Agile in Real Life

AGENDA

• Fit Agile to what you do• Agile in a nutshell• Scrum vs Waterfall• Incremental vs Iterative Development• Adopting Scrum• Problems in real world

FIT AGILE TO WHAT YOU DO

• What makes Agile work?• Greenfield Development• Customer/Product Owner always available• Executive Buy-in

AGILE IN A NUTSHELL

• Agile is an approach• Scrum is an implementation• Agile ~ Scrum

“If you boil agile down to its minimum, you pretty much get scrum.”

-Alistair Cockburn

SCRUM VS WATERFALL

• Waterfall is a defined process– The same inputs and processes

always yield the same outputs

• Scrum is an empirical process– Gather experience and adopt

accordingly

INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT

• Product is delivered in small chunks

• Highest priority features first

• Features are complete at delivery

INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT

ITERATIVE DEVELOPMENT

• Skeleton product delivered first

• Successive releases refine the product

• Incorporates customer feedback throughout delivery

ITERATIVE DEVELOPMENT

ADAPTING SCRUM

THE STRUGGLE BEGINS

• Absentee Product Owner • Meeting existing hard

deadlines • Drowning in technical debt

WHAT IS A PRODUCT OWNER?

• Provides vision and boundaries

• Customer facing• Provides feedback to the team

(Agile must be iterative)

PROBLEM: PRODUCT OWNER IS NOT AVAILABLE

• High ranking executive • Works remote• Refuses to participate

Symptoms:– Doesn't attend meetings– Only communicated by e-mails– Not engaged during demos

SOLUTION: PROXY PRODUCT OWNER

• Works with product owner to choose the right person

• Establish boundaries

Advantages:– Shares the customer’s perspective– Builds product owner skills in others

Disadvantages:– Proxy may not have the role power– Can lead to “tunnel-vision” backlogs

PROBLEM: PRODUCT OWNER FALLING BEHIND• Appears engaged• Attends meetings but

unprepared• Doesn’t respond in timely

manner

Symptoms:– Unable to answer questions from

the team– Backlog isn’t ready for planning

sessions– Stories are incomplete

SIREN SOLUTION: MULTIPLE PRODUCT OWNERS

• No unified vision for the product

• No clear authority for the team

SOLUTION: SHARE PRODUCT OWNER’S RESPONSIBILITIES

• Scrum master helps with backlog grooming• Developers with story writing• Testers help with defining the acceptance criteria

Advantages:– Spreads product knowledge across the team– Builds product owner skills in others– Product owner is no longer a single point of failure

Disadvantages:– Difficult to coordinate – Beware of product owner becoming just a reviewer – Will impact the workload of the team members

PROBLEM: SCRUM MASTER IS PRODUCT OWNER

• One person tries to serve both scrum master and product owner roles

• May work, but success is rare

Symptoms:– Team doesn't get customer feedback– Appears to be doing low value work– Isn’t working towards a unified vision– Scrum process suffers

SIREN SOLUTIONS

Solutions 1: Assign a product owner– If a product owner is available this

wouldn't have occurred

Solution 2: Redistribute Product owner’s work– Team still lacks long term vision for the

product– An unwanted product is delivered very

efficiently

SOLUTION: COACH UP A NEW SCRUM MASTER

• Allows current scrum master to focus on product ownership

• Enables current scrum master to think long term

• Opportunity to grow a new scrum master within the team

MEETING EXISTING HARD DEADLINES

“This agile thing is great…..but we really need to meet this

deadline”

“Agile does not work with deadlines”

TRIPLE CONSTRAINTS

MEETING A HARD DEADLINE

• Often more interested in deadlines than feature sets

• Launch planning tend to center around dates

• Dates create flexibility with features

PUT STORIES TO FIT IN THE RELEASE

Important:• All stories need to be estimated• Know points completed per sprint (velocity)• Know sprints left in the release

• Points completed per sprint = 10• Sprints remaining in the release = 3• Remaining capacity = 30

SLICING STORIES TO FIT THE RELEASE

• Add more high priority stories per release

• Better customer feedback• Optimizes the work of the team

SLICING STORIES TO FIT THE RELEASE

PLANNING MULTIPLE RELEASE

• Revisit future plans often• Be flexible with priorities• Keep in mind that plans become

more fragile when the time horizon increases

ADJUSTING DATES TO FIT FEATURES

60 points of work20 points per sprint 3 sprints remaining

30 points of work15 points per sprint 2 sprints remaining

WORKING WITHOUT DEADLINES

• Deadlines force prioritization• Delayed time to market• Lost feedback opportunities

Q&A

Thank you!