As Agile project management is being widely adopted, the questions of if and how it could scale is a main topic of discussion. In this blog post, Gilt explain how it scales Agile with teams, ingredients, initiatives and KPIs.
The basis of the Gilt process is the initiative, which is a project that should be started in the coming 3 to 12 months. This is the “portfolio” vision for the company, but no roadmap is maintained. Gilt uses key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure initiatives. Gilt is organized in teams of around 4-10 collocated cross functional members.
Teams focus usually on a single initiative but might own other less active initiatives. Team members have a lot of input in selecting the initiatives their team works on. Teams should operate and feel like a startup and they self organizing and self prioritizing. Ingredients are guidelines to make sure that the teams are appropriately staffed. A successful team should have some combination of the following ingredients: product visionary, coder, presenter, visual designer, business thinker, organizer, motivator, quality manager, coach, analyst, architect, writer, visual designer and ux specialist.
This very interesting blog post describes all these practices and more in detail. The conclusion is that “The current approach embraces technology as a key differentiator for Gilt and serves to establish our technology department as a leadership organization rather than a service organization. Being a leadership organization sounds great, but it’s not a panacea. It creates additional demands on teams, and requires them to have a deep understanding of our business and a strong point of view, clear vision and driving ambition. We need entrepreneurs to make this model succeed.”
Read the complete post on http://tech.gilt.com/post/44792645000/scaling-agile-at-gilt