Publications

Reduced time to identify inter-dependencies and deliverables from months to days Able to prioritize IT operations alongside business goals Learned to develop effectively as a team

Now moving into its third year since introducing the Scaled Agile Framework, the dbPalace team at Deutsche Bank is well beyond the roll-out and introduction phase and results have been significant – from a 35% increase in product delivery to a 50% reduction in defect leakage to faster on-boarding of new businesses – the team has achieved significant results winning multiple industry awards. Listen to the interview.

As Agile Software Development practices become more and more popular both customers and suppliers are looking to find ways to have more agile contracts. Contracts that reflect and exploit the benefits of an agile way-of-working on both sides of the relationship. This hands-on workshop introduces and applies a number of simple but powerful tools to enable customers and suppliers to establish effective contracts that reflect their level of agility without constraining or compromising that of their partners.

In EM360's Podcast interview, Ian speaks about his experiences of specialising in large-scale agile adoptions. Drawing on his expert knowledge, Ian has worked with hundreds of projects to introduce iterative and agile practices in sectors as diverse as government, telecommunications, finance, and internet start-ups.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 4 of this series, Ian Spence provides some practical tips to avoid waterfalling your features.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 3 of this series, Ian Spence provides guidance on what it means for a Feature to be Ready.

In May 2017, agile leaders from the banking, insurance, telecom, technology and publishing sectors gathered with Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) at the Tower of London to discuss the important role executives, product managers and release trains engineers play in a successful agile transformation programme. With clients from Deutsche Bank, SimCorp and Mastercard participating in the panel discussions, guests heard first-hand what it really means to adopt, resource and carry out these roles in large, often quite traditional, internal software development organisations.

To be agile as teams, we need to adjust our approach to meet our immediate challenges and needs. To be agile as an organization, we need to learn collectively and evolve our approach over time to support our evolving mission, so that we continue to excel in an ever-changing environment. We would not call a TV set “adaptive” if, in order to adjust the volume, we had to throw it away and replace it with a model with a different volume setting. So why are we prepared to accept process frameworks that leave us in a similar predicament every time we want to improve our product development performance as an organization?

An agile way of working spread to 5,000 practitioners within two years by using an Essence-based Practice Architecture A sustainable path to agility was created - teams could incrementally improve their way of working and growing Practices provided standardization which helped practitioners share and learn best practices

Key to realizing benefits from agile is strong customer representation through empowered Product Ownership – to guide the team in delivering a solution that maximizes end-user value. But this is also often the hardest agile practice to get working effectively, because of its novelty for many stepping into the role, and because of the challenges in balancing time commitments with existing business responsibilities, and combining incisive decision-making with broad-based stakeholder representation and negotiation. Download the infographic and post it on your wall as a daily reminder of what's needed or better yet, download our Product Ownership Health Check Guide.