Many discussions about the agile framework happen on a small scale — either within specific teams or in small companies with only a handful of people. However, as agile breaks from its IT-based roots and is used across industries, more managers and employees need to scale their practices. Growing an agile framework for an enterprise organization can be done with the right change managers and organizational champions at the helm. 

What is Agile at Scale?

As you start to learn about scaling agile for your organization, you will likely come across two main concepts: 

“For many, large-scale Agile means developing and delivering enterprise-class systems and software with the involvement of many teams,” writes Johan Karlsson, senior consultant at Perforce Software. “In reality, however, large-scale Agile means different things to different organizations, including bringing Agile practices to different departments across the enterprise.” 

A small company might need to scale its agile framework beyond the IT department to the entire organization, while a large company might start a project with an agile framework that requires hundreds of employees and stakeholders. Regardless of what large-scale agile means to your organization, it requires total buy-in from every team involved.

Most companies work with first-generation agile, which was meant to be a team-based methodology. It helped IT departments connect with stakeholders to get projects done, explains the team at Blueprint Software Systems. However, as agile gets bigger to tackle large, enterprise-size projects, it needs to evolve. This second-wave of agile (also called agile at scale) addresses the concerns of using agile in a major capacity. This is actually why the SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) was developed.

An Agile Framework Will Change Your Whole Organization

The agile framework requires your employees to think of the company as a whole and place its needs over the needs of a single department. While a project might be the top priority of one team, it might be low priority when seen in context of the entire organization. 

“Disciplined IT teams are enterprise aware, which means while they are concerned with their own goals, they are driven to do what is best for the full solution,” writes Beccy Dreyling, agile practice lead at Gorilla Logic. “In a large environment, the teams do not work in a vacuum. Their world exists as part of the whole organization. Business owners, architects, and finance all work together and move in the same direction.”

To guide these priorities for all teams, Daniel Knott, product manager at German business professionals social network XING, encourages companies to follow the “North Star” metric when setting goals. The metric provides a clear vision for what the product will look like and the overall mission that employees should work toward. 

The north star metric must include both a vision statement and a key metric that can be measured to track the produce strategy. Even the largest teams can turn back to the north star metric for guidance.  

Focus on High-Value Initiatives

One of the biggest changes team members will experience when scaling an agile framework is the focus on high-value initiatives within the organization. These are projects that will have a significant impact on operations, sales and customer base.

Professor Carine Simon, senior lecturer and industry liaison at MIT Sloan School of Management, helped transition Liberty Mutual to agile at scale. When it came time to launch a major project, like changing the onboarding process for new customers, members from each team were brought in. The marketing team changed their onboarding materials, the call center provided customer insight from customer feedback and the finance team offered solutions for different payment methods.

Each department provided input and expertise to move the project forward because each department ultimately benefits from those improvements — making this collaboration part of a high-value initiative.  

“[Scaling agile] would also provide focus and insight into your organization’s highest-value initiatives,” writes Marla Schimke, head of product marketing at Broadcom. “You can identify gaps and highlight new requirements at the portfolio level which would minimize ad-hoc projects that could conflict with one other or duplicate efforts.” 

Your company moves forward as a whole, as opposed to various teams working on projects and constantly trying to get executive buy-in.  

For that reason, Hamesh Chawla, vice president of engineering at software testing platform Zephyr, encourages companies to keep a single product backlog for all teams. Everyone is able to see what each team is focusing on and where resources are needed, while the company can collectively concentrate on high-priority tasks.

Identify Champions of Change

As you work to implement an agile framework across your team, identify leaders, workers and stakeholders who can help you along the way. 

“The needle won't move if organizations don’t have agile champions and change agents who are the main catalysts between management and teams,” says agile coach Pooja Wandile. “Any successful change requires someone who can translate an organization's vision into reality. Agile champions and change agents make this happen.”

These people will take ownership of projects and make sure that they are done in the new, agile way. They will also troubleshoot problems and work with teams to address their concerns. With multiple people serving as these champions, your company can scale out your agile framework faster. 

Stakeholder and manager buy-in is particularly important when scaling agile.

“As your organization, project/product, and context scales, sooner or later you will find yourself moving (sometimes) powerful people out of their comfort zones,” warns agile coach Alberto Caeiro Jr. “And in this specific case, these stakeholders may use every single power they have to sabotage your product or project. So keep in mind that stakeholder management, despite being almost an invisible work, is indeed a very demanding and energy-consuming one.” 

Once you have executives on your side for the adoption of an agile framework, you can bring the workflows to almost any team or department to change how they get work done. 

Build an Agile Framework That Benefits Each Team

Your agile framework needs to apply to each team, so that everyone is on the same page. This will likely require your company to develop its own processes that are unlike other organizations. 

“A quick fix is to copy a successful approach that was used by another organization,” write agile organization coach Cesario Ramos and Kurt Bittner, vice president of enterprise solutions at Scrum.org. “While that might give you benefits in the short term, over time this approach will very likely not be successful.” 

This is because your company needs to work through what it means to be agile within your own organization and develop a set of rules to reach your goals. It requires a change in the whole organizational structure, not just an overhaul of processes.

Very few projects or activities are completely siloed anymore, explains full stack software engineer Andrew Powell-Morse. When each team has their own agile rules and processes, collaboration becomes significantly harder. Leaving your team to work on a project with another department can feel like entering a foreign country and navigating a new language and currency. When scaled well, on the other hand, everyone is on the same agile page.  

Remember, an agile framework is meant to help teams better adapt to change, writes the team at cloud based requirements management tool ReQtest. When there is uncertainty in the project or the plan goes completely awry, an agile system guides multiple teams through whatever issues they have. You don’t want multiple agile frameworks causing confusion or preventing solutions within your organization.

Identify Sore Spots for Organizational Change

If you want to smoothly introduce agile across your organization, then you need to find out what is blocking the process. Chris Ciligot at Clearbridge Mobile suggests that legacy systems and tools can be a barrier for agile adoption. Legacy systems are often siloed or hard to use in an agile process. Companies may need to look into replacing some of these systems if they are committed to implementing an agile framework across their whole organization.   

The barriers to change might also lie in how your managers incentivize and lead employees. In an article for Harvard Business Review, Scrum Inc. CEO Jeff Sutherland with Darrell K. Rigby and Andy Noble, both of Bain & Company, highlight exactly how an agile system will change HR processes, particularly for recruiting and retention. With an agile framework, managers need to look for employees with strong hard skills who also are comfortable in a collaborative environment and who can handle change. They need people who are less focused on job title and more on expanding their careers and jumping in when the company needs them. 

In this way, a team player with an average skillset may be more valuable than an industry expert who wants to stick to their own way of working. 

Catching these change barriers and removing them can help your company slowly transition into a high-scale agile enterprise. Of course, sometimes you may need to run through the barriers and pick up the pieces after. 

Johan den Haan, CTO at Mendix, suggests whenever possible avoiding a “big bang” where teams are forced to change to an agile methodology immediately. However, he also admits that there are times when rapid change can be beneficial. For example, when competition in an aggressive market forces a reluctant team to embrace agile, or when an unexpected project requires a new way of working and thinking.