The Transition from Kanban to Scrum and Risk Prevention in

Big Telco Corporation

Dragan Stankovski

University of Telecommunication and Posts, Sofia, Bulgaria

Keywords: Agile, Scrum, Project Management, Risk Assessment, Kanban, SAFe, Risk Management.

Abstract: One of the biggest challenges to driving and managing projects in a big telco corporation is to define the right

approach and moment of switching from Kanban to Scrum modelling and way of working. Unfortunately, in

the real world, this slim line by some rules basically is ignored or established at a very late stage. There is no

clear definition and exact power to be pointed out and used while projects are running. The aim of this paper

is to give basic rules and advanced directions to find them including the right moment establishment without

any impacts on the work and the project itself. A clear definition of this approach will ensure a smooth

transition in full transparency in the already established agile culture and project execution.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays the most important part of running a

successful telecommunication corporation in the

world is to have the exact equation of success. Most

of the big players in the telecommunication market

are trying to apply the agile approach and be one of

the first and faster telcos and launching new offers

and attractive packages for the end customers. The

high efficiency of working with agile in the right

perception is not always easy to be implemented

across big corporations such as telecommunication

companies. The telecommunication market is very

challenging and full of continuous and rapid changes

that need to fit all requests from the end customers

including such that sometimes look like not necessary

to be implemented for the global market (Titova,

2018). When all telcos are doing this digitalization or

transformation from the regular way of working to the

agile style, they have a huge challenge selecting the

right approach and exact methodology in order to fit

not only the employees in the company but also the

market which is so a bit caprice. In this journey, most

of them slightly choose the wrong turn and

unfortunately, the end goals and results are not as

expected. While we're leaving in a world full of

information and easy access to everything over the

internet, sometimes this advantage actually became a

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0558-2236

disadvantage and misleading to finding the right

approach and way of working. The aim of this paper

is to provide the right path and define the criteria for

choosing the right agile approach combining the

company the size and the product that was developed.

In the next chapters, special attention will be

dedicated to the risks and prevention in order to

establish the right approach and perfectly fit for telco

companies.

2 AGILE CULTURE

Like all changes when the big telecommunication

companies start with a transformation, the challenges

are always starting with pushback questions like why

we need the transformation. In most cases, the

confirmation itself is always improving the flexibility

to find discover and manage the customer experience

in this dynamic time also with the transformation in

most of the cases the organizational barriers including

service are bypassed and the team is working in value

streams to complete on time I'm at work, develop and

deploy without technical depts and ship on time the

offers available to the market. All of these criteria are

related to improved quality and flexibility to be a

successful and aggressive market. The second

challenge is why we need to go agile. Compared to

102

Stankovski, D.

The Transition from Kanban to Scrum and Risk Prevention in Big Telco Corporation.

DOI: 10.5220/0012048600003485

In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk (COMPLEXIS 2023), pages 102-108

ISBN: 978-989-758-644-6; ISSN: 2184-5034

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

the standard waterfall the market is very dynamic and

long-term projects are not resolutions to be on top.

Except deliver faster the agile approach and Culture

is putting the customer and the end customer

experience at the core of developing the products and

products, creating more transparency, melting the

barriers into the teams, and making the work more

enjoyable and fun. The biggest thing that should be

under one here is to make a clear definition and

distinguish what exactly is agile. In most resources

and papers agile is mentioned as a methodology or

method but the actual declare definition is that agile

is simply a mindset that is described by the 12

principles from the agile manifesto (Fowler, 2001).

2.1 Values and Focus of Agile over the

Traditional Ways of Working

When we talk about values there is always a way of

improvement for individuals and interactions, the

way of developing the software, the collaboration

with the customer, and maybe most important the

speed and response to changes are very often in this

market of telecommunication. Challenging those

values there is always a place to be improved and how

to make things better with the implementation of

Agile. So while there is value in the topics mentioned

above, agility is focused to improve the process and

tolls, which are one of the best parts in the

establishment and execution of the projects. Also, the

contract is always negotiable due to the duration and

changes, so it can be modified to fit the current market

needs. Special focus is dedicated to the follow the

established schedule and plan and doing the

comprehensive documents that will require a more

visual then readable view.

Figure 1: Reasons to move and work in Agile.

