When undertaking a cloud migration project, some potential high-level epics (also known as features or user stories) that could be created might include: Assessing current environment: This epic could involve conducting an assessment of the current IT environment to identify any challenges or constraints that need to be addressed during the migration process. This might include identifying dependencies between systems, assessing the complexity of the current environment, and identifying any technical or business risks that need to be mitigated. Migrating applications and data: This epic could involve the actual process of migrating applications and data from the current environment to the cloud. This might include tasks such as re-architecting applications to be cloud-native, migrating data to the cloud, and testing the migrated applications and data to ensure that they are functioning correctly. Establishing a cloud governance model: This epic could involve defining and implementing a cloud governance model that outlines how the cloud environment will be managed and governed. This might include defining roles and responsibilities, establishing policies and procedures, and setting up monitoring and reporting mechanisms to ensure that the cloud environment is being used effectively and efficiently. Implementing security controls: This epic could involve implementing security controls to ensure that the cloud environment is secure and compliant. This might include tasks such as setting up network security controls, implementing identity and access management controls, and establishing incident response procedures. Ensuring business continuity: This epic could involve implementing measures to ensure that the migrated applications and data are available and accessible to users during and after the migration process. This might include tasks such as setting up failover and disaster recovery processes, testing the resiliency of the cloud environment, and establishing a maintenance and support model to ensure ongoing availability. These are just a few examples of the types of epics that could be created for a cloud migration project. The specific epics and tasks that are included will depend on the specific goals and requirements of the project.

Read full article here In this article McKinsey explains how Agile Ways of Working can help government function even better for the citizens.

If you are interested in applying Agile principles in Government or Public Sector then this certified from Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a good place to start with. Following lessons are covered in this certified training: Advancing Lean-Agile in Government Embracing a Lean-Agile Mindset Understanding Scaled Agile Framework Principles Creating High-Performing Teams and Programs Planning with Cadence & Synchronization Supporting Program Execution Mapping the Path to Agency and Program Agility Leading Successful Change Ref: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

What are Microstructures? Microstructures are the way you organize all your routine interactions. They guide and control how groups work together. They shape your conversations and meetings. The five most commonly used microstructures are presentations, open discussions, managed discussions, status reports, and brainstorming sessions. What elements define design of Microstructures and how Liberating Structures? A structuring invitation (listen to me); How the space is arranged and what materials are needed (rows or U facing presenter, screen, projector and PPT slides); How participation is distributed (nearly 100% of total time for presenter); How groups are configured (one group, one presenter); and, A sequence of steps and time allocation (presentation for most of time; possibly Q&A for balance of time). Liberating Structures are designed with variations on these five structural elements. There are total 33. What are Liberating Structures? Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust. They quickly foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone. Liberating Structures are a disruptive innovation that can replace more controlling or constraining approaches. Excerpts from: https://www.liberatingstructures.com

