Successful Large Scale Agile Transition

[Derek Davidson]

Hello

I'm doing some research into successful, large scale, agile transitions.

Does anyone have an example of a successful transition, where:

Large means > 10000 employees
Transition means 'Were working in a traditional way but are now working in an agile way'
Successful means that the agile transition is still underway and affects more than just IT

Appreciate any and all responses, especially if there are available references.

Thanks.

--
Derek
Sent from my iPad

[Mark Levison]

Try less.works for some.

Cheers
Mark

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[Derek Davidson]

Hello Mark

By which I'm thinking you're referring to Large Scale Scrum from Craig Larman and Bas Vodde ?(hope I spelled those correctly)

It's not so much scaling approaches I'm looking for but real world examples of large organizations that have transitioned successfully.

Sorry if my intent was unclear and thanks for responding.

--

Derek

Sent from my iPad

[Mark Levison]

Yes and they have case studies. Writing from my phone hence the imprecise links.

Caveat LeSS isn't so much a scaling framework as an experiment framework. Each new org is an experiment.

Cheers
Mark

[Ashish Pathak]

One of the better ones that I have followed is that of Netlifx. It may not be 10k + people but it's big in terms of market share and leadership position.

Scrambled by my iPhone 6

[Dinesh Sharma]

Mark actually meant https://less.works/case-studies/index.html :) 

Many Thanks,
Dinesh Sharma

[Derek]

Hey Dinesh. Long time no hear. I hope you're well?

Thanks for the link. 

-/

Derek

Sent from my iPhone

[Punita Dave]

Hi Derek,

I have worked on a 6000+ people transformation. Not sure what your research entails. Can you share some more insights on your research?

Regards,

Punita.

[Derek]

Hello Dave

As per the question really. As soon as I find one person proposing a success, I seem to find three that will shoot it down. 

In short, I cannot find one successful large scale agile transition (where success is defined as per my original post)

--

Derek

Sent from my iPhone

[Martín Salías]

Hi Derek

I lead such a transformation (together with my team at Kleer) at Grupo Sura in Colombia. Most information we have is in Spanish, but you may get an idea.

Some videos here:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n20ul5Dyns

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYehhZxtyWo

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yRoP-9A3s

This is a huge Insurance Company where we started transformation in IT, built an Adoption Team (the Agile Table) and then spread the change throughout the organization. 

We are now pushing further into Sura AM, which is a separate business (Asset Management) spread through Latam. Here we have another challenge as we have to consolidate a working style across different cultures and diverse organizations (most of the branches were aquired over the last 3~4 years).

Let me know if you need more information, and maybe we can contribute to your research.

Regards,

Martin Salias about.me/martinsalias

[Derek Davidson]

Hello Punita

I'm doing research for a book I'm writing. It proposes a new way of working with large (read > 10,000 employees) organisations.

At present, I'm actively trying to find instances of successful large scale agile transitions (those terms are defined in my original post) and I'm coming up short.

If you know of any, I'd love to hear about them.

Thanks.

--

Derek

[Derek Davidson]

Hello Martin

This is very helpful. Thank you.

--

Derek

[Tom Mellor]

Hmmm...out of 18.2 million businesses in the US, only 1800 have more than 10,000 employees. That's .01% of all companies. Out of those 1800, I would bet a year's earnings that not 1% (18) would make or have made any amount of "transition" to being agile.

I worked at one of those 1800 (with 68,000 other employees) for 22 years and worked earnestly for the last 9 to help it be even just a little bit agile. No luck there. I've watched many other so called "agile transformations" try and die, too.

Depending upon how you measure the outcome of something like this, I suspect there is little reliable evidence of success. Big companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and Yahoo were agile at their beginning and to fight the effect of growth on their culture (being agile is about culture since it is something an org is, not something it does.)

I'm not sure what relevance a book about large company so-called transitions would be, but a book about transitions out of being agile might be interesting. Especially in its exploration about why.

[Pierre Neis]

Actually working at SAP HQ in Walldorf where "Scrum" is the "method" to be applied.

I can leave you a feedback on work in progress.

SAP: 76,986 employees in 130 countries.

Would love to know what large global company can say that it's agile

	PierreNEIS Senior Lean Agile Coach | Associate M: +352 / 661 727 867 UK: +44 / 203 239 52 60 wecompany.me | You can book me Actually Scrum Coach for S4HANA/Hybris Billing @ SAP SE

[Derek Davidson]

Thanks for your response, Tom.

I think that most agile coaches work with either medium or large scale organizations. So far, my research, and personal experience, shows that the larger the size of the organisation, the greater the likelihood that an agile transition will fail. As a coach this bothers me. I'd like to help my clients to succeed and so, I'm looking at ways to do that.

I completely agree your assertion that many of today's large organisations (such as the ones you listed) were born agile. It's in their DNA. It tends to show that, to succeed, you need to be agile.

So, what of the large, traditional organization? Many of the stats say that they're slowly dying. Even those that attempt to transition to agile, can't seem to make it.

This is where my book comes in. I have an idea to help them. And my research is to test some of my notions.

Again, I welcome any and all thoughts on this.

Thanks.

--

Derek

[Derek Davidson]

Hello Pierre

I'd love to find large organisations that have successfully transitioned to agile, too. Here are some names I've been given thus far (I welcome comments from all on these, or any others):

1. Microsoft

2. ING Bank

3. Salesforce.com

--

Derek

[George Dinwiddie]

Derek,

Nationwide Insurance has 33,000 employees. They're not all in software
development, of course, so I'm not sure about your definition of "large."

- George

--
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* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach http://www.agilemaryland.org
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[Yves]

Thzre have been multiple agile transitions at ING:

Spain, Netherlands, Belgium. 

None of them are 10.000 in size . Resultaat are totally different as transitions were Done with different teams and approaches

scrambled by yPhone

[scott.duncan]

Just a couple thoughts:

1.  How much of large organizations claimed to have transitioned to an Agile approach are actually involved in doing that?  From what I have heard at Scrum Alliance sessions and webinars, Microsoft's has been limited to a subset of their development organizations, for example.

2. How easy do people think it is for any "large" organization (even medium ones) to transition effectively to just about anything?  For some places, "Agile" is "just another thing" as they have been led down the Lean or Six Sigma or CMM/CMMI or whatever path already in the past.

[Ron Jeffries]

What is the meaning of “transition” when it is a part of the company with totally different results?

On May 29, 2016, at 12:07 PM, Yves <yv...@hanoulle.be> wrote:

Thzre have been multiple agile transitions at ING:

Spain, Netherlands, Belgium. 

None of them are 10.000 in size . Resultaat are totally different as transitions were Done with different teams and approaches

Ron Jeffries

ronjeffries.com

There's no word for accountability in Finnish. 

Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted. 

--Pasi Sahlberg

[scott.duncan]

And on another aspect of the question, I would have to agree that the number of large organizations where the transition "affects more than just IT" is probably incredibly small as just getting all of IT transitioned is a challenge when IT departments have been used to siloing the way they work.  For example, a successful project I worked with back quite a few years ago (i.e., before 2008), had to negotiate for several months to get a build a week from the group that managed builds for all projects.  Early Sprints had poor velocity because of dependencies on the database group who'd throw their work over the wall and the Scrum teams would end up most of their Sprint just testing that software rather than working on much else of their own.

On Monday, May 23, 2016 at 8:05:11 AM UTC-5, Derek Davidson wrote:

[Yves]

Yes Ron that is my point.

That said, technically the different ING's are different Legal companies.

Y

scrambled by yPhone

[Derek Davidson]

Hello George

Great to hear from you. I hope I understand your question when I say that 'Large' means an organisation of more than 10,000 (ie: not 10,000 in IT alone).  

Then again, by successful, I was looking for organisations for where agility had extended beyond simply IT.

--

Derek

[Derek Davidson]

Hi Ron

Thanks for your response. I may be misunderstanding you here so please bear with me. I welcome being corrected.

By transition, I was meaning a full organisational transition to working in an agile way.

I have come across pockets of successful agile adoption in a number of large organisations (though they often appear to be in spite of the organisation, rather than because of it). I am deliberately excluding these for the purposes of the question / research.

Thanks.

--

Derek

[Derek Davidson]

Hi Scott

That all sounds hugely familiar to me. I see similar circumstances often.

Where I am working at present (organisation of 250,000 worldwide), the most successful area consists of less than 200 people, working in IT only.  They had to invest huge amounts of time up-front to negotiate with the 'machine' to overcome bureaucracy and get support in areas such as physical infrastructure. They do superbly well compared with their peers. Most areas of IT want to copy them. But almost no-one wants to invest the up-front hard work to make it happen.

All of my research so far tells me that traditional, large organisations cannot transition to agility at an organisational level.  My question to this august group, is intended to challenge my findings thus far.

--

Derek

[Yves]

Then you have to drop ING

scrambled by yPhone

[John Miller]

Derek,

It would help me to know what your specific research thesis is and what is the specific parameters you have around "large" and "successful".

Thanks,

John

[Derek Davidson]

Hello John

Not sure what else I can add, really. From my original post:

Large means > 10000 employees
Transition means 'Were working in a traditional way but are now working in an agile way'
Successful means that the agile transition is still underway and affects more than just IT

My thesis is that successful agile transition has not been achieved in a large organisation.

--

Derek

[Mark Levison]

David I think we're all agreeing with you. Change of this nature, on this scale will likely take 10+ years. Specifically a generational change in leadership.

Check-in with Peter Green (ex Adobe) and Tarang Patel (still at Adobe).

Cheers
Mark

[John Miller]

Thanks,

John Miller

Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach

On May 29, 2016, at 4:09 PM, Derek Davidson <derek.d...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello John

Not sure what else I can add, really. From my original post:

Large means > 10000 employees
Transition means 'Were working in a traditional way but are now working in an agile way'

What is an "agile way"? How much "agile"? Values? practices? What levels... Teams? Individuals? Leadership. 

Successful means that the agile transition is still underway and affects more than just IT

Don't all Agile transitions affect more than just IT, at some level. What level of involvement?

 Is it All of IT (developers, operations, help desk, infrastructure, etc...)

My thesis is that successful agile transition has not been achieved in a large organisation.

The questions are vague to me. 

[Pierre Neis]

Hmm Usually transition is a collection of actions to build your journey to a change and it doesn't mean that the goal is reached: ex. what means 100% achieved Continuous Improvement?

Transition can be the definition on Why and How?

If I'm wrong then you can remove SAP from this ;b): here is the land of scrum-butt!

	PierreNEIS Senior Lean Agile Coach | Associate M: +352 / 661 727 867 UK: +44 / 203 239 52 60 wecompany.me | You can book me Actually Scrum Coach for S4HANA/Hybris Billing @ SAP SE

[Derek Davidson]

Hello John

I've shied away from absolute definitions on purpose. To create definitions would, I suspect, require the detail oriented mind of a lawyer. Even the thought of that makes me feel anti-agile :) 

I'm not a lawyer, and neither do I want to be. Even if a definition were created, I suspect there would be arguments over that definition. That's exactly what I wanted to avoid.

--

Derek

[Derek Davidson]

Hello Pierre

> Usually transition is a collection of actions to build your journey to a change and it doesn't mean that the goal is reached

I completely agree

--

Derek

[John Miller]

So, what does successful mean if success has not been reached. 

Sincerely trying to understand. 

Thanks,

John Miller

Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach

[Chet Hendrickson]

HI,

I think it would be interesting to find a 10,000+ company where all the work was being done in a consistent manner, without regard to what that manner might be.

chet

	Chet Hendrickson ch...@hendricksonxp.com	Tel 248.345.7258 http://www.hendricksonxp.com

[Derek Davidson]

Hello John

I tend to think of a transition as a bespoke path between traditional and agile ways of working. That path will be unique to the organisation making the transition.

I have described success, within the context of my original question, as 'the agile transition is still underway and affects more than just IT' 

In other words, it doesn't matter if we've completed all of the steps on our chosen path. What does matter is that:

 - We're still transitioning

 - The transition affects more than just IT

 - The current state is one that you and I would recognize as being agile*

* I've added this last bit in the hope that it makes my intent clearer, while also keeping me clear of the rats nest that is 'a definition' :) 

--

Derek

[Pierre Neis]

Here a PRO argument:

- Transition (here) means that there is a corporate will (decision, necessity or engagement) to adopt Agile as the way of doing things and different strategies has been set up with different levels of achievement. 

Example 1: at SAP there is a corporate decision that all the projects has to use Scrum

Example 2: Bank X has a request from Compliance that all the IT Projects has to use an agile way to be aligned with SOX protocols like ISAE 3400.

Example 3: Global E-Commerce player has been asked by Venture to use Agile only for transparence reasons.

Example 4: CEO of Global manufacturing let people free of choice to use what their want and agile is largely used. Reason of the choice is get people engaged and aligned to corporate culture.

[Mark Levison]

Derek - I know that Ericsson is on this journey, where they’re at varies with who talk to. The person co-training with me right now to become a CST is inside Ericsson. The journey like all of this ilk will take another 10+ years.

Cheers

Mark

-- 
Mark Levison
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