{"id":1445,"date":"2020-01-21T11:52:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T11:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smharter.com\/blog\/?page_id=1445"},"modified":"2022-04-11T17:40:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:40:42","slug":"how-large-successful-companies-achieve-agility-at-scale","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.smharter.com\/blog\/how-large-successful-companies-achieve-agility-at-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"How large successful companies achieve agility at scale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is an account of how large successful companies like <\/em>
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Spotify, LinkedIn, Netflix and HP LaserJet Firmware <\/em>
achieved agility at scale with tangible and lasting business benefits.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Compare this account with The results of companies migrating to heavy-weight scaled frameworks and off-the-shelf platforms<\/a>.
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Disclaimer:<\/strong> I don’t and haven’t worked for these companies. The info reported below has been cross-checked from multiple publicly available sources (videos, articles, documents, posts) coming from, then, company’s employees, in few cases from a journalist that visited the company, in one case from a previous employee, and from the company’s blog. For some of the companies, I could double-check with a current employee the resemblance of the whole resulted from putting together info from different sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Summary<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All these big and successful companies work to deliver digital services and\/or digital products, or physical products with embedded software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These successful companies have achieved Agility at scale, with tangible and lasting benefits for their business.
Agility<\/strong> here is intended as being fast, dynamic, innovative, flexible, adaptive, and resilient.
It means they all achieved agility at scale in their business, in their organisation and in their technology.
At Scale<\/strong>, because they employ from a few hundred to several thousand software developers and engineers;  and some of them develop large software systems that require many of those developers and engineers to work together on the same piece of software\/delivery initiative.
With tangible and lasting benefits for their business<\/strong>, as is proven by their undisputable successes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image below shows a comparison of a few aspects, among all eight companies (WoW acronym stands for Ways Of Working).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comparison of top companies scaling approaches (click the image to zoom)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

An infographic follows below with some of the key points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of those companies had that agility from the outset and maintained it while they grow (Google, Facebook, Spotify, Amazon) while others at some point in time went through some kind of change or transformation to achieve or recover such degree of agility (Microsoft, LinkedIn, Netflix and HP LaserJet Firmware). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Their pursuit of agility has been driven both bottom-up and from the top, with a lot of autonomy as well as responsibility for the teams. The balance between the bottom-up and the top drive vary from company to company.  People, their autonomy, their mastery, their involvement, and team-work have been fundamental ingredients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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None of these companies even remotely refers to, uses practices from, or takes inspiration from any one of the commercial scaled agile frameworks (e.g. SAFe, DaD, or even LeSS).
None of these companies adhere to just one of the official Agile frameworks, not by the book, not by imitation, nor in a prescriptive or uniform and standard way for all the teams with a cookie-cutter or cut-and-paste approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All these companies have grown their own ways of working internally, in a continuous process of experimentation-learning-adaptation-evolution, in order to suit their specific circumstances and needs (no scaling by imitation, no copycats).
All these companies\u2019 ways of woking take inspiration or are congruent with many of the Lean and Agile principles, values and mindset. With a few exceptions for two of them on sustainable pace, psychological safety, and daily collaboration with the business.
In their pursuit of agility, all these companies have a strong focus on technical excellence with a strong engineering culture. All of them consider the company culture as an important ingredient of their agility (suggested reading: Culture and cultural change frameworks and ideas<\/a>).
All these companies\u2019 have some technical practices at scale that have their roots in Agile and specifically in Extreme Programming (e.g. Trunk Based Development, Continuous Integration, Test Automation, Continuous Delivery). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are still continuously evolving their own ways of working (no transformation programs, no target operating models or any end-state or end-date, no distinction between improving and delivering, just every-day continuous improvement). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of these companies (Microsoft, Spotify, HP LaserJet Firmware) explicitly define themselves as Agile and explicitly adopt ideas and practices from several Agile frameworks (e.g. Extreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, Lean Startup). The other companies do not explicitly define themselves Agile and do not have any explicit company-wide policy about Agile, while Agile exists in pockets in their organisation because of the autonomy of the teams.
None of these companies talks about scaling Agile, some talk about Agile at scale.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In conclusion, for all these companies, their agility has been instrumental for their business, financial and commercial success, and for keeping their edge and innovativeness while growing and at scale.
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These stories shared below provide good learnings about things that worked very well for these companies. Correlation does not imply causation, so do not just copy these as recipes, instead use these learnings to inform and inspire the experimentation in your company with an experiment-learn-adapt-evolve approach.
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Microsoft<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Agile journey at Microsoft has been underway for some ten years starting from 2008 and continues to evolve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Over these ten years, the journey has been:<\/p>\n\n\n\n