The team I was working with had a “great problem” – more work than we could deliver. However this success brought mixed blessings as the strain of growing so quickly was starting to show. We had a backlog of work, process issues, resourcing and quality issues and a lot of knowledge residing with one or two of the original start-up team who were now single points of failure.
The innovative, "can do" attitude of the start-up company was still there but we were having growing pains. We knew that what we were experiencing in our market (Australia) would eventually be seen in our USA market if we didn’t find a solution to our growing pains.
We looked to Lean and Agile as a multidisciplinary approach to achieving an effective product strategy, development and delivery capability that could be scaled to the whole organization.
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Growing pains scaling agile in service delivery LAST Conf 2014
1. Growing Pains
Scaling Agile to Achieve Greater Capability
in Service Delivery
By Mia Horrigan
Managing Director Zen Ex Machina
www.zenexmachina.com
http://zenexmachina.wordpress.com
@miahorri
3. Start Up Growing Pains
• More work than team could deliver
• Process, resourcing and quality issues
• Knowledge residing within a few individuals - Single
points of failure
• 30 offices in AU, NZ, EU and rapidly expanding in USA
• Grown from 20 to 200 to 1000 within 7 years
• 48% of staff joined in last 12 months
www.zenexmachina.com
4. Decay
Start- Up
How Business Grow
www.zenexmachina.com
Youth
Growing Pains
2nd Youth
Maturity
Turnover
Profit
Moment of Truth:
Cusp of the comfort zone
Years in Business
ToplineRevenue/Profit
Healthy Business Curve
The Slow Death
Crash & Burn
5. Key Issues
• Project overruns
• Decreasing margin
• Lots of non-billable work being done
• No product or service delivery roadmap
• Projects managed in isolation
• Lots of new starters, difficult to on-board
• Poor quality
• Low level of maturity
www.zenexmachina.com
6. Level 1 - Initial
Processes unpredictable, poorly controlled and reactive
Level 2 - Managed
Processes characterised for projects and is often reactive
Level 3 - Defined
Processes characterised for the organisation and
is proactive (projects tailor their processes from
organisation's standards)
Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed
Processes measured and controlled
Level 5 – Optimising
Focus on process
improvement
Capability Maturity Model (CMMI)
We were here
7. Capability Uplift Strategy –Lean Start-up
www.zenexmachina.com
Aim Objective How
Improve resource and
capacity planning
processes
Scrum masters involved in assisting resource and
capacity planning for the Sprints
Increased accuracy of estimations of work effort
Capability planning occurs
Planning is established on a continuous cycle
Engage Executive, Directors Product teams
Team, PMO and Delivery team strategic
planning
SM Coaching Clinics with scenario-based training
SM and POs mentoring one-on-one
Buy-in from SMs
Implement and
enhance (Agile/Scrum)
project delivery
Sprint cycle goals for projects achieved
Continuous planning embedded into Sprint cycles
Reporting as part of the project cycle
Achieve level 2 CMMI® maturity rating within 3
months
Support from CIO and Director for the Agile
Framework
Peer review by Business / Global PMO of key
artifacts.
Engagement of the business during planning and
review stages of projects
Up-skill and train
Scrum Masters as
owners of the process
Ensure Scrum Masters are moving towards conscious
competence
Achieve CMMI® level 3 maturity rating within 3- 6
months
Engage Scrum Coach
Wkly Coaching Clinics /Lean coffees
Backlog of Coaching Clinic topics that represent
value to SMs and align to the strategy and
guiding principles
Conduct Coaching Clinics and one-on-one
sessions with Scrum Coach
Implement and
enhance governance
processes
Improved transparency
Resources allocated appropriately across projects
PRINCE2 aligned
Successful project management recognized as more
than just “on time” and “on budget”
Implement RACI from projects to Program
Continue backlog refinement meetings of
Applications Development Forums and Project
Board to rank projects
Identify standards for tolerances and baseline
8. 5 Areas of Improvement (Lean Principles)
• Process issues – Lack of governance, and
understanding of processes, roles & responsibilities
• Waste due to functional silos – Upstream operated
independently of downstream
• Waste in resourcing model – Cherry picking and
body shopping
• Quality issues – Milestone driven timeframes not
realistic, no testing time, non billable rework 24%
• Lack of “big picture” thinking – No program view of
delivery, or interdependencies, limited collaboration
www.zenexmachina.com
10. Unconsciously
competent
3 months
Consciously
competent
2 months
Conscious competence and
agile adoption
www.zenexmachina.com
Consciously
incompetent
1 month
Aim: Learn what
the rules are
Aim: Learn how
the rules apply
Aim: Learn why
the rules apply
Outcome:
Awareness of
change required to
produce
repeatable
outcomes
Outcome: learned
behaviours with
repeatable
outcomes
Outcome:
Empowered to
change the
rules and
know the
consequence
You know that you
don’t know and it
bothers you
You know that you do
know something but it
takes effort
You know how to do
something and it is
second nature
You know how to do
something and it is
second nature
12. WIIFM- “What’s In It For Me ?”
Organisation
• Based on business’s
Priorities
• High visibility on project
progress
• Ensure effective use of
resources
• Help with the change and
adoption
• Product Roadmap and
upgrade path articulated
Service Delivery
• Happy client area
• Certainty around resources
• Collaboration and
multidisciplinary approach
• Better quality through
Build/Test process
• Ability to manage projects
within a program framework
www.zenexmachina.com
13. Scaling to Program Level
• Implemented Scrum and Scrum of Scrums as
framework to assist organisation to scale its
agile capability
• Program approach to manage competing
schedules and priorities
• Program governance ranked order of product
backlog and release train order
• Team left to focus on what was of value to
client
www.zenexmachina.com
14. Governance
• Decision points at all levels
• RACI to manage scope and requirements
www.zenexmachina.com
Portfolio
Program
Project
16. User vs. Product Focused
www.zenexmachina.com
Intelligent Integrations Smarter Hospitals
(EMR)
• Rhapsody
• PCEHR
• SMD
• Integration Engine
Products/Solution
• Clinical portal
• HIS
• Meds Mgmt
• Orders
• Clinical
Documentation
• SMT
• ED Whiteboard
• Mobile
• IAM (Caradigm)
Healthier Populations
(EHR)
• BIS
• OHBI
• Healthcare
Pathways
• Mobile
• Patient Portal
• Ereferrals
• EMPI (Nextgate)
Orion product
View
Customer
View
Product View
17. Cultural Change
• Moving to Scrum was a cultural change
• Needed executive leadership approval and support –
took time
• Lot of resistance from senior members of team as new
structure took away function role based power
• Managers blocked the processes
• PMs lacked big picture thinking negatively impacted
program
• Had to make some tough decisions
• Had an unhappy client who was a global reference site
www.zenexmachina.com
19. Billable Utilisation Paradox
• Revenue based on timesheets and % complete
against budget and estimate to complete
• But most projects were fixed costs so longer delivery
eroded billable rate
• Scrum Utilisation >95% but project health issues
meant billable utilisation was 60%
• Gaming of the system
• Changed to communicating sprint goals, progress
and value delivered
• WIP limits helped to ensure team had focus on value
www.zenexmachina.com
20. Limitations and Problems with Scaling
• Methodology concerns of scaling from project
to portfolio and regions
• Started midway through fixed priced projects
• Confusion and in-fighting over scarce resource
• Multiple PMs contributing to common backlog
but only one product owner (skewed)
www.zenexmachina.com
21. One Product Backlog
ProductBacklog
a
a
c
b
d
c
• Develop Product Backlog items
to 20/20/60 levels of granularity
• Create Definition of Done
• Create sufficient specificity and
clarity in Product Backlog to
commence first Sprint
Planning & Design ExecutingInitiating
• Develop Program Backlog (Epics)
• Develop Epics acceptance criteria
• Rank new Epics in Program Backlog
• Brief Product Owner
• Brief Teams
• Undertake estimations of Epics
• Agree deployment milestones
a
a
c
Sprint
Backlog
Sprint
Planning
4-week
Sprint
Production Ready
Increment
• Analysis
• Design
• Development
• Testing
• Daily Scrum
• Remove impediments
• Team-based work
• Capacity planning
• Capability planning
• Succession planning
• Create goal for
items to be
completed by
the end of the
Sprint
• Create tasks
• Release into Test
• Demo with the
Client
• Lessons learned
for the Team for
next Sprint
23. Successfully Scaling the Program
• Scrum of Scrums
• One product owner with Program Director as
master Scrum Master
• Pairing of knowledge resources with new
starters
• Re-use of framework and program roadmap
across regions and client sites
• Communities of Practice shared lessons learnt
across regions at global PMO level
www.zenexmachina.com
24. Outcomes
• Improved delivery capability
• Product co-development partnership with Sprints
• Decrease risk of failure to deliver on time
• Working collaboratively with stakeholders
• Robust governance and accountability
• Iterative rather than “hero” efforts
• Sharing skills and knowledge
• Scaled from project to program to portfolio
• Adopted learning to global PMO
• Lean delivery – identified and decreased waste
www.zenexmachina.com
Ehealth – integration between clinician, hospital, primary care and community centres
Nursing, Product Manager and Program Manager – good understanding of issues from client and users
Brought in to run the service delivery team
Ehealth – integration between clinician, hospital, primary care and community centres
Nursing, Product Manager and Program Manager – good understanding of issues from client and users
Brought in to run the service delivery team
Rating the organization against the CMMI showed an organization where processes were not consistently applied and were very much dependent on individual knowledge and capability rather than reflective of an organizational capability. Whilst the global PMO was in the process of defining organizational standards for project delivery, they are at the early stages of developing the PMO.
To address the process and quality issues, we applied Lean Startup as the strategic cornerstone of delivery and introduced Lean metrics to the (product) value stream to remove waste
Process issues- Lack of agreed understanding on processes and governance led to misunderstandings in roles, responsibilities and accountability for aspects of delivery within the organization. This impacted our ability to provide clarity regarding product forecasts, costs, and to fully account for the risks involved in development, integration and delivery.
Wastes due to functional silos – Upstream processes operate independently of downstream delivery processes. This resulted in unrealistic expectations of clients of delivery milestones and estimate costs lower than actual costs and a backlog of projects that all seemed to be blocked by product issues.
Waste in resourcing models – Individuals and team resources were cherry-picked rather than on assessment of team mix necessary to assure successful delivery with minimal risk. As a result, project contribution margins had decreased. The resourcing model was “body shopping” out key team members who worked in isolation. Growth meant there were a lot of new starters but it was difficult to on-board resources quickly.
Quality issues – Milestone driven timeframes established upstream resulted in all available time being absorbed by development with little time for testing. The teams were working on a number of legacy projects that had been in progress for over two years, and this meant that the solution being implemented was no longer the supported version. Non-billable project work (re-work and technical debt) was 24% of hours.
Lack of “big picture” thinking – The current projects had grown organically and there had not been a program view applied to delivery of the Health Account. The team did not have a full understanding of interdependencies and where their projects fit into the larger picture for the client and organization. Their silo approaches meant that there was no collaboration or knowledge sharing across the organisation.
Scrum coach them to support processes and help them apply the right patterns to get through to next level