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Are you Ready for Agile – Agile Relevance and Readiness Speaker: Dennis L. Baldwin Company: Experis Website: www.linkedin.com/pub/dennis-baldwin/0/806/66a/ Edit

Welcome to the PMI Houston Conference & Expo and Annual Job Fair 2014

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WHY AGILE?

Reduce Cost.

Increase Quality.

Improve IT and Business Collaboration.

Reduce Idea to Implementation Timeframe.

AGILE MYTHS

Agile is a “one size fits all” solution.

Agile projects do not need to be planned.

Agile allows you to develop code sooner.

Agile does not require documentation.

Agile projects don’t need a Project Manager.

Real Business Quotes…..

“After IT can make projects go quicker, cost less money and

have better quality, we’ll join the Agile bandwagon….”

Corporate CFO

“I just sent my entire staff to Scrum Master certification

training….we’re now Agile….”

Corporate CIO

“Mariam’s husband just finished a project as a Scrum Master.

He’s going to make us Agile. Oh, his rates are cheap and he’s a

great golfer, too!!....”

PMO Director

“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Mark Twain

IS AGILE RELEVANT?

Why are you moving to Agile?

What are your realistic expectations for Agile?

How will you define success for using Agile?

The questions you should be able to answer before embracing Agile…

Why are you moving to Agile?

Improve the Ability to Adapt Businesses need to be able to adjust their aim as project needs change

Obtain Benefits Sooner IT organizations