#10 – The Scaling Agile Showdown

Even though we should always seek to descale before scaling, we must acknowledge that folks like Dean Leffingwell and Craig Larman have built frameworks for scaling agility that have enabled many large companies (many that surpass pure software development) to embrace agile principles and values. These thought-leaders have made it possible for enterprises to grow their practicing of agile from software departments to encompass the enterprise level spanning many types of development. Whether this instills the ”right” agile mindset with the organizations from the beginning is a different discussion.

Also, let’s remember that “scaling agile” is not a solution to a one-dimensional problem; before settling on SAFe, LeSS, Scrum@Scale, Nexus, DAD or others, we must help the organizations get to their real ‘why’ of wanting to scale agile before choosing a framework (managing or removing dependencies, accelerating value delivery in one or mulitple products, etc.). Ideally, in the spirit of learning, when thinking about scaling, initiate pilots for several scaling frameworks (and also try not to) to identify which one fits our enterprise the best before making the choice. And remember to first nail it and then only scale it if we really have to.