AgileCamp Silicon Valley 2015: An Agile Journey by Prakash Bettadapur, Cisco Agile Expert

1. Cisco Confidential© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
A Program’s Journey
September2015
Prakash Bettadapur!
Successful Agile Transformation

2. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Program State before Transformation
! Overview of the Journey
! Teaming Considerations Applied
! Lean Principles Applied, Waste Eliminated
! Agile Planning Techniques
! Agile Execution
! Agile Architecture Principles
! Agile Delivery Considerations
! Summary

3. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 3
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• High number of customer problems
• Partners and Customers discontent and disengaged
• Only one Product Manager handling all the requests
• Work halted for several releases
• Resources diverted for other programs
• Large, distributed and scattered team
• Many team members with dysfunctional attitudes
• Dysfunctional dev/QA relationship
• Disengaged 3rd party vendor’s team members
• Isolated Development Partner (IT) team members
• Outdated infrastructure and architecture
• Too many meetings with too many stakeholders
• Over management by stakeholders
Areas requiring
attention:
• Product Quality
• Partner & Customer
Collaboration
• Team Composition
• Team Dynamics
• Outdated Architecture
• Wasteful Activities

4. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 4
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Encourage close Customer Collaboration
• Address Customer needs timely manner
• Build quality into the product upfront
• Team Composition
• Team Empowerment
• Lean Thinking
• Frequent Retrospection
• Quick learning from failures
Areas requiring
attention:
• Product Quality
• Partner & Customer
Collaboration
• Team Composition
• Team Dynamics
• Outdated Architecture
• Wasteful Activities
Let$us$take$a$close$look$at$the$journey$overview$and$then$see$how$each$area$was$addressed$

5. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 5
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
$30M
$60M
$90M
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
May-12
Jun-12
Jul-12
Aug-12
Sep-12
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Nov-12
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May-13
Jun-13
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Sep-13
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Nov-13
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Jan-14
Feb-14
Mar-14
Apr-14
May-14
Jun-14
Jul-14
Aug-14
Sep-14
Oct-14
Nov-14
UserStories
Axis Title
117
207
329
184
344
1.10
1.11,1.11.x
1.12
1.12.x,1.13
1.13.x,1.14
$31.5M
FY12
$49.5M
FY13
$88.1M
FY14
Business
Engineering User Stories
AgileAdoption
Content Quantity Delivery Improvement over 2.5 years since starting Agile: 3 times
Productivity Improvement considering funding reduction from $1.9 M to $600K:10 times
What contributed to the success of Agile and contribution to Productivity?
1950K/Qtr
1250K/Qtr
950K/Qtr
600K/Qtr
Let$us$review$further$what$principles$and$values$got$applied$in$which$phase…$

6. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 6
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Team Empowerment
• Teams taking responsibility for decisions, planning & delivery
• Close Collaboration & Cooperation
• Agile Leadership
• When, what and how to delegate
• Balance when to step-in/step-out
• Obstacle removal
• Coaching
• Aim for Team Joy
• Employee Satisfaction
• Customer Satisfaction

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Team Structure & Collocation
• Establish well defined, collocated teams
• Right sized, right membership, good mix of junior &
senior developers, leader driven
• Collocated dev and QA
• Permanent QA members
• Filling Essential roles
• Appropriately scale scrum masters for each team
• Identify product owners from engineering team to scale
product management bandwidth
• Embed architects, leaders, UE/UX into team
• Training
• Train teams in effective scrum techniques and also
strategies for release planning
• Seed trained/experienced team members into other
teams

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Eliminate waste
• Deliver fast
• Defer commitment
• Create knowledge
• Build quality in
• Respect the team
• Optimize the whole
• Partially done work
• Extra features
• Relearning
• Handoffs
• Task switching
• Delays
• Defects
How$did$we$apply$all$these$values$and$principles$in$our$journey?$

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Budget waste
• Identify areas where money spent, not contributing to
program
• Re-assign members to other projects in budget
spreadsheet – those who were not part of this program
• Non-contributing team members
• Allow them to go to different teams/programs or out of
CSTG/Cisco
• Grow leaders & teams in India as they took on more
responsibilities
• Process waste
• Too many meetings requiring too many participants
• Cut down must meetings to 2 per week
• Reduce time spent in wasteful discussions on imaginary
scenarios and risks

10. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 10
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Adequate, just enough planning
! Continuous
! Daily
! Iteration/Sprint
! Release/Roadmap/Program/Project/
Product/Program Increment
! Portfolio/Vision/Strategy
! Agile estimation
! Adequate risk management
! Visibility to track projects

11. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 11
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Adequate, just enough planning
! Continuous
! Daily
! Iteration/Sprint
! Release/Roadmap/Program/Project/
Product/Program Increment
! Portfolio/Vision/Strategy
! Agile estimation
! Adequate risk management
! Visibility to track projects

12. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 12
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Adequate, just enough planning
! Continuous
! Daily
! Iteration/Sprint
! Release/Roadmap/Program/Project/
Product/Program Increment
! Portfolio/Vision/Strategy
! Agile estimation
! Adequate risk management
! Visibility to track projects

13. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 13
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Retrospectives after every sprint & after 1st release
• Dev/QA handoff issues
Strict handoff needs
Named/dated/fixed builds
No participation in standups
Documentation needs
• Release needs
Regression test suites
Identifying need for test automation
• Troubled Deployments

