Working in a mature, established organization can present challenges in adapting Agile practices at the team level, while also collecting and providing information about various projects and initiatives that senior management requires to manage the overall business. Agile frameworks, such as SAFe, may offer a useful way forward, but it may not align directly to existing business planning and management practices. New concepts, such as value streams, are introduced, while traditional concepts such as projects and programs disappear. Learn how we created our own Scaled Agile Framework - managed using Jira - that leverages the best of both worlds — supporting traditional business management practices without hindering the agility of our software development teams!

1. BRIAN BOBRYK | PRODUCT OWNER | BLOOMBERG LP
Enabling Business
Management with Jira
Scaled Agile for Business and Engineering Reporting

2. Agenda
Background

3. Agenda
Side effects of agility

4. Agenda
The road to scaling

5. Agenda
Business planning

6. Agenda
Our framework

7. Agenda
Final results

8. Background
About Bloomberg

9. About
Bloomberg
Large &
Established
Founded in 1981
The company is a 38 year old organization
Large organization
19,000 employees in 176 locations around the world
5,000+ technologists and software engineers

10. About
Bloomberg
Unique culture
Culture is the foundation for success
Since the first day Mike created the Company,
Bloomberg’s completely unique culture has been the
foundation of it’s success
All employees are measured on 4 culture
values
Innovate
Collaborate
Know Your Customer
Do the Right Thing

11. About
Bloomberg
Agile adaption
The company began adapting agile back in
2013
Agile practices are a natural extension of the
existing culture

12. Side Effects of Agility

13. • As Agile practices are adopted their efficiencies
become apparent
• Agile practices appear to be in a juxtaposition with
existing business management practices
• Traditional management practices become a
challenge to align
• Collaboration across teams and business areas
necessitate a management framework
SIDE EFFECTS
THE SIDE EFFECT OF AGILITY
Laboratory

14. Road to Scaling

15. WHERE WE STARTED
• Started with a SAFe 4.0® implementation
• Jira issue type Initiative used for SAFe Epics
• Jira Epics represented Features
• A Jira project was used to manage features
• Features were grouped by a field
• Teams were represented by Jira
components

16. WHAT WE FOUND
• Feature management and PI planning were well
accepted
• Planning was being done consistently
• The process facilitated better communication
• Grouping of features kind of aligned with
traditional projects
• Initiatives were not being “managed”

17. ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS
• Group features by field did not accommodate for
any additional project related data
• PI planning was primarily occurring on a quarterly
basis
• The implementation of the framework provided a
natural hierarchical roll-up capability
• Impact on the individual Scrum teams was
negligible

18. Business Planning

19. Business Planning
Annual
Business
Planning
Decomposition
of the Plan
Into Projects
Plan
Management
(Reporting and
Adjusting)
While the details of a planning process will differ from company to
company, the basic process is similar and repetitive

20. MANAGING AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
The level of management details required to manage decreases as
the level that is being managing gets higher
Initiatives
Projects
PI / Quarter
Sprint
Level of
management
Level of detail
required

21. MANAGING AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
Examples of details required at different levels
• Initiative level status
• Scoped to fiscal year/quarters
BU
• Project level status
• Scoped to fiscal quarters
Department
• SWAG
• Feature status
• Scoped to a multiple sprints
Group/PI
• Story points
• Issue status
• Scoped to a sprint
Team/Sprint
Initiatives
Projects
PI / Quarter
Sprint

22. Our Framework

23. BLENDING THE TWO PROCESSES
• A new issue type of project was created
• Mapping between projects and related feature
epics was established
• Aligning projects to their higher level initiatives,
plans and sub-plans was done in the same fashion
• Fields that were not used were removed and
fields to better support actual usage were added

24. Before
SAFe 4.0® based
After
Business aligned

25. Nearly all the best things that
came to me in life have been
unexpected, unplanned by
me.
Carl Sandburg

26. THE UNPLANNED
• Eliminated 3 – 4 days of spreadsheet updating
• Improvement in data quality/confidence at the top
• Communications overall increased
• Automation to support usability
• Enhancement requests to our internal tools increased
• Enhancements requests to the model increased

27. THE FRAMEWORK TODAY

28. Strategies
Goals
Initiatives
SUPPORT FOR AUTOMATION
Team 1 Team 2 Team 3
Epic/
Feature
Story/
Task
Subtask
Teams will link JIRA tasks to Initiatives
Development Plan Reporting
(Monthly)
JIRA
Work Management
(Daily)
ReportingExecutionandIntake
Read Only
Hierarchy is pushed down into
JIRA
Strategies
Goals
Initiatives
Epic/
Feature
Story/
Task
Subtask
Epic/
Feature
Story/
Task
Subtask

29. AUTOMATION AT THE EPIC LEVEL

30. The Final Result

31. ROLL UP VIEW OF HIERARCHY

32. FEATURE MANAGEMENT WORKFLOW
Ideation
Initial
definition of a
feature for
development
Refinement
Researching
the Feature,
estimating
the effort,
complexity ReadyforPI
Feature
added to PI
Planning
backlog,
Acceptance
criteria is
clearly
defined
Scheduled
Feature was
scheduled for
next PI
Implementation
Development
in Progress,
Feature
decomposed
stories/tasks,
have been
scheduled for
a sprint
DevComplete
Development
is complete
awaiting
testing
Testing
Testing is
completed,
Feature is
ready for, or
in the process
of, rolling out
Complete
Rollout is
complete

33. ENHANCED REPORTING

34. FEATURE TRACKING

35. % WORK COMPLETE

36. The Final Result
Automation
Work managed in
Jira aligned with the
higher level business
management
perspective
Management
Management
capability is
enhanced at all
levels
Transparency
Full top to bottom
transparency and
alignment across the
business
Refinement
Iteration and
refinement of the
model continues

37. BRIAN BOBRYK | PRODUCT OWNER | BLOOMBERG LP
Thank you!