Team Profiles
The themes of success and profiles shown below help new team members quickly get up to speed on how their team operates and what the key points of emphasis are in each team’s use of Agile.
Agile Topics & Concepts
Themes of Success
While FAS-IT does not prescribe a rigid methodology for all of its programs, in sharing our mutual experiences, we have found many common themes of how we can be most successful in leveraging Agile methodologies.
Success starts with competency – solid domain knowledge on the business, FAS-IT and vendor sides. We are fortunate that at GSA our business colleagues are masters of their products, services and processes and passionate about them. This results in speed of collaboration between the business, IT, and the vendor.
At FAS-IT we have truly internalized our belief in continuous improvement. As we encounter problems, immediately after a release or a program increment, we look at what works and what doesn’t and add it in the next iteration. We take our retrospective ceremonies seriously and we have recognized the value of the insights that we come away with and incorporate.
Finally we believe in the value of relationships. This starts with team morale: recognizing and encouraging them, positive dynamics, trust, motivation, and leading by example all have real impact. Relationships across our organization - with our Cloud Services team, the business, and an engaged and supportive leadership team. The same truth applies to our relationship with our vendors, current and future. The better our relationships, the easier it is to stay on the same page and maintain clarity, and deliver value to the business and its customers.
Here we present profiles of selected initiatives at FAS-IT in order to give a more specific idea of their characteristics. You can follow the links below each initiative to learn more about the system modernization projects of each of the initiatives.
Team Profiles
The profiles below provide context on the team structure, Agile metholodologies and ceremonies, and metrics adopted by each division, along with some unique insights from each division.
ASSIST
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 12 week PI cadence / 2 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (Standup), Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Closing a Sprint
Team Size & Structure: 9 Agile teams of 5-7 members - Key roles: Business Owner, Product Owner, Product Manager, Enterprise Architect, System Architect, Agile Release Train (ART) Engineer, Scrum Master, Full-Stack Developer, Business Analyst
Key Metrics: Quality - Escaped Defects, Predictability - Planned-to-Done, Team Stability - Team Morale / Turnover, Productivity - Cycle Time, Risks, Burn-down Charts, Burn-up Charts, Stories Committed vs Stories Delivered
Business Value Metrics: Percentage of PI Objectives Delivered vs. Committed
Insights from ASSIST
- As one of FAS-IT’s largest programs, there is a particular emphasis on throughput tracking, balancing velocity and capacity.
- However, transparency and collaboration between stakeholders and development teams is just as an important driver to their successful performance.
- The Release Train Engineer is a critical role, who needs to be an Agile coach. Every Scrum Master also needs to be a coach. It’s important that everyone (or nearly) be certified.
- Two ceremonies that are particularly helpful are Office Hours (to involve partners), as well as the ART Sync
- "Time to acknowledge possible incident” has been an important metric.
FAS Cloud Services (FCS)
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 12 week PI cadence / 2 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (Standup), Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Review, Closing a Sprint, retros, PI review, Monthly reviews
Team Size & Structure: 17 Agile teams of 3-10 members - Key Roles: Product Owner, Product Manager, Agile Release Train (ART) Engineer, Scrum Master.
Key Metrics: Risks, Point estimate vs. Points completed, Epic Estimate vs. Completed Points, Epic carry over, PI commitment changes, OKR: Maintain Points commitment reliability within 90%, Burn-down Charts, Stories Committed vs Stories Delivered
Business Value Metrics: Sprint and PI Reports capture value delivered
Insights from FCS
- FAS IT leverages the CAWG intake framework, leveraging a scorecard framework that helps to forecast and prioritize work.
- FAS Cloud Services (FCS) provides Cloud Enablement to other FAS-IT programs and consists of Enablement, Cloud Engineering, and Data Engineering. Within each of those areas there are multiple teams - about 17 in all.
- The team has found that they can get more and more out of Jira, and has been migrating processes to Jira, some of which were spreadsheet-based, speeding up the ticketing process and improving the process efficiency overall.
- Likewise, the group has expanded the scope of the FCS Release Train to include all teams.
- Retrospectives were especially helpful early on during maintenance windows. We do them in all areas of the program when necessary.
- Clearly defining and structuring requirements has been a key success factor in FCS projects.
GSAFleet.gov
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 12 week PI cadence / 2 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile, Agile, Scrum
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning
Team Size & Structure: 9 Agile Teams of 10 members - Key Roles: Product Owner, Product Manager, Scrum Master
Key Metrics: Quality - Escaped Defects, Predictability - Planned-to-Done, Team Stability - Team Morale / Turnover, Productivity - Cycle Time, Risks, Burn-down Charts, Burn-up Charts
Business Value Metrics: Time to market
Insights from GSA Fleet
- Experience and training is key: an experienced scrum master on the vendor side in particular, but also the technical and testing leads.
- Like IAE, Fleet operates Release on Demand
- Continues to analyze and adapt metrics, as existing metrics may not tell the whole “story” if we don’t consider all the possible drivers.
Integrated Award Environment (IAE)
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 8 week PI cadence / 2 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile, Scrum, Kanban
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (Standup), Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Closing a Sprint, Inspect and Adapt
Team Size & Structure: 24 Agile Teams of 7-10 members - Key Roles: Portfolio Epic Owner, Business Owner, Product Owner, Product Manager, System Architect, Agile Release Train (ART) Engineer, Scrum Master, Full-Stack Developer, Business Analyst, Business Architect, Enterprise Architect, Technical Product Owner
Key Metrics: Quality - Escaped Defects, Predictability - Planned-to-Done, Risks, Capacity, Velocity, Productivity - Cycle Time
Business Value Metrics: Weighted Shortest Job First, Epics bound to PI boundaries, Inspect and Adapt
Insights from IAE
- IAE runs our largest set of Agile teams with around 25 teams and 200 team members in total, our only initiative that runs multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs)
- They have a large number of development teams from multiple vendors, so clearly defining roles and responsibilities has been key to successful collaboration, identification of dependencies, and testing.
- With two deployments per 8-week Program Increment (PI) it may be considered “Release on Demand”, allowing high-frequency releases with low overhead.
- Pre-PI planning was added recently as a ceremony and this has improved the Definition of Done.
- IAE’s retrospective ceremonies are attuned to the need and stakeholders: there is an Inspect and Adapt ceremony, development retrospective and a retrospective for leadership.
- Due to the size of the program, the Release Train Engineer plays an especially critical role to identify dependencies and other key coordination tasks.
- IAE uses WSJF for prioritization and deriving business value.
Market Research & Digital Experience (DX)
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 8 - 16 week PI cadence (Determined by specific Agile Teams) / 2-3 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile, Agile, Scrum, Kanban
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (Standup), Scrum of Scrums, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Closing a Sprint
Team Size & Structure: 6 Agile Teams of 5-10 members - Key Roles: Portfolio Epic Owner, Business Owner, Product Owner, Product Manager, Enterprise Architect, System Architect, Scrum Master, Full-Stack Developer, Business Analyst, Business Architect, Technical Writer, ISSO
Key Metrics: Quality - Escaped Defects, Predictability - Planned-to-Done, Team Stability - Team Morale / Turnover, Productivity - Cycle Time, Burn-down Charts, Burn-up Charts, Stories Committed vs Stories Delivered
Business Value Metrics: Stories Committed vs Stories Delivered, Time to Market
Insights from DX
- As the GSA Digital Experience program strives to provide cutting-edge digital solutions to meet the needs of government agencies and the public, adopting elements of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), such as scrum and Synchronized Release Planning, has enabled the DX teams to achieve accelerated time-to-market.
- DX has leveraged its adopted agile methodology to break down silos and foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and communication, leading to increased productivity with fewer bottlenecks and maximizing value to effort.
- Agile's inherent flexibility has allowed DX to establish multiple release planning and sprint cadences that work for each development team while maintaining unified oversight through a scrum of scrums ceremony to identify dependencies.
- DX has leveraged resources within FAS-IT to optimize productivity such as the FAS Jira Governance Board and agile metrics reviews to obtain deeper insight into their teams' performance and adjust, improve, and make processes the best they can be to give our stakeholders the most value possible.
Personal Property Management System (PPMS)
Program Increment Cadence / Sprint: 12 week PI cadence / 2 week-long springs
Agile Methodology: Agile, Scrum, Kanban
Ceremonies Used: Pre-PI Planning, PI Planning, Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum (Standup), Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Closing a Sprint
Team Size & Structure: 8 Agile Teams of 6 members - Key Roles: Business Owner, Product Owner, Product Manager, System Architect, Scrum Master, Full-Stack Developer, Business Analyst, Business Architect, DBA, Test Engineer, Project Manager
Key Metrics: Quality - Escaped Defects, Predictability - Planned-to-Done, Team Stability - Team Morale / Turnover, Productivity - Cycle Time, Risks, Burn-down Charts, Stories Committed vs Stories Delivered
Business Value Metrics: Acceptance Criteria, Planned vs. delivered
Learn More About PPMS
In-Depth Case Study
PPMS Case Study