 My name is Francis Kelly. I work with Dean Leffingwell and the team at Scaled Agile. And my talk today is about people. Because really when it comes down to transformations, any transformation, it comes down to the people who you're supporting, right? So we're going to go through a few people today. We're going to talk through them. Because at the end of the day, a transformation is about ensuring all the people are on the bus or on the train at the right time. Try to pass these out, Gus. So what is this really about? If we're talking about people, that's going to be tough, right, to keep up with that. My voice isn't as attractive as that, right? Should I sing a few? So if you're not familiar, my talk today is about people and those people who need to be trained and certified to find the advantages of SAFE. If you're not familiar with SAFE, the Scaled Agile framework is a publicly-facing, freely-available knowledge base for applying lean and agile best practices at enterprise scale. So the good news here for those of you who are new to SAFE is you can go to the Scaled Agile framework.com that has all of our information, the entire content, everything you need to apply these practices. Our commercial concern at Scaled Agile is to ensure that you're trained and certified to make the best of these practices. So let's jump in. SAFE has repeatable successes. If you go to the Scaled Agile framework.com, on the right-hand side, there's case studies. SAFE has been proven to be repeatable and successful in helping organizations apply lean and agile best practices at an enterprise scale. We're refreshing these case studies every couple of weeks. Look for new ones as we continue to develop. So if we have SAFE and we have agile, what's really the problem? Here's some challenges in scaling lean agile. Managers not thinking lean, alignment as lip service, prioritization as a game, building your portfolio without strong program execution, building code faster, and of course never looking back. So these are the unsafe starts that we've seen out there in the field related to applying SAFE. Let's get to the first person that we're going to talk about in our journey today. We're talking about Tony the Taskmaster. Maybe some of you work with Tony right now. How can we spot Tony? Tony's always there to assign tasks to the team. Tony loves 100% capacity. Has anybody read the Phoenix project yet? Show of hands? Good deal. I'm reading it for the second time. The flight from Boulder or from Denver to Frankfurt and then to Bangalore is kind of a long one. So I picked out a couple books and I started reading the Phoenix project and finished it in 2013 when I started working with Dean and the team. And I opened it up again because, gosh, the learnings there are so awesome even for an organization like ours. So we know Tony because he loves 100% capacity. He knows more about everything, right? He's that manager as I know it all. And of course he's the center for solving everyone's problems. And what's the real challenge for Tony? He's called the chicken by his teams. Not a great place to be, right? So if we have a manager who's really not leading, how do we affect change for that person and affect change in the organization? Here's what we do. We train Tony. We assimilate into being a leader and not a manager of things, to be an inspirer of people, understanding that people build products and he needs to be there for those individuals. Tony needs to apply the principles of product development flow, not have 100% utilization. And he needs to know and teach those lean agile principles. Safe leaders, as we teach in the scaled agile framework in the two-day class called leading safe, we make sure that people are engaged and involved in the process of developing software. Has anybody written any code that's not been released production? Yeah. But you got paid for it. That was okay, right? And maybe not, right? We want to ensure that we're building the right things at the right time, solving the right problems. So for managers who don't think lean, like Tony the taskmaster, we want to engage with him. We want him to emerge as a leader who's involved in the process of the agile release train. So how can we help Tony? We need to train him in lean agile leadership. This is a new way of thinking and working. We need to teach him some problem-solving tools so he can engage and empower his organization to develop and develop fast. Remember, in safe, we're not taking people out of the organizations, we're taking them up in the organization. Tony as a manager needs to be more strategic and give his teams an understanding of the why, the why three, why change, why now, why this set of code. We don't want to ask him for his support. We want to ask him for his leadership. Remember, good managers are really leaders. Leaders inspire and motivate. And that's what we want out of Tony the taskmaster. Another challenge to applying safe principles is alignment as lip service. Here we go. Let's meet Simon Schur. What are the patterns we see with Simon? Oh, he likes to talk around but never in group meetings. He guides others' decisions, so hey, wouldn't it be nice if we just did it this way? Wouldn't it be nice if we executed that code this way? Trade-offs, code quality, architecture, doesn't know anything about it. And of course, Simon would feel that face-to-face planning is too expensive and inefficient for the teams that he supports. So how can we help this individual? How can we help Simon? We want to ensure that he has an understanding of alignment in safe. We want to make sure that we have prioritized backlogs. For those of you who haven't read the Phoenix project yet, everything seems to be important in the Phoenix project. Everything is important. And we all know if everything is important, nothing is. So we need to make sure we're aligned and have prioritized backlogs. We need to have face-to-face planning, committed, prioritized objectives. People ask me very frequently, is there some secret recipe? Is there some magic to safe? I say, yeah, there is. The only magic to safe is face-to-face planning, getting everybody in the room, ensuring that we have release