What is an enterprise agile planning tool? Products that enable organizations to scale agile practices and provide a comprehensive enterprise view for the definition, planning and management of work. These tools evolved from project/team-centric tools to support a business-outcome-driven approach to managing agile software development. What capabilities do these tools provide? Project portfolio management Strategic portfolio management Value stream management Value stream delivery What are different organizational needs which these tools fulfill? Monthly, weekly and even daily incremental value delivery based on business outcomes Support for enterprise agile frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Product roadmapping Increased visibility into the flow of work Management of work backlogs Collaboration capabilities for individuals and teams Management of cross-team dependencies Release planning and forecasting Visibility into the financial aspects of the work being done What are key Enterprise Agile Planning Tools? JIRA Align - provides integrated support for multiple agile frameworks. Provides end-to-end visibility, traceability and insight into the flow of all product delivery processes, tying that all back through the value stream for efficiency Rally and Clarity from Broadcom - Focus on enterprise-scaled agile (Rally) supported by portfolio planning and management capabilities (Clarity). Improvements in capex tracking capabilities and integration with third-party tools. Digital.ai Agility - Full support for enterprise agile frameworks such as SAFe, LeSS and DAD. Merger of CollabNet VersionOne, XebiaLabs, Experitest, Numerify and Arxan Technologies to form Digital.ai Digité - SwiftKanban, SwiftEASe and SwiftEnterprise products are focused on providing support for SAFe with an emphasis on strong Kanban capabilities. Favor - Enterprise level agility, success in SaaS and Video Game industry, enterprise grade security, integration. Gitlab - Good for organizations managing product portfolios, all remote philosophy, developed by community. Limited support for SaaS IBM Engineering Workflow Management - Good support for SAFe. Infectra - SpiraTest (team), SpiraTeam (project) and SpiraPlan (enterprise). Inflectra provides a solution for a regulated environment requiring traceability from requirements to tests. Azure Boards - Direct integration with Github Enterprise Planisware - Planisware Enterprise and Planisware Orchestra tools are focused on a project and portfolio management (PPM)-based approach to enterprise-scale agile. Planview - Planview Enterprise One and Planview LeanKit are two products. Support for collaboration, objectives and key results (OKRs), product roadmapping and product-based dashboards. ServiceNow IT Business Management (ITBM) - Support for SAFe, AI/ML, integration with Azure Pipelines, Gitlab etc. Siemens - Polarion ALM and Polarion X. Polarion is well-suited for creating systems in a quality-sensitive, heavily regulated environment using agile methods. Organizations in regulated environments, and whose processes are subject to audit, emphasis on quality engineering and traceability. Targetprocess TCS Jile - TCS’s product roadmap for Jile is ambitious, encompassing enhanced portfolio management, Jile marketplace, Jile community and the incorporation of cognitive and other AI technologies. Reference: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-25YSX6JD&ct=210504&st=sb

Few things governments need to do to improve results of digital transformation are -- Be inclusive Provide access to citizens Enable visibility so that citizens know the status of their requests Be proactive and stay ahead in the game Be vigilant and act quickly U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published an Agile Assessment Guide as well. Poll.

You can access this white paper from here This Agile Transformation White Paper from Leading Agile starts by arguing that Agile is a simple concept but why it is difficult for so many organizations to get benefits out of it? It emphasizes that there is a need for an ecosystem in organization to systematically overcome the structural, procedural, and cultural barriers. This white paper has 4 sections. WHY Agile Transformation is required considering business case and transformation hypothesis. WHAT section covers thinking tools necessary to build your Transformation Strategy primarily theory & approach and reference architecture. HOW explores how to actually orchestrate change and measure progress. WHO covers the roles necessary to orchestrate the change and skills required. Few of the good graphics out of this White Paper are: 4 Quadrant Model where you would like to see your organization is: Multi-tier governance.

We are summarizing few of the case studies from DEVOPS CASE STUDIES: The Journey to Positive Business Outcomes by IT Revolution. What case studies you have? Post in the comments below. Technology Practice Journey: APIs>Full Agile Practice Stack>Automation>CI/TDD>Lean, Concepts Challenges: Culture of stopping changes whenever something broke. IT organization was too complex, with silos inside of silos Server provisions took many teams, and there was no end-to-end accountability Large amount of technology debt Journey: 4 Stages. Enabling and unleashing change agents, cultivating and growing a grassroots movement, getting top-down alignment, figuring out how to scale across the enterprise. What IT Leadership did? Started internal DevOps Program Engineers started to talk about infrastructure as a code Did branding around technology Bottom-up matched with top down. DevOps and Agile started to become core talking points in townhalls aligned with Thoughtworks’ CI/CD Maturity Model to baseline measure products moved from a COBIT-based, highly-segmented model, to a product and service model Shifted their delivery model from waterfall and project-based to product-based using Scrum and Kanban models. Modern tech architecture: API based, loosely coupled, lightweight tooling, self-service, and optimized for cloud based and CI/CD practices. converging the Agile and DevOps movements Traditional training combined with hands-on immersive experiences. They also created an internal incubator environment, like a transformation emergence center, called the Dojo, which became the place they went to practice their craft Hashtags: #DevOps #CaseStudy Ref: DEVOPS CASE STUDIES: The Journey to Positive Business Outcomes by IT Revolution. https://itrevolution.com Disclaimer: Neither Agileance Org nor the contributors to this post claim the ownership or validity of the content. All rights reserved by the content owner.

