Agile is only for smaller projects and/or startup organisations - Not Anymore. Taking my own and my organisation's experience, Agile is a proven methodology that is well suited for delivering complex, distributed, multi-year enterprise programs, for many years now. While this is really a great thing for agile enthusiasts and practitioners, it’s a bit of worrying sign for me the increased recognition and popularity the ‘Agile Certifications’ and ‘Agile Frameworks’ are receiving among individuals and organisations who would like to adopt Agile to stay relevant in current world.

1. S r i d h a r a n V e m b u
ARE THEY OVERSELLING THE AGILE
FRAMEWORKS AND CERTIFICATIONS
Discuss Agile - Hyd / Pune - 21/22 Nov 2015
✤This presentation is copyrighted to Sridharan Vembu of ThoughtWorks Technologies Ind Pvt. Ltd.
No copy or use of this presentation should occur without prior permission

2. this is something that puzzles me for quite sometime..

3. and, I’m going to try and solve this puzzle together with
you…

4. let me share a success story with you..

5. This company is World’s most innovative Electronics
giant and a household name across the globe…

6. this company is World’s most innovative Electronics giant
and a household name across the globe…

7. around 5 years ago, they came up with a renewed vision
to try and turn around company’s fortunes

8. Part of this vision was a complete redesign of the digital
marketing platform across the globe

9. This initiative was under one of the affiliated companies
of this global giant

10. ThoughtWorks partnered with this company exactly three
years ago to help them achieve this goal

11. Global Web Transformation Program - at a glance
100+ countries, 130+ locales
7 timezones
15K + unique pages to be created
100K+ products
300K+ Responsive Images
10+ different vendors
5 Waves - 5 regions
Close to 100 regional systems getting phased out
2 failed prior attempts
ZERO downtime - 2 years since 1st Go-Live
3 weeks deployment cycle - Concept to Production
3-6 m USD yearly saving
Continuous Delivery (incl. automated deployments till Prod)
250+ members (peak size)

12. Global Web Transformation Program - at a glance
Global
Solutions Unit!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
GWT Program!
!
!
!
!ThoughtWorks
Team
Inside Out Agile Transformation
Automated Deployment!
Common backlog!
Collective ownership
Pair Programming!
TDD!
Continuous build, integration!
Automated Deployment!
Effective feedback mechanism!
Tech debts / bug bashes!
Distributed Standups!
Common tool for backlog

13. Global Web Transformation Program at a glance
Top Mgmt.PMO
Region
Region
Region
Region
Delivery
UX/UI
Delivery
Delivery
Data
Center
Region
Content
Support
Region
The Flight Map
* indicative

14. Let me ask you few questions?

15. How many are you are certified?

16. How many of you have used any of the scale
frameworks?

17. Can you tell me, what are some of the aspects /
elements missing in this story, that the Frameworks and
Certifications prescribe as ‘must-have’ or ‘should-have’?

18. No HIP - yes, you’re right…
!
NO HIP

19. No Fancy titles and roles

20. No separate Release Management, Product
Management, etc required

21. UX needs to be one of the agile teams or spread across
teams

22. Why Kanban only at Portfolio / Epic level?

23. Sorry DAD, I don’t agree with you :-)

24. Why I think, Certifications alone don’t help you…

25. Some Good things I like…
• Architecture continuous evolves - you got it right Dean…
• Continuous integration and test first - Again Big +1
• Trying to give a common structure to the learnings
• Somebody has put in a lot of effort to put together all
their learnings and gave a structure to it

26. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
!
Working software over comprehensive documentation
!
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
!
Responding to change over following a plan
And then the Agile Manifesto says…

27. I’d to agree with Ken Schwaber - The RUP guys were
back!! :-)

28. The 4 Questions you should ask? - Alistair Cockburn
• Independent of anything else going on, how will you increase collaboration?
• Accounting for everything else going on, how can you increase trial and
actual deliveries to consumers?
• How will you get people to pause and reflect on what's happening to and
around them?
• What are some experiments your people will do at different levels in the
organisation to make a small improvement?

29. The Take Aways…
• Need a strong executive sponsor from client organisation
• If not all, need at least one PMO member supporting the
transformation
• Start with a core team (Inside Out approach) that truly believes in
agile
• if the team has some or good exposure around agile, you
couldn’t ask for more :-)
• Please understand, the transformation is not about introducing new
vocabulary or shaking the existing structure
• The key to success lies in behavioural change
• If you want to focus on process change and improvement, focus
primarily on Engineering Processes and not only operational
processes

30. Thoughts / Comments / Questions?
THANK YOU