Nine Practices To Deliver Enterprise Solutions

Agile development, as a "lightweight" methodology, is suitable for small and medium-sized development teams, but may not meet the growing needs of large enterprises. The size of a large enterprise is usually ten or even dozens of times bigger than a small team. In addition to the difference in the number of employees, the complexity of the system and the complexity of interpersonal coordination also vary a lot. Relatively speaking, there are more communication and integration in large companies.

Agile development has become an indispensable methodology in today's software development, with more and more large enterprises using it. The questions are how to apply Agile to large enterprises with higher complexity for scaled agile development.

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Large enterprises need to link various activities through mutual coordination and constantly upgrade, including：

• Story analysis and business function definition
• Function analysis and configuration
• System design and design integration
• Design alternatives and trade studies
• Modeling and simulation
• Building and testing components and systems
• Verification and validation
• Deployment, monitoring, support, and system update

Nine best practices are helping you deliver the enterprise solution:

1. Continuously Refine The Solution Plan

In the process from traditional waterfall development to agile development, products are delivered in frequent small batches instead of a single development model in waterfall development. Similarly, in the Scaled Agile framework, the activity of building large systems occurs in smaller successive batches throughout their lifecycle, replacing the traditional "V" life model. Before each small batch is delivered, developers can fill in the gaps from the last time and explore new forms and features, so the value of the product can change according to user requirements.

As the solution plan is continuously improved, the complete solution has flexibility in the product development process. During the value flow of the product, the upstream team constantly changes its design according to the changing stories, the downstream team explores new issues in the process of implementation and provides feedback to the upstream to continuously improve the solution, which in turn makes the whole team continuously improve.

2. Using Roadmap

We need to make corresponding plans for the product release plan and innovation system. The plans developed by applying traditional methods are detailed and long-term, while the introduction of new technologies and changes in user requirements can quickly dismantle these detailed plans.

Therefore, in order to achieve agile management in large enterprises, we can manage and forecast work by using roadmaps. Roadmaps focus on near-term work and are divided into delivery commitments and work forecasts. They can help to functional break the near-term work solution, at the same time, they can help the incremental planning. Roadmap allows the team to add, change, remove and reprioritize new knowledge as it emerges, which ensures that the team delivers the maximum value for each increment.

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3. The Importance Of Architects

The architecture of software development is the key to determining the amount of effort and cost required for changes. This requires the architect to be able to collaborate with the team to create a resilient system that allows the team and trainers to build, test, deploy, and even release parts of a large solution independently.

4. Resolution Of Compliance Issues

The Quality Management System (QMS) was created before Lean-Agile development and was based on a methodological design that was omitted in the area of compliance. The subsequent introduction of the Lean Quality Management System (LEAN QMS) made compliance activities part of the regular process. The compliance article in SAFe 4.6 provides specific successful models that have achieved good results in industries with rigorous compliance processes. It illustrates how Lean-Agile and regulatory compliance behaviors can coexist using SAFe to make the process more visual and merge compliance activities into the overall product development process.

5. Build and Integrate Through Training

With the expansion of system scale in the whole enterprise, making internal parts coherent becomes a problem for managers to solve. Enterprises coordinate developers and engineers to build, integrate, deploy and release large systems through release training and solution training. Agile Release Trains (ART), the primary value deliverer in SAFe, require teams to work at the same pace and stay in sync, so everyone integrates their solutions, validates assumptions, and even makes incremental deliveries at least in PI.

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6. Applications For Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is at the core of continuous delivery. Full integration is something that cannot be applied in large-scale systems, but agile teams can integrate and test in small environments and rely on system teams to test end-to-end in real production environments. Smaller integrations in partial scenarios or small environments also mean less time and cost for the team to test.

7. Manage the Supply Chain with Systematic Thinking

Large systems manufacturing teams must integrate solutions throughout the supply chain. The supplier, development team, and customer should be in the same shared space to ensure a smooth integration handoff.

In the integration process, if the solution in one case is part of a larger solution in another case, once there is an adjustment to the plan, it can affect the entire supply chain, resulting in increased costs and reduced efficiency. Managers need to manage the supply chain with systematic thinking that places the functional composition of the solution on a value stream with a consistent roadmap, where the platform team can decide for itself which aspects to change without impacting the rest of the supply chain.

8. Establishment of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline

• System engineering activities for analysis and design (continuous exploration) are carried out in small batches and flow rapidly through the pipeline
• Pipeline planning includes building pipelines and systems
• Continuous integration creates an automated environment that allows changes to flow through pipelines
• The architecture leverages wireless updates and programmable hardware to enable deployment and distribution in the operational environment.

9. Rapidly Deployable Systems

A fast CD pipeline means the early release of delivered automated, minimum viable systems. This allows organizations to learn earlier with less investment and possibly even start generating revenue sooner. The architecture of the system must support continuous deployment and release on demand. For example, the architecture leverages wireless updates and programmable hardware to enable deployment and release in the operational environment.

Advances in lean systems practices and technology are changing the way organizations handle the development, deployment, and operation of large systems. They are replacing the traditional big-bang launch with a continuous delivery model. This requires teams to adopt a more streamlined systems engineering approach, coordinate across the supply chain, and have the ability to develop real-time systems to continuously deliver higher value to users.