I taught a public Certified ScrumMaster class in Boulder recently, and was struck yet again by how many folks had burning questions about how to manage multi-team programs with Agile.
Technically, the CSM is an introductory course, designed to give the basics of Scrum sprints and releases and of how to lead Scrum teams. More and more, though, I find that people feel the need to at least understand how Agile works at scale, even as they begin to implement Agile for a single team. “Tough Questions” from the class included: “How to collaborate with non-Agile teams on a single project,” and “How to handle coordination between multiple Scrum teams.”
I began to answer these questions during last week’s webinar: “The Secret to Coordinating Multi-Team Agile Programs.” In the webinar, I described why Agile teams have the advantage when it comes to quality, value *and* coordination in multi-method programs. I also gave some practical tips for making coordination and integration work.
I was really excited to be joined on the webinar by Srikrishna Gopalakrishnan, eBay Senior Product Development Manager. I had the good fortune to work closely with Sri when we were launching eBay’s first Agile program. Sri talked about what it’s really like not only to make the coordination work, but also to change the way you lead and manage, along with putting a different kind of energy into motivation. Sri and I got to tell our stories, adding real-world experience to make sense of textbook Agile.
I invite you to listen to and watch the recorded webinar. And, for those of you who listened and submitted questions, answers are on their way shortly.
I believe that Agile project management in small, co-located teams crossed into the mainstream back at the sold-out Agile 2007 conference, but Agile program management at scale is just now heating up. Last week’s article on eBay’s Agile adoption in Business Week (combined with other recent news) shows us that organizational agility is becoming a mainstream topic at the highest levels.
The market is no longer asking, “Can we scale Agile across the enterprise and large distributed teams?” and instead is asking, “How do I get there?” and “Who can help me?”
BusinessWeek asks, “Can eBay Get Its Tech Savvy Back?”
Watch the video of eBay's Mark Carges on BusinessWeek.com
Author Douglas MacMillan says: “Carges’ plan for eBay is to take the “agile” method of software development epitomized by the daily deal widget and expand it to other areas of the site. New product pages will be customized to better accommodate different categories, such as jewelry and clothing. And the company is helping third-party developers create applications for eBay’s site such as a UPS-branded terminal for monitoring shipments” Read the full article >>
Author Note: Mark Carges was my boss and mentor at BEA. I know a good bit about his current efforts and they are really going for it at eBay and PayPal. It is great that their enterprise agility efforts will unfold in public eyes.
In other mainstream signs of Agile…
I was excited to see a couple of other great articles on Agile this week, including:
- Marketers often say you’ve reached the mainstream market when you notice your peers are doing it, and you feel behind enough to move. InfoWorld’s Paul Krill noted in his article Software Companies Jump on Agile Programming Bandwagon how many providers are “eager to hop on the agile development train.” (Clearly, we have an early mainstream market now.) See my post about traditional providers, including IBM, entering the space.
- Gantthead’s Bob Weinstein handily made the case for transitioning to Agile development in his article on Making a Case for Agile Project Management. He says:
“If ever there were an ideal time to make the leap from a traditional to an agile project management approach, it’s now. In this tense, uncertain, cost-cutting environment where CIOs are watching their bottom lines like hawks, the concept unfailingly proves successful. It not only delivers consistent, excellent results on time, but often under budget.”
- Finally, David Rubenstein from SD Times tackles the issue of Agile Development Built to Scale. I agree with Robert Holler that scaling anything across an entire organization is tough, and that sometimes Agile just gets a bad rap for something that is universally a challenge. It does take commitment from the team, a bit of training and a lot of inspecting and adapting to be the best Agile organization you can be.
The question these days is: how good do you want to be, by when, and who’s the best partner to get you there?
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