How Do You Implement a Scaled Agile?

As a leader, you are always troubled by a common problem: "Agile," as a lightweight methodology, is easy to implement in a small team of a dozen people, but in a large environment where multiple teams are combined, it is more or less obstructed by all parties. So, what do you need to do to overcome these obstacles and implement agile in a large organization?

After experiencing Scrum blockage, leaders choose to reconstruct their teams' goals, starting with the organizational structure for gradual improvements to achieve the scaled agile.

With the principle of "starting from young," the implementation of scaled agile should be considered from three basic perspectives: promoter, management, and team members.

Scaled Agile Change Promoter

The choice of a promoter is essential when the organization has not yet stepped on the threshold of scaled agility. Typically, the role of a promoter is filled by multiple individuals, and leaders can choose to hire a professional scaled agile coach from the outside to guide the organization through internal change.

The key to successfully implementing scaled agile is selecting a scaled agile coach. When selecting a coach, the first hurdle to pass is the coach's certification, followed by the coach's agile implementation skills, practical experience, and customer cases. In addition to inviting "external help," one or several people from the organization should conduct relevant skills training to thoroughly integrate the organization's characteristics and the need for change and present the effect of "specific analysis of specific problems."

Management

It is the leaders and managers who make decisions in the organization. If the leaders are still in the traditional mindset of the waterfall development model or the Scrum model, and the change cannot be carried out from top to bottom, it will be useless to do anything. Therefore, it is essential to train leaders on this. This will help leaders understand the value and internal mechanism of scaled agile, promote the formation of scaled agile values in the organization and internalize them to form a unique cultural core of the organization.

Team Members

Top-down change does not mean that team members can enjoy the results without doing anything or that they can do things mechanically according to the instructions given by their leaders. Instead, each team member consciously assumes responsibility for driving the organization forward with scaled agile change around a common goal. In scaled agile, the important thing is the cooperation between various teams, and each team needs the cooperation of each member. Therefore, all members of the organization are indispensable.

In addition, members must perform work based on the organization's common goals, in lockstep, with frequent deliveries in small batches to continually adjust to changes in requirements. As previously mentioned, achieving team and technical agility requires agile teams to unite around a common reach goal. The agile release train is a vital part of value delivery: at a specific time, in a specific place, 5-12 agile teams are trained in scaled agile, lean principles and collectively plan the next Program Increment (PI).

The gradual implementation of scaled agile in organizations relies on certain logic and pattern.

• Promoters provide technical support for scaled agile change;
• The management provides affirmation of leadership for scaled agile change;
• Team members solidify the foundation for scaled agile change.

While the changes are traceable, the people and processes involved can do their work according to a unified release pace. It is only then that teams can work closely together to facilitate the implementation of various practices such as quality assessment and test-driven, adjust accordingly to the actual situation of the organization and jointly drive the agile release train toward its destination.