transitioning to agile webinar presentation

Copyright ThoughtWorks, 2009

Transitioning to Agile

Vivek Prahlad, ThoughtWorksvprahlad@thoughtworks.com

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Agile

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Agile• Before starting off a transition

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Agile• Before starting off a transition• Getting started with a transition

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Agile• Before starting off a transition• Getting started with a transition• What transitioning to agile means for

Agenda

• A brief introduction to Agile• Before starting off a transition• Getting started with a transition• What transitioning to agile means for

teams• Myths and Antipatterns

What is Agile?

Agile is a way of developingsoftware that's all about

acknowledging(and embracing) change

Incremental

Iterative

Adaptive

What is Agile?

• Incremental–Build a system gradually–Demonstrate progress

What is Agile?

• Iterative–Multiple releases (every month or so)–Iterations (usually one or two weeks)

What is Agile?

• Iterative–Multiple releases (every month or so)–Iterations (usually one or two weeks)

• Adaptive–Accommodate changes to goals–Incorporate feedback, lessons learned

The pillars of Agile

• Collaboration• Testing• Automation• Feedback

Agile teams

Working on a Agile team

• Representation across all roles–Developers, Analysts, Testers, Iteration /

Project Managers• Whole team part of iteration planning• Unit of work is the 'User Story'

– Includes acceptance criteria

Example

• As a customer, I'd like to pay for books with a credit card

• Acceptance tests–Check payments with Visa–Check payments with Discovery–Should not allow payments with invalid

card–Should inform about declined payments

Release planning

• Involves all stakeholders• Helps set goals for development• Typically 1-3 months horizon• Prototypes, R & D• Final output:

–Release plan (features, stories)–Estimates

What do iterations look like?

Analysis - 2 Analysis - 3

Development - 1 Development - 2

Testing - 1

Analysis - 4

Development - 3

Testing - 2

Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3

What do iterations look like?

Flavours of Agile

• Xtreme Programming (XP)• Scrum• Feature Driven Development• DSDM

XP practices

Starting off a transition

Food for thought

• Transitioning to Agile has consequences• Not a silver bullet• Not easy• Take the time to think through practices• And why they exist• Executive commitment is critical

Picking a project:

• Choose a significant project• Greenfield vs existing project

Picking a team:

• Full representation of all roles• Start small, grow incrementally

–Even for experienced agile teams• Critical to identify a customer• Colocated, if possible• Team needs to be involved in release

planning, introductory sessions

What transitioning to Agilemeans for teams

Agile for developers:

• Test Driven Development• Incremental design and Architecture• Refactoring• Continuous Integration• Craftsmanship• Discipline

Agile for architects:

• Everything we just talked about• No Big Design Up Front

Agile for testers:

• Early (and incremental) testing• Collaboration with development• Collaboration with analysts• Automate, automate, automate!

Agile for analysts:

• Getting user stories right• Story independence• Incrementally building features

Agile for managers:

• Facilitating vs. Controlling• Getting the team what they need• Removing roadblocks• Self organized teams

Agile for the team:

• Collaborative software development• Shared workspace• Shared responsibility for quality• Shared responsibility for meeting team

Cultural Issues

• Successful agile teams are self-organized• Team members choose tools, what they'll

be working on• Managers as facilitators vs directors• Close collaboration – too close for

comfort?

Getting started

• Starting with a retrospective• Release planning• Picking practices• Retrospectives

Starting with a retrospective

• Helps identify issues that need solving• Allows the team to prioritize issues that

need fixing• Can help choose the practices that will

address issues

Release Planning

• Involves the whole team• Helps evolve a shared understanding of

what the team is building• Recommend a short release plan

Picking practices

• Management and technical practices go hand in hand

• Cherry picking practices requires experience

• Practices are interdependent• Choose an iteration length• An experienced Agile coach can help

Picking practices

Workspaces

• The design of your workspace matters• Large tables more effective than cubicles• Informal communication requires close

proximity• Large monitors, two keyboards per

workstation can help Pair Programming

Quality and Testing

• Testing an integral part of development–Acceptance tests–Unit and Integration tests–Functional –Optional: Performance Tests

• Test early, Test often• Continuous Integration

–Fix the test vs. Raising a bug

The Cost of Change

Defect found during TDD

The Cost of Change

Defect found during continuous integration

The Cost of Change

Defect found during continuous integration

Defect found dueTo active stakeholder

participation

Visibility for stakeholders

• Release plan• Story wall• Agile Project Management tools can help

Retrospectives

• Helps bring out issues• Improvement, not assigning blame• Important to fix the top few major issues• Repeated at regular intervals• Can help improve processes, team

structure, productivity, etc• Recommend external facilitators

Tools for agility:

• Wikis can help enhance collaboration• Several agile project management tools

now available• Xunit tools• IDEs that support refactoring• Continuous Integration tools (like

CruiseControl)

Myths and Antipatterns

• Scrum equals Agile• No documentation• Cowboy coding• Don’t know what’s round the corner

Antipatterns

• Trying to force-fit Agile into CMM• Separate testing team• Too much scale• Using the wrong tools

Summary

• Transitioning to agile needs (a lot of) homework

• Need to know where you are...• ... and what you'd like to get to• Don't underestimate the cultural impact• Several new skills for everyone to learn• Start small, scale can wait• Iterate, tweak, improve

Questions?

vprahlad@thoughtworks.com

transitioning to agile webinar presentation

agile means

agile team representation

experienced agile coach

agile vivek prahlad

development collaboration

possible team

xp practices

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