This webinar series addresses aspects of what it takes to be be effective in Agile at Scale. Each session in the series is 20-30 minutes in length with 10-15 minutes of Q&A.

Webinar sessions

An executive’s guide to Agile

April 22, 2014
Al Shalloway | Recording | Slides (PDF)

Discusses Net Objectives’ approach to Agile, which is about fast delivery of business value in a predictable, repeatable manner. If you are an executive or you’ve talked to executives about Agile and got little interest from them, this webinar is designed for you. Agile is really about the quick delivery of the most important business value in a consistent, repeatable, predictable manner. It is not about iterations, teams, co-location, or any of the ways it may be implemented.

Why achieving Agile at Scale requires more than team and evolutionary-based approaches

May 28, 2014
Al Shalloway | Slides (PDF)

Achieving Agile at scale requires attending to structure, management, systems, code quality and more. Approaches geared from a top up or kaizen only approach are doomed to fail because they don’t address inherent challenges of Agile at scale. This webinar starts out by discussing these challenges and describes why systems thinking and attending to flow are essential. Before we embark on a transition to Lean-Agile methods, we must understand the challenges inherent in effective software development of either products or IT software.

• Why our management methods work against our ability to develop software
• Our required mindset – lean-flow
• How to create visibility in our process and what we will discover
• Why pilots tend to work, but often take us further from Agile at scale
• Why a team based approach cannot solve an organization’s problem – time to move on from Scrum-of-Scrums

Intended audience: Directors, architects, product managers, product owners, project managers, team leads

What is required at scale?

June 23, 2014
Al Shalloway | Recording | Slides (PDF)

Software development requires several things to be done to be effective and efficient. While these may not have been well-known 10 years ago, they are fairly well known now and include:

• Business Level
  • Focus on building and deploying minimal business increments
  • Drive from business value, organize around what is being built and build incrementally
  • Have architectural epics be a peer to business epics
  • Limit the number of things being worked on
• Management
  • Make all work visible
  • Have teams work in a consistent cadence to be able to synchronize on a frequent basis
  • Value code quality, program execution, alignment and transparency
  • Provide a structure for teams to work together
  • Create teams to the greatest extent possible
• Teams
  • Manage work in process to eliminate waste caused by delays and overworked people
  • Have an owner for the development value stream
  • Use test-first methods
  • Automate testing
  • Achieve continuous integration

Intended audience: Directors, Executives, Project Managers, ScrumMasters, Team Leads, Architects