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- Now, let us talk about

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Enterprise-level Agile transformation

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versus Team-level.

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Agile at scale is defined as
the ability to drive Agile

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at the organizational level

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by creating Agile culture and mindset.

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Also, we apply Agile
principles, practices,

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and outcomes at an enterprise level.

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This is extremely important
because in large organizations

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it's almost impossible to succeed

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in an Agile environment
without scaling agility.

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So let's review an example.

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Let's imagine a software
agility team that decides

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to implement Scrum at the
team level in their company.

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In our example it's a large bank.

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In their previous organization

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three of the seven team
members worked on Scrum teams.

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So they're not new to Scrum.

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They were excited about team empowerment

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and collaboration that they had

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with their customers in
an Agile environment.

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They shared the experience
with other team members

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and introduced them to Agile
manifesto, Scrum guide.

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And initially other team members
were a little bit skeptical

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and didn't think that team
self organization would work

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in a large financial services company.

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But then they decided to be
open-minded and to try it out.

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The first thing they
did was to get support

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from their functional managers.

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Their managers did not mind them trying

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some Agile practices as
long as the team members

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deliver high quality software on time

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and keep them in the loop.

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Managers asked for weekly updates,

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offered help and advice to team members.

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So that was a really helpful first step.

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Next, the team came up with
the name of Transformers,

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because they were transforming the way

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of working in the organization

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and the way it delivered
software to their customers.

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They agreed to provide weekly
updates about the number

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of users, stories, tasks
completed, bugs resolved,

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and functionality delivered
to their managers.

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And they started sprinting.

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In four sprints,

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the functional managers said

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they don't really need those reports

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because they could see

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all up to date information in Jira

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which was the tool that the team selected

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to manage their work.

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So without this overhead,

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the team became even more productive.

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This of course didn't mean
that everything was perfect.

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Sometimes they would get a blocker

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that they did not expect from a new tool,

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or sometimes they had to tweak a solution

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because of security review and so forth.

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And they didn't hit every
single sprint commitment,

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but if they missed, they missed by little,

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maybe one user story.

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They learned not to get upset
with missing the commitment

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and they decided to turn every challenge

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into an opportunity.

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So what they did,

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they discussed the problem
at their retrospective

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and expressed any concerns
about inefficiencies

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and then took their delivery

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to the next level with new improvements.

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As a side product of this transition,

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team members were actually
very happy and committed.

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They had control now.

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They felt rather than getting tasks,

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they were getting a direction.

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And then they had the freedom
to make their choices,

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in terms of implementation
details, sequencing,

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or planning their work,

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and overall self organizing
the team into delivery.

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They also felt there
was almost no overhead

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in the way they managed the work

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or at least compared with
their prior experience.

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And also they didn't have
to submit those RAG reports,

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red, amber, green,
about the project status

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and a lot of explanations
they had to do previously.

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And also they worked at a sustainable pace

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versus their prior
constant weekend heroics.

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They were motivated by showing
their work to the users

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and hearing their direct
appreciation and feedback.

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So compared to really high
attrition on other adjacent teams

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within the organization,

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no team member has left
the Transformers team

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since the Agile adoption started.

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Actually on the opposite,

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multiple people within the
company heard about this team

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and were reaching out to them

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and said they would like to join.

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Also of course, things were
not all smooth and easy.

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One problem was Transformers
team was not the only team

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in the organization,

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so they depended on many other teams

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for infrastructure, solutions,
software integration,

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data backup, legal compliance
reviews, and so forth.

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They did not work in a vacuum

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and it was becoming more
and more apparent to them.

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Because those other groups did not have

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the same level of agility,

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they did not have flexibility

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and customer centricity as they did.

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Within a few months

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there were multiple
challenges that transpired.

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There were three most
impactful challenges.

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The first one, management
still required long term plans

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with every activity detailed out

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with timelines and delivers,

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and they still wanted RAG
status, red, amber, green.

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The burn downs and roadmaps
were not sufficient to them.

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The second challenge was with the legal

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and compliance departments.

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They required four to eight week notices.

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And in many features that were delivered

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they would require changes
after their reviews

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which disrupted the following sprint.

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The third challenge is
that software dependencies

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on other teams that did not practice Agile

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were really challenging.

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Even though Transformers did their best

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to decouple features and request
those early from the teams,

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the teams took a lot of time
to process and deliver those

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and that slowed down Transformers sprint.

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So those three challenges
made it really hard

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for Transformers to exist
within the organization.

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In addition to all these
challenges the attitude

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towards Transformers within
the organization itself

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was not that positive.

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Some of their peers thought
they were just trying

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to stand out and make life
more difficult for the others.

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Some of the managers were clearly annoyed

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by the lack of enthusiasm
related to advanced planning

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on all those requirements
months and months in advance.

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It was easy to understand the managers had

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to plan a year ahead based
on the annual budget cycle.

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So incremental planning was seen by them

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as an impediment to their own job.

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The chief software architect
was taking Transformers'

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agility almost personally.

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She saw it as a threat
to the architecture board

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that she chaired.

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The concept of emergent
design in an Agile environment

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challenged the whole existence
of the architecture group

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because they would have
to review every changes

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to the architecture very,
very far in advance.

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Also their organization CTO,
chief technical officer,

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used to say that perception is reality.

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And the perception was that
there was no planning in Agile,

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no architecture and no
collaboration outside of the team.

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So others felt that
Agile was the wrong way

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for the organization to go.

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And unfortunately it didn't end very well.

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The Transformers team was restructured

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with the team members
individually assigned

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to different projects,

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and many of them left the company.