Doing Agile Right

 

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SCALING AGILE

Saab’s aeronautics business has more than one hundred agile teams operating across software, hardware, and fuselage for its Gripen fighter jet, a $43 million product that is daunting in its complexity. At 7:30 a.m. each front-line team holds a fifteen-minute meeting to flag impediments, some of which cannot be resolved within that team. At 7:45 the impediments requiring coordination are escalated to a team of teams, where leaders work to either settle or further escalate issues. This approach continues, and by 8:45 the executive action team has a list of the critical issues it must resolve to keep progress on track. Saab Aeronautics also coordinates its teams through a common rhythm of three-week sprints, a project master ...