What this book covers
Chapter 1, Origins of Agile and Lightweight Methodologies, briefly touches on why Agile concepts, values, and principles evolved to address issues with the traditional plan-driven and linear-sequential software development models. We'll see how, driven by software engineers, Agile-based practices can help to eliminate the complexities, inefficiencies, and inflexibilities of the traditional software development models.
Chapter 2, Scrum Beyond Basics, introduces the fundamentals of Scrum and explains how it became the software industry leader as the preferred lightweight and Agile framework. This chapter also explains how Scrum evolved from a simple, single-team software development practice to supporting numerous industry and functional business applications to improve both operational and development efficiencies.
Chapter 3, The Scrum Approach, builds on the fundamental elements of Scrum and the factors that drove its widescale acceptance, as outlined in the previous chapter. This chapter gets into the details of how Scrum Teams operate. Specifically, you will learn the flow of activities across a Sprint as defined by its events; Scrum Team roles and responsibilities; and the artifacts that support transparency and inspection.
Chapter 4, Systems Thinking, considers how Scrum implements the concepts of empirical process control theory to help teams resolve complex adaptive problems. But we need more tools in our bag to get at the dynamics that make large and complex systems challenging to understand, let alone manage. Systems thinking provides an approach to look at complex things as a set of interconnected parts that together create a dynamic environment resulting in interactions and behaviors that are often difficult to predict.
Chapter 5, Lean Thinking, is the first of two chapters on Lean Development, and examines how these concepts and practices can help organizations maximize efficiency and value by applying Lean Development practices across all value creation and value delivery activities.
Chapter 6, Lean Practices in Software Development, is the second of two chapters on Lean Development, and focuses on how to apply these concepts and practices to the development of software and cyber-physical systems.
Chapter 7, Scrum of Scrums (SOS) Conce, teaches the principles and structures of the SoS approach. The founders of Scrum, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, both acknowledge that the focus of the Scrum Guide™ is on building small, flexible, and adaptive teams to develop products, services, and other desired outcomes. Though not formalized in a guide of its own, Scrum of Scrums was their first documented extension to the Scrum framework, providing additional guidance on integrating the activities of multiple Scrum teams, with the potential to scale to thousands of people.
Chapter 8, Scrum@Scale (S@S), discusses how Jeff Sutherland developed this extension to Scrum and formalized it in the Scrum@Scale Guide®. Building on the foundations of SoS, S@S is a framework that describes a linear-scalable approach, drawing on the concepts of scale-free architectures, to create and coordinate multiple Scrum teams. The goal of S@S is to deliver high quality and value while simultaneously improving business agility.
Chapter 9, The Nexus™ Framework, examines how Ken Schwaber developed this extension to Scrum and formalized it in the Nexus™ Guide. The purpose of the Nexus Guide is to provide advanced instructions on integrating multiple Scrum teams working in collaboration on a single product. Besides learning about many useful techniques and artifacts, readers of this chapter will also learn how to install Nexus Integration Teams (NIT) and several new events to help manage multi-team integration, dependency, and synchronization issues.
Chapter 10, Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), introduces the last of the relatively "pure" scaled-Scrum frameworks. LeSS provides many useful, though optional (that is, non-prescriptive) rules and guides to help Scrum teams with multi-team implementations of Scrum. Moreover, LeSS offers two frameworks, one for relatively small multi-team environments, and the other for more substantial multi-team product development activities. In this chapter, you will learn how the smaller LeSS framework functions with Scrum teams operating as Feature Teams. You will also learn how the LeSS Huge framework functions and brings the concept of Requirements Areas to manage large-scale integration and dependency issues.
Chapter 11, Disciplined Agile (DA), introduces the first of the two comprehensive Lean-Agile approaches described within this book. DA is easily differentiated by its emphasis on teams having the ability to define their way of working (WoW). DA offers six fully developed life cycles from which a team can choose. The DA toolkit provides process guidance and techniques across four levels of the Disciplined Agile Enterprise (DAE), spanning Agile, DevOps, IT, and Enterprise.
Chapter12, Essential Scaled-Agile Framework (SAFe®), is the first of two chapters on SAFe. SAFe is the second and most comprehensive of the Lean-Agile disciplines presented in this book. However, its approach is much different than that of Disciplined Agile in that it provides four configurations with detailed instructions on how to establish business agility in very large organizations while preserving the benefits of economies of scale that large organizations inherently benefit from. This chapter presents the Essential SAFe configuration, which serves as a foundation for the other configurations if they are needed.
Chapter 13, Full Scaled-Agile Framework (SAFe®), explains how to scale SAFe practices to support the development and delivery of large solutions with multiple value streams. This chapter will also help you understand how to align and manage product development, support, and enhancement investments with corporate strategies and across multiple planning horizons. Finally, we will touch on the SAFe Implementation Roadmap, which guides organizations on how to build the skills, structures, and resources necessary to support the Lean-Agile enterprise, and ultimately leverage early successes to overcome cultural and personal resistance.
Chapter 14, Contrasting Scrum/Lean-Agile Scaling Approaches, considers how, at this point, you will have learned the basics of seven unique approaches to scaling Scrum and Lean-Agile practices to enable business agility. But which approach is best for your organization? This chapter offers side-by-side comparisons for you to evaluate each framework in terms of your unique context and requirements.
To get the most out of this book
The following table lists the recommendations for a better understanding of the Scrum/Lean-Agile practices covered in this book.
This book is written under the assumption that our readers will have a large range of knowledge with regard to Scrum, Scrum scaling issues, and the value of including Systems Thinking and Lean Development practices as part of their efforts to become Agile. So, the book is written for the novice, those with intermediate knowledge, and even those who have been around the block a time or two with Agile.
This book is written with all business domains and organizations in mind.
This book is useful for software developers and software development teams. But it's not limited in scope to just supporting Agile practices in the software development community. Today, Scrum and Lean-Agile practices are the necessary enablers to compete in our digitally disruptive economies. Therefore, all business domains and organizations are impacted and must embrace the concepts of agility to sustain organizational viability. This is the mentality you need to have when reading this book. Be it a commercial enterprise, government agency, or non-profit, this book will help your organization compete and add value in our constantly evolving digital world.
