Transforming How We Deliver Value: Agility at Scale

Continuous delivery in software development allows us to deliver incrementally, get quick feedback, and react. A key enabler is the adoption of agile techniques and methods; key inhibitors in the enterprise are size, scale, and complexity. In particular, within large organizations, teams face immense challenges in both the adoption of Agile and Lean principles but also scaling that adoption to an enterprise level. The Rational ALM organization within IBM is a typical enterprise, and our teams have adopted agile principles. But agility at enterprise scale is not the same as team-based agile development. Now we must coordinate work across multiple interdependent teams to deliver value, rather than focusing on developing a single product or application. Kelli Houston from IBM shares her experience of adapting SAFe in an enterprise organization and describes the struggles, mistakes, and successes throughout that process. Kelli identifies the key challenges, including the need to identify value, provide the right data for various audiences, and the inherent required culture shift. Learn how to avoid some common pitfalls as you and your own organization embark on this same transformation.

Outline/Structure of the Session

• Overview of Agile and Lean Practices

• Practical benefits in general

• How Agile and Lean can provide value when scaled to the Enterprise

• Applying Agile and Lean for teams of teams and for the portfolio

• Overview of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

• How it can help you with an enterprise scaled agile transformation

• Commentary on its applicability (or not) from our experience

• Case Study: IBM’s ALM Foundation project

• Motivations for getting started with our enterprise scaled agile transformation

• How we got started — why we picked SAFe

• Our process — the good, the bad, the ugly

• What worked, what didn’t with respect to SAFe

• Where are we today? What value have we seen?

• What are our next steps?

• Best Practices and Lessons Learned

• Recommendations for leading your own enterprise scaled agile transformation

Learning Outcome

• Understand the motivations driving Enterprise Scaled Agile transformations

• Learn about how best to approach adopting Lean and Agile practices at an Enterprise scale

• Get an overview of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), including benefits as well as gaps

• Hear about the best practices and challenges in scaling Agile to the Enterprise

• Learn by example: successes and mis-steps in the IBM Rational ALM organization’s transformation

Kelli Houston, DevOps/Agile Solution Offering Manager, IBM Rational

Kelli Houston is the DevOps/Agile Solution Offering Manager at IBM Rational, where she is responsible for driving the development and delivery of offerings that accelerate customer time-to-value through the adoption of best practices and supporting automation.

Kelli has over 28 years in the software industry with a strong background in software engineering, consulting, solution architecting and project management. She has co-authored several books, and is a Certified Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant.

Kelli’s Linkedin profile :www.linkedin.com/pub/kelli-houston/1/198/527

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