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Architecture dependencies
! UE/UX dependencies
! Inter-components dependencies
! Inter-teams dependencies
! Simplicity and Agility

15. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 15
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Architecture dependencies
! UE/UX dependencies
! Inter-components dependencies
! Inter-teams dependencies
! Simplicity and Agility

16. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 16
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
! Architecture dependencies
! UE/UX dependencies
! Inter-components dependencies
! Inter-teams dependencies
! Simplicity and Agility

17. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 17
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Partner Summit; visited partners for feedback
• Teams taking more responsibilities & risks
• Architectural & Infrastructural Enhancements (LCM, CCIX)
• Major performance enhancements
• Teaming with 3rd Party framework vendor
• Major performance enhancements from vendor also
• Responsibly handling failure scenarios; part of Cisco team
• Collaboration with Partners and BDMs
• “Product is on Steroids” feedback
• DevOps – CI/CD implemented
• Test Automation engineers hired
• Golden period for the program team
• The Teams Rocked!!
• Highest Employee Satisfaction
• Highest Customer Satisfaction

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Drastic reduction in budget due to unrelated factors in
the Business Unit
• Lost key members; Unplanned capacity reduction
• Partially Complete Stories
• Great partnership with Product Management to
reevaluate and reprioritize deliverables
• Prioritized customer high value features
• Minimum Viable Product delivered
• Others delayed for future releases

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Frequent Customer Deliveries
! Early Value Delivery
! Continuous Value Delivery
! Highest Value Delivery
• Managing Business Outcome
! Promote close customer collaboration
! Determine technical feasibility
! Test market readiness
! Leverage early revenue opportunities
! Avert losing market opportunity
! Salvage partly finished product
! Enable roadmap reshuffle

20. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 20
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Low investment continued; Executives not in sync
with business priorities
• IT Development Partner lost all resources; all their
work fell on remaining teams
• As the core team completed 80% of the roadmap, it
took up rest of IT roadmap and delivered them
• Team weathered difficulties & delivered beyond
expectations
• Due to the team pride, motivation & confidence
• Fantastic partnership with Product Mgmt, Vendor
provider, Business teams, Customer/Partners
• One month extension in release deadline helped get
more into the release

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Agile Values
• Early and frequent delivery
• Customer collaboration
• Adaptation
• People come first
Waterfall Values
• Deliver on time and on budget
• Make early commitments
• Get it right the first time
• Process comes first

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CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
Aspect Agile Waterfall
Commitment
and Delivery
• Organize to reduce cost of change (not
amount of work)
• Balance between value delivery now & future
ability
• Deliver frequently, on cadence; scope varies,
quality important
• Team responsible
• Artifacts reviewed & approved; changes can
be costly
• Scope fixed, cost & schedule varies based
on factors
• Deliver on deadline; early commitment
matters
• Project manager responsible
Decisions and
Adaptability
• Effective before efficiency
• Defer decisions to last responsible moment
• Fail fast and cheaper; maximize learning
• Optimize utilization
• Make early commitment; minimize changes
• Get it right first time; no room for failures
Tracking
progress
• Time boxed; Deliver shippable quality
• Continuous value delivery tracked for %
progress
• Delivery on final deadline; review for quality
compromises
• Progress is % completion of initial plan
Individuals • People, respect, trust, transparency
• Broad expertise, T-shaped skills
• Resources, technical skills matters, experts
• Deep expertise, specialist “resources”
Interactions • Self-organizing teams; keep colleagues
informed
• Teams share ownership of decisions &
results; work by consensus
• Servant leaders in trusting, supportive
relationship
• Hub & spoke model – manager coordinating
and organizing
• Teams not feeling ownership; look to
manager for decisions
• Command and control relationship

23. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 23
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
Aspect Agile Waterfall
Commitment
and Delivery
• Organize to reduce cost of change (not
amount of work)
• Balance between value delivery now & future
ability
• Deliver frequently, on cadence; scope varies,
quality important
• Team responsible
• Artifacts reviewed & approved; changes can
be costly
• Scope fixed, cost & schedule varies based
on factors
• Deliver on deadline; early commitment
matters
• Project manager responsible
Decisions and
Adaptability
• Effective before efficiency
• Defer decisions to last responsible moment
• Fail fast and cheaper; maximize learning
• Optimize utilization
• Make early commitment; minimize changes
• Get it right first time; no room for failures
Tracking
progress
• Time boxed; Deliver shippable quality
• Continuous value delivery tracked for %
progress
• Delivery on final deadline; review for quality
compromises
• Progress is % completion of initial plan
Individuals • People, respect, trust, transparency
• Broad expertise, T-shaped skills
• Resources, technical skills matters, experts
• Deep expertise, specialist “resources”
Interactions • Self-organizing teams; keep colleagues
informed
• Teams share ownership of decisions &
results; work by consensus
• Servant leaders in trusting, supportive
relationship
• Hub & spoke model – manager coordinating
and organizing
• Teams not feeling ownership; look to
manager for decisions
• Command and control relationship

24. © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 24
CSTG One Team. One Technology Portfolio. Built to Scale
• Right team structure and collocation considerations
• Agile Planning & Execution
• Early delivery, with regular cadence
• Confidence built with Business teams and with
Customers/Partners
• Teams responsible, empowered, motivated
• Teams ready to take risks and introduce architectural
changes without impacting delivery cadence
• Teams bounced back & delivered beyond expectations
despite difficulties
• Enabled and sustained team joy

25. Thank you.