dependencies and more layers of organization, the group was able to scale to 12 Scrum teams, each containing approximately five to nine developers, within a year.
Two of the primary aspects of successful organizational transitions that we discussed with the Danube consultants were volunteerism and self-organization. Although teams who committed to a three-month trial period of “by-the-book Scrum” were asked to adhere to the core principles and practices, adoption was clearly more important than adherence. A “please just try it” attitude from management resulted in better buy-in from teams. After the three-month trial, teams were given the freedom to organize themselves and inspect and adapt their approach every sprint. Although the teams needed to work together, they were given as much freedom as possible to determine what would work for them. Deviations were discussed, but not judged in the PAT meeting with all POs and ScrumMasters each week. Our goal at this stage was unity, not uniformity.
Visibility was also crucial to this process. An internal wiki allowed teams to document what worked for them, what didn’t work well, and suggestions for best practices for Scrum adoption.
Implementing Scrum “by the book” was an integral part of launching Scrum across the teams. However, at an organization the size of OAP, it is necessary to conform to certain organizational structures or requirements. After the three-month pilot period, some modifications were made to fit Scrum into our culture and environment. First, the team had to define which roles were most useful to their goals. We developed the following role descriptions:
Business Owners: Senior managers or principal engineers charged with oversight of multiple teams or overarching technical issues for all teams. BOs set the roadmap milestones (Release Plan) and defined the ‘desired’ features at each milestone. Scrum teams still owned sizing and committing to meet the feature milestones based on their velocity.
Product Owners: Typically functional group managers.
Technical Owners: Technical leads from each of the functional areas who could collaborate on integration, dependency, and architectural issues to