A specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less.
—William J. Mayo
Shared Services represents the specialty roles, people, and services that are necessary for the success of an Agile Release Train (ART) or Solution Train but that cannot be dedicated such a train on a full-time basis. Because these resources are specialized—often single-sourced and typically quite busy—each ART and Solution Train must plan to engage the shared services personnel it needs, when it needs them.
The focus that comes from assembling all the necessary skills and abilities needed to deliver value is what characterizes ARTs and, by extension, Solution Trains. However, in many cases, it’s just impractical to devote some specialty functions to a single ART. There may be a shortage of a particular skill, or the needs of the ART may fluctuate, making full-time availability impractical. To address these issues, Shared Services supports development by quickly focusing specialty expertise on the areas of the system or Solution that require unique knowledge and skills.
In some cases, the effort must occur ahead of the Agile Teams (e.g., security, information architecture) so that it may contribute directly to the Architectural Runway that supports new Capability or Feature development. In other cases, the resources can trail core development a bit (e.g., customer training, localizations). In some cases, merely being supportive and reacting quickly is sufficient.
In either case, without timely support and synchronization, the programs will struggle to meet their objectives. While not dedicated to the train, Shared Services must travel with it, as the train has to carry some of their cargo, too.
Potential members of Shared Services typically include people with the following types of specialized skills:
Agile and software/systems engineering coaches
Application/web portal management
Configuration management
Data modeling, data engineering, and database support
Desktop support
End-user training
Enterprise architecture
Information architecture
Infrastructure and tools management
Internationalization and localization support
IT service management and deployment operations
Security specialist (Infosec)
System quality assurance and exploratory testing
Technical writers
Shared Services personnel engage in the following type of activities:
Participating in Program Increment (PI) Planning as well as Pre- and Post-PI Planning
Driving requirements where necessary, adding to solution intent and taking ownership of their portion of dependent backlog items
Collaborating with Agile Teams to fulfill the dependencies that occur during PI execution
Participating in System Demos, Solution Demos, and Inspect and Adapt (I&A) workshops, when appropriate, as many improvement backlog items may reflect challenges with the availability of specialized skills and dependencies
Occasionally, members of Shared Services may choose to operate as a single team. In that case, they would iterate on the same cadence as the ARTs and work like any other Agile team.
Because shared technical resources are highly specialized (as opposed to the ‘generalized specialists’ found in an Agile team), their skills must be continuously refined to keep up with advancements in their respective fields. Shared Services should receive training with the Agile Teams during the ART launch.
Supporting Agile Teams requires either sustained or transitional specialty expertise. Shared Services personnel may temporarily become part of an Agile team for short periods of time. In this case, they have the benefit of experiencing the Agile dynamic, as well as an understanding of the speed of development and the quality of the product produced. Their membership on the team, while temporary, also accelerates the broader teams-of-Agile-teams dynamic that—only by acting together—can deliver Enterprise value. Also, having Shared Services personnel embedded in the team for short periods of time enables knowledge transfer, which reduces the ART’s dependence on specialized skills.
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[1] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011.