Agile at Scale Using Azure DevOps

Part 1: Course Introduction and Level-set

1. Primary challenges of agility at scale

• Our scenario for the course
• How we’ll use Azure DevOps in this course
• Teams for the course

Practice: Teaming – We’ll sort the class into groups and work in teams throughout the class. Your team will self-organize and choose a name.

Part 2: Configuring Azure DevOps for your ARTs and Teams

1. Differentiating products, epics, and value streams

• Reporting structures in Azure DevOps
• Reporting by: value, delivery, cost
• Linking workflows to product

2. Setting up our scenario

• Getting work into ADO
• Setting up teams in ADO
• Team members in ADO
• Roles in ADO

Practice: ADO applied – Throughout these sections, we’ll work in ADO to set up realistic scenarios and apply what we learn in our own situations.

3. The product hierarchy

• Defining your product priorities
• Input a product hierarchy in ADO
• Enabling traceability to products
• Associating stories and features with products

Practice: Defining your ARTs in ADO – By the time we finish this section, you will understand best practices for defining your product hierarchy and release trains within Azure DevOps.

4. Icons and symbols in ADO

• The book (story)
• The trophy
• The crown
• Risk vs. reward in your scalability construct
• Product predictability manager
• Inspect and adapt

5. Scaled agility artifacts and practices supported by ADO

• Stories, Features, and Epics
• Team and Program Backlogs
• Scrum and Kanban practices
• Backlogs and taskboards
• Teams
• Sprint cadences
• Iterations, Innovation, and Planning (IP) Iteration
• Program Increments (PI)
• Milestones
• Release Trains, ARTs, and Program Teams
• PI Objectives, Team Goals, and Solution context

6. Creating kanbans and backlogs

• Columns configured for scaled agility
• Portfolio Kanban and backlog – epics and columns
• ART program kanban and backlog – features and columns
• Team kanban and backlog – stories and columns
• Configuring columns to match SAFe

Practice: Shu Ha Ri and Azure DevOps – At this point in the class, you will be familiar with all the key artifacts, terms, and framework components provided by ADO. Your coach will now get you started adding stories, features, and tasks in our realistic scenario.

By the end of this section, your teams will be able to use Azure DevOps for making work visible at the portfolio level and exposing where the money is being spent. You’ll understand how value streams are being funded, and how work is either improving or delivering a product.

Part 3: Using Azure DevOps for Agile Events

1. PI Planning

• Allocating work to an increment
• Plugin: program board
• PI objectives
• ROAM risks
• Team workspaces

2. Scrum and Sprint events 

• Iteration (sprint) planning
• Allocating work to a sprint
• Using task boards for daily standups
• Using metrics for sprint review
• Iteration (sprint) retrospectives
• Backlog refinement

3. Other scaled agility events 

• Using program boards for Scrum of scrums
• Product ownership sync with PI objectives
• System demos
• Preparation for PI planning
• Inspect and adapt

4. Introducing the context of portfolio vision & strategic themes

By this point in the class, you and your team will be well-versed on how Azure DevOps tools and technology capability can be mapped to the practices, artifacts, roles, and management constructs of frameworks for scaled agility.

Part 4: Scaling Portfolio and Strategic Themes

We will conclude the class with an overview of how the capabilities of Azure DevOps frame scaled agility in a way that can be extended beyond development stakeholders to the rest of your organization. The portfolio and strategic themes.

1. Goals and objectives

2. Programs and portfolios

3. Customer centricity

4. Design thinking

5. Implementing SAFe and other frameworks for agile at scale

6. Coaching and progressing transformation

Part 5: Class Conclusion and Charting Your Course

1. Discussion: Immediate goals

2. Expert Q&A

For anyone in organizations using Azure DevOps to scale agile practices, thise course is an immediate benefit to:

• Development teams
• Program, project managers, PMO staff
• Product owners
• Cross-functional engineers
• Team leaders and ScrumMasters
• Testing and quality champions
• Portfolio owners and managers
• Business and IT managers
• Anyone who needs greater visibility into project or workflow efforts

• Use Azure DevOps to produce agile results – you’ll focus on outcomes, not just tools
• Understand how Azure DevOps is designed to support scalability goals
• Map features of Azure DevOps to your framework for scaling agile
• Use Azure DevOps to manage and track agile events: PI planning, iterations, standups, backlog refinement and much more
• Define your products, epics, and value streams within Azure DevOps
• Gain portfolio-level visibility into the work of your teams and progress
• Design and manage your product hierarchies using Azure DevOps
• Practice hands-on scenarios defining ARTs, program increments and sprints
• Create kanbans and backlogs for every level of hierarchy in an agile-at-scale framework