There is no single way Agile is done at Microsoft This is the Developer Division’s story 3 week sprints Scrum at the team level Emphasis on self-managed.

Karen NgPrincipal Group Program ManagerVisual Studio Cloud ServicesMicrosoft

Agile and DevOps at Microsoft

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There is no single way Agile is done at Microsoft

This is the Developer Division’s story• 3 week sprints• Scrum at the team level• Emphasis on self-managed teams• Top-down and bottom-up• Expanding to DevOps

The punchline

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OLD: Schedule

2 years

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OLD: Schedule

Planning M1 M2

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OLD: Planning

Planning M1 M2

SpecsSpecs

Specs

?

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OLD: Planning

Planning M1 M2

SpecsSpecs

Specs

We knew exactly what to build, and we knew it

was right!

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OLD: Milestones

Planning M1 M2

Beta RTM

We had a perfect schedule and knew exactly when it would

be ready!

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OLD: Milestones

Code Test & Stabilize Code Test & Stabilize

We now had perfect estimates and we understood how it would

all come together!

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OLD: Writing code

Code Test & Stabilize Code Test & Stabilize

CodeComplete

We wrote all the code months before we shipped a release.

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OLD: Fixing bugs

Code Test & Stabilize Code Test & Stabilize

Stabilize

We now just needed to stabilize the code and get it ready to ship to customers

A: Very well in the era in which it was born. But…

Q: How did it work?

Diego Lo Giudice and Dave West, ForresterFebruary 2011Transforming Application Delivery

Times have changed!“Firms today experience a much higher velocity of business change. Market opportunities appear or dissolve in months or weeks instead of years.“

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• Roles• Organization• Teams• Cadence• Plan• Practices

Guiding principles

Alignment

Autonomy

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

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Sprint3-week sprints

Season6 month season

Vision18 month vision

6 18

3

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Our roles

Program Manager – Responsible to ensure we’re building the right thing.

Engineer – Responsible to ensure we’re building products that are fast, reliable, and well engineered.

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Organization chart

Program Management Engineering

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Our teams

Program Management Engineering

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• Cross discipline• 10-12 people• Self managing• Autonomous backlog• Intact for 12-18 months• Physical team rooms

Teams

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Q: Who’s the ScrumMaster?

PM Engineering

Question?

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• Yes, we do have some remote individuals. It’s the exception, not the rule.• We aim for remote teams, not remote

disciplines.

Q: What about remote employees?

Question?

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3 week sprints

3 weeks

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3 week sprints

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3Week 2 Week 3

Sprint 69Sprint 68 Sprint 70

Deployment

Sprint Planning

Done!

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What we accomplished

3 week sprints

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3Week 2 Week 3

Sprint 69Sprint 68 Sprint 70

The sprint plan

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Sprint mails

Plan Accomplished

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Code Test & Stabilize Code Test & Stabilize

CodeComplete

Q: Are these real sprints? Question?

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A: Yes, these are real sprints Question?

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Q: What do you track?

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

Sprint 69

Question?

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Things we don’t watch• Team burndown• Team velocity• Original estimate• Completed hours• Team capacity• # of bugs found

Q: What do you track?

Things we watch• # of bugs• Unit test coverage• Rolling build quality• Dev cycle time• Live site issues

Question?

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Live Site Incident

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Sprint3-week sprints

Season6 month season

Vision18 month vision

6 18

3

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Seasons

SpringFallSpring Fall

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Seasons

3 weeks

SpringFallSpring Fall

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How do you stay in sync?

3 weeks

SpringFallSpring Fall

Question?

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Team Chats

3 sprints

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1. What’s next on your backlog?

2. What’s your debt situation?

3. Any issues?

3 Questions

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Direct. No “lost in translation”.

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Direct. No “lost in translation”.

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Q: What about the details?

Experience Review

Question?

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• Storyboard of what you’re going to build• High level execution plan• Talk about sprints, not hours

• Feedback, feedback, feedback

Experience Review

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• Monthly view of service availability• Health check of operational metrics• Talk about what happened, how, and what

you’re doing about it

Service Review

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Service Review

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Sprint3-week sprints

Season6 month season

Vision18 month vision

3 6 18

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Vision

SpringFallSpring Fall

6 month plan

SpecsSpecsExperience Reviews

18 month vision

SpecsSpecsScenario Review

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Now what?

SpringFallSpring Fall

Done!

What did we learn over the last 6 months? What did customers tells us? What did the telemetry tell us?What changed in the marketplace?

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Planning

SpringFallSpring Fall

6 month plan

SpecsSpecsExperience Reviews

18 month vision

SpecsSpecsScenario Review

Done!Done!

& Learning

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Q: What about on prem? Question?

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1. Less is more2. Get out of your teams’ way3. Autonomy, mastery, purpose4. Plan & learn5. Have fun

Take-a-ways

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http://aka.ms/engineeringstories

Hear more about our journey…

Thank you!

[email protected]