dcbadd2015 public sector agile
TRANSCRIPT
Public Sector Agile,
BI and the BA (You)
October 2nd, 2015
Roland Cuellar
Clayton Dean
Bios
Roland Cuellar (‘kway-are’)
• Business Process and Strategy
Consultant, NTT
• Agile consulting for about 10 years
• CSM, CSPO, CSP, LSS Green Belt
• Computer Science and MBA
• Cycling, car racing, and generally
“going fast”
Clayton Dean• Managing Direct, Piper Consulting
Group
• Practicing Agile-ist/XP for over 12
years
• Experienced CSM and CSPO, but also
consulting as a BA at clients
• CBAP, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSP, CSD
• MBA & Masters in IT help bridge the
‘chasm’ between IT & Business
• Soccer fanatic and avid cyclist
So… Why are we HERE?
Agile means you don’t need Business Analysts!
A Typical BA’s Situation
• Clients expect instant results…..
…in spite of years of neglect
• Overly complex systems grown by rock-pile, serving no single purpose, with no identifiable business owner
• Lack of technical ownership
• Lack of metrics
• Organizations built to
operate, but not learn
Common Agile BA Challenges
• Eliciting Requirements
• Dealing with Complexity
• Release Strategies
• Functional Ownership
• Championing the needed Changes
• Your Issues?
Mechanizing Requirements
Lack of Requirements Process
• In waterfall, all of the requirements are delivered at once so there isn’t as much focus on iterations.– Emphasis is on getting to the gate, not having quality or a
rapid, repeatable process
• But in agile, you need to deliver a frequent, steady stream of Dev-ready requirements …– When are requirements done? When they are actionable!
• This requires some sort of defined process by which ideas and desires get turned into dev-ready stories
Agile Requirements Process
• Apply same agile development concept to
your requirements process
• Define a workflow and track the flow of
requirements
• Prioritize requirements and get them to done
Agile Requirements Process
Boiling the Ocean:
Decomposing Complexity
Modeling Workflows• Many of our clients systems have complex work-
flows built over years
– It can be challenging to ‘chunk’ them down into bites
– Lack of consensus on steps/process
– Lack of ownership
• User-stories alone do not capture “flow” very
well
• Need additional tools to show how stories relate
to workflows
Modeling Workflows
• Major workflow steps /epics along the top
• Related stories under each workflow step
Modeling Workflows
Release Strategies
Release Strategy
• In waterfall, we often have single large
releases of everything. Sometimes years after
we started
• In Agile, we have the ability to release more
frequently
• But this requires that we purposely design
meaningful releases that work across the
workflow
Release Strategy• Start with simple functionality across the
entire workflow
• Add more capabilities with each release
Release Strategy
Product Roadmapping is Now Important
1. New requests come in all the
time
2. Difficult to make commitments of
scope
3. So, release on a cadence …
monthly, quarterly, etc
4. Set release goals and set timing
5. Float the scope, hit the dates
6. Interleave new functionality and
maintenance
• Monthly releases
• Some are maintenance (green), some are new dev (blue)
• Releases have high level goals
Ways to assist your CSPO
• Many CSPOs are new; understand
functionality but not IT
• Many are new to agile and don’t have
experience thinking about how to chunk up
the work
• Help your CSPO develop their IT skills
• Focus on coherent, overall, Release Strategy
Leading the Horse to Water:
Operationalizing your Client
Assess What They Do Well
• Chances are your client has a BI tool or tools that capture data, transform data and report out.
• Native at all clients is expertise. Perhaps capturing data and producing reports
• Repurposing the systems: You can harness this to help push entities to learning systems.
• The first step: “You have
to measure in order to
improve”
Repurposing Business Intelligence
• Most BI systems are a treasure trove of
operational details:
– Typical Error rates
– Number of Errors by Geographic Unit
• These become prioritized action plans:
– What to fix first
– What to train
– Which areas are doing it well – and should be emulated
– Cycle Times
Simple ExampleError Code Description Count Percent
16001 The Case is a duplicate of a record already in the Data Mart. No further action required. 316,748
17005
A duplicate Filing was received as part of a Terminated Record (to what was already Filed in the Database)
and so was not added. There is no further action required 204,115
17004
A Filing was received on a Terminated Record. It was not added to the Database. Please submit updated
Termination information, or reopen the case. 188,006
10016 Judgment For code not valid. 3,710 19.29%
10015 Filing Magistrate code not valid. 3,672 19.10%
17002
The Case being opened must have a lower sequence in the Origin field (e.g., 4 before A, before B, before C,
before D, before E, etc.). 3,134 16.30%
17001 The case attempting to be reopened has not been terminated. 2,635 13.70%
10018 Procedural progress code not valid. 1,544 8.03%
10006 Invalid filing Judge code 1,281 6.66%
10031 The Nature of Suit is not within valid date parameters, please update the NoS code to a valid value. 1,079 5.61%
18005 Reopen filing date must be greater than or equal to the termination date of the previous filing. 765 3.98%
10023 Termination Magistrate code not valid. 452 2.35%
10002 Invalid county code 208 1.08%
10019 Termination judge code not valid. 135 0.70%
9002 Invalid Jurisdiction / Nature of Suit combination 126 0.66%
10009
The reportable NOS and Jurisdiction combination is not valid for the filing date associated with the case.
Refer to Appendix A for valid combinations. 120 0.62%
10010 Invalid origin code. Origin code must be 1,2,3,4,5,6 ,or A-E. 88 0.46%
11003 Nature of suit code 860 must have an origin code of A, B, C, D, E, 3, or 4. 63 0.33%
10001 Invalid District and Office Code Combinations 33 0.17%
1017 Judgment For code value is missing. 26 0.14%
10005 Invalid Fee Status 26 0.14%
12002 Invalid termination arbitration code in term arb code field. Valid values are M, V, E or spaces. 26 0.14%
10011 Pro se must be 0,1,2 or 3. 26 0.14%
8001 Amount Received must be greater than or equal to 0 if the nature of judgment code is 1 or 2. 25 0.13%
10014 Disposition code not valid. 22 0.11%
11002 Nature of suit code 860 is only valid if the filing date is less than 05/1987. 11 0.06%
18003 Filing date must be less than or equal to the current date. 7 0.04%
12001 Invalid filing arbitration code in filing arb code field. Valid values are Y, V, M, E or spaces. 6 0.03%
14002 Civil case key invalid office. 6 0.03%
10004 Invalid defendant diversity code when jurisdiction is 4. 2 0.01%
10027 Transfer origin code not valid. 2 0.01%
19,230
Functional Ownership
and Metrics
Establishing Metrics
• Need to work with Business Owners on a daily
basis:
– If Metrics aren’t used in a daily/weekly meetings,
statuses, discussions…. Then they aren’t metrics
– Staff tends to respond to what they are asked and
what is tracked
Example: Type of Request
What’s wrong with these numbers?
CCB Priority Count Ave Days % of Total
1-Emergency 68 16 17.6%
2-Mandated 17 34 4.4%
3-High 160 66 41.5%
4-Medium 82 76 21.2%
5-Low 59 79 15.3%
Grand Total 386 60 1
• 17% of things can’t be an Emergency
• Over 60% of things are High/Mandate/ERs
• Is 386 changes over a given period acceptable?
Take-aways
• “Wants” are not dev-ready requirements, you must have a process for maturing them
• Develop release strategies that deliver value early and often and allow incremental learning
• You need more than just user-stories
• Existing systems are a trove of data and potential metrics to start the conversation(s)
• Metrics are only effective if used every day