large scale agile Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Jelena Vucinic: Leading Change in a Large Scaled Agile Organization

Jelena shares her experience leading change in a large scaled agile organization with 200 engineering teams. The change involved restructuring roles, connecting teams closer to customers, and a significant mindset shift. Jelena emphasizes the importance of introducing changes slowly, being transparent, and keeping communication open. She highlights the need to empower leaders with tools and support while collecting continuous feedback throughout the process.

Self-reflection Question: What steps can you take to ensure that change initiatives are sustainable in your organization? Leave your answer in the comments, let’s get this conversation started!

About Jelena Vucinic
Jelena is a self-conscious perfectionist and an everlasting optimist. She is deeply curious about the way people interact. After listening attentively, she likes to ask open questions that often help to reflect and improve collaboration. Jelena believes that every single person makes a difference, and she is dedicated to helping teams and leaders unlock their potential.
You can link with Jelena Vucinic on LinkedIn.

Kirsi Sahlstén: Understanding the Complexities of Driving A Large Scale Agile Transformation

In this episode, Kirsi helps us understand the complexities of leading change in a large organization. She shares how a change team with representatives from various roles and a virtual setup facilitated a smooth transition to new teams. The use of pulse surveys, questionnaires, and a transparent Kanban board helped maintain alignment and trust throughout the process. Kirsi offers practical tips, such as starting with a common cadence and allowing teams to adjust later, and the importance of self-reflection surveys for continuous improvement. Discover the techniques that made this reorganization a success.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

About Kirsi Sahlstén

Kirsi is a wanna-be neuroscientist and wanna-be full-stack developer who, in real life, ended up as an Agile coach. She is passionate about sparking and enabling learning and unlearning, working together across boundaries, and focusing on the essential. Her favorite question is “Why?” and she is fascinated by the complexity of simplicity.

You can link with Kirsi Sahlstén on LinkedIn.

Anna Mbengam: Strategies for Aligning Distributed Agile Teams In A Large Scale Agile Adoption

In this episode, Anna shares experiences from a large-scale tech company, detailing the challenges of setting up distributed teams across different products while implementing scaled agile practices. Leadership alignment on the change’s purpose was established, but resistance arose due to time constraints for training. Anna advises comprehensive training for all, along with piloting the change with one team. Balancing role transitions and training proved overwhelming, prompting Anna to involve leadership. She underscores the importance of leadership buy-in, advocating their participation in key processes like PI planning and Inspect and Adapt sessions. Supporting team autonomy and experimentation is crucial for successful change management.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

About Anna Mbengam

Anna, an accomplished Scrum Master and SAFe Coach since 2018, thrives in diverse industries like Personal Investments, Healthcare, Food & beverage, and Banking. She’s authored 5 self-published guides aiding aspiring Scrum Masters, and her mentoring has transformed 200+ professionals into highly effective individuals for any organization.

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.

Konstantin Ribel: A Blueprint for Organizational Transformation With The LeSS framework, A Case Study

Konstantin shares a pivotal change initiative aimed at tackling a complex product in a major automotive company. Focusing solely on change, he collaborated with management and specialists to define the necessary changes. A workshop, led by Konstantin, served as a major catalyst, and triggered collaboration across the organization. Through four months of intensive collaboration, the direction of change was clarified, emphasizing a real organizational shift. The team iteratively simplified a consulting company’s proposal, ultimately embracing the LeSS Framework for Scaled Agile. Konstantin highlights the importance of being open to challenges from the organizing, and working to get buy-in, and adopting a political mindset. He advises aligning management with development challenges and cautions against blind framework implementation.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

About Konstantin Ribel

Konstantin drives organizational success through innovative thinking, simplifying processes, and building high-performing teams. With a strong track record in change management and process optimization, he leads agile transformations and applies systems thinking for adaptable, thriving businesses in dynamic industries.

You can link with Konstantin Ribel on LinkedIn.

Leland Newson: Skills Matrix, a tool to visualize the skill siloes in your Scrum team

In a new team, Leland noticed that the skill silo (everyone sticking only to their skill specialty) was affecting the team’s ability to deliver. The team was working as if they were doing several sequential waterfalls instead of acting like a unit. Every time one team member was absent, the team couldn’t make enough progress to deliver.

In this episode, we talk about how to remove the skill silo, and avoid the mini-waterfalls anti-pattern.

In this episode, we also mention the Skills Matrix as a tool to visualize the skill silo.

Featured Book of the Week: The Lean Software Agile Development Toolkit by Poppendieck

In The Lean Software Agile Development Toolkit by Poppendieck, Leland found a new perspective on what it means to improve an organization. This eye-opening book is a regular read for Leland, and reminds him of the importance of looking at the flow of work (Flow Efficiency), rather than trying to optimize activities that may ultimately be wasteful.

About Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.