2.2 Think and Implement Agile

It was already pointed out that Agile is not a

methodology or model, but it is a mindset that

changes teams to focus more on what is important and

right instead of who should be right. From the very

beginning of Agile implementation there is base

thinking as a base and focus on the values that need

to be completely accepted by all telecommunication

companies as organizations like Accountability,

Innovation, Trust, Courage, and maybe in the very

first place Transparency. Counting and aligning those

directions there is always a place to set up the proper

mindset at all levels of the organization, execution,

Figure 2: Values and Practices over the Principles.

operational or managing in order to set up the proper

goals (Jennifer, 2016), make the propriety

collaboration, introduce the synergy in the teamwork,

make it simple as is possible, be flexible and much

more. More granular explanations and ideas are

presented in fig. 2

2.3 The Power and Clear Line Between

Project and Product

In order to get real value while planning and

executing projects, there is one main issue that

prevents us from reaching our goals in most telcos

and the big corporation is referring to the Complexity

due to the size and amount of the scope combined

with the short term of execution. Most worthwhile

things that bring value require non-linear, complex

implementations that have not been done in the

organization before and with this transformation,

there is always a place for the pushback. In the

traditional mindset “predict and plan” – the

complexity is acknowledged, and we are trying to

predict upfront as much as possible. This approach

implies:

Working

Software

Documentation

Collaboration

with customer

Negotiation and

replaning

Responsible

changes

Stick to the

official plan

Imdividuals

and

iteractions

Tools and

Process

• Speed

• Bussiness value

•Team work

• Flexibilituy

• Agile process

•Testing

• Retrospective

• Stand-up

• Development

•DevOps

•Automation

•Know-How

• Innovation

•Knowladge

Transffering

•Trust

• Transparency

Values Practice

PrinciplesApproach

The Transition from Kanban to Scrum and Risk Prevention in Big Telco Corporation

103

 The future in most cases is predictable –

Projects should have covered planning

upfront.

 Change needs some time and cannot happen

overnight – Set scope early on and tightly

control.

 We should focus to know as much as

possible in advance.

Usually, a lot of work goes into building the

infrastructure, front end, back end, documentation,

training, etc before the product goes live. But what if

we need to change something?

The alternative approach to complexity is an

“inspect and adapt” mindset:

1. We cannot accurately predict the future –

We need to be ready to plan as we go

2. Change is to be expected – Decide and adapt

as we learn on the road

3. We cannot know everything in advance –

We should rely on the empirical process.

This is the trigger and start point of the

implementation and moving of Scrum because

instead of building the complete solution we release

it in increments.

Table 1: Differences between Project and Products.

Projects Products

Fixed dates and timeboxes

Until product is ready to

Teams are established

specifically for project

Long term and cross-

functional teams

Focus only to internal Focused to external

Value delivered at end of

project

Continues value and

delivering and improving

Fixed scope Flexible scope

Waterfall Agile

Lead by a Project

Manager/

Lead by a Product

Manager or Product

Owner

Solutions and system

focused

Customer focused

Learning often lost

Learning remain in the

team

Increment one will contain just enough done work

from the front end, back end, testing, and architecture

work to start serving the customer even if not all

planned functionality is implemented, also known as

MVP or minimum valuable product can be

implemented and bring value to the customer while

the rest of the puzzle is still in development.

One of the major issues, while transitions and

transformations are happening in the

telecommunication companies, is the lack of

understanding and making differences between

project and product, this and using Kanban or Scrum

is also not clear when it’s come to the moment of

decision. Table 1 are presented the differences and

main touchpoints when there is a need to have such

separation because in agile the focus is always related

to the customer, and this is why the most proper is to

say that we are delivering products and not projects.

3 AGILE TRANSFORMATION

STAGES AND CHECKPOINTS

In all Telecommunication companies, the agile

transformation usually is a huge and massive change

that needs to be adopted by the entire organization

and implemented in all departments to work and get

all benefits that are presented in every written proof

for Agile. As mentioned that is complex and should

be applied to several phases, which may even be

different depending on which level of the

organization one is focusing on and of course

modified with the terminologies that are close to the

telco companies. One of the most common stakes that

are always presented while such transformations are

in progress is to adopt the old company structure and

terminology and replace it in the agile processes, and

this usually is deviating the understanding of the

joiners or external members. The timeline of the

transformation and changes is depending on the level

of knowledge of the team members and most

important the wheal nest to transform and make their

life easier and mainly is combined into 4 phases,

figure 3.

The major goal of the assessment is to do the

analyses for the operational model and what the telco

is doing AS-IS. The next approach is present in a

human-readable view with clear points to the weak

spots and places where improvements need to be done

called TO-BE operational model. After the kick-off,

the transitions should be established with the

implementation of the suggestions and the transition

of teamwork. In the end, the most powerful tool and

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feedback of the job done is the stabilization where all

continuous improvements will be presented including

the missed ones during the Assessment phase.

Figure 3: Investigation flow.

3.1 Transformation of Organization

The Telcos and huge organizations usually need to

pass full transformation across the entire internal

structure, usually, this is a long process, and

transformation is executed with different

organizational units or departments, tribes who are

the main focus. The end goal is to make sure that

different organizational units (both, external and

internal) will start the transformation at different

times so there will be moments for correction and

synchronizing the best practices without impacting

the development of the products. Also, the units are

unique by themselves so the duration of the

transformation is always different and the most

problematic part is always the cross-team work and

communication keeping the cybersecurity

requirements and regulation (Bikov, T, 2021). This

collaboration is the key to success and the right

implementation of Agile (Kanban or Scrum) because

the teams can learn and adapt effectively.

