New Practical Scaled Agile Framework – The CIPSA Framework

I’m pleased to announce the availability of ManagementYogi's Practical Scaled Agile Framework. The  Certified In Practical Scaled Agile (CIPSA) certification course is based on this framework. With CIPSA (sip-sa), you can scale to multiple Scrum or Kanban teams and deliver complex products or solutions.

It's the only framework and certification in the world, which informs how to scale with software tool(s). It's practical and hands-on. No other framework and/or certification course in the world provides it!

The Practical Scaled Agile framework has been under development since March of this year. It has gone through multiple iterations, a number of prototypes with reviews and article publication before it’s made public today. 

Why Non-Practical, Scaled Agile Frameworks are Ineffective?

Worldwide, a number of Scaled Agile frameworks are available. Unfortunately, not a single one of them informs how to do scaling in a practical, hands-on manner with software tool(s). This, indeed, is a big problem. Many Scaled Agile Practitioners, with whom I frequently interact, really don't know how to do scaling in the real-world as they are certified in theories.

For example, considering multiple Scrum teams sprinting together or multiple Kanban teams working together on a Product Backlog, a number of questions come-up:

1. How do you to manage so many Sprints across multiple Scrum teams?
2. How do you synchronize multiple Sprints in a cross-team environment?
3. If Kanban is used at the team level, how would you scale?
4. Can you track multiple teams (say five Scrum or Kanban teams) together at scale?
5. Is it possible to see burndown/burnup charts for the entire scaled team and individual teams?

With ManagementYogi's Practical Scaled Agile framework, the answers to all the above questions are in affirmative – yes all of them! In addition, you can manage all the teams using a single software tool, which in our case is MS Project Agile. You can also manage assignment, planning, tracking, stands-ups, retros and reviews at scale. 

With this background, let me introduce the framework used for the Certified In Practical Scaled Agile (CIPSA) course. As our Practical Scaled Agile framework is directly associated with the CIPSA certification, going forward, I’ll call it CIPSA framework.

The CIPSA Framework

The CIPSA framework extends the team level Scrum or Kanban, helps to solve dependencies and enables collaboration and cross-team management. It extends them in the following ways. 

CIPSA Artifacts: All individual teams use a single and same Product Backlog. The Product Backlog items are visible to all the teams, but items are distributed across the teams. This backlog goes through refinement so that the individual teams can know which items to work upon in the next Sprint (Scrum) or Release (Kanban).

A CIPSA Backlog is built during the CIPSA Planning event and it's the sum of all work done by individual teams for the upcoming Sprint or Release. 

The third artifact is the CIPSA Integrated Increment, which is the sum of all integrated work from all teams and is given at the end of (or during) the Sprint or Release.

CIPSA Events: There are multiple events in the CIPSA framework, namely, CIPSA Backlog Refinement, CIPSA Planning, CIPSA Daily Stand-up, CIPSA Review and CIPSA Retrospective. Each of these events plays a critical role in managing Agile at scale. 

CIPSA Roles: There are two primarily roles in CIPSA complementing the accountabilities at the individual team level. They are Chief Product Owner and Principal Scrum Master (Scrum) or Principal Flow Master (Kanban).

At the individual Team level, there will be Product Owner, Scrum Master (or Flow Master) and Developers, some of whom play a major role in integration work. There is no separate integration team because developers are encouraged to be generalizing-specialists.

The CIPSA Framework – Graphical

The CIPSA framework is shown in the below figure. It shows the CIPSA artifacts and CIPSA events at scale. It also shows the artifacts and events at an individual team level, in dotted rectangles and circle.

The CIPSA Framework – Interactions

There is a single Product Backlog with ordered items and it’s continuously refined with cross-team members as part of the Cross-Team Backlog Refinement meta-event. The Product Backlog with the Product Goal is presented in the CIPSA Planning meta-event by the Chief Product Owner to the CIPSA team. In this meeting, a CIPSA Backlog is created with the Product Backlog items that can be delivered by multiple teams in the upcoming Sprint (Scrum) or Release (Kanban). In other words, the “what” part is decided here.

Post CIPSA Planning meeting, for each team, an individual Team Planning event takes place. The Product Backlog items taken for the respective team is broken down into individual tasks, which results in Team Backlog. A Team Backlog is available for every team. In other words, the “how” part is decided here. 

Next, each team begins to work on the respective Team Backlog. A CIPSA Daily Stand-up meeting happens everyday with cross-team members to synchronize the work, identify cross-team dependencies, issues and risks. The CIPSA Daily Stand-up is preceded by Individual Daily Stand-ups for the individual teams. 

In the CIPSA Review meta-event, a CIPSA Integrated Increment is presented for the entire CIPSA team and needed stakeholders. As the focus is on CIPSA Integrated Increment, CIPSA Review meeting replaces the individual Team Reviews. 

In the last meta-event of CIPSA Retrospective, the CIPSA team reflects on the effectiveness of the CIPSA team as a whole and determines the improvements that can be taken-up. The CIPSA Retrospective is preceded by Team Retrospectives, which are specific to the individual teams. 

The below video [duration: 7m] explains more on this new CIPSA Framework. 

 

Conclusion

As you’d have noticed, at the team level in CIPSA, one can use either Scrum or Kanban, while most Agile at Scale frameworks take only one. Also, quite a few scaled Agile frameworks employ a large number of artifacts (also events or ceremonies and roles), which are in violation of one of the four values of Agile Manifesto: 

"Working software or product over comprehensive documentation."

Above all, not a single Scaled Agile framework informs how to do scaling in a practical, hands-on manner. 

As we just saw with the figure and explained interactions, the CIPSA framework is simple to follow and you can employ it in your organization or teams. And you can do the entire scaling with the hands-on software tool of MS Project Agile.  

The CIPSA framework is free to use. However, when you use this framework or the concepts from this framework, I’d expect you to give due credit.

The detailed CIPSA framework guide is now available (August 30, 2024). The guide is free to download and use. The new CIPSA Certification Course is based on this framework.

References

[1] *NEW* Certification Course: Certified In Practical Scaled Agile (CIPSA), By ManagementYogi.com

[2] New Practical Scaled Agile Framework: The CIPSA Framework Guide (FREE Download), By Satya Narayan Dash and ManagementYogi.com

[3] Article: Kanban at Scale Managing Multiple Kanban Teams and Boards with MS Project Agile, By Satya Narayan Dash, first published at MPUG.com 

[4] Article: Scrum at Scale: Multiple Teams and Synchronized Scaled Sprints with MS Project Agile, By Satya Narayan Dash, first published at MPUG.com