BCG’s experts, equipped with our agile at scale framework, guide companies toward collaborative and efficient ways of working. Learn more.

This article is the final in a series of six articles on the growth, value, and future of Design for People. The intent has been to explore and discover the impact of behaviors, habits, and patterns of people in the design of environments.

Agile at Enterprise Scale: The Tricky Bits - Download as a PDF or view online for free

(UPDATE: see Spotify Engineering Culture, two short animated videos showing how we work) Dealing with multiple teams in a product development organization is…

AIOps Agile Methodology Agile Project Management Agile Modeling Agile Business Analysis Agile Leadership Business Model Innovation Continuous Innovation Design Sprint Design Thinking DevOps Dual Track Agile Feature-Driven Development eXtreme Programming Lean vs. Agile Lean Startup Kanban Rapid Application Development Retrospective Analysis Scaled Agile Spotify Model Test-Driven Development Timeboxing Scrum Scrum Anti-Patterns Scrum At Scale Stretch […]

IBM Targetprocess is a powerful, flexible enterprise Agile planning SaaS solution that powers your ability to scale at the speed of business."

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The communal microfactory is an agile apparel production method that allows for made to order and on demand manufacturing at scale.

In this poster, I have collected some organizational design patterns from Agile product organizations at scale. The highlighted questions might serve as an…

Scaled Agile equips enterprises to use SAFe to accelerate speed-to-value, adapt strategies, navigate change, and execute at scale to delight their customers.

