The ICON Blog

Every business is a software business.

While that statement may sound extreme, it emphasizes a current reality: digital disruption is changing the landscape of business. As Mik Kersten points out in his book Project to Product: “the tech giants that have mastered software at scale are expanding into traditional business…are mastering traditional businesses more quickly than the world’s established companies are mastering software delivery.”

As a coach who helps implement Agile and the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe), I’ve encountered many organizations where the product development teams (software and otherwise) are not immediately sold on Agile change. Agile tends to appeal more to the business side, less so to the ones doing the work. Why is this?

As a member of an Agile Team, have you ever had one of the following complaints about management?

• Their deadlines are too tight.
• Their expectations are unfair because they don’t follow Agile processes.
• They don’t take time to learn more about the work that’s being done.

It’s true, management can be a pain sometimes...so what have you done about it?

As the Lead Transformation Coach at Aegon Asset Management, Charlene Cuenca presented her story of how AAM began implementing SAFe Agile Architecture out of the gate, the challenges and pitfalls overcome along the way, and the resulting successful Global Architecture Team that exists today.

Your first Program Increment (PI) Planning event is on the calendar, and you feel ready to kick-off your first Agile Release Train. It’s time to align the teams on their work for the next three months. No pressure here—PI Planning is only the most pivotal, face-to-face event in the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe).

It is often stated that while agility works for software, it is not as easily applied to hardware. In this presentation, you will learn how SAFe’s Core Values and Principles apply to Agile Hardware Development. Duane discusses real world considerations when executing within a Portfolio configuration, including:

1. How is Hardware different?
2. Horizon Planning and Hardware Phases
3. Roles and the ART
4. Team Composition
5. PI Planning and “incremental delivery”
6. What about testing and system integration?

More often than not, the shift to Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) is not an overnight one. After all, it takes time to pivot from traditional Project Management (PPM) to a lean-agile LPM capability, especially since we want to get the SAFe Essentials established first. But the benefits are clear—better exposing strategy and demand and having a big picture view of capacity and impact on delivery provides better alignment and transparency, which in turn informs better decision making and trade-off discussions at all levels. But where do we begin?

In this presentation, you will learn the context of LPM and view field-tested, practical approaches to get started.

With the holidays around the corner, you might be on the verge of hosting an upcoming celebration. Oh, the stress! You know what it’s like pulling together a party that everyone can enjoy. As the host, you tend to get wiped out before the party even gets going!

What if I told you that there was a better way to plan and execute your parties, based on personal experience? If I were you, I'd consider using Kanban for one of your upcoming celebrations.  Not only does it help with organization, but it also provides more opportunities for fun—for both you and your guests.

Intrigued? Below, I will share with you my story behind "Celebrations with Kanban," as well as some tricks and tips for your next party, so you can enjoy it as much as your guests.

Do you find that your teams and Business Owners have a hard time digesting PI Objectives, what they are and their purpose in PI Planning? Their PI Objectives can end up sounding more like features (“Add the green widget feature to the purchase screen”), and sometimes they are ignored entirely.

DevOps is a market buzzword, with nearly every enterprise trying to implement DevOps to remain relevant in their industry. When I was first introduced to DevOps, I was skeptical—over 40 deployments in a day and 200x shorter lead times? I was extremely concerned about the security and robustness of these builds being deployed, as the only artifacts to support this were from smaller companies. There was nothing to prove that DevOps worked in large enterprises.