- Hello, VUCA World!
- What Is an Agile Organization Design?
- Typical Problems When Adopting Agility
- Avoid Copy–Paste Scaling: A Typical Scaling Approach
- Overview of an Agile Organization Design
- Summary
- References
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Avoid Copy–Paste Scaling: A Typical Scaling Approach
Scaling is about increasing in size. Fire departments, for example, scale their operations depending on the severity of the fire. Depending on the scenario, they may increase the size of the trucks, the number of vehicles, the number of people, and the coordination and communication process as needed. This approach is what Cesário Ramos calls copy–paste scaling.7 You “copy” the trucks and people needed and “paste” them to form a larger group while adding extra processes for communication and coordination.
When you apply this approach to Agile, it means increasing capacity by copying and pasting Agile teams in your development group. To support and coordinate this growth, organizations typically augment their teams with special roles such as project managers or feature owners. They also add extra layers of coordination, such as release management; extra process steps, such as integration test phase; and even additional artifacts, such as system specifications and team work packages.
Unfortunately, this results in reduced team–customer collaboration because the teams start to focus on the added coordination roles, the intermediate artifacts, and the revised processes. As a result, you are now decreasing the feedback loops and slowing down rather than speeding up.
Let us provide an example.