These are unprecedentedly tough times and our heart goes out to unfolding tragedies in India and elsewhere in the world. A largely ignored aspect of this is about millions of Professionals working from home and helping businesses run worldwide. But, with so much despair, disappointments and literally death around it is difficult to keep up the pace with work. As a small effort, we are designing a simple toolkit which professionals can use. Just take a printout, stick to wall, and follow. Best thing you can do is to share it with your colleague and teams. What else can come in toolkit? Please comment and we will add. Speak out your concerns: Your supervisor, manager, customer, HR they understand unprecedented situations you are in and they are there are for you. So, speak out and share if work pressure is hitting you hard more than ever. They know that probably first time in proverbial work-life balance 'life' is literally life. They will help you. More than three, is a bad spree: Avoid more than 3 continuous meetings. If you are working with same set of people, work with them to plan a optimal schedule with no more than 3 continuous meetings for team. Its not just work-life balance, its work-meetings-life balance: Keep a log of time you are spending in meetings and time you are actually doing the work. If people are pulling you in unnecessary meeting politely decline and ask them to write an email/IM to you instead. Work with your teams and target to reduce meetings by 30% Share ETA as best, most-likely and worst case: If somebody is asking you by when you will be able to complete a piece of work then please share three ETAs (Expected Time of Arrival) to complete - Best Case, Most-likely and Worst case. Don't take pressure even if you are hitting worse timelines. 30 in 3: Block your calendar for 30 minutes for every 3 hours. For these 30 minutes get totally off from the system and phone. Spend time with your family and relax a bit. Daily stand-up with your family, friends and relatives: Yeah right! that's Agile Term. But, why can't you be Agile with your family! Make a schedule and reserve few minutes daily to get in touch with your family, friends and relatives. These are tough times, don't wait for regret. Perfection vs Sustainability: Well, you can spend hours and hours making something which is not worth that much of time. Spend that extra time with your family, doing some exercises etc. In routine day to day work don't target perfection but target sustainability. Start finishing, stop starting: Keep a whiteboard in your work area and create a simple Kanban Board on it (Backlog, To Do, In Progress, Completed). Color code work items and personal items (yes, both are important). Focus on completing things rather than starting new things. This Kanban Board will give you that picture. Get Mobile: Though it is hard to believe in current times but if your organization has still not get you equipped to complete at least communication and collaboration (for e.g. Office 365, MS Teams etc.) through mobile then drive a movement to get that done. Keep it shared: Keep all your work in progress documents at a shared location with at least one designated person with access. If in any unfortunate event you have to be out then your office will not be bugging you.

Excerpt taken from original McKinsey Article Agile resilience in the UK: Lessons from COVID-19 for the ‘next normal’ Both for governments and corporate it is important to build resilience through business continuity and crisis planning. Critical processes must be identified and back-up plans must be in place to keep those processes on track know matter what crisis hit. Most organizations complemented this with war-gaming, which involves rehearsing scenarios that establish a basic operational structure and mindset to adopt in a crisis. The war games also helped ensure role clarity and established chains of command that were communicated ahead of time. But what are common characteristics of resilient organizations and how they can build to Agility? Establish a common purpose and clear communications Set up structures to allow rapid decision making Create networks of local teams with clear accountable roles Develop a culture that empowers people Provide people with technology they need What do you think -- what else corporate can do to become resilient? Comment below. Hashtags: #Resilience #Agile #Government #COVID #COVID19 #Pandemic Ref: McKinsey Article Disclaimer: Neither Agileance Org nor the contributors to this post claim the ownership or validity of the content. All rights reserved by the content owner.

