Scaling Scrum

We offer private training, at your location or virtually, and an OnDemand course catalog.

About Scaling Scrum

Duration: 1.5 – 3 day course
Resources: Workbook

Scrum is a successful way for individual teams to deliver value quickly. As the needs of the business expand beyond what individual teams can accomplish, however, organizations need to scale Scrum while remaining agile.

Using an extended case study, this course presents the best practices necessary to scale software projects to multi-team projects, multiple geographies, and work that spans multiple iterations. You’ll examine scaling tactics from a Scrum perspective including Lean, Kanban, and Scrum of Scrums. Learn the do’s and don’ts of scaling Scrum gleaned from Construx’s extensive experience helping clients scale Scrum across the globe.

Course Details

Scaling Fundamentals

• Product vision’s critical contribution to scaling
• Infrastructure and tools sets for scaling
• Project focus and multi-tasking – how to manage for scaling
• Patterns of scaled work distribution

Agile Scaling Principles

• Defining clear decision lines
• Creating collaboration
• Delivering customer facing value consistently
• Maintaining feedback loops
• Maintaining quality

Scrum as a Building Block for Scaling

• Three roles
• Three artifacts
• Four meetings
• Two levels of commitment

Lean Scaling Principles

• Limiting waste
• Early defect detection
• Acknowledging variation

Kanban

• Setting up a pull system
• Creating a work queue
• Setting work in process limits
• Defining classes of service
• Calculating flow time

Technology and Scaling

• Traditional scaling tools
• Web 2.0 support for scaling
• Using instant messaging effectively
• Leveraging shared workspaces
• Electronic meetings—making them efficient and effective
• Configuration management techniques for scaled environments
• Build challenges in scaled environments

Architecture’s Role in Scaling

• Using common architecture successfully
• Conway’s law
• Architecting for features vs. components
• Planning to allow the architecture to emerge
• Test-driven architecture
• Handling work in Scrum that does not create user-visible value
• Addressing work that spans multiple iterations

Team Coordination

• Planning for time together
• Aligning plans and processes
• Creating convergence points
• Defining clear roles and responsibilities
• Building and using common infrastructure
• Approach to demos and retrospectives in scaled projects

Overcoming Geography

• Working with language differences
• Working with cultural differences
• Working with time differences
• Establishing “presence” in distributed teams
• Ins and outs of using liaisons
• How to handle travel
• Creating points where value is delivered

Achieving Quality

• Defining “done” consistently
• Building communities of interest
• Lessons learned with Scrum of Scrums
• Team-level testing
• Release-level testing
• Working with non-functional requirements
• Coding standards

Release Roadmaps

• Process for creating release roadmaps
• Key inputs into release roadmaps
• Getting to the right level of detail
• Delivering customer value vs. better architectural components
• The Release train metaphor

Backlogs and Scaling

• Focus on one primary backlog
• Role of chief product owner
• Product owner councils
• Product backlogs vs. team backlogs
• Allocation of functionality to backlog(s)
• Area product owners

Benefits

You’ll learn:

To scale Scrum from a single, focused team to a multi-team, multi-national, distributed project
Tips and techniques to scale from one to hundreds of teams
The benefits of common frameworks, including LeSS, DAD, and SAFe
What works and what doesn’t when scaling Scrum

Who should take this course?

This class assumes familiarity with Scrum and with agile in general. It is designed for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Directors, Managers, Architects, Leads, and Team Members who need to scale Scrum.