Make sure you're ready to scale your agile organization. Here's your checklist.

Fortune 100: “James, we're trying to scale up our agile transformation using <fill in the blank> framework. Can you give us any suggestions regarding approach?”

James: “Let me ask you some questions about your most mature scrum and kanban teams.”

Fortune 100: “Fire away.”

James: “For your scrum team, does their Definition of Ready include that dependencies have been explicitly cleared and that the stories meet the INVEST criteria so the team can fully commit to delivering those stories? And can you count on a trending velocity from the team so that you can determine their CPP (cost per story point)?”

Fortune 100: “The team does understand Definition of Ready, and INVEST criteria, but we haven't been the best at continuously repeating our application of those points. And I'd definitely like to know the team's CPP. That would help me do some ROI calculations at the portfolio level.”

James: “Ok, something we can work on. For your most mature Kanban team, does their board include explicit policies regarding individual and status WIP limits, and how long their intervals are so that cycle time and flow efficiency can be measured? And do they have some sort of Definition of Done that determines how their cards transition from "In Progress” to a “Wait” status in their workflow?”

Fortune 100: “I don't think they measure their board, and they don't make strategic use of WIP limits outside of the usual individual limit of one work item at a time. And I'm sure they don't maintain a Definition of Done for the workflow as you describe it.”

James: “Ok, do you have a formal assessment process that provides empirical data on Scrum and Kanban trending team maturity and effectiveness?”

Fortune 100: “We do Sprint Retros. Nothing more than that.”

James: “Yeah but you don't get a lot of trendable data from just doing Keeps, Starts and Stops. Your teams should be self-assessing using an assessment worksheet at every Retro as well.”

Fortune 100: “That would be great if we could add that to the Retro agenda. I can see where empirical data provided to the leadership level would reinforce our transformation.”

James: “Yes it absolutely does. Do you have a formal agile refinement process (not BRD's) for stories that executes outside of the sprint to make sprint backlog grooming more efficient? And do you keep at least three sprints worth of stories meeting the team's Definition of Ready in the backlog at all times?

Fortune 100: “Generally all we use is BRD's and the product owner doesn't have enough time to meet that requirement for the backlog.”

James: “So my guess is PO's and maybe even scrum masters are either not allocated full-time or are spread too thin for backlog and team activities.”

Fortune 100: “That's probably true.”

James: “Well, given the answers you've provided, implementing some scaling framework at this time is going to be a waste of time and not agile.”

Fortune 100: “Why do you say that?”

James: “Because you don't have enough to scale with yet. Doesn't mean you can't get there, but your transformation needs to be driven by the fundamentals right now instead of some heavy framework.”

Folks, you can't scale an agile organization built on a foundation of sand. Make sure your fundamentals are in place and providing you with a regular stream of empirical data, and always reinforce your commitment to Agile Values (trust, transparency, commitment, continuous improvement). Strong team assets that practice these fundamentals and values are far more critical to the success of your organization than any scaling framework.

Until next time,

slàinte mhath!

James Smith has a 25 year career building high-performing technology teams and organizations for a multitude of industries. He enjoys working with startups to some of the largest corporations in the world, has held several highland games world records, and has pitched to VC using nothing more than napkin drawings and a bowl of M and M's. He claims there's only one truely always-optimizable XOR result in the universe, that either 2+2=4 or it doesn't, but not both. Otherwise, some of the best results can be found in the grey areas.