Here are key takeaways from 14th Annual State of Agile Report. We have attached the copy and direct link to download. What do you think about this report? Please comment. Bookmark this page for direct access to more reports from Industry. How many teams uses Agile in an organization? 5% None of our teams are Agile 18% All of our teams are Agile 33% More than 1/2 of our teams are Agile 44% Less than 1/2 of our teams are Agile Which areas adopt Agile in an organization? 37% Software Development 26% IT 12% Operations 7% Marketing 6% HR 5% Sales / Sales Op What are top reasons for adopting agile? How does Agile Maturity looks in an Organization? What are benefits of Agile? ABILITY TO MANAGE CHANGING PRIORITIES 70% PROJECT VISIBILITY 65% BUSINESS/IT ALIGNMENT 65% DELIVERY SPEED/TIME TO MARKET 60% TEAM MORALE 59% INCREASED TEAM PRODUCTIVITY 58% PROJECT RISK REDUCTION 51% PROJECT PREDICTABILITY 50% SOFTWARE QUALITY 46% ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE 44% MANAGING DISTRIBUTED TEAMS 41% SOFTWARE MAINTAINABILITY 35% PROJECT COST REDUCTION 26% What are various practices of Agile which organizations employ? DAILY STANDUP 85% RETROSPECTIVES 81% SPRINT/ITERATION PLANNING 79% SPRINT/ITERATION REVIEW 77% SHORT ITERATIONS 64% KANBAN 63% PLANNING POKER/TEAM ESTIMATION 60% DEDICATED CUSTOMER/PRODUCT OWNER 54% RELEASE PLANNING 51% SINGLE TEAM (INTEGRATED DEV AND TEST) 51% PRODUCT ROADMAPPING 49% FREQUENT RELEASES 48% COMMON WORK AREA 42% STORY MAPPING 37% AGILE PORTFOLIO PLANNING 33% AGILE/LEAN UX 24% What are various engineering practices which organizations employ? UNIT TESTING 67% CODING STANDARDS 58% CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION 55% REFACTORING 43% CONTINUOUS DELIVERY 41% AUTOMATED ACCEPTANCE TESTING 36% CONTINUOUS DEPLOYMENT 36% PAIR PROGRAMMING 31% TEST-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT 30% COLLECTIVE CODE OWNERSHIP 29% SUSTAINABLE PACE 23% BEHAVIOR-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (BDD) 19% EMERGENT DESIGN 13% How success is measured in Agile Transformations and Agile Projects here? Read the forum post on this topic here. What are different Scaling Methods? What are different challenges which organizations face while adopting and scaling agile? GENERAL ORGANIZATION RESISTANCE TO CHANGE 48% NOT ENOUGH LEADERSHIP PARTICIPATION 46% INCONSISTENT PROCESSES AND PRACTICES ACROSS TEAMS 45% ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AT ODDS WITH AGILE VALUES 44% INADEQUATE MANAGEMENT SUPPORT AND SPONSORSHIP 43% LACK OF SKILLS / EXPERIENCE WITH AGILE METHODS 41% INSUFFICIENT TRAINING AND EDUCATION 39% LACK OF BUSINESS / CUSTOMER / PRODUCT OWNER AVAILABILITY 36% PERVASIVENESS OF TRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENT METHODS 30% FRAGMENTED TOOLING AND PROJECT-RELATED DATA / MEASUREMENTS 29% MINIMAL COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING 22% REGULATORY COMPLIANCE OR GOVERNMENT ISSUE 16% What are different tools in market for Agile? Which capabilities would be most valuable for improving DevOps practices? 39% Ability to measure the cycle time, wait time, and bottlenecks in the flow of value to the business through delivery cycle 34% End-to-end traceability from business initiative through development, test, and deployment 34% Identification and measurement of technical risk prior to deployment 28% Automated audit, compliance, and governance reporting across control points What value stream management adoption? Value Stream Management (VSM) is a combination of people, process, and technology that maps, optimizes, visualizes, measures, and governs business value flow (in the form of epics, stories, work items) through heterogeneous enterprise software delivery pipelines from idea through development and into production. 78% of the respondents said that their organizations have interest in VSM, are planning to implement VSM, or are currently in some stage of VSM implementation. Hashtags: #Agilecoach #Agile #Coach #StateofAgile #Agility #DevOps #VSM Ref: The 14th Annual State of Agike Report Disclaimer: Neither Agileance Org nor the contributors to this post claim the ownership or validity of the content. All rights reserved by the content owner.