planning and understanding estimation to get the jobs done. We also look for cross-team and cross-program alignment. It's interesting to us when people say, hey, this just isn't going to work. Our teams are already set. We've set up virtual release trains for those organizations. So how can we help Simon? First step, help them understand content design or content design and release authority. Understand the roles of the PMPO team. We just released a new workshop called Product Manager, Product Owner. And we need to engage Simon in program events. The release planning meeting, absolutely. Simon, come on board. System demos, inspect and adapt, program backlog refinement sessions. In fact, we might actually have Simon lead in an I&A so he understands what the business is and what the value is that we're bringing. Next up is prioritization as a game. Let's meet Patty Pocherface. So who's Patty? We know how to spot Patty pretty easily because she's always interested in backroom deals, always has extra tickets to the game of prioritization. And when all else fails, Patty screams the loudest. Patty also doesn't like this concept of weighted shortest job first. Really confusing, really frustrating for her. So how can we help Patty? We need to have her understand that weighted shortest job first means getting the right work done at the right time. We need her to apply prioritization and job sequencing and make sure she's decentralized and controlled down to the teams so there's speed and accuracy. And of course there's always matching capacity to demand with frequent I&As. So how are we going to help her? We're going to train Patty and everyone on the team in prioritization and sequence methods. This is very important. Alex Shakima from Scaled Agile wrote a small 52-page novelette. It's on our blog. It's called the Pacific Express. It's really a mix and match of all the experiences Alex has had in release planning and launching Agile release trains. And there's a big part of it that's about business owners attending the release planning sessions. It's a big part of SAFE, alignment and visibility to the business value that's being requested and delivered by the teams that they support. Number four in our six patterns of unsafe starts, building a portfolio of practice without strong program execution. And of course we meet Helen Heifleier. Of course Helen's at the portfolio level so let's start implementing here. Start moving stuff through the system really quickly. Helen believes metrics are key to success. We believe in SAFE, the only great metric is workable software that the customers will actually use. To my question earlier, why write the code if no one's going to use it? Let's make sure we're aligned with the business. Make sure that those priorities get at the door quickest. Helen sees the development teams as the real problem. Phoenix Project goes over this very well. And of course, if there's a sense of delays, let's push more into the system. Something will come out, right? Good, bad, or indifferent. I'll hit some goal, right? So what do we do with SAFE? SAFE program execution calls for lean agile assets, centralized strategy with decentralized decision making. It's important for us to attend those release planning meetings. It's very important for us to have the team to understand what the business vision is, what the value that we're creating or asking to create, and what is expected out of the agile release train launch. We need to be vision-driven. We use fact-based metrics. If you go to the scaled agile framework.com, all the metrics are there. It tilts things a little for organizations, but they work. And of course, regular inspect and adapts. So how do we help Helen? We need to train her in leading SAFE and portfolio program management workshop. We need to focus on launching agile release trains. The agile release train launch gets the teams engaged and gets the team happy. I really enjoyed Diana's presentation this morning because I talked a lot about those happy people. We talked to people who have implemented SAFE. They said, you brought the humanity back to my software development shop. People are really working for a greater purpose and a greater cause. We need Helen to move from those milestone-driven metrics to value-driven metrics, right? Because at the end of the day, there's no software. Value gets return on investment. And then as always, trust in our Kaizen events. Ever improvement. Constant sense of danger. Number five is really interesting because I worked for an organization who had a bunch of folks who were building code really fast, but we really still weren't working. So let's meet Cory. Cory the cowboy. Anybody know a cowboy coder? He's got little hands out there, right? He's very feature-driven and he loves making Patti Poker face happy. And we know Patti from back in our talk this morning. Patti always knows the right coffee to bring to the PMO and the right donuts to bring to the developers because she wants to get that job done to push stuff through the system that is important to her, not important to the business. What else with Cory? He loves watching code just blow up in the merge. Just toss it over the wall. Test-driven development? That's silly. I'm a coder. Just code. Get it out the door. And of course, spaghetti code with no comments. How can we help Cory the cowboy? Oh, and of course, Cory avoids the architects at all costs, right? He doesn't want to see those guys. He doesn't want to be involved in the architects. So with version three of SAFE, we talk about safe code quality. We want higher quality products and customer satisfaction. We want predictability and scalability. We want time to innovate. Really, the problem is with Cory is there's a lack of engagement for him. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know really what he's delivering. So how do we help him? Want to educate him in agile architecture? Want to ensure that he understands that automated test environments are good for everyone. Continuous integration helps us with the larger system and make sure that we're opening ourselves up to peer review and architectural guidance so we are building the right system so we're building a system that can stand up to the stress. And of course, never looking back. Let's meet Michael move on. Michael's always got really great ideas, really awesome stories on ethics, right? He's always got an ethic to talk about. Very good friends with Helen. Team retrospectives? Why would we have that whining session? I found that INAs at our sprints really help out the team. When we go back and inspect and adapt, it really tells us what we're doing and what we haven't done. Michael's always wondering why the business owners are never happy and the team's over-commit. Of course, if he's good friends with Helen, push and work through the system, just gotta push, push, push, something will happen, right? How do we help? We need to get into the mindset of the Kaizen, that constant set of danger, we look to have small, steady improvements. I call them quick wins. If I can have my team get a few quick wins, keeps everybody excited, keeps everybody engaged and motivated. Make sure we have the toolkit for retrospectives, value stream mapping, INAs. All these tools are really important and covered in Leading Safe and our PPM and PMPO classes. So how can we help Michael? At the end of the day, how do we help someone who doesn't want to look back? We need to train him on prioritization and sequencing, making sure the right work is getting done. It would be important for Michael to drive and inspect an adapt session, so he understands that it's not about whining, it's about actually bringing up the real challenges based on the business, the real victories and the real grows that we have. Michael needs to understand a little bit more about value stream mapping so we can go ahead and get an agile release train launched. And have Michael take on that quarterly customer satisfaction, understand and really embrace that customer, internal or external, to ensure that we're delivering the right products at the right time. So is there hope for these individuals? I believe there is hope. I didn't fly all the way from Boulder, Colorado to just tell you I believe in hope. I've watched people change. It's a great thing. I've watched people change in a way that brings that humanity back to software development. Because when you look at software developers, they're really artists. They're given a set of requirements and ideas and are asked to go develop something beautiful. And when we think about software, software is a lot like art. It's really never done. If you go up to a Monet painting, there's a lot that goes on in a Monet painting. Lots of dots. When you step back, it's a beautiful picture. I look at developers as artists and we're here to help them. On the image that I shared with everyone that has this graphic called Safe Implementation 1-2-3. It kind of looks pretty simple. Pick your value stream, train everyone and launch the trains. We've gotten some feedback from the field saying, hey, this almost looks like it's oversimplified. Can you dive into it a little deeper for us? Sure. So Dean and the team looked at these challenges in organizational transformation from Qatar. Because we really wanted to look deeper at what we provide and save and ensure that we can really have a practice makes permanent behavior that will drive change over the long haul. So if you look at Qatar's work and leading change, these are the common mistakes for having organizational transformation. So let's talk about them. First thing we're going to do is we're going to train these lean agile change agents. Excuse me, it's getting to about 11 o'clock in my time, so that's when I stopped talking. Lean agile change agents are safe program consultants. When an organization trains and certifies lean agile change agents, we now overcome too much complacency, the issue of organizational change. And then failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition. When you look at an SPC in an organization, that is the lean agile change agent that comes in at the program level. And can assist in support in identifying the value stream and assisting in supporting and training leading safe, launching an agile release train. Very important for organizations to have an SPC within their team. The SPC is the Uber Enterprise Change Agent for Safe. The Safe Program Consultant, step one. Actually Rowley is doing a class next week, four-day SPC class. You've trained and certified, and you can teach leading safe and launch agile release trains. So those are the things that a Safe Program Consultant can help your organization with. So who do you train? All of those individuals who are at the program level who are going to either be involved in or owning the launch of an agile release train. We say it all the time in our office, train everyone and launch the trains. Pick that value stream, give us the biggest problem child and then let's start training all of our executives, managers and leaders. When we train in leading safe, the Safe Program Consultant class can teach in leading safe and train and certify safe agilists. We want our leaders to emerge as different people who are engaged and involved in the agile release train. We don't want to just read them into the benefits of Safe and then say, hey, we're going to do this big room planning. We need them there for the release planning. We need their leadership. In 4.0, we're redeveloping the House of Lean. We have a new House of Lean, respect for people on culture, flow, innovation and relentless improvement from three pillars to four. So in this two-day class, we teach problem-solving tools. We ensure that those individuals will be engaged and involved in the agile release train launch. Leaders need to learn. Leaders need to learn and read the book drive. They need to take on a new way of working and thinking in their organization. So who do you train in leading safe? Everyone on that value stream who's at a manager level and above. Two-day class. I had a complaint from a customer. They said, you mean, an executive came to us and said, you mean we're going to have to sit in a class for two days? Two days we're going to invest? I said, well, what was the delay that you last had in your release? Two months. I