Scaling for Success: How Tamara Maintains Agility During Rapid Expansion

In a whirlwind of growth, Tamara’s product development department has experienced an astounding 500% expansion in the last four years. Throughout this period of rapid expansion, Tamara has achieved remarkable milestones, including recognition in Forbes’ Top 10 startups in MENA and reaching Unicorn status by the end of 2023.

Born in the ‘Agile Era,’ Tamara embarked on its journey with the belief that embracing Agile methodologies would enable rapid adaptation, frequent deliveries, and the empowerment of self-organizing, innovative teams. When I joined Tamara in 2021 as their very first Agile practitioner, the company operated with only four scrum teams. Entrusted with the task of implementing best practices in line with the Scrum Framework and Agile values, I witnessed each team swiftly gaining confidence in their methodologies, embracing the essence of agility, and consistently delivering valuable new products and features to the emerging platform.

Tamara’s vision of becoming the leading payment solution provider in the MENA region quickly materialized into a strategic roadmap. This roadmap, initially ambitious, necessitated the integration of multiple new product teams. Throughout 2022 to 2024, our growth trajectory soared from humble beginnings of four teams to an impressive twenty-four, with ambitious expansion plans poised for the future.

The Roadmap to Growth

Scaling at this pace can be incredibly exciting, but it is not without its challenges. In the initial stages, embracing agility as part of our startup culture allowed us to learn and adapt easily. Adding more teams made maintaining the same level of agility increasingly challenging. As our team size multiplied, we faced constant threats such as communication breakdowns and alignment issues, risking the loss of agility. As our teams expanded, we realized the importance of introducing more structure and standardization to keep everything running smoothly while still upholding the core principles of Agile.

Despite our growth, we remained steadfast in our commitment to Agile values and principles, recognizing them as the foundation of our success thus far. We understood that upholding these values would be crucial in sustaining our momentum and delivering value to our customers amidst rapid expansion

In this article, I will address some of the significant challenges we faced and explain how we overcame them using Agile values and principles.

Communication and Alignment

Throughout the development lifecycle, we encountered several challenges related to communication and alignment. At Tamara, we realized that relying on isolated Google Sheets and ad-hoc communication among a few product managers working on roadmaps was no longer sufficient. We experienced increased dependencies, project delays and blockages, and miscommunication regarding important requirements. Many of these issues originated from upstream stages, where roadmaps were set and cross-team dependencies needed discussion, planning, and coordination. Therefore, our main focus was to come up with a planning process that would enhance communication and alignment whilst remaining streamlined and easy to follow.

After experimenting with various approaches, including unsuccessful big room planning events and Gantt charts, and after receiving extensive feedback, we successfully implemented a highly collaborative quarterly planning framework. This framework prioritized enhancing communication and alignment among all teams by promoting transparency and collaboration across different departments.

To achieve this, we made sure that roadmap plans were accessible in a shared space. Initially, we used Google Sheets but later transitioned to Jira Advanced Roadmaps, offering visibility to all members of the product development teams and stakeholders. Within the 8-week framework, we introduced group refinements involving collaborating teams, fostering collective ownership and alignment. Additionally, we incorporated a dependency negotiation stage, bringing decision-makers together into the same room, albeit a virtual one, to finalize alignment on timelines and expectations before committing to quarterly roadmaps.

To support alignment on dependencies, we introduced a weekly meeting dubbed the “dependency dialogue.” This forum provided a dedicated space for teams to discuss upcoming and current dependencies, ensuring they maintained the necessary momentum for on-time delivery. Drawing inspiration from the concept of “scrum of scrums,” which we found less effective, we focused on meaningful discussions rather than status updates. By visually tracking dependency progress, we improved communication, minimized surprises, and supported on-time delivery.

Maintaining an Agile Mindset and Culture

Rapid growth presents a challenge to upholding our Agile mindset and culture. As we expand our teams and processes, there is a risk of diluting the core principles that have been instrumental in our success.

Our foremost priority is nurturing a culture of continuous improvement within the organization. To achieve this, we have prioritized developing standardized dashboards displaying key Agile metrics across all teams. By providing training and mentorship to each team member on how to interpret these metrics, we empower them to pinpoint obstacles and devise strategies for improvement. Our focus spans critical areas like quality, time to market, and consistency, guiding our teams toward peak performance.

In addition to bi-weekly team retrospectives, we’ve introduced regular reviews of metrics and quarterly goal-setting sessions to cultivate a collective commitment to continual growth and enhancement.

As our Agile teams expanded during our scaling efforts, it became clear that assigning a dedicated scrum master to each team would not be feasible. Nonetheless, we remained committed to upholding best practices while nurturing a culture of empowerment and self-organization.

To achieve this, each of the five agile coaches across the 24 teams dedicates time to mentor and train team members in the responsibilities of a scrum master. This approach has led to the adoption of a round-robin approach within each team, where a different team member assumes the role of scrum master each sprint. This ensures that our teams can continue to conduct effective sprints and scrum events without relying solely on one individual.

Adhering to the scrum framework has been instrumental in preserving the self-organizing, cross-functional structure of each team. Amidst the hustle and bustle of various activities, our Agile teams remain focused on their sprint goals, taking ownership of their commitments. Despite external pressures to deliver quickly, each team maintains its backlog and has the autonomy to monitor velocity and capacity. This empowerment enables them to make informed decisions about their commitments.

Process Scalability

Ensuring the effective scalability of our processes is a crucial challenge as we continue to grow. It requires finding the right balance between standardized processes and the inherent flexibility of Agile principles.

While we value individuality, allowing each team to operate independently would lead to chaos. Therefore, driving alignment on processes across all teams is essential for ensuring seamless collaboration, managing expectations, and upholding certain standards, such as sign-offs, documentation, and validation.

To address this challenge, we have developed an end-to-end development lifecycle process that guides us from start to finish while embodying Agile principles. At each stage, we prioritize:

• Collaborating more closely with stakeholders bringing us closer to our customers and users.
• Embracing changing requirements through small releases and short feedback loops.
• Motivating teams and individuals by granting ownership and autonomy at each stage.
• Increasing transparency to set expectations and communicate forecasts to stakeholders and collaborating teams.
• Encouraging continuous improvement of quality.
• Providing opportunities to learn and adapt from both product-level feedback from users and stakeholders and process-level insights, such as lead time and cycle time between phases.

By integrating these principles into our processes, we not only ensure scalability but also foster a culture of agility and innovation that enables us to thrive amidst growth.

Staying true to Agile values has enabled us to continue to foster adaptability, collaboration, and empowerment, essential elements for success in a dynamic environment.

As we’ve learned at Tamara, Agile values are not just a recipe for success; they’re a guiding philosophy for growth and innovation. As we continue to expand, we will persist in experimenting, learning, and adapting to thrive.