Agile-From Awareness To Implementation

Presenter Name: Komudi Bahal

Contents• Agile Awareness

– About Scrum– Scrum Team /Roles– Adoption Rate of different flavors of Agile Methodologies– Agile Development Rhythms(Checklist)

• Implementation Case Study

Scrum Process Overview

• Scrum Skeleton

About Scrum

Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile development framework for managing software projects and product or application development. Scrum includes some of the following key Agile practices:• Self directed and self organizing teams • No external addition of work to an iteration, once chosen • Daily stand up meetings, with special questions • 30 calendar day iterations • Demo to external stakeholders at the end of each iteration • For each iteration, client-driven, adaptive planning

Agile Awareness-Scrum Team

•

5

Scrum-Master1

Product Owner1

•Defines functionality based on stakeholder input• Prioritizes functionality based on market value• Responsible for the ROI• Accepts or rejects final results• Adjusts functionality and priorities each Sprint as

needed

•Manages the Scrum process• Allows the team to self-organize• Ensures the team is fully

functional and has what it needs to succeed• Handles disruptions• Shields team from external

influences

Stakeholders• Customers• Sales•Marketing•Market experts• Visionaries

Software Development1

Quality Assurance (QA)1

User Experience Design (UX)

Tech Lead/ Architect

• Creates technical design, develops software, and tests code integrity

Confirms software functions as intended

Scrum Team Roles2

Business/ Product Analyst (BA/PA)

Acts an interface between business and development. This is role is typically filled by the Product Owner.

Defines technical direction, standards, shared application components for reuse, etc.

Designs the system from the customer’s point of view

Disruptions• Breakdown in Scrum process• Communication and cooperation

failures• Absenteeism at daily Scrum meeting•Members pulled in different

directions

Agile Development Rhythms

Strategy

Release

Iteration

Daily

Continuous

Releases beginwith a release planning meeting

Iteration Planning,Iteration Review and Retrospective

Daily 15 minutes stand up meeting

continuous, planning, collaboration, design, development, testing and integration

Begins with vision associated with a business need.

New Environment

Adoption Rate of different flavors of Agile Methodologies

Data taken from “Abrachan Pudusserry’s” Thought paper “Agile Implementation “

Cultural Aspects of moving towards Agile Implementation

While implementing Agile, one will have to unlearn many of the conventional management practices to accept the culture imbibed on the foundations agile values and principles.

Values• Commitment – Be willing to commit to a goal. Scrum provides people all the • authority they need to meet their commitments.• Focus – Do your job. Focus all of your efforts and skills on doing the work that • you have committed to doing. Don’t worry about anything else.• Openness – Keep everything about the project visible to every one • Respect – Individuals are shaped by their background, and their experiences. It is • important to respect the different people who comprise a team.• Courage – Have the courage to commit, to act, to be open, and to expect respect.

Key Agile Principles • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of • valuable software.• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness• change for the customer’s competitive advantage.• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, • with a preference to the shorter time scale.• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support • they need, and trust them to get the job done.• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a • development team is face-to-face conversation.• Working software is the primary measure of progress. • Agile processes promote sustainable development.

Challenges in Agile community

Agile Implementation Case Study

The Project background • The Existing Project in this case study is a Data warehouse project implemented using

Waterfall Methodology where the data used to come from the various upstream databases ,massaged within the Warehouse and moved to the corporate reporting teams to produce the desired output of Micro strategy reports.

• There were around 1000 business users using these Micro- strategy reports. This project was managed and owned by the Technology Warehouse team, with business users representing the clients. The overall team included data Architects, Tech Leads, Developers, Project Managers, Portfolio Leads , Reporting Team.

• Project Phases in the existing Waterfall Model :a. Project Initiation b. Pre- Development and Planning(PDP)c. Analyzed. Designe. Buildf. Testrollout/Release

Agile Implementation case StudyChallenges observed using existing Approach1. Frequent requirement changes by the business users .2. No extra funds available for the changes requests.3. Budget constraints and last minute funding cuts.Since Agile was new to the organization and business not completely aware , development team decided to do a POC(Proof of Concept) using Agile for Phase I requirements of the current project and based on the results implement Agile across all Phases.Actions/Benefits Observed as a result to implement the POC for Phase I using Agilea. 100% dedicated resources to the POC team . 1 Tech Lead , Data Architect, Project Manager,

Test Lead with product owner from business.b. Scheduled the Release Planning meeting with all the stakeholders to identify the

stories(define features of the Phase I) and assign them to the respective teams. The team then estimated the user stories (requirements) per iteration.

c. This helped the team break down user stories down to a 2 week iteration where the focus of delivering was a smaller section of user stories. Rather than entire project as compared to waterfall model.

d. Sprint Review meeting focused on any issues ,risks and on track schedule for that iteration. However during the first review meeting it was found that business changed the user story for the phase 1. This included the Reporting parameter change. In fact this change not only effected the Warehouse Technology team but also the downstream reporting team.

Agile Implementation case Study

Challenges observed during Agile Implementation• Since the warehouse team had the data coming from the upstream and going to the down stream

systems, Agile implementation was a challenge .• The Upstream and the Downstream teams were not implementing Agile hence delivery of the data

from the upstream team as per the iteration 1 schedule became an issue.• The downstream team was also not implementing the Agile hence output reporting schedule also was

a challenge• Since the POC was a success as it only required few data elements from upstream and downstream

systems, however implementation across teams for larger data set was an challenge. Mitigation Approach used• Team leads and Project Managers took self initiatives to introduce Agile benefits and principles

across different data streams.• This involved Directors, VP, Senior Leadership and Business Sponsor to be part of agile Awareness

initiatives across various Data warehouse teams. • Go ahead of senior leadership within IT and business was a critical step for Agile implementation

across various data streams.• Collaboration effort across teams to make the resources aware and hence implement Agile was a big

success.

Appendix/Scrum GlossaryProduct Backlog All Features of the Product

Release Backlog Subset of the Product Backlog, targeted at next product release

Sprint Backlog Tasks for the iteration. Typically 4-16 hrs.

Sprint Iteration of 30 days

Daily Scrum Meeting Daily Standup meeting

Team Introspection Reflect and improve upon learning

The Product Owner The product owner is responsible for representing the interests of every one with a stake in the project and it’sresulting system.

Teams Team is responsible for developing the functionality

Scrum Master Is the facilitator between the product owner and development team

Thank You