Shared Services

A specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less.
—William J. Mayo, American Physician [1]

Definition: Shared Services represents the specialty roles, people, and services required for the success of an ART or Solution Train, but that are not dedicated full-time.

Because these individuals have specialized skills—often single-sourced and typically quite busy—each Agile Release Train (ART) and Solution Train must plan to engage the shared services personnel it needs when it needs them.

Details

ARTs and, by extension, Solution Trains assemble all the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to deliver value. Without it, teams can be blocked waiting for information or decisions that delay value delivery. However, it’s impossible to devote some specialty functions to a single ART. There may be a shortage of a particular skill available or it is simply impractical to staff all ARTs with that expertise. Also, the needs of the ART may fluctuate, making full-time commitment impractical. To address this, Shared Services support 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 may contribute directly to the Architectural Runway (for example, security and information architecture) that supports new Feature or Capability development. In others, the effort can trail core development a bit (for example, customer training, localizations, and compliance audits). In some cases, merely being supportive and reactive quickly is sufficient. These services on the trains ensure their work is performed early and in smaller batches to make delivery more predictable and provide team feedback.

In either case, the programs will struggle to meet their objectives without timely support and synchronization. Shared Services may participate full-time with a single ART or distribute their efforts across multiple ARTs across the Enterprise. And in some instances, they may embed themselves directly on a single Agile Team for a short time. In all cases, they commit with the teams and ARTs to the shared goals and PI Objectives.