Key takeaways from [ “Why Agile doesn’t scale, and what you can do about it” | Dan north (@tastapod) | GOTO Aarhus 2013 ] If you want the full version see the full slide deck here.
Being agile is about getting something out the door – it’s very good in doing SHIP IT – Tweak it – think it build it. Wax on – wax off. Being agile is about people and tools and is a great approach for problems that allows to be solved with these borders.
The challenge is in the more complex domains with a bigger solution, a bigger problem, a bigger program with many people, many dependencies, many teams. In these (NP?) problem domains other factors come into play: Governance, Customers, Money and the organization as a whole (see slides regarding Agile Adoption Patterns).
In the later contexts agile as a delivery model doesn’t scale without project governance and portfolio management to oversee and prioritize based on strategic returns on investment. Shipping any minimum viable product from time to time in a larger context requires more oversight on “are we nearly there?” “are we ensuring delivery?” “are we ensuring credibility?” .. are the many global teams going agile in each their direction?
The same goes for the testing efforts – agile scales to a certain point, and at that point the scrums, the state-models and so on are a part of the solution engine. It’s what’s tests something, but with size comes the need to know why we make the decisions we make – and are we there yet?
Disclaimer: GOTO Aarhus 2013 is sponsoring my attendance as a blogger.
Complexity is a Matter of Perspective 
[…] the road to production. It’s about getting requests from the customer/Product owner and shipping it. We tend to forget that there is more to the life cycle of application than adding to the pile. […]
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