What Christmas Dinner and The Top Methods for Scaling Agile Teams Have in Common

italic textScaling Agile teams reminds me of a family tradition built upon cooperation, communication, trust, and teamwork. Every year, each of my three siblings and I contributed a dish or two for my mother’s Christmas dinner, a potluck-style spread. I often recruited my husband and our kids to help prepare our designated side or dessert. Around 3 p.m. Christmas Day, our entire family gathered for our complete meal, celebrating the holiday and our teamwork.

We can all learn lessons about the top methods for scaling Agile teams from my family’s carefully orchestrated feast. Much like our dinner, scaling Agile requires communication, teamwork, alignment, and shared responsibility. While multiple teams are working on different parts of a project, all contributions must come together seamlessly to deliver a unified result. And, while some families share similar traditions, different methods of teamwork may be more effective for specific teams. In this post, we’ll explain the top 4 methods for scaling Agile teams and discuss which framework will help your company foster collaboration better than Grandma’s holiday dinner.

Why do we need to scale anyway?

Like Grandma’s holiday dinner, where family members need to come together to deliver on a common goal (the dinner), organizations will eventually need to do the same. When the organization reaches a level of maturity and complexity where coordinating multiple teams becomes necessary to achieve larger organizational goals, it’s time to consider scaling, and a scaling framework is a great place to start.

What Does a Scaling Framework Do?

A scaling framework provides structured guidance for expanding Agile practices across multiple teams, departments, or entire organizations. While Agile principles work well for individual teams of all sizes, scaling frameworks address the complexity and coordination challenges that arise when multiple teams are involved on a large project.

A scaling framework might be useful when coordination grows more important to a project’s success. Similar to directives from the organizer of a holiday potluck, a scaling framework provides lightweight governance that helps ensure every team’s work aligns seamlessly to deliver a unified result.

There are six key functions of a scaling framework:

1. Facilitates Coordination: Ensures multiple teams work together efficiently without stepping on each other’s toes.
2. Aligns Teams with Strategy: Connects day-to-day work with organizational goals to ensure alignment.
3. Manages Dependencies: Identifies and resolves inter-team dependencies to avoid bottlenecks.
4. Standardizes Processes: Introduces consistent practices, roles, and events to maintain cohesion.
5. Improves Visibility: Provides a clear overview of progress, risks, and outcomes at all organizational levels.
6. Enhances Communication: Creates mechanisms for sharing knowledge and feedback across teams.

Who Needs a Scaling Framework?

When Agile principles are applied by multiple teams that are delivering on a single goal, scaling frameworks become essential for organizations. Five types of enterprises may find the most value in utilizing these frameworks.

1. Large Organizations: Companies with hundreds or thousands of employees need a structured way to scale Agile across business units, ensuring consistency and alignment.
2. Organizations with Complex Products: When multiple teams are working on different parts of the same product, a scaling framework helps manage dependencies and integration.
3. Enterprises in Transformation: Businesses transitioning from traditional project management to Agile methodologies often use scaling frameworks to guide their transformation.
4. Global Teams: Companies with distributed or remote teams benefit from frameworks that standardize practices and foster collaboration across time zones. 5.** Industries with High Compliance Needs:** Sectors like finance, healthcare, and government, where compliance and governance are critical, require frameworks that integrate Agile with regulatory requirements.

What are the top methods for scaling Agile teams?

Four popular methods for scaling Agile teams stand out for their ability to guide teams in achieving goals: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), and Scrum@Scale.

1. SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

SAFe has been one of the more popular Agile frameworks since 2010, providing a comprehensive set of values, principles, and practices that help align teams’ priorities with larger organizational goals. SAFe works best for organizations with complex structures that require a high level of coordination and governance. Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises are most likely to utilize this framework. SAFe combines principles from Lean, Agile, and DevOps to deliver value through cross-functional teams called Agile Release Trains (ARTs).

Benefits of becoming SAFe certified include enhanced decision-making skills, improved collaboration amongst multiple teams, customer-centric product development, strategic alignment, and adaptability.

• Portfolio Alignment: Aligns team efforts with business priorities through Lean Portfolio Management.
• Cadence and Synchronization: Establishes a fixed schedule for planning and delivery across multiple teams.
• Role Specialization: Introduces roles like Release Train Engineer, System Architect, Business Owners, and Product Manager to streamline scaling. Enroll in Hyperdrive’s SAFe Agilist course now to get your certification!

2. LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum)

LeSS is a simplified scaling approach rooted in the principles of Scrum. Hyperdrive Vice President Tom Perry describes LeSS as a Scrum Framework at its core, with an approach that leads teams down a path of their own thinking, design, and systems for an ideal framework.

“You don’t see LeSS spelled out in a great deal of detail,” said Perry. “It’s more like we’ll give you the systems-thinking tools and then using those systems-thinking tools you’ll build your own framework.”

LeSS frameworks focus on a lightweight process, enabling multiple teams to collaborate on a single product. Organizations that want to scale Agile while maintaining the core simplicity of Scrum find the greatest impact from LeSS.

Key Features:

• Single Product Backlog: Ensures all teams work toward the same goal, reducing duplication and silos.
• Cross-Team Events: Includes shared Sprint Planning and Retrospectives to align efforts.
• Continuous Improvement: Emphasizes iterative learning and reducing waste at every level.

3. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

DAD is a flexible toolkit offering guidance on scaling Agile by tailoring practices from Scrum, Lean, Kanban, and other methodologies to an organization’s specific context. DAD works best for organizations that need a customizable framework to meet unique challenges across different departments.

Key Features:

• Hybrid Approach: Combines practices from multiple frameworks for a tailored solution.
• Lifecycle Options: Supports different delivery lifecycles, such as Agile, Lean, or Continuous Delivery.
• Focus on Governance: Addresses enterprise-level concerns like compliance and risk management.

4. Scrum@Scale

Developed by Jeff Sutherland, Scrum@Scale extends Scrum principles to the organizational level, enabling networks of multiple teams to operate effectively. Organizations looking for a modular and flexible approach to scaling Scrum practices experience success through this method.

Key Features:

• Two Cycles: Focuses on a Scale Scrum Master Cycle for coordination and a Product Owner Cycle for alignment.
• Modularity: Allows organizations to scale specific areas without overhauling their entire structure.
• Minimum Viable Bureaucracy: Encourages scaling without unnecessary layers of management.

Final Thoughts: Do You Need a Scaling Framework?

When considering the success of my family’s Christmas feasts, I think everyone would agree that coordination and careful planning were the secret ingredients for success. In business, that special ingredient often appears in the form of a scaling framework. If your organization struggles with:

• Coordination: Teams duplicating efforts or working in silos.
• Alignment: A disconnect between strategic goals and team-level work.
• Delivery Delays: Bottlenecks caused by inter-team dependencies.
• Lack of Visibility: Unclear progress or priorities across teams.

…then a scaling framework might be the right solution. It provides the structure and practices needed to ensure Agile principles scale effectively.

Scaling frameworks ultimately help the entire organization deliver value faster with more consistency. Organizational leaders should consider factors like team size, organizational complexity, and overarching goal to determine which type best suits your enterprise.