the pitfalls of being agile
DESCRIPTION
This presentation examines the points of friction where Agile methodology breaks down on large enterprise web projects.TRANSCRIPT
Agile PitfallsSeth Brown: Director of Professional Services, LullabotDrew Harteveld: AVP Digital Operations, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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MSLO Digital Replatforming Project
18 month duration
50+ resources, internal and external
40+ individual sub-projects, ranging from 4 weeks to 6 months
Average of 8 sub-projects simultaneously underway
Content totals: 500,000 images
18,425 recipes
14,686 articles
7,000 videos
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Flame Wars Theory vs. Practice Does it Scale? Purists Be Warned
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Theory & Practice
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Resource Management
Theory: Fully dedicated Not shared across projects Co-located Strong Product Owner Represents business, creative, and technical stakeholders
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Resource Management
Practice: Every resource engaged on 3+ simultaneous projects Remote/ virtual resources Poor integration of Product Owners into Agile teams until late in the game.
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Product Backlog
Theory: Complete list of User Stories representing end-state application Active participation of Product Owners Fluid prioritization by Product Owners Awareness, via Velocity or other means, of implications of shuffling priority
order
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Product Backlog
Practice: Established backlog Composed of tasks, features, epics, user stories Resource capacity aware [Gantt chart] Highly-structured, semi-formal process for prioritizing backlog Transparent, widely socialized to stakeholders Allows the project to meander
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User Stories
Theory: Each story represents a single testable feature User-oriented Test conditions written on back Non-technical language INVEST
Independent Negotiable Valuable to users and/or Product Owners Estimable Small Testable
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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User Stories
Practice: Tried to stick to official language Often veered form “As a [user type]…” structure for fully back-end tasks Never enough time to build robust backlog Good involvement of Product Owners for prioritization Poor engagement of Tech resources Abandoned…
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Iteration Planning
Theory: Four-hour planning meetings Add new stories Prioritize backlog Assign Story Points Pack Sprint
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Iteration Planning
Practice: 2-hour meetings, including Review, Retro, plus Planning Prioritize backlog Pack new sprint Always rushed Grew to handle time estimating in separate meeting, only Tech
resources involved
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Estimating
Theory: Story Points associated with each User Story Not necessarily predicated on hours Utilize Story Points to determine and track Velocity Paper clips to represent Story Points Triangulate estimates Don’t pretend precision is possible (Fibonacci) User Story-based Burndown charts
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Estimating
Practice: Good with Story Points We are terrible at estimating Strong implementation of paper clips as time and team member Clips on cards to socialize
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Taskboard
Theory: Public space Cards to be moved through representation of process [Kanban] Resource engagement with board Location for Standups Transparent for all stakeholders Tactile tools: index cards, sharpies, yarn, paper clips, thumbtacks, planning
poker, etc.
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Taskboard
Practice: Big, beautiful, centrally located Taskboards Classic implementation Low developer engagement Overlap and duplication with ticketing system Product stakeholders never really utilized for status, thus produced separate
weekly reports
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Ticketing Tools
Theory: Agile doesn’t want the info. buried in systems Information should be accessible, tactile, visceral Formats should be comfortable to all team members
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Ticketing Tools
Practice: Tickets are the preferred currency of developers Less technical resources never felt comfortable
organizing project as tickets Prioritization cumbersome and invisible Power dynamic shifts away from Product Owner to
developers We utilized Unfuddle
NetFlix queue? C
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Burndown
Theory: Daily reconciliation of time or points remaining vs. work remaining Sensitive diagnostic of Sprint health Allows visualization of project trends Provides historical foundation for future estimation
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Burndown
Practice: When we did them, they rocked Regime for hour estimation was strong, thus good
data in reporting Time consuming for PMs Hassle for developers Tough sell for team members Product stakeholders never fully engaged with
reporting Burndown as hours or Story Points? A-
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Standups
Theory: Daily SCRUMs 15 minutes max No rabbit holes or “solutioneering” Detailed issues deferred for optional aftertalks 3 questions:
What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? What roadblocks?
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Standups
Practice: Only afforded 2x per week due to shared resourcing In front of Taskboard Held to 15 minutes, 80% of the time Fantastic participation across cross-functional groups Prone to solutioneering
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Release Planning
Theory: End of every Sprint results in shippable code Iterate Enterprise deployment best-practices
Version control Code promotion strategy
Start with: Pared-down interfaces Fewer features Fewer roles Simpler permissions Fewer modules Key workflows
EXPERIENCE PLANNING OVERVIEW
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Release Planning
Practice: Major issues with gap between Agile Sprint work and
aggregating all on one platform for Production Iterative releases had to be feature-complete Like-for-Like Replatforming Goldilocks scope – “Not too big, not to small, just right”
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[Intermission]
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Pitfalls
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Design in a vacuum vs. what we get “outta the box”
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Design in a vacuum vs. what we get “outta the box”
Diagramming the “rainbows and unicorns”, greenfield design
Offensive to the Tech team
More work to build an experience around the provided functionality, than just to build from scratch
Ignoring one of the major strengths of the Drupal platform, its modularity. You get some functionality just by installing!
Steve Jobs: design-driven engineering
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Lack of fully-allocated team resources
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Lack of fully-allocated team resources
Highly likely we were hobbled right out of the gate by this, just weren’t smart enough to realize it
Never got that deep, selfless integration across the team
Resources more concerned about their own deliverables [across projects] than the project’s own deliverables. How can you blame them?
Does it scale?
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Selling Agile to stakeholders and clients
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Selling Agile to stakeholders and clients
Fixed timeline
Negotiable scope, willingness to meander
Complex process for stakeholders to understand
Diametrically opposed to “fixed-price bid” contracts
If all three constraints of the “Iron Triangle” [scope, cost, and time] are fixed, Agile isn’t a good fit for your project
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No Map
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No Map No functional specification to document scope
Difficult to onboard new team members
Nearly impossible to facilitate formalized stakeholder approvals
Doesn’t provide the “Big Picture” of a classic waterfall Gantt chart
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Infrastructure projects not suitable for Agile
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Infrastructure projects not suitable for Agile
Scope not negotiable due to “Like-for-Like” expectations
Hard project deadlines
Foundational code doesn’t lend itself to stakeholder-prioritized iteration
Stakeholders don’t value it [“where is the sizzle?”]
Can’t ship with just the foundation
Can’t build a nuclear submarine in an agile fashion – the bulkheads won’t be water tight.