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We often don’t think through carefully enough what new behavior, skills, and attitudes will be needed when major changes are initiated. As a result, we don’t recognize the kind and amount of training that will be required to help people learn those new behaviors, skills, and attitudes. —Kotter Train teams and launch trains. —The SAFe approach Train Teams and Launch the ART This is article nine in the SAFe® Implementation Roadmap series. Click here to view the entire roadmap. In the previous articles in the SAFe Implementation Roadmap series, we described the first eight’ critical moves’: Reaching the Tipping Point Train Lean-Agile Change Agents Create a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) Train Executives, Managers, and Leaders Lead in the Digital Age Organize Around Value Create the Implementation Plan Prepare for ART Launch By now, key ART stakeholders are trained and onboard, and launch plans are in place. The LACE and various SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs) are ready and prepared to help. This article discusses how to train the teams and launch the ART so that the real business benefits of the change can start to occur. Details Kotter’s quote is a reminder that changing people’s behaviors, attitudes, and skills—and in the end, the culture of an enterprise—is no small feat. If people are to do things differently, leaders must “shape the path” [1]. That requires training to show people the way and follow-up coaching to help them master these new skills, techniques, and attitudes. Train the Agile Teams Now is the time to focus on the new and tentatively identified Agile Teams who will constitute most train members (see Prepare for ART Launch). These are the people who create the systems needed by the business, so it’s essential that they fully grasp what’s about to take place. They come from across the organization and have all the knowledge from business, development, operations,  support, and other domains to define, build, test, and deploy their solutions. To be successful, they must understand their role in the ART and gain the Lean and Agile skills needed to be effective in their changing role. Likely, some or all have never participated in an Agile or SAFe environment, so the next significant task is to train all the teams in the SAFe way of working. Scaled Agile, Inc.’s two-day SAFe for Teams (S4T) course is designed for this purpose. This team-building and training course features an introduction to Agile development, including an overview of the Agile Manifesto and its values and principles. It also includes: The core responsibilities of an Agile team and Agile Release Train (ART) an exploration of the roles of Scrum Master/Team Coach and Product Owner The purpose and mechanics of the essential events for their chosen team method, SAFe Scrum or SAFe Team Kanban Preparation for PI Planning Understanding the events which enable value flow and how to measure and accelerate flow as in each Agile Team and the ART In addition, teams prepare their Team Backlog, which identifies the work needed for the upcoming PI planning event. When approaching this training, keep in mind that it’s likely many of the team members will have some degree of experience with Agile development and might feel that they are already equipped to work in SAFe. There could potentially be some resistance to what they might consider more basic Agile training. However, this team training is critically important for SAFe success. In particular, there are several elements of team agility at scale that are unique to SAFe. These include: The role of the team in PI planning, Inspect and Adapt (I&A), and the IP iteration Focus on and participate in the System Demo Applying Features, user stories, and acceptance criteria to define and validate system behavior Applying the Core Responsibilities of SAFe Agile Teams Understanding the flow of work through the connected backlog systems Collaboration with other teams and other roles, including the Business Owners, Release Train Engineer, Product Management, and System Architects Introduction/application of Built-In Quality practices, including the Continuous Delivery Pipeline Building the larger team of teams that constitutes the ART The Benefits of Big Room Training In some rollouts, training is performed team by team over time. That can sometimes be effective. However, a more accelerated approach is strongly recommended and proven, which includes training all the team members simultaneously. This practice has raised some eyebrows in the industry. Many picture 100-plus people in a room being trained simultaneously, compare it to the more intimate setting of a small team with a single instructor, and can’t imagine that it delivers equivalent benefits. In reality, it provides far more value, for example: Accelerated learning - This training happens in two days rather than over months. That speeds up the timing and assimilation by all the train members, which accelerates the launch. A common scaled Agile paradigm - All team members receive the same training, at the same time, from the same instructor. This eliminates the variability of different training sessions by different instructors using different courseware over time. Cost-efficiency - One of the challenges with Agile implementation at scale has been the availability and expense of training. Talented, proven instructors are hard to find and not consistently available, and their value and cost are commensurately high. The Big Room approach is typically three to five times more cost-effective than individual team training. Collective learning - There is no substitute for big room training learning experience. Face-to-face interaction is one of the critical ingredients of Agile at scale. Training everyone together starts building the social network that the ART relies upon and creates a far better experience than what can be accomplished when working separately. There can be a transformative aspect to it, something you have to experience to believe. To create a feel for what’s possible, below are some observations from Mark Richards, SAFe Fellow and a SAFe pioneer in Australia. How on earth do you get a high-impact training experience with 100 people in the room? I was initially unconvinced, so I worked with my clients to schedule four or five SAFe team-level courses over the period leading up to the first PI planning. I’d request that they send entire teams to the same course so they could sit and learn together, and they would promise to do their best. Then the pain would start. Firstly, the teams would often be in flux up until the last moment. Then they would be too busy on current commitments to all come together, so they would dribble through two or three at a time. And distributed team members would go to different courses. But I eventually got convinced enough to try it. After the first big room training, I was blown away and spent some time sorting through how on earth it could be so powerful. —Mark Richards, SAFe Fellow, Australia Here are some of Mark’s insights:

Start from Agile principles first

Agile is merely a philosophy of how to change the way we think about delivering value. Powerful ideas have grown from the original philosophy, namely frameworks, like Scrum and Kanban. Manufacturing, product development, service development, sales, marketing, and yes, even management can benefit from the ideas espoused from Agile. Having helped all sorts of Read More

Tens of thousands of organizations - including over half of the Fortune 100 - use MongoDB to build high-performance systems at scale.'

When well executed, Agile is massively scalable and profitable

The Agile Manifesto has probably had the greatest impact on how projects are done – even how non-agile projects are done. The concept of iterating, developing and focusing on value are principles that even predictive projects benefit from.

AGILE | 「心地よい緊張感漂うミニマルな造形を、素材感たっぷりに。」　株式会社ヒラシマ 〒832-0807福岡県柳川市三橋町枝光6-1 / SHOWROOM　PIANO ISOLA/ピアノイソラ

"Bienvenido X. ¡Tu destrucción a la mano!" ―Agile, Mega Man X2 Agile (アジール, Ajīru?) es un Maverick miembro del grupo de los X-Hunters. Agile es quien recolecta datos para el "Plan de Unificación", es el estratega-militar dentro de la organización, siendo muy cortés y de personalidad reservada…

Indigenous placemaking in design is gaining greater currency in Australia and plays a crucial part in reconciliation, says a University of Melbourne academic.