1. Scrum@Scale Case Study: Financial Services
Launching

2. Current Challenges for Financial Services Firm
Compliance mandates
Long lists of enhancement requests
Severely dissatisfied customers
Long release cycles
Low quality
Primary transformation driver.
18 months estimated worth of work but less than a year to implement.

3. Initial transformation phase approach
Duration
Teams
Product
Site
Executive Action Team
Focus I
~ 3 Months
1 & 2
Prod X
Site A
Site A only
2 Execs (CIO, COO)
~6 Managers
Agile Coach
Launch Site A Transformation Pilot
Focus on “operations” at Team level, setting Teams up for success II
~ 4 Months
3 & 4
Prod Y
Sites A & B
Sites A & B
3 Execs (CIO, COO, EVP)
~15 Managers
Launch Site B Pilot Teams
Remove organizational, procedural, or tech impediments
Ensure consistency in Team execution approach and mindset
III
~ 8 Months
5, 6, & 7
Prod Z
Agile Practice SM
Strategic organization transformation (beyond Teams)
Spin-off “tactical” actions to Agile Practice
Run as a set of Scrum Teams
Own and prioritize transformation backlog

4. Cross-Team Coordination
Attempted Scrum of Scrums
Perceived low value due to vast differences in product and technologies
Replaced with:
Ad hoc discussions – easy to do since physically co-located
Natural “coffee time” pre and/or post daily scrum
Combined sprint reviews with “one view of the product” demos
Agile Community of Practice
Regular scheduled touchpoints between POs and CPOs (more on this in next section)
Probably might be the most controversial area of this case study. Recognizing need for cross team collaboration, started with Scrum of Scrums. Met twice a week with representatives from the Scrum Teams, typically the Scrum Masters plus a “guest star” from a Team, if that person happened to know the most about the issue or impediment. Over time, however, due to the wide range of products and technologies across all seven teams, they felt the SoS was not valuable for them. So, they opted to do other things that would facilitate cross team collaboration.
Instead of scheduled SoS, the teams took advantage of being physically co-located and simply walked over to the next cube or workroom and had a discussion. It was very ad hoc approach. Key here is that Teams were fully aware of the compliance dates and expectations, so they were not shy about raising issues – they were quite transparent. Also, the daily scrums were typically the same time of day. Often members from most teams would naturally end up around the coffee station before or after the daily scrum. The SM’s were fairly on top of any impediments, rarely any blocker lasting more than a day. So, sharing of information was not an issue.
Furthermore, within each product, they did combined sprint reviews that focused on presenting a “one view of the product” demo to the stakeholder attendees. To have a smooth sprint review, it forced cross-team coordination. In addition, the SM’s created an Agile Community of Practice where they cross-shared approaches and improvements. Lastly, the PO’s would regularly meet (at least twice per sprint, usually twice per week), to ensure alignment of backlogs and dependencies. So, while there were no formally scheduled SoS’s, the maturity, discipline, and courage to ensure transparency and cross-team collaboration.

5. Scaling the Product Owners
CPO X
CPO Y
CPO Z
PO X1
PO X2
PO Y1
PO Y2
PO Z1
PO Z2
PO Z3
Product X
Product Y
Product Z
Product Backlog Z
Product Backlog X
Product Backlog Y

6. Executive MetaScrum (EMS)
There were challenges with establishing EMS
With heavy focus on compliance mandates, longer term vision and roadmap of product prioritized lower
EVP did two actions:
Partner with clients’ executive teams to ensure participation in Scrum Team reviews and giving feedback via UAG
Culled four-to-five year list of enhancements to “most recent” 18 to 24 months
Remaining items prioritized; only high priority items investigated further

7. Prior to Transformation After initial Transformation
Outcomes
Prior to Transformation
After initial Transformation
18 months of work anticipated
Software done in half the time; customers not quite ready for solution!
Compliance date met
Low quality (80+ bugs in prior release)
Improved quality by ~95% (4 bugs in release)
40% time in spent maintaining and merging code
20% time spent maintaining and merging code
Low client satisfaction
Clients became “advocates” for the product and Scrum
Next step: Internally wanted to expand to further Teams