Large enterprises that develop software cannot function without structure, but often develop structures that cripple productivity and impair responsiveness to customer needs. This Webinar introduces an approach to building effective structures by introducing the concept of Agile governance. Agile governance provides formalized practices for decision making (governance) which incorporate the principles of the Agile Manifesto and Lean Engineering. The result is a set of simple recipes for selecting, planning, organizing, and tracking work at all levels in the organization (the Portfolio, Program, and Project levels), which apply within or across Business Units. We also provide guidance on how to develop new recipes, when needed. This webinar introduces the basic concepts of Agile governance. We will look at some existing concepts (such as Scrum of Scrums and SAFe), and lay the foundations for subsequent webinars that address specific scenarios of common interest.

1. Instructor: Kevin Thompson, PhD, PMP, ACP, CSP, CSM
The leader in training and consulting for project management and agile development
Principles of Agile Governance

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Who is cPrime?
Engaged For Your Project-management Success

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Who Are You?
1) How big is your organization?
2) What is the dominant type of project in your portfolio?
3) Which of these best characterizes the products you develop?

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Start Communicating!
• Download the white paper “Recipes for Agile Governance (RAGE):
The Enterprise Web.”
• Email: agileexpert@cprime.com
• Social media: #RAGEwebinar
• Chat room: http://us11.chatzy.com/89016233074361. Password: RAGE
• Share ideas and you could win an iPad!
http://www.cprimelabs.org:8090/display/AgileGov/Agile+Governance+Home
• Give a real world example of how a company could use one of the
principles discussed in the white paper/webinar.
• Tell us about the biggest problem you face that this model would address.

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After the webinar…
• We will send directions to collect the PDU you will earn from
attending this webinar
• We will also send a links to the recorded webinar and
presentation slides once they are posted online
• Please hold your questions until the end of the presentation

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About Our Presenter
Kevin Thompson, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Physics from
Princeton University, and extensive background in managing
software development projects. He specializes in training
individuals, teams, and organizations in agile development. Dr.
Thompson helps companies make the challenging transition to
agile development by working with development teams and
business stakeholders to identify their needs, define the right
process for the business, determine the steps needed to
implement the process, and work through the steps
successfully. Dr. Thompson has Project Management
Professional (PMP), Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP), Scrum
Master (CSM), and Scrum Practitioner (CSP) certifications.
Kevin Thompson

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What will You Learn Today?
• Not a particular Agile process like Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe
• But the principles that will enable you to create processes like
these, at any level in an enterprise from project to portfolio
• You will no longer be constrained by what processes already exist
• E.g., if you like SAFe, use it. If you don’t, create your own process.
We are sharing knowledge gleaned from years of work with very
small to very large clients
• This information has not been made public before
• Now, it is yours
• We intend to provide an open-source solution over time

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How will Principles of
Agile Governance Benefit You?
1. With processes that work for your world
2. With rapid decision-making at minimal cost
• Reduce the time, effort of making decisions
• Make them more frequently
• Think Lean Start-Up: Less time spent making plans, quicker test
of your hypotheses
• Have more opportunities to experiment, learn, change direction
3. With high visibility for priorities, status of work

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Coming Now, and Coming Soon
Now
• The principles of Agile Governance. This is the foundation for
what follows.
Soon
• Follow-up presentations of practical examples for a variety of
real-world scenarios
• Portfolio, Program, and Project levels
• Agile and Hybrid Projects
• Metrics, Artifacts, and Techniques

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Motivation: Common Enterprise Problems
• Things that take too long
• Time-to-market: 18 months instead of eight weeks
• Integration test cycles: too many, too many months
• Things that often fail
• Coordination across Business Units
• Dependencies
• Handoffs
• Confusion
• Lack of clarity around authority to make decisions
• “Too many cooks in the kitchen”
• Lack of understanding about what can be meaningfully estimated
• Inadequate determination of ROI to support portfolio decisions

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Poll
Which of the following is your
greatest challenge?

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What doesn’t Work
• Business as usual
• We’ve tried that. We’re still looking…
• A random collection of point solutions
• Every problem has a context
• Point solutions help, but are often too narrow
• Scaling Agile
• The cure is not “scaling Agile.” It is creating solutions that work.
• Companies have complex and widely-varying needs, including
hybrid processes, that can't be addressed by a one-side fits all
"Agile scaling" framework.
• Agile processes (Scrum, XP, Kanban) are not always the right
solution! There are valid reasons for using plan-driven and hybrid
processes.

