Why Industries Are in Need to Adopt Scaled Agile?
Today’s Software Development requires a results-driven dynamic approach that accepts rapid innovation and code change. Developers require a flexible way of code development to fasten the Software Development Life Cycle. Even when organizations utilize multiple Agile Teams to drive productivity, developers struggle to meet end-user demands. The Scale Agile Framework (SAFe) brings the best solution to help the Agile Teams work together effectively. Keep reading as we discuss why industries must adopt Scaled Agile as soon as possible!
What is Scale Agile?
Scaled Agile is a framework that implements lean Agile Practices in large enterprises to improve customer experience and meet stakeholder requirements. Alongside combining different Agile Practices, Scaled Agile emphasizes lean thinking.
Scaled Agile provides well-structured guidance about the roles and responsibilities of all Agile Teams and Developers. It ensures no resource goes to waste when developing software/product features. Instead, Agile Teams look for solutions to their pain points, perform smooth workflow management, and work on revenue streams.
The Difference Between Scaled Agile & Agile:
Agile is a Continuous Development (CD) method that ensures Continuous Delivery of the assigned tasks by Agile Teams. In Agile, the developers break a single Product Backlog into Sprints while working in multiple cross-functional teams. The development team can break down User Stories into smaller time-defined tasks. Hence, Agile is perfect for smaller development teams.
But, large enterprises with hundreds of development teams cannot benefit from dividing the workload among smaller teams with the Agile approach. Here comes the need for Scaled Agile, which considers the enterprise size before forming Agile Teams to help increase productivity. Scaled Agile utilizes standard Agile Principles to plan the project framework efficiently.
Having said that, Scaled Agile and Agile have similar core values but aren’t the same. Scale Agile prioritizes alignment, program execution, transparency, and built-in quality. Whereas Core Agile focuses on customer collaboration over contract negotiation, achieving team alignment, and process interactions.
What Single Team Agile Challenges Can Scaled Agile Resolve?
Teams following the Core Agile principles challenges face challenges that remain unsolved when dealing with larger enterprises. These challenges can only be solved after adopting Scaled Agile:
1. Lack of Alignment with The Business
Team-level Agile doesn’t have any underlying structure to percolate the Product Vision to each Agile Teams individually. As a result, most teams fail to get the maximum benefits of the Agile Approach.
2. Maintain Uniformity Among Teams based on Productivity
It’s impossible to maintain uniformity among Agile Teams to deliver an equal amount of work by the end of the Sprint. As each team works independently, larger enterprises fail to establish working agreements across all Agile Teams.
3. Dependency on Management
Most Agile Teams must meet a competitive timeframe to reach the Product Goal. The Product Owner can’t manage Multiple Teams. Utilizing Scaled Agile helps organizations deal with complexities related to the workflow of multiple Agile Teams.
4. Co-Coordinating Release Windows
Since different teams of Developers focus on smaller bits of product improvements, Software Release becomes a stressful event to handle for larger organizations. Using Scaled Agile helps the Product Owner to coordinate all Releases smoothly across multiple teams.
5. Leveraging Specialized Roles
Many specialized roles like Unit Testers, UX Designers, or Technology Architects don’t require full-time responsibilities throughout Sprint. Considering this, Scaled Agile leverages the specialized functions when they make definite sense to work.
Getting Introduced to Scaling Agile Frameworks:
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Consider it as online knowledgebase that defines the proven success patterns for implementing various Lean Agile Practices at a larger enterprise scale.
- Scrum of Scrums: This technique leverages a system of coordination between the Scrum Team and the development teams to participate in regular meetings.
- Disciplined Agile: This is a decision-making framework that follows a hybrid and learning-oriented Agile approach.
- Large-Scale Scrum Framework (LeSS): LeSS is a lightweight framework that handles multiple Agile Teams.
How Does Scaled Agile Benefit Industries with Larger Teams?
To understand the actual benefits of Scaled Agile, you must understand the complexity of relationships and communication barriers that larger teams face. The bigger the team is, the greater the number of process relationships to maintain.
Most Agile Frameworks like Scrum and Kanban are most effective for managing individual Agile Teams. The story is different when it comes to managing multiple Agile Teams. Scaled Agile goes beyond the single team level, which, in turn, aligns multiple Agile Teams to work in a cross-functional environment. While the Product Owner gets enough space to make better predictions, industries succeed in managing the dynamic market conditions and meet ever-changing customer expectations.
Conclusion
Moving to Scaled Agile ensures better team collaboration and decision-making among the Agile Teams. Hence, Agile Leaders of large enterprises can focus on Lean Thinking to adopt the capabilities of Scaled Agile. The Agile Leaders should develop a new plan to increment team productivity efficiently.
Reference
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/what-scaling-scrum