said, well, you can't invest two days to get back? Two months. They came to the class. Why do we train in leading safe? We bring all of those managers, leaders and executives in so they become more involved and engaged in the process. Clearly at the portfolio level, there's vision. We just need that vision communicated to the people in the program and the team level so you're inspired and you understand what it is we're developing and delivering. And step three, train teams and launch agile release trains. We've chosen our value stream. We have our team. We have an SPC, a safe program consultant. Step one, the image that I gave. Step two, training and leading safe. And step three, the five-day process of launching an agile release train. We re-baseline the team on safe scrum and XP best practices. We have an orientation for scrum masters and product owners. And then we have two-day release planning and we launch the train. Five days to launch. So that's safe implementation one, two, three. Those are the six fixes to unsafe starts. I believe I went a little over time, but I started about ten minutes late. Any questions for me? Yes, yes. So the question was that seems oversimplified. You have a big organization and we need to train everyone and launch the trains. So while the five-day release planning is very quick, we've actually executed the plan as follows. We've gone into an organization and taught leading safe on that value stream. We've left them alone, came back in the next month, and went through the agile release train launch packet to ensure everyone has what they need. We're prepped for our release train launch. We teach safe scrum XP to the developers and the teams. Come back in two weeks. Scrum master or product owner do some coaching to the PMO so they can generate their backlog and their ask and then go into release planning. So if there's any questions on how to execute the release train, while we have done it very successfully in a five-day launch, we've also seen other success patterns where leading safe is taught and then a month later we go in and do the agile release train, and then we've had other patterns where we've taught leading safe in one month. Two weeks later, we've come back and taught PMPO workshop, and then we coach that organization on grooming the backlog and coming up with the ask, and then come back for safe scrum XP and releasing the train. We like the five-day agile release train where we move people through very quickly. Thank you. Yes, so I did talk about Safe 3.0. Right now, Scaled Agile is underway developing for Safe 4.0. If you go to the Scaled Agile framework.com site, and this is the beauty of Safe, you go out to Safe... So this is Safe 3.0, and that's what I've given out to you guys in the image. Here's a Safe 4.0 sneak preview that was just released last week. So this is on the Scaled Agile framework site. Big things that are happening with 4.0 around budgeting and lean systems, DevOps, the house of lean, and then some things within code quality. Safe 4.0 will be released right at Agile 2015. I think I'm... Just to add to that, we have a lot of applications as a consultant or a practitioner. Is this version is linked to that, or we have to upgrade ourselves? Excellent question. If you were to get Safe certified as a Safe program consultant with 3.0, your certification goes for a year. And then when we introduce things like Safe 4.0, we actually have webinars and education sessions for those SPCs to keep them knowledgeable about the new content and the new big picture. Another question? You said the best way for Safe is to have the team having a face-to-face meeting on all the occasions. But is it really a practical case when I have my team spread across? So what would be the proposals you have for that? So distributed teams. It's tough. The last Agile release train launch, we had Sweden, Boston, Massachusetts, Indiana, India and California, all five time zones. It's very challenging to get everybody on the phone. There's a lot of issues with communications, but we actually have an Agile release train launch pack that's given to all of our Safe program consultants so you can understand the needs and work with those distributed teams. It's challenging but not impossible. When they came to us and said, we have to stay up late at night or get up early in the morning, we said, yes, to have really effective release planning, it is going to take commitment from the team. And that's why, really, that's why we want those leaders and the leadership to be engaged and involved in Agile release trains because those are the folks who will actually have the budget and release the communications to have a multi-organization arc. If there's a need for references on that subject, please let me know. We have a lot of folks who are doing Agile release train launches every three months with distributed teams. Difficult but not impossible. Make sure you have great Wi-Fi. Question? Collaborate with the customer at what point will you bring the customer to Safe Agile? So good news with 4.0. Customers represented at the end of the value stream at the portfolio level. So with 4.0, that's a new change that we're making. So sorry, this is pretty washed out. So with 4.0, we're going to have the actual customer on the big picture so we can have that consistent feedback loop at the end of that value stream. So I mentioned during my talk on the 31st of March through the 3rd of April, rally software and innovation routes have a public Safe Program Consultant class here in Bangalore. We'll be back, Scaled Agile will be back in May and we'll have a Safe Program Consultant class in Pune. And then we have other partners who are going to be back probably monthly on a Safe Program Consultant training in the public setting. Remember that SPC is the individual who can train and certify in leading Safe and launch agile release trains and also drive the PPM, the portfolio program workshop as well as the PMPO workshop. Question in the back? I would like to just get a flavor of what the SPC does or when speaking to the executives and management like what is the outcome that one gets when the SPC talks to this section of