Scaling through Building Organisational Support.

As we kick off 2018 talk around scaling agile seems to have reached new levels  I've no hard and fast facts to support that statement only endless discussions of  the topic constantly filling up my Twitter and Linkedin feeds. Most of this discussion tends to be framework focused, pitching LeSS again DAD against SAFe and so-forth.

I'm not sure how productive this discussion often is, moreover it tends to just turn into one big slanging match. Not least though because when it comes to the topic of scaling agile I'm not even convinced everyone's talking about the same thing. Most of the time the discussion seems to be focused on the question of how to spin up as many Scrum teams as possible. How do you get fifty teams working seamlessly together? Or something similar.

A common response to such a problem often goes something along the lines of getting one team working well first. That seems like an eminently sensible position to take. If you can't even get single team Scrum working well then what is it that you'd be scaling to fifty teams?

The discussion often ends there, although perhaps there's something else we should be asking - how do you hope to even get a single Scrum team working well until you start scaling? It's important here to qualify that statement with a specific definition of 'scaling'.

In the above question the focus of 'scaling' shifts from how many Scrum teams can be instantly spun up to one of creating and scaling the conditions for effective agile practices across the organisation. Such a focus is represented as the fourth enabling pillar in  the team coaching model - a supporting organisational context. In other words, for a team to be successful then the wider organisation mechanisms and structures need to be in place to support the desired way of working.

In an agile context these organisational mechanisms and strictures will covering issues such as HR, performance and rewards, recruitment, architecture and product landscape etc. The fundamental question being asked here is that if such factors are not addressed at scale, i.e. at the organisational level, then will individual teams ever be able to realise meaningful and sustained success? If individual teams cannot realise success then what impetus will there be to start seeding activity more widely? Such a situation could be represented by the cycle below:

As such, if we take our definition of 'scaling' to mean simply replicating the practices of individual teams then perhaps we could be enabling a self-defeating cycle which works to discourage and prevent establishing effective wider practices and agility.

If we shift the focus of scaling to that of enabling supporting conditions then perhaps we can work to avoid this negative cycle and actually work to build a positive reinforcing one.

We can see from this why enabling organisational support forms a pillar in the team coaching model, because that organisational support is not just crucial for the performance of any one given team but also for the building of desire and momentum for wider change and improvement.

Perhaps therefore, the common question associated with scaling agile needs to switch from how can you scale until you've got single team Scrum right to how can you even get single team Scrum right before you start to scale, i.e. start to build the foundations for organisational support? In this context, good single team scrum can be seen as the result of effective scaling rather than being seen as the precursor to starting.

Often the focus of scaling seems to be a narrow attempt to increase the number of teams. If we consider scaling though to represent the appropriateness of the supporting organisational context, rather than simply the number of so-called Scrum teams then maybe we'll be better positioned to realise success.