Why Agile is incompatible with Matrix organizations, the collateral damage that Matrix organizations exert on their projects and products, and how to break these things. Some highlights: Cross-functional teams, Tuckman's Stages of Team Formation, Test Automation Pyramid. I've given this talk at the Agile Network India meetup on 2019-07-27.

1. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Escaping the Matrix

2. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Pipeline
Test and Production
Code
⇒ Executable
Development
Understand emerging
requirements
⇒ Acceptance Criteria
Ideation
Requires needs and ideas
turned into valuable
features
Users / Operations
Build, Verification,
Deployment
⇒ Automated
Pipeline

3. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Two Agile Key Questions
● Are we doing the right thing?
● Are we doing the thing right?
How to answer these questions?
Feedback!

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The Two Values of Software
“The Secondary Value of Software is its behavior:
That it does what the current users currently need without any bugs, crashes or delays.”
— Robert “Uncle Bob” C. Martin
⇒ But Users and their needs change over time!
“The Primary Value of Software is softness of its structure:
That it tolerates and facilities the ongoing change for new features.”
— Christian Hujer (paraphrased from Robert “Uncle Bob” C. Martin)

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Organization
Functional
Grouped by function
Matrix
Product
Grouped by product/project
Project

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Matrix Organization Example
Payment
Test
Core
Test
Telco
Test
Payment
Dev
Core
Dev
Telco
Dev
QA PM DevTest
Munich Pune Lisbon Montreal
Business
Line 1
Business
Line 2
CxO
Support

8. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Product/Project Organization Example
Product 2 Product 3 Product 4Product 1
Product
Group 1
Product
Group 2
Product
Group 3
Product
Group 4
Business
Line 1
Business
Line 2
CxO

9. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Productive Teams
● What is a Team?
● What is a productive team?
● What makes a team productive?
● When is a team productive?
“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
— Agile Manifesto

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Performing
Norming Storming
Forming
Tuckman’s Stages
of
Team Development

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Traditional SoftwareProduct/Project
End date
Success by reaching end date
No end date
Success by never ending

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Test Pyramid
Unit
by/for Developers
3
Integration
by/for Architects
2
Acceptance
by/for Users
1
S
L
O
W
E
R
F
A
S
T
E
R — Robert C. Martin, Twitter
— Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile

13. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
Users not in team ⇒ Long UAT
Testers not in team ⇒ Wrong testing approaches
Operations (both) not in team ⇒ Slow deployment
Support not in team ⇒ Insufficient feedback
QA not in team ⇒ Release Blockage instead of Release Support
Overspecialization
Underperforming Teams
Matrix Collateral Damage Examples

14. Nelkinda Software Craft Pvt. Ltd.
ConnectSummary
Matrix organizations risk
collateral damage to Agile.
Projects organizations are
the “natural way” for Agile.
Christian Hujer
CEO/Founder
Nelkinda Software Craft
Twitter: @christianhujer
LinkedIn: Christian Hujer
E-Mail: Christian.Hujer@nelkinda.com
Blog: http://nelkinda.com/
Podcast: TBA
YouTube: TBA
Questions?