the organization. The beauty of having Dean as your boss is he has just so much stuff on the website that we could just go ahead and refer to him. So as an SPC in that first step that SPC can train in their organization or in their partner's organization they can train and certify across the organization. So that SPC can train in leading Safe and also run the agile release train. During the SPC class we provide that lean agile change agent the tools and the tips and the practices necessary to ask those questions to engage leadership. The first two days of the SPC certification we're actually training SPC candidates to train in leading Safe to develop that internal drive for the leadership to become more engaged and involved in the process. I will tell you I've been with the organization for two years now and when we have those moments of actually talking with leadership they're really interested in leaning forward for the development teams that they support. Safe provides this alignment Safe provides this visibility and transparency down into those teams that they support. Did that answer your question? No, I'm sorry. It did not answer my question completely. If you could just give one or two examples as to how the executive gets transformed as a result of the SPC talking to the executive which then drives the agile adoption process. So in a more specific way we're not asking the SPC to simply talk to the executives and the leaders. We want to train and certify those leaders as safe agilists. I saw the eyes light up. So that's not the easiest thing in the world. So let's say one or many of you in the audience say hey you know what I'm going to go after and get my Safe program consultant training but I'm not really a trainer. This isn't something I do every day. That's why we have a really great partner network and that's why I have a five year multi-entry visa for this country is to develop the partnerships with individuals who can train and pair with you on that first leading safe. Because we really, step one if you really want to get to that leadership really want to go ahead and get to the leadership take them here. We have a ton of content on our website for those leaders. So the first thing I would suggest after becoming a Safe program consultant is to download the Safe Foundations PowerPoint deck. This is a tool to be used in conversations with your executives, managers and leaders before you inspire them to take a two day class. This is the deck that actually talks about the foundations of Safe, the leveraging of Agile the bringing of lean practices and the principles of product development flow to the organization. So it's this PowerPoint that is also publicly facing and freely available. My name is Francis.Kelly at Scaled Agile.com I'm one of the only people who has the script to this deck and I'm happy to provide it to you. Because the script really resonates. So we go through the foundations of Safe which is really leveraging the investment already made in these organizations which is agility and really challenging that leadership that we need them to emerge as different different thinkers and different ways of working. Did that answer the question that time? Yes. Thanks. Sometimes it takes two times. I'm sorry. It's the way it is. Any other questions? We should be Agilist first. No, actually I would say you don't have to be a Safe Agilist first. And we actually did a really great job on our website. I got to say we work with some really awesome people at Scaled Agile. So we came out with this which is right for you. And we go down all of the different levels. So as an SPC, we have some prerequisites already built in. So as an SPC we say five years of development, software development testing, three years of experience in Agile, one or more relevant Agile certifications, certified Scrum Master product owner, any of these would do. What we look for in an SPC class is a knowledge of agility at least a level three on a scale of 5. So those people who have been involved as a CSM, who have been in the organization, those are the folks who will definitely thrive. It's a fast moving class. There is an exam at the end. Did that answer your question? Awesome, thank you. What's that? Well the renewal fee is so high because we deliver so much value to you. And here's what I mean by value. With the Agile Release Train launch assessment tools, we have monthly calls with our SPCs. We've stood up an SPC members only area site on LinkedIn for people to exchange views. So really the renewal fee is actually down. It used to be $1,000. And the renewal is after year one. So here's the benefit to you above and beyond everything. Give it a try. If you're in your SPC class in Bangalore or in Pune next month or come over and see Dean's class, you receive your first year within that initial investment. And then at year two you can decide if this has been a valuable investment for you. But you do renew every year. So on our site here and again if you're a member of the organization of the if you are an SPC we've developed a members only area site. So this is for certified SPCs who have taken our class. I took the class. We have all the latest files. We have all the advanced topics. No cost licenses for lean agile budgeting, capitalization, architecture and DevOps. Anything we do SPCs get first up at the top here. We allow you to purchase courseware. So you can either use that within your organization or partner's organization. Courseware is about $100 per seat. So if you figure your daily rate and the courseware, some good value in there. And then we have the art launch pack. So there's content upon content for you as an SPC. All your branding kits, all the guidelines and then as I mentioned, monthly we do a new welcome new SPCs. So really after year one the value you'd have to define. If you become a partner of SAI there are certainly some other benefits such as discounting on our certification renewals. This has been a really good quiz which somebody worked with was here. Any other questions for me? Thank you. We're out of time. My name is Francis. I'm here. If there's any questions, anything I can do for you guys please let me know.