Director, Tools & Processes Steve Greene, Big Bang Adoption of Agility

Many software organizations today ask "How do we make an agile transformation and what benefit will we get"? Should you transition your organization to agile all at once or proceed more iteratively, team by team? This talk describes salesforce.com's agile transformation where we moved our entire R&D organization to an agile model. The key difference in our approach was to throw the switch on 30 teams all at once. Most agile experts thought this was a crazy approach, however, in the end our transition became one of the fastest and largest agile transitions. In just 3 short months we moved our entire team from a waterfall-based approach to an iterative, Scrum based methodology we?ve named ADM (Adaptive Development Methodology). Over the course of the year we have refined and measured our progress and learned many lessons. This approach was a great risk for the organization that has ultimately delivered dramatic results and extraordinary business value.

Our methodology combines both Scrum based project management and XP style continuous integration practices. Our Technology team uses this methodology to regularly deliver 3 to 4 major releases a year to over 43,000 customers via more than 150 million transactions per day. The presentation will include our approach to the agile transition, the business value that we have achieved and the results of our team-wide survey sampled every quarter. If you are still in the midst of or are starting a large, multi-year agile transition, you may want to consider going "all in" after this talk.