Doing agile development at scale is not necessarily the same as scaling agile development.
The latter suggests taking an existing agile development and changing the scale, whereas the former may involve imposition of an agile approach at an existing scale.
The latter suggests taking an existing agile development and changing the scale, whereas the former may involve imposition of an agile approach at an existing scale.
In many cases, when people are discussing scale and agility, there is an assumption that the scale is necessarily large or larger than some current size.
Scale and scaling work both ways. Question the assumption: sometimes what development needs is scaling down not up.
Scale and scaling work both ways. Question the assumption: sometimes what development needs is scaling down not up.
If, in scaling an agile approach, you do not currently have an agile approach that works, regardless of scale, then it is likely that scale is not the problem — and scaling something that does not work is most likely not the solution.
If the desire to scale agile development comes from having a lot of developers, then it is more likely the problems you are dealing with are from having lots of developers. The scale of interest is smaller, not larger.
If the need for scaling development up comes from an increase in demand, be sure that you are scaling value demand and not failure demand.
If the desire for scaling up comes from wanting to speed up development, keep in mind that adding people, adding distance, etc. are standard braking techniques.
