I keep running across organizations with 4-10 dev teams struggling with Agile. They look to the two most popular frameworks out there for a solution (Scrum & SAFe) to solve their problems. On one hand they see something that can work at the team but doesn’t help them with their product management. On the other they see something much bigger than they need. They’ve fallen into a trap–looking for a solution instead of solving their problem
What are their problems? Most have trouble Identifying what has the greatest value to deliver, breaking it down into the right size business increments to give to the teams, coordinating their teams’ work, teams not being able to decompose the business increments they’re given into small stories, and building, validating and releasing the code quickly. These abilities should be their focus
When Agile Product Management provides guidance in what’s important, coordinating teams is straightforward. It’s easier to pull a rope than it is to push it. 2-3 days working on prod management, ATDD, a little Scrum and a little Lean is all you need. Invest here, it returns more value. And it’s less expensive. Proper training &coaching methods can get your product folks, 6 teams & their coaches working with Agile methods for less than $40k