This is part 9 of a 10-part series I am writing on Agile Project Management, by Jim Highsmith.

Now we’ll focus on scaling agile project management. Scaling has traditionally been called the Achilles’ heel of agile methodologies, but it does not have to be. The introduction of a barely sufficient amount of process, along with the agile principles, can keep large teams agile.

One useful practice is to use a hub organizational structure. A mix between hierarchical control and completely self-sufficient nodes, the hub encourages teams to interact enough that project goals are met while still allowing teams to be as self organizing as possible. The interaction forces the team members to come up with adequate integration strategies and allows for appropriate information flow between the teams. During the course of the project, individual teams must not fall into the sub optimization problem. The goals of the project override to some extent each team’s individual goals, which is why each team isn’t completely self organizing. The Microsoft Solutions Framework uses a model very similar to the hub described in APM.

The primary tool Highsmith advocates for scaling is the Commitment-Accountability Protocol. Although it has a complex-sounding name, it is simply a physical expression of inter-team accountability and intent (an index card). Like all agile practices, CAP can be implemented simply and escalated as the scalability challenge increases for ever larger projects.