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Begin by Forgetting what You Know
Imagine a large company that produces technology products
The most important question to answer about the continuing
development of these products is not
• What features to build
• What technologies to use
• What infrastructure to develop
• How to manage development
The most important question is
• How do we decide what to do?
… because this covers everything else

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Analyze
DecideAct
Decision Loops are Key
1. Analysis guides decisions
2. Decisions drive actions
3. Actions produce results,
which inform a new analysis
• The better our decisions, the better our results
• Focus should be to optimize decision-making
• This focus leads us to the concept of “governance”

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Governance
• Is often mentioned, but seldom defined
• Is commonly seen as being about control
• Is really about decisions that lead to actions
Our definition:
“Governance is the formalization and exercise
of repeatable decision-making practices”
• In other words,
Governance is how to decide what to do

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Agile Governance
• Agile Governance is an Agile style of governance
• Enables rapid decisions, based on lightweight artifacts developed
with minimum effort
• Is applicable to any process (Agile, Plan-Driven, Hybrid, etc.)
• Agile Governance reflects the values of the Agile Manifesto
Emphasizes interaction, collaboration, results, adaptation to change
Over
Processes, tools, internal documents, contracts, plans
• Agile Governance is adaptable, not rigidly prescriptive
Customizable recipes
“Thou Shalt Do Things Exactly as Prescribed”


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Levels of Governance
• Classic perspective
• Project: Temporary endeavor to deliver a fixed scope
• Program: Collection of linked projects
• Portfolio: Group of Programs/Projects to be managed together
• Classic definitions don’t map well to Agile world, but…
• Hierarchical organization is still relevant.
• Our levels for Agile Governance
• Project Level: Refers to work of a single Team, which is a
persistent grouping of people
• Program Level: Refers to the collaboration between Teams
• Portfolio Level: Refers to the development and management of
business initiatives that lead to program- and project-level work

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Levels of Governance

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What is your biggest
issue in portfolio
governance?
Poll

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Inspiration from Scrum
• Scrum is our “pathfinder” process, because it
• Is prescriptive enough to have a meaningful identity
• Supports customization for local needs
• A Scrum process provides many “governance points” at which
decisions are made, in meetings or on the fly
• We seek not to “scale up Scrum,” but to
1. Understand how governance is conducted in Scrum
2. Develop principles that can be applied in other contexts

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Principles versus Recipes: What’s the
Point?
Define “governance recipe” to be a
mildly prescriptive and customizable technique
for making a specific type of decision
• A process such as Scrum contains a particular set of governance
recipes
• Scrum as “Prix Fixe” menu
• The point is not to meet only the needs of purely-Agile projects
• Unrealistic to expect a single “Agile scaling” framework to handle the
variety of practical, real-world scenarios (e.g., hybrid projects)
• The point is to
• Understand the principles that enable effective governance
• Help you to construct useful governance recipes to organize work
effectively for your world

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Some Common Principles for
Agile Governance
1. Standard Recipe Elements
2. Common Role Types
3. Categories of Governance Points
4. “Good Enough” is “Good Enough”
5. Granularity
6. Definition of Done
7. Handoffs
Download Recipes for Agile Governance: The Enterprise Web
from www.cprime.com for much more detail

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How the Principles Work Together
Recipes have Standard Elements, including Common Role
Types and Categories of Governance Points. We organize
deliverables at each level into a small number of coarse-
Granularity items, which we rank by value, and for which our
estimates for effort, value, etc. should be Good Enough for the
current need, and no better. Work is always completed to a
Definition of Done, and the Handoff from source to receiver is
accomplished through sustained interaction over time.
Download Recipes for Agile Governance: The Enterprise Web
from www.cprime.com for much more detail

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1: Standard Recipe Elements
1. Roles
A Role defines areas of responsibility associated with different aspects of
governance. People who fulfill these Roles collaborate with others to
decisions, but have sole authority over their area.
2. Ceremonies
Ceremonies are recurring meetings, with specific and standardized
agendas, attendance, and practices, and for specific purposes.
3. Artifacts
Different artifacts serve different purposes (requirements, planning, etc.),
but most decisions make use of artifacts to some degree.
4. Tracking and Metrics
Tracking progress requires collecting data for useful metrics.
5. Governance Points
A governance point is a moment at which someone who fulfills a particular
Role makes a decision in the domain of that Role’s authority, based on
standard practices, metrics, and artifacts.

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Example: Scrum Recipe Elements
1. Roles
ScrumMaster owns process. Product Owner owns product
requirements. Team owns estimates, and task definition / assignment.
2. Ceremonies
Backlog Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Up, Sprint Review,
Retrospective
3. Artifacts
Stories, Task Breakdowns.
4. Tracking and Metrics
Taskboard, Burndown Chart.
5. Governance Points
Story completed to Definition of Done. Product Owner approval of
Story.

