1. Scrum in a Large
Organization
Ralph Koglin CPO, Bernd Götz CSM

2. Introduction
•Today
•History
•Good and Bad from the Trenches
•What's next?
2

3. • Bernd and Ralph
About Us
33
3

4. • Bernd and Ralph
About Us
44
4

5. Swiss Re is a leading and highly diversified global
re/insurance company
• Our financial strength is currently rated:
Standard & Poor’s: AA-/stable; Moody’s A1/positive;
A.M. Best: A+/stable
• A pioneer in insurance-based capital market solutions, we
combine financial strength and unparalleled expertise for
the benefit of our clients.
• We deliver both traditional and innovative offerings
in Property & Casualty and Life & Health that meet our
clients' needs.
• 150 years of experience in providing wholesale
re/insurance and risk management solutions.
The “Gherkin”, London
Headquarters, Zurich
Armonk, New York
5

6. • Develop a global treaty rating platform reflecting the best practices of
existing rating methods and tools currently implemented in the Americas,
Europe, and Asia-Pacific as well as more recent and future developments
• Replace a wealth of existing tools (largely excel based tools)
• The Global Rating Platform forms a central part of the underwriting process
• A multi-year initiative
The Global Rating Plattform
6

7. GRP Today
7

8. 8
modernanalyst.com

9. • Chief Product Owner, three Product Owners
• 37 team members
– Four teams with Scrum Masters
– One "Chief Scrum Master"
• Distributed between
– Riga (Latvia)
– Zurich (Switzerland)
The Project Setup
9

10. Teams and Chapters
10
See Kniberg, Scaling Agile @ Spotify

11. • 3 week Sprints
• Working Agreements
– Definition of Ready
– Definition of Done
• Daily Stand ups
– 10 -15 minutes per team
– 10 -15 minutes Scrum of Scrum
• Product Backlogs
• Regular planning poker sessions for story
point estimation and release planning
Scrum Setup
11

12. Sprint Details
12
Sprint 81 Sprint 82
Monday
Sprint release
deployment, Business
Review preparation
Business Review
Retrospectives (per team)
Sprint Planning (all)
Story planning and
estimation per team
Story planning and
estimation per team
MorningAfternoon
SprintingFriday Tuesday
Story preview sessions
Story analysis and design
Sprint release wrap up
(continued on Friday)
Thursday

13. Release Planning
13
1 2 3 S 2 3 4 5 S1 S
Release 5.1 – May 12
3 Feature Sprints
1 Stabilisation Sprint
Major Topic:
• xxx
(incl. performance improvements)
Minor Topics:
• yyy
ca. 6 small Stories:
- agreed critical stories
Major Topic:
• xxx
(development proceeds till end of 2014)
Minor Topics:
• yyy
• zzz (agreed on stories)
ca. 10 small Stories:
- agreed critical stories
Stabilisation
only!
Release 5.2 – Sept 15
5 Feature Sprints
1 Stabilisation Sprint
Release 5.3 – Oct 27
2 Stabilisation
Sprints
S

14. History
14

15. • ~10 team members
• In 2008 the project started with
"Swiss Re RUP"
• Large use case documents
– expensive to maintain
– handed over from Business to IT
(throw it over the fence….)
• Wasteful!
2008: Business vs IT
15
Use Case
Document
modernanalyst.com

16. • ~ 15 team members, all in one team
• Crisis workshop to pull the project together
• "Partial" introduction of scrum:
– Let's call use cases  stories
– Word to Wiki
• Three week development cycles
• First product backlog
• Project manager becomes product owner
– High level features for releases put together by PO
2009: "Scrum But"
16

17. • ~ 15 team members
• Version 1.0
– minimum viable product
– high degree of stress
• Split into two teams, introduction of Scrum of Scrum
• Technical debts
• Introduction of story point estimation using planning poker
2010: First Production Release
17

18. Version History
18
1 Sep 2010
1.0
26 Aug
2011
2.1
27 Aug
2012
3.0
13 Jul 2013
4.0
Summer
2014
5.x

19. Good and Bad from the
Trenches
19

20. • Core Values! Great!
• Bodies and committees – PSB, LSC, TDC,
SQA, AQ, MTV, GIA, ORM
• BPPM - Best Practice Project Management
– still alive and kicking
– project vs product thinking…
• Yearly planning and budgeting process
• Build vs run organizations
– Move to run mode, handover to maintenance
team, aka "waste"
• How to identify and how to agree what's
waste and what's not
Hang on… is Swiss Re a Truly Agile Company?
20
modernanalyst.com

21. • A physical board is not possible due to
two locations
• Jira with Rapid Board (aka Greenhopper)
• Confluence Wiki
– User documentation
– Specification
– Business documentation
– Technical documentation
• It took some time to get there
• Is Swiss Re lucky with this tooling?
Lean Tooling in an Enterprise
21

22. 22
Jira

23. 23
Confluence

24. • Communication and Collaboration
– Heavy users of Swiss Re's Web Based Conferencing
platform
– Lotus Notes Sametime for group and individual chats
Team Location and Setup – Collaboration….
24
• Near Shoring – it's
given at the moment
• Lots of travelling
• Regular all team
workshops and
events
• Build trust across
locations

25. The Waterfall Virus still Alive…
People stuck in Waterfall Thinking
25

26. Defects, Defects, Defects
26
Stabilization Sprints
1.2 2.1 2.5 3.1 3.5 4.0 4.2 5.0

27. • Lack of automation
– Being addressed, is a huge undertaking if
not picked up from the beginning
• Incomplete acceptance tests
• Developers don't test their own code
well enough (not enough unit testing,
not enough integration testing)
• Domain complexity (complex domain
model, complex calculations, hard to
validate)
• Too much load by PO, hence too much
work in progress
Where are those Defects coming from?
27
modernanalyst.com

28. Stories and Defects Correlation
28
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1 1.1 1.2 2 2.1 2.5 3 3.1 3.5 4 4.1 4.2 5
NumberofStories/Defects
Version
Stories vs Defects
Stories per Release
Defects per Release
"We know it,
but…"

29. What's next?
29

30. • More product focus (vs. project focus)
• Continuous delivery
– More frequent deployments to production
– Having a potentially shippable product each Sprint
– Strong investment into test automation
• Leaner specification, e.g. using "Specification by Example"
• Foster Lean/Agile knowledge within the Business organization
• "Delight the Customer"
PO/SM Wish List
30

31. • Is it enough to count stories, and to drop story point estimation?
• Our own data supports above statement, correlation is 0.97!
• See Story Points considered harmful, Vasco Duarte
Changes in Estimation
31

32. • It works! Even in a large organization!
• Training and education!
• The relationship between Business and IT improved with Agile/Scrum
• It's still very much bottom up, and based on energetic people
Conclusion
32

33. 3333
Thank you!