Convoy Ceremonies

Captain’s Mast

In this ceremony, anyone wishing to change the priorities set in Convoy Alignment must file a PCR and represent it for approval. This allows the Chief Signals Officer to adjust the Completed vs Committed goal to ensure it does not reflect poorly on the Commodore.

Captains’ Meeting

Meeting of the Feature Captains to plan the date when the DORC™ will be assembled.

Coding

The group of Code Engineers assigned to each feature will implement the requirements they are given as rapidly as possible using the industry best practice, Continuous Isolation. This ensures it can be tested and delivered on the Convoy it is planned for. Once the feature is coded, the Code Engineers can return to the coding pool to await their next adventure!

Code Inspection

The CSET will review the completed code before it is tested to ensure it is compliant with CSET and EARB standards.

Convoy Alignment

This is a 5-day meeting held every 6 weeks for planning the next 8 quarters of features to ensure the critical paths are aligned. See the agenda for details.

Dry Dock

It’s normal for a little damage to occur when we are moving so quickly. Defects will accumulate. The Dry Dock is the process of halting feature development for a few weeks so that repairs can be made.

Manifest Approval Ceremony

Before any convoy may “leave port”, it’s critical we ensure that all Scaled Agile DevOps processes have been followed. The Convoy Steering Committee is convened on the day the fleet sets sail. See Deploy the Fleet for the detailed process.

Post-Standup Standup

Only the most important status updates are given in Standup and some defects are lower priority than some features. To address this, we use the Post Standup Standup ceremony. Here everyone on the Convoy participates to provide status updates to the Commodore on the lower priority work that is not being worked on.

Post Standup Standup Review

To ensure no information is lost through insufficient documentation, each Feature Captain will submit a daily report using the SAD Update form and email it to the Commodore who will consolidate it and file it.

Press Gang

In the Press Gang ceremony, each Feature Captain chooses 2 to 20 Code Engineers from the coding pool to deliver the next feature. This ensures each Code Engineer is allowed to work on new and interesting things and that all are fully utilized.

Scrum of Scrum of Scrums

To effectively scale communication, we use the Scrum of Scrum of Scrums. First thing in the morning after the daily scrum, each team selects a Tribute to attend the daily Scrum of Scrums (SOS). At noon your Tribute attends a Scrum with the Tributes from the other teams. They select a Tribute of Tributes from the SOS meeting who, at 3 pm, attends a meeting with the Tribute of Tributes of the Scrums of Scrums from the broader organization. They then reverse the process to pass down direction. May the odds be ever in your favor!

Testing

To keep the Code Engineers productive, we need them to focus only on coding. For unit testing, the Feature Captain will assign the complete feature to the Unit Testing Team to ensure 100% test coverage.

System Integration Testing

If two teams validating a change are good, three teams are better! This SIT team tests all of the new features of the Convoy together.

Rota Fortunae

We know that a static organizational structure limits improvement and also becomes boring for some executives. While many outside the SADMF community may propose Value Stream Mapping to identify constraints, we know that the process is time-consuming and uses too many Post-Its. To resolve these we introduced the Rota Fortunae ceremony where we “spin the wheel”, restructure, and then see if we are delivering better. If we fail, then we convene a Tribunal to address it.

Tribunal

We must Build Quality In by removing things that cause poor quality. In this monthly ceremony, we identify and remove the person who created each defect.