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Example: Waterfall Recipe Elements
1. Roles
Project Manager manages project. Program Manager manages set of
projects and their interactions. Product Manager develops high-level
product requirements. Business Analysts develop detailed
requirements. Project Team implements product. QA Team tests
product.
2. Ceremonies
Daily Status Meetings, Post-Mortems
3. Artifacts
Product Requirements Documents, Change Requests, Task
definitions, Project schedule.
4. Tracking and Metrics
Gantt Chart, % done per Task
5. Governance Points
Phase Gates

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2: Common Role Types
These responsibilities are very common, and it is useful to
formalize the responsibilities and authority into associated Roles
1. Define specifications for deliverables
2. Monitor progress, remove impediments, and enforce the
defined process
3. Build and validate deliverables
Example: Scrum Roles
• Product Owner
• ScrumMaster
• Team

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3: Categories of Governance Points
These types of decisions occur frequently
1. Develop Specifications for Deliverables
2. Rank Deliverables
3. Plan Implementation
4. Perform Implementation
5. Monitor Status of Work
These resemble the Project Management Institute’s Process
Groups, but differ because the notion of a Project as a one-off
effort to deliver a unique result differs from the concept of
continuing work to augment products over time.

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4: “Good Enough” is Good Enough
Estimates for scope, effort, or value for a new product or feature
are not possible.
• Goal of estimation should be a number that is good enough to
meet immediate needs, and no better.

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5: Granularity
At all levels
• Define, estimate, and plan deliverables at coarse granularity,
focusing on a modest set at any one time
• Work by ranking (sequencing) deliverables, and estimating
what will fit into a specific period of time
• Use simple decision criteria, and crude (but quick) estimates to
enable rapid decision making and quick generation of plans
It is occasionally necessary to create longer-term plans at a
detailed level (as for Release planning), but these are costly and
time-consuming efforts, and seldom appropriate for what-if
analyses. Engage in these efforts only when the cost is truly
justified.

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6: Definition of Done
A “Definition of Done” (DoD) is a policy statement about generic
criteria that work on deliverables must satisfy before work can be
considered “done.” It excludes specific test cases for specific
deliverables.
Examples:
• A DoD can be created for a specific Team’s work on Stories
(the DoD for Stories)
• A set of Teams doing similar work may share a DoD for their
Stories
• An organization may define a DoD for a product release, that
must be satisfied before the product can be released to
production for use by customers

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7: Handoffs
Handoffs of information or work from one group (source) to
another (receiver) are common. Handoffs can be conducted in
three ways.
1. Documentation: Source writes a document or fills out a form
2. Discussion: Source and Receiver meet to discuss the
handoff, and ensure that it is successful
3. Collaboration: Source and Receiver meet as many times as
needed to work through issues, and do whatever work is
needed after meetings to make the handoff successful
The right choice depending on the degree of complexity and
uncertainty involved. These are often under-estimated, resulting in
handoffs that fail.

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Governance versus Scaling versus SAFe
• The focus of scaling is to create an Agile process, for a particular type of
deliverable, that works on larger scales than one Team. SAFe is an example of
such a scaled process.
• The focus of Agile Governance is to discover principles that enable the
development of effective decision-making recipes that work at all levels, and
across multiple organizations or business units, in a large enterprise.
• A particular process, such as SAFe, can be described by a particular set of
Agile governance recipes
• SAFe defines specific and highly prescriptive practices for developing
and delivering software applications. It defines technology-related roles
and a variety of software-engineering practices, mixing decision-
making and execution into a single process. It is not designed to
address heterogeneous environments with widely-varying needs.

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Conclusion
• The Principles of Agile Governance enable rapid decision-
making through a combination of standard elements
• The focus is to create or customize a process by defining a set
of Agile Governance Recipes that define how decision-making
is done for that process
• Some processes (like Scrum) come with these
• Some (like Kanban) are standardized but incomplete, and can be
“retrofitted” with governance recipes
• Some must be developed from scratch, for specific situations
• Enterprises routinely have a combination of processes, some
Agile, and some not
• These principles are not limited to a specific context, but are
useful for a wide variety of situations and processes

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Coming Up:
Practical Recipes for Different Worlds
• We have presented some principles for effective and Agile
governance
• Our follow-up presentations will provide examples of practical
recipes for specific situations:
 Portfolio Governance
 Program Governance for Application Development
 Program Governance for Production Deployment
 Project Governance for Distributed Scrum Teams

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Question & Answer