Key Factors in Scaling up Agile Team in Matrix Organization

This paper presents our experiences with a 120-person matrixed software engineering product team that successfully scaled adoption of Scrum across three countries. The product is a legacy, mission-critical software system that conforms to stringent healthcare regulatory standards. We are practicing Obeya wall-A a large physical wall that visualize product information-that addresses our cross team communication challenges, Kudos cards-An event where people shows their gratitude cards publically for peers who deserve-that bonds team together and OYA day-A day event for team to do something 'Out of Your Area'-that helps fostering innovation, learning culture and collaboration. We are also describing our experience in defining focus areas of a project manager, test manager and that of a product manager. These roles are not defined in scrum guide, however, are relevant in our experience in a scaled up distributed scrum environment. The authors bring together experiences as a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, a Test Lead and an architect who have been an integral part of this journey, establishing these practices over several years. These practices have helped in scaling as well as stabilizing the team to an extent where each product version meets milestones on time and is taking strong steps towards shorter release cycles of quarterly releases. This paper also summaries our lessons learned, and recommendations.