During the week of the Tesla Model 3 Launch in Fremont, CA, Tesla invited Scrum Inc. to host a Certified Scrum Master and Certified Product Owner course at the factory. On Wednesday that week, we had a tour at the production site in Elon Musk's personal golf cart. An awesome time was had by all!
Background
In 2009 I was in Palo Alto doing Scrum Training and I decided to take a test drive in a Tesla Roadster with my business partner and fellow trainer Gabrielle Benefield. I put in an order for a new red Roadster right after the drive. People thought I was crazy but after getting friends and family stock that has increased 20X, I get all my Tesla's for free. They are powered from my solar roof so electricity is also free. And there are free Tesla Superchargers everywhere, not to mention free charging at the office. This is the best product I have ever invested in. Check out comments in Quora. Here's a picture of the test drive.
What's Happening at Tesla?
After the Roadster, three versions of the Model S, and my order for the Model 3, I was eager to see what Tesla was doing with Scrum. There were many people from Tesla in the classes, some passionate advocates for more and better Scrum. Tesla could certainly use more Scrum as they are now entering what Elon calls "production hell" trying to fill 500,000 orders for the new Model 3 as fast as possible. With more and better Scrum they could turn it into "production nirvana." Everyone is working hard and under stress. At another automobile manufacturer, we worked with a team of 200 that could not deliver anything. It was cut to a team of 20. That team shipped a critical production system in a few sprints. Tesla needs that!
You Need "True Scrum" not "California Agile"
To deliver with 10% of the staff you have to do what the Japanese call "True Scrum," the Scrum of the grandfathers (Takeuchi and Nonaka) and fathers of Scrum. There is far too much "California Agile" in Silicon Valley where developers do whatever they want and you get whenever they deliver.
We taught the Scrum Inc. patterns based approach to Scrum at Tesla where there are at least 11 ways to double your velocity in the next sprint after you leave the class. Some of the class participants were from a rocket factory not far from the Tesla plant. They asked me to present key lessons learned to their Scrum teams after we finished the classes at Tesla.
The Rocket Factory
We visited the stealth mode rocket factory after the Model 3 launch at Tesla. The CEO is running the company 100% Scrum for all departments (departments are teams or sets of teams). They are committed to building and launching rockets in 10% of the time of SpaceX. We talked to their whole development team about the key lessons we teach in the Certified Scrum Master course on how to deliver "Twice the Work in Half the Time."
Silicon Valley Agile Leadership Network
As a bonus to the Tesla courses, Stacey Louie set up a user group meeting for the Silicon Valley Agile Leadership Network at Computer Associates in Santa Clara. There we talked about how to scale Scrum without breaking Scrum. 50% of the audience said they were doing Scrum in a company where the management was still using waterfall. Agile was viewed as a running wheel you put in the development area to make the developers run faster. All the same command and control waterfall reports were required. A scaling framework was often chosen to keep the managers safe from Agile and protect the hierarchical organization, rather than refactoring the organization, incentive plans, and job descriptions to achieve higher performance. I talked about how the best companies do Scrum where the management becomes Agile and gets directly involved on Scrum teams and supports Scrum teams.
If you're interested in the presentation, you can download a PDF of the slides: Scrum at Scale Keynote SVALN 18 Jul 2017
Tesla Roadster R80 Upgrade
Side note: I recently upgraded my Tesla Roadster to an 80KWH battery so it now goes over 300 miles per charge just like my Tesla S P100D.
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