The Periodic Table of DevOps Tools is the industry's go-to resource for identifying best-of-breed tools across the software delivery lifecycle. Which one is your favorite tool and why? Comment below. Hashtags: #Agile #DevOps #DevOpsPeriodicTable #Tools Ref: Digital.AI DevOps Periodic Table Disclaimer: Neither Agileance Org nor the contributors to this post claim the ownership or validity of the content. All rights reserved by the content owner.

Scrum Alliance and Business Agility Institute have collaborated on the first-ever State of Agile Coaching Report. We have attached the copy and direct link to download. What do you think about this report? Please comment. Bookmark this page for direct access to more reports from Industry. Here are the key take aways! About Respondents: The vast majority of people who consider themselves agile coaches do not hold master-level agile or coaching certifications. Coaches with the same experience and certifications can expect to make less at companies new to agile than they can at companies who are further along on their agile journey. Experienced coaches and those holding master-level certifications are most often contract hires or consultants rather than full-time employees. Most agile coaches invest in a lifelong learning journey Clients select coaches based on their experience and reputation, as well as for their ability to provide specific services, such as agile coaching and agile transformation. Agile coaches make an impact by helping organizations improve in 5 areas: Agility across the organization Communication, collaboration, and transparency Delivery, speed, and quality Individual, team, and organizational metrics Management mindset An agile coach’s success is often measured based on the performance of those they coached rather than by specific coaching metrics. What is value of an Agile Coach? (Most commonly mentioned to least mentioned) Improving agility across the organization Improving communication, collaboration & transparency Improving delivery speed and quality Improving individual, team, and organization metrics Improving management mindsets There are some information about learning investments and compensation details for Agile Coaches What challenges do Agile Coaches face? Leadership as a barrier to implementing agility Lack of understanding about agile Resistance to change from legacy structures, culture, and mindsets Remote working and COVID-19 Hashtags: #Agilecoach #Agile #Coach #StateofAgile #Agility Ref: The 2021 State of Agile Coaching and Scrum Alliance and Business Agility Institute Disclaimer: Neither Agileance Org nor the contributors to this post claim the ownership or validity of the content. All rights reserved by the content owner.

This is one of the most frequently asked question. This is what 14th Annual State of Agile Report says. What do you think? Comment! How Success is measured with Agile Transformations? 58% Customer/user satisfaction 54% Business value 48% On-time delivery 45% Quality 44% Business objectives achieved 40% Productivity 37% Organizational culture / morale 35% Process improvement 33% Predictability 29% Project visibility 15% Product scope How Success is measured with individual Agile Projects? BUSINESS VALUE DELIVERED 46% CUSTOMER/USER SATISFACTION 45% VELOCITY 37% BUDGET VS. ACTUAL COST 31% PLANNED VS. ACTUAL STORIES PER ITERATION 31% PLANNED VS. ACTUAL RELEASE DATES 28% DEFECTS INTO PRODUCTION 26% CYCLE TIME 25% ITERATION BURNDOWN 24% BURN-UP CHART 22% DEFECTS OVER TIME 20% WORK IN PROGRESS 20% RELEASE BURNDOWN 18% DEFECT RESOLUTION 15% CUSTOMER RETENTION 14% ESTIMATION ACCURACY 13% CUMULATIVE FLOW CHART 12% EARNED VALUE 12% REVENUE/SALES IMPACT 12% PRODUCT UTILIZATION 11% TEST PASS/FAIL OVER TIME 11% SCOPE CHANGE IN A RELEASE 9% INDIVIDUAL HOURS PER ITERATION/WEEK 8% Hashtags: #Agile #Transformation #Success