Dos and Don'ts from the Scaled Agile Trenches

GOTO Aarhus 2024

A lot of time and money has been invested in agile transformations in Denmark. The entry point to agile in many organizations has been the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). In several organizations, the results have not (yet) lived up to the expectations, which has given agile a tarnished reputation.

In the autumn of 2023, we interviewed several people in Danish organizations who have and have had responsibility for transforming their organization towards agile. We interviewed them about their experiences with their agile transformation. We promised them anonymity and have experienced that they have shared their experiences openly with us.

We have collected the conclusions from the interviews and categorized them in these five points:

• Commitment and involvement from management.
• Competence-related challenges.
• Scaling and organizational transformation.
• Connection between the strategic and operational level.
• Funding and delivery models.

Following up on our talk on day 1 of the conference we will explore and dig deeper into the issues under each point with a focus on, how we could and should solve the issues.

The program for the Workshop is:

1. Welcome a. Check-in. b. Program.
2. Commitment and involvement from management. a. Presentation of the main issues. b. Elaboration and reflection in groups with focus on how to solve the issues presented.
3. Competence-related challenges. a. Presentation of the main issues. b. Elaboration and reflection in groups with focus on how to solve the issues presented.
4. Scaling and organizational transformation. a. Presentation of the main issues. b. Elaboration and reflection in groups with focus on how to solve the issues presented.
5. Connection between the strategic and operational level. a. Presentation of the main issues. b. Elaboration and reflection in groups with focus on how to solve the issues presented.
6. Funding and delivery models. a. Presentation of the main issues. b. Elaboration and reflection in groups with focus on how to solve the issues presented.
7. Wrap-up.