From twice a year to twice a month: the story of No More Majors

What do we want? No More Major Release! When do we want it? After the next Major Release!

The Belgian Federal Pension Service (SFPD) has a large IT department with more than a dozen teams working on the same application. Over the course of a few years, these teams developed an agile way of working at the team level, but were struggling to work effectively on a larger scale. Early 2018, a Scaling course and a LeSS course were organised to help tackle this problem. This inspired an experiment where part of the organisation started to prepare a LeSS flip. It also made it very clear that there were a few technical obstacles to overcome before any organisational change could be successful. First thing on the list: getting rid of biquarterly major releases, instead releasing all functionalities in biweekly increments. This was something that had been talked about for a long time, but never really attempted. So a community of practice was kickstarted, with the ambitious goal of finally making this dream a reality in just a few months. This is the story of the No More Majors community: from its kickstart, through the obstacles they encountered, to the successes and failures they achieved. And also: the surprisingly fast organisational changes they caused!

Photos

Tom JansAgile coach
Kessel-Lo, Bélgica
Simplification Officers
Thierry de PauwContinuous Delivery advocate - Lean Software Engineer
Gent, Bélgica