Unit or department level of transformation from the

high level is following 4 major subsequent stages they

are focusing mainly on the needs and stakeholders.

- Engage: usually related to commitments and

readiness to start with Agile transformation;

- Prerequisite: preparation of the thing that

needs to be changed and nominating teams

that will start first with the implementation of

the transformation;

- Start: lunching the actual transformation with

selected teams in the unit. This process is

always related to the execution, monitoring,

and real feedback from the teams;

- Operation: ongoing feedback and

improvements.

Figure 4: Stages of Departments/Unit transformation.

It's important to note that the transformation and

the changes can be significant at multiple levels

usually, they are related to structure, internal

processes, ownership, delegation, etc. To have better

control and keep as much transparency the

transformation is recommended to take place in

"stages". The stages will give the flexibility to

experiment in the beginning while the real approach

is written on the stone. Duration and start are

different depending on the team's maturity, and

capability to identify the risks and dependencies

including impediments.

3.2 Team-Level Transformation Stages

Those stages are very easy to be implemented

because the biggest part of the transformation is

already done in the Unit transformation and the most

problematic spots are identified so now is the right

moment to be just practiced and see the results.

As presented in fig. usually stages are 4, where

most of the time is dedicated to the preparation phase.

On the team level usually, preparation, adoption,

and optimization are equal, and part of the unit start

and lunch part. And the Operation is ongoing and the

same for all projects and transformations. The

practice is recommending this transition to be not

more than 4 sprints (Stankovski, 2022).

Figure 5: Team level transformation steps.

4 THE MOMENT OF

SWITCHING FROM KANBAN

TO SCRUM

In previous chapters, the main focus was to explain

the complicated process and the transition when

telecommunication companies are moving to agile

Assesment

Blueprint

Transition

Stabilization

Wave -1

Engadge Prerequisite

Wave 0

Start

Wave 1

Start Operation

Wave n

Operation

Prepare Adopt Optimization Operation

The Transition from Kanban to Scrum and Risk Prevention in Big Telco Corporation

105

working. The practice is showing that the telco itself

is searching for information mostly in the internet

space or paying external companies to establish

internal processes and stages for this transaction.

When it came to the company deciding on the

external ones as was described in the previous

chapter there are you there using analysing methods

to find the best brooch and make this transition

smooth and most efficient for the company

including the employees and the market. Opposite to

this approach are randomly written suggestions that

are trying to generalize the approach, and, in most

cases, they are not fit or they're absolutely not

applicable to the telecommunications needs and the

companies. There are a lot of examples where the

processes are agile, but a gel has a couple of sub-

methods like Kanban, SAFe, Scrum, Lean, etc

(Wanner, 2019). Each of them is specific and two of

them exactly are most used in the implementation

and telecommunication companies. Kanban or

Scrum is the most common topic under discussion

and in most cases wrongly established process of

implementation. Some of the companies prefer to

work with Kanban but unfortunately, their real need

is to work in the scrum, the same goes for vice versa

some of the telcos are working in the scrum which

is absolutely not necessary because the projects are

not requiring such complexity. The final goal is to

provide a definition of the right moment when

companies as a real need to work in Kanban and

when actually they need to switch the scrum when

the business starts to grow, and the development of

the project and product is more complicated

(Torado, 2019).

4.1 Kanban in Telco Corporations

Using Kanban will bring benefits in projects related

and especially require visualization of development

including continuous brainstorming about design.

This automatically is referring that Kanban as an

approach is more appropriate when UI is designing

or some of the R&D parts are developing

(Vasiliauskas, 2019). In other words, if need clear to

define when Kanban should be implemented as an

approach there is plenty of cases but the most

important of them are related to the continuous work

understanding alone items or when things are

dedicated to the specific work and they're focusing

only on the dedicated items in most cases went there

tidy related to the research and development

including the u x design that needs to be visualized

and maybe one of the most important things is when

the teams are more or less handling with the

operational things managing tickets resolving

problem racing defects etc. Referring to the duration

of the project execution and development there are

no strict lines they're going to put the project itself

into the framework but compared to the time when

we talk about the size of the teams usually in the

practice the recommendation for this approach is

work to be done in smaller teams not extending the

size of 7 squads or split accordingly to hybrid model

of work (Stankovski, 2022).

