Enterprise Scrum: Scaling Scrum to the Executive Level

Abstract

Our company manages 25 software engineering teams across 6 products using a single top-down Enterprise Scrum. We know of no other company doing this, yet it provides extreme visibility and control at the CXO level. It promotes agile thinking enterprise-wide, driving non-engineering departments to adopt Scrum. We believe it is making us more profitable.We estimate effort in team months, run quarterly Sprints, assign whole teams to projects, meet in weekly stand-ups. We start, postpone or cancel whole projects. Within individual projects, we still use 1-4 week Sprints and all the trappings of the classic Scrum process, including, in some cases, Scrum-of-Scrums.New challenges arise: Shared resource constraints suggest Kanban methods. Net Present Value can justify prioritization, but creates controversy. Moving teams between projects requires rapid programming environment setup. The process forces executives to justify decisions. We want simple improvement metrics, but they seem elusive.