Modeling project-to-product team transformations

The previous section, with its focus on Sprint Planning, looked at a relatively small part of the Scrum framework. This section provides a model of the rest of the Scrum events and the added complexity of supporting the development of a large and complex solution involving multiple Scrum Teams.

The scope of this model is fairly large, so for this exercise, we will stay at a fairly high level in our analysis. In practice, the Product Owners and other planning participants will further decompose many of the elements to analyze their unique circumstances.

Similar to the strategy employed with our analysis of the Sprint Planning event, Figure 4.12 provides a list of identified elements. The model is based on several assumptions: the product already exists, and the organization's executives are looking for a better approach to aligning further development in support of customer's needs, while also benefitting from improvements in productivity:

Figure 4.12 – Elements involved in implementing Scrum on large and complex products

Bear in mind that there is no single approach to laying out a CLD diagram, and organizations have unique issues that they have to deal with. This model is but one potential set of elements and issues facing an organization that wishes to implement Scrum to support the development of a large and complex product or service.

Modeling a burning platform situation

Figure 4.13 is a visual model of the response that an organization might take to address a burning platform situation involving the long-term development and sustainment of a large and complex product offering. The term burning platform is a business analogy involving a situation where the company is facing a critical problem that is putting the firm at risk of going under.

The analogy comes from the story of a fellow who was on a burning oil platform at sea and was faced with a decision to jump into freezing waters, and perhaps perish, or face the certainty of dying if he stayed on the burning oil platform. He jumped and lived. The point of the story is that it's often better to take an action that might cause failure than staying where you are and facing certain failure:

Figure 4.13 – CLD model of a burning platform situation

In our model, the executives have observed that they are missing important customer requirements, missing release dates, and having product quality issues. All these effects are direct and positive indicator of the burning platform situation facing the company. Faced with these situations, the executives do some research, read mine and other books on scaling Scrum, and decide it's time to jump into the Scrum waters. That decision had a direct but negative (oppositional) effect on the burning platform.

Modeling Scrum scaling activities

Figure 4.14 is a visual model of the elements that are identified for the system to scale in an Agile manner in support of the development of a large and complex product. Remember from the previous subsection that the executives decided to jump off their burning platform and into the unknown waters of implementing Scrum on a large scale. That decision is where this diagram starts.

As the first order of business, the organization has implemented an enterprise Scrum Team to oversee the implementation of Scrum. The enterprise Scrum Team both evaluates the needs for the implementation and removes any impediments that arise during and after the implementation. This team operates at the enterprise level, not at the product level.

Some of the issues they must address include determining the needs to implement product-oriented teams, understand the skills and experiences needed on each team, and deciding how many teams are required and the makeup of each team in terms of skills. These are all direct and positive (in the same direction) effects of the establishment of the enterprise Scrum Team.

Those same elements directly impact the organization's ability to define optimized Scrum Teams for their product. Again, the relationships are direct and positive. The removal of impediments impacts the organization's ability to optimize the teams and ensure the teams receive adequate skills, through training, coaching, and mentoring resources. These relationships are negative, or oppositional, in effect. In other words, with the removal of impediments, more Scrum training is provided, and more optimized teams are created:

Figure 4.14 – CLD model of Scrum scaling activities

At this point, we can start to look at the elements involved in developing and refining the Product Backlog, and the assignment of Scrum Teams to develop the desired product capabilities.

Modeling the development of the Product Backlog and rolling out Scrum Teams

Figure 4.15 looks at the issue of missing requirements and how the organization can develop Product Backlogs and ultimately establish Scrum development teams to build the highest-value and highest-priority features. Both product value and priority assessments have direct and positive outflows from the identification of missing requirements relationship.

For simplicity, the model does not get into the elements involved in finding and developing a product owner to support the development and refinement of the Product Backlog. But certainly, those are important factors that the enterprise Scrum team must address.

With the assessment and identification of high-priority and high-value items, the product owner builds the Product Backlog. Items with higher priorities and value flow into the backlog with direct and positive relationships.

The development of the Product Backlog allows the subsequent development of sprint goals and backlogs. Before we do this, we need the development and assignment of Scrum Teams. In the previous section, we modeled the elements in our system that remove the impediments to providing Scrum training and the definition of optimized Scrum Teams. Those elements allow the organization to assign the Scrum Teams. The relationship between removing impediments and the assignment of Scrum Teams is negative, as they move in opposite directions—that is, having fewer impediments leads to the capacity to have more team assignments. The definition of optimized Scrum Teams has a direct and positive relationship with the assignment of Scrum Teams.

The assignment of Scrum Teams has a direct and positive relationship with the rollout of pilot Scrum Teams and with the rollout of additional Scrum Teams over time. The assignment of Scrum Teams also has a direct and positive relationship with the establishment of sprint goals. In other words, the teams are available to develop the sprint goals and Sprint Backlog:

Figure 4.15 – CLD model of building the Product Backlog and rolling out Scrum Teams

We could go on and model the elements and relationships involved in running the development sprints. I've stopped the model here as this is the scope of the effort that is most involved in realigning the organization's development resources into product-oriented teams. Now let's look at what these models look like when combined.

Modeling the rollout of Scrum in a large product environment

Figure 4.16 puts all the previous models from this section into a single model. The visual model shows the burning platform situation that helped us understand the issues that put the company at risk. That assessment led to the organization's executive conducting research and discovering how scaled Scrum concepts could help resolve those issues.

Two causal loops evolve from the burning platform situation and assessment. One loop, shown in the lower left-hand side of the diagram, shows the elements and relationships that lead to the assignment of Scrum Teams. The other loop, shown on the right side of the model, depicts the identified elements and relationships that lead to the discovery of the highest-priority and highest-value requirements, which become the baseline items making up the Product Backlog. As the Product Backlog is defined, the Scrum Teams are assigned to develop the desired features, starting with pilot teams and rolling out additional Scrum Teams over time.

Note that an additional line was shown to form a linkage between the Staged roll-out of additional Scrum Teams node to the initial Burning platform situation node. This relationship completes the causal loop. The relationship is negative to indicate the oppositional effect the implementation of Scrum Teams has on the burning platform— that is, adding more Scrum Teams should reduce the effect of the burning platform situation:

Figure 4.16 – CLD model of a large product rollout of Scrum

In the next and final section of this chapter, you will learn how to apply systems thinking to enterprise implementations of Scrum.