ASPE Web Seminar

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015

Agile Primer: A 360 Degree Look at What it is and How it is Used

Objectives

• Provide high-level knowledge and understanding of Agile principles and practices

• Common understanding of Agile terms

• Why Agile can provide long-term value for your customers

• How you can position yourself in the agile market

Agenda

• Why Agile

• Agile Process Overview (most of time will be spent here)

• Agile Communication

• Certifications

Defining Our Challenge

• Our development teams are building something that doesn’t exist.

• The customer is attempting to describe what they imagine this non-existent product should be.

• Our developers then try to imagine what the customer is describing and the build the product they believe they heard the the customer describe.

• And finally, the first opportunity anyone has to truly see if the product built is one that the customer needs and wants is after development is complete.

New Project Law: s + s + $ Does Not =

Schedule: Scope: Budget:

Your Project

‣ Project delivered within the timeframe originally identified

‣ No date slips

‣ Every milestone achieved

‣ Everything originally requested is delivered

‣ Everything delivered works perfectly as the customer requested, no bugs

‣ Did not spend a single cent more than originally estimated to spend

‣ Did not need any additional resources, hardware, etc. throughout entire project

on time all scope within budget

= /

+ + = /

happy customer

Why Agile?

Why Agile?

1.Manage rapidly

changing priorities

2.Increase

Productivity

3.Improve Quality

4.Accelerate time to

market

VersionOne/AgileAlliance Survey, August 2006

1

Requirements

Analysis

2

Architecture and

Design

3

Code

4

Test

5

Deploy

‣ Waterfall development sequences phases of the project in a

‘throw it over the wall’ approach.

This is typically where we find

whether or not we built a

product the customer needs

and wants.

Cost of change increases as project progresses

Understanding a “Waterfall” Approach

Pop Quiz: WF Requirements

• What percentage of overall project time is spent gathering, elaborating, and communicating product requirements?

• What percentage of requirements, as originally defined, change during the course of the project?

• What percentage of features, as ultimately delivered, are rarely or never used by the product’s end-users?

50%

35%

65%

Agenda

• Why Agile

• Agile Process Overview

• Agile Communication

• Barriers

• A philosophy about software development.

• A collection of processes and practices that uphold this philosophy.

• A grassroots movement to fundamentally change the approach to software development.

“Agility is more attitude than process, more environment than methodology.”

-Jim Highsmith, Agile Project Management

What is Agile?

The Agile Manifesto

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

http://agilemanifesto.org/

That is, while there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping

others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

The Agile Umbrella

• Lean Software Development

• Scrum

• Extreme Programming (XP)

• Kanban

• Others

Agile Practices / Concepts

• Product Owner / Scrum Master

• Daily Scrum aka Daily Stand Up

• Agile Planning / Estimating

• Sprint aka Iteration

• User Story

• Task Board

• Burn down / Velocity

• Retrospective

The Mechanics of Scrum

Product

Backlog

2-4 Weeks

Daily

Sprint

Backlog Product

Increment

Product Vision /

Roadmap

Product

Release

Retrospective

Process Overview

Agile Benefits

Agile Development Value Proposition

Agile Development Traditional Development

VISIBILITY ADAPTABILITY

BUSINESS VALUE RISK

Copyright 2004 - 2006 VersionOne, LLC

Forming the Agile Team The Customer Unit

• Customer

• Product Manager

• Marketing

• Executives

• Stakeholders

• More…

The Development Unit

• Developer

• Business Analyst

• QA

• Project Manager (Scrum Master)

• Creative

• Tech Writer

• More…

What How

Self-Directed/Self-Organized Teams

Team Best Practices

• Start as a team, finish as a team

• Where possible, come together physically

• Open and Honest Communication

• Inspect and Adapt

• Incremental improvement in product and process

• Focus on work not role

• Deal with issues facing output (people, tools, technology)

• Make decisions about output

• Ask for vision, goals and communication on goal status

Agile Planning

“When preparing for battle, I find

that plans are useless, but

planning is indispensable”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Agile Planning

Product Vision

Yearly by the product owner

Product Roadmap

Bi-yearly by the product owner

Release Planning

Quarterly by the product owner and team

Sprint Planning

Bi-weekly by the team

Daily Planning

Daily by the team and individuals

• Provide the Big Picture

• ‘Elevator Pitch’

• Design the Box

• Project Charter

• Success Criteria

• Keeps our priorities in alignment and our focus on the right path

Product / Project Vision

• Agile requirements are written from a customer’s perspective, in plain language to minimize the barrier to customer involvement.

• Understanding the why can be as important as the what.

• Information gems exist in knowing why our customers want what they ask for.

• These are User Stories

As an instructor,

I want to post my presentation

online

so that I do not need to send it.

As a patient,

I want to access test results

online,

so that I can get them at my

convenience without calling my

doctor.

Agile Requirements – Focus on the Customer

Estimating

• If we know that estimates drive expectations, what do we do with our estimates?

• This leads to “estimate bloat” in highly dependent, traditional project plans

Or we INFLATE them!

We pad our

ESTIMATES

Relative Estimating

• Not time based (days, hours, weeks...)

• Size

• Complexity

• Triangulate with other known factors

Story Points

• Unit-less measure of

• Size

• Complexity

• We know that 8 is four times the size of 2

• Based on Fibonacci’s sequence

8

2

Team Velocity • How much can the team FINISH in a

single sprint

• Factors effecting team velocity

• Number of resources

• Interruptions

• Multi-tasking

• Over time, team velocity is derived from actual data

• We must balance velocity with quality

Agile Principle: “Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.”

Release Planning

Sprint1 Story A - 3 pts

Story B - 2 pts

Story D - 5 pts

Sprint 2 Story C - 5 pts

Story E - 2 pts

Story F - 3 pts

Sprint 3 Story G - 8 pts

Story H - 3 pts

Release 1

Sprint Planning

• Drill down by priority

• Identify specific tasks

• Estimate each task - hours

• Repeat for all stories

• Team Commitment

Sprint Planning

Sprint 1 Story A - 3 pts

Story B - 2 pts

Story D - 5 pts

Sprint 2 Story C - 5 pts

Story E - 2 pts

Story F - 3 pts

Sprint 3 Story G - 8 pts

Story H - 3 pts

Release 1

Story A Task 1 - 1 hr

Task 2 - 8 hrs

Task 3 - 2 hrs

Story B Task 1 - 8 hrs

Task 2 - 4 hrs

Task 3 - 2 hrs

Task 4 - 4 hrs

Story D Task 1 - 1 hr

Task 2 - 16 hrs

Task 3 - 12 hrs

Task 4 - 4 hrs

Daily Scrum

• NOT a progress report

• Daily Planning

• What did I accomplish yesterday?

• What will I commit to today?

• What impediments exist?

Demo

• Showcase working software

• Welcome feedback

• Great forum for gathering new user stories (requirements)

• Not a presentation format

Retrospectives

• Most powerful tool available to an Agile team

• Must be a safe environment

• Inspect and adapt forum for the team

• What worked well?

• What did not work well?

• What will we improve?

Customer Team Development Team

TIM

E

Create Product Vision

Create Product Roadmap

Write User Stories

Size User Stories

Prioritize Product Backlog

Identify Baseline Velocity

Create Release Plan

Agile Overview – A Recap

Agenda

• Why Agile

• Agile Process Overview

• Agile Communication

• Barriers

Communication

• Transparency

• Electronic vs Low-tech

• Main path - Billboard Model

• Taskboards

Taskboards

• Great tool for co-located teams

• Improves visibility

• Reduces interruptions

• Simple, informative, easy to maintain

• Inspect and adapt regularly

• Reflect the personality of the team

Story Not Started In Process To Verify Done

Story A Task 6 Task 3 Task 4 Task 2 Task 1

Task 5

Story B Task 4 Task 3 Task 2 Task 1

Task 5

Story C Task 1 Task 2

Task 3

Next Sprint Deferred

Taskboards – Progress Should Be Visible

Taskboards – Thousands of Examples

Agile Certifications

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM) – Extremely popular, no-experience requirement

– Gain understanding of Agile/Scrum

• Scrum.org, Professional Scrum Master

• ICAgile Professional (ICP)

• ICP - Business Value Analysis (ICP-BVA)

• ICP - Agile Testing (ICP-TST)

• Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP)

• SAFe Agilist (SA) and (SP)

• CSPO, CSP, CSC, CSC, CST (Scrum alliance larger “family of certs”)

Collaborative Discussion

Thank you!!! I appreciate your time.

David Mantica

President, ASPE Training