Scaling Scrum course image

Scaling Scrum

We offer private training, at your location or virtually, and an OnDemand course catalog.

About Scaling Scrum

  Duration: 1.5 – 3 day course
  Resources: Workbook

Scrum is a successful way for individual teams to deliver value quickly. As the needs of the business expand beyond what individual teams can accomplish, however, organizations need to scale Scrum while remaining agile.

Using an extended case study, this course presents the best practices necessary to scale software projects to multi-team projects, multiple geographies, and work that spans multiple iterations. You’ll examine scaling tactics from a Scrum perspective including Lean, Kanban, and Scrum of Scrums. Learn the do’s and don’ts of scaling Scrum gleaned from Construx’s extensive experience helping clients scale Scrum across the globe.

Scaling Fundamentals

• Product vision’s critical contribution to scaling
• Infrastructure and tools sets for scaling
• Project focus and multi-tasking – how to manage for scaling
• Patterns of scaled work distribution

Agile Scaling Principles

• Defining clear decision lines
• Creating collaboration
• Delivering customer facing value consistently
• Maintaining feedback loops
• Maintaining quality

Scrum as a Building Block for Scaling

• Three roles
• Three artifacts
• Four meetings
• Two levels of commitment

Lean Scaling Principles

• Limiting waste
• Early defect detection
• Acknowledging variation

Kanban

• Setting up a pull system
• Creating a work queue
• Setting work in process limits
• Defining classes of service
• Calculating flow time

Technology and Scaling

• Traditional scaling tools
• Web 2.0 support for scaling
• Using instant messaging effectively
• Leveraging shared workspaces
• Electronic meetings—making them efficient and effective
• Configuration management techniques for scaled environments
• Build challenges in scaled environments

Architecture’s Role in Scaling

• Using common architecture successfully
• Conway’s law
• Architecting for features vs. components
• Planning to allow the architecture to emerge
• Test-driven architecture
• Handling work in Scrum that does not create user-visible value
• Addressing work that spans multiple iterations

Team Coordination

• Planning for time together
• Aligning plans and processes
• Creating convergence points
• Defining clear roles and responsibilities
• Building and using common infrastructure
• Approach to demos and retrospectives in scaled projects

Overcoming Geography

• Working with language differences
• Working with cultural differences
• Working with time differences
• Establishing “presence” in distributed teams
• Ins and outs of using liaisons
• How to handle travel
• Creating points where value is delivered

Achieving Quality

• Defining “done” consistently
• Building communities of interest
• Lessons learned with Scrum of Scrums
• Team-level testing
• Release-level testing
• Working with non-functional requirements
• Coding standards

Release Roadmaps

• Process for creating release roadmaps
• Key inputs into release roadmaps
• Getting to the right level of detail
• Delivering customer value vs. better architectural components
• The Release train metaphor

Backlogs and Scaling

• Focus on one primary backlog
• Role of chief product owner
• Product owner councils
• Product backlogs vs. team backlogs
• Allocation of functionality to backlog(s)
• Area product owners

You’ll learn:

  • To scale Scrum from a single, focused team to a multi-team, multi-national, distributed project
  • Tips and techniques to scale from one to hundreds of teams
  • The benefits of common frameworks, including LeSS, DAD, and SAFe
  • What works and what doesn’t when scaling Scrum

This class assumes familiarity with Scrum and with agile in general. It is designed for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Directors, Managers, Architects, Leads, and Team Members who need to scale Scrum.

“This was a great learning experience for me to take back and apply scrum to our mostly scaled environment. Alex allowed a healthy dialogue between participants. I for sure benefited a lot.”

Rajesh Shetty, Cisco

“Most valuable: The open exchange of ideas and further knowledge on all of the contributing topics of Agile. I really enjoyed the class and felt the time was well spent.”

Graham Smith, Avista

“Frameworks and how/when they should be applied in context of scaling. Good class/trainer. Got a lot of good information and a little strategy on scaling with different frameworks.”

Tim Ricks, Starbucks

“Good class and instructor. Worth investigating if you are trying to scale your scrum organization.”

Keith Riggs, Multimedia Games

“Very pertinent to our org’s situation. Group discussions were great.”

Shane Patrick, Viewpoint

“Most valuable was the focus on collaboration, the strong emphasis on basics, and the discussion. Extremely enlightening. Excellent coach!”

Tommy Vance, Starbucks

“The course was very inspirational and encouraging for me to pursue more in-depth use of scrum at my company.”

Paul Shoeman, Honeywell

“Appreciate the current industry standards add-ins. Excellent course with a fabulous facilitator.”

Natalie Stephens, Starbucks

Customize this course

Your team has unique challenges. Learn about the ways we can customize this course to fit your needs.