4.2 Scrum in Telco Corporations

When the scope of the project starts to increase, and

the launching of the minimum viable product is the

most required frequently to go on the market and

then the Kanban approach is not fitting to all those

requirements which leads telecommunication

companies to switch to more flexible agile work

called SCRUM. Here also plenty of cases can be

defined when exactly scrum needs to step in and

when the transition from Kanban to Scrum needs to

be done, but the most important is to underline that

when the project is required to achieve some

predictability and to release value very fast on the

market then the Scrum is a must. Scrum is also used

when the teams are committing the something that

will be on production after dedicated time called

Springs or Project Increments, including the

importance when running projects where velocity

and the pace of the deliverables should be stabilized

to be more productive for a longer time. And maybe

one of the most important details is when there is a

large number of dependencies between the pieces

and they need to be managed among third parties

that are requiring synchronization or simply

integration.

4.3 Definitions and Risks of Transitions

from Kanban to Scrum

All previous chapters describe the benefits and

suggestions for which of those 2 approaches need to

be used Kanban or Scrum. In real work and practice,

there is no clear definition or direction of where is the

border and when telecoms need to switch between

them. This is one of the reasons for late lesson

learning or in the worst case failure of the projects.

The final aim of this paper is to set up those

frameworks, so there will be a clear vision and

expectations when it comes to such a decision. The

major condition is to have two of the 3 main criteria

presented in Table 2 below:

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Table 2: Crosslines to do switching from Kanban to Scrum.

Condition Kanban Scrum

Duration of the

roject

Short Term (<3

months)

Long Term (>3

months)

Size of the teams <7 7 an

above

Integration / work

with 3

parties

Only Internal

>1 vendor /

external

stakeholders for

inte

ration

If 2 conditions are presented then the telecommu-

nication companies should not doubt if they need to

move to Scrum. That will give them the all benefits

of managing the project and the scope in time,

reducing the technical dept and being sure that the

minimum valuable products will be on the market.

Talking about risks and not being on time to step in

and start with the transition there are a couple of

topics that need to be taken into consideration. The

first and most important is to understand the key

elements of Agility like trust, courage, openness,

focus, and respect. This will prevent and eliminate

tonnes of issues related to internal struggling between

Table 3: Crosslines to do switching from Kanban to Scrum.

Product Owner

Definition

Responsible for maximizing the

value of the product and the work

of the Development Team. How this

is done may vary widely across

organizations, Development Teams,

and individuals

Responsibilities

• Prepares “user stories” and

refines them with the squad

• Maximizes value by prioritizing

backlog of user stories

• Continuously interacts with the

customer

• Maximizing the value of the

product and the work of the

Development Team. How this is

done may vary widely across

organizations, Development

Teams, and individuals.

NOT

• Is NOT a Product manager; is

NOT responsible for deliveries

(but is responsible for value)

• Is NOT Project Manager

team members, jeopardizing the deliverables and

most important the quality of the work. The second

important factor is a clear understanding of the roles

and responsibilities of the actors and team members

inside of the projects and especially during the

transition from Kanban to Scrum. The practice is

showing that understanding the roles of team

members is not a problem with most of them, the

telecommunication companies usually straggling

with the understanding and definition of the major

role of the product owner. To make things much clear

the definition of PO (Product Owner) is presented in

the next table (O’Connell, 2013):

5 CONCLUSIONS

The thresholds and direction when the telecommuni-

cation companies need to switch from Kanban to

Scrum are providing a better stage and understanding

of the needs and exact moment of this event. This will

bring not only value but also put the space to bring

the real values and best practices of Agile and

especially the smooth transition avoiding risks and

jeopardizing the projects. Same as previous when the

moment should happen and there will be frequently

deliverables on time without compromising the

quality of the work, the focus will remain on the

customer side with continuous improvements and

feedback. This situation and the full transparency will

always eliminate the waste of the team's time and

work including encouraging and balancing the

workforce. In another word the agile keys of the

mindset will always be in the first position:

Transparency, Empowerment, Collaboration,

Interaction, Trust, Responsibility, Accountability,

Communication, Adaptability, and Respect (

O'Dwyer,

O, 2012).

Also one of the conclusions that should be taken

is that failures are not options this is given and we

need to get the maximum and turn them into

advantage so we can learn fast, change the culture of

the telecoms and of course find the exact moment of

the transition for the other Units/ Department of

Teams based on lessons learned and stakes that we

should avoid and nor repeat.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The results presented in this paper are based on the

empiric collections and experiments in the real

project delivered to different customers in

The Transition from Kanban to Scrum and Risk Prevention in Big Telco Corporation

107

telecommunication companies over the globe in the

period of 4 years between 2018 and 2022. The results

are not impacted by the lockdowns during the COVID

restrictions based on the previous and after numbers

of total deliverables in the dedicated timeframes. The

results end suggestions are focused on the

Telecommunication companies and their business,

implementing in other industries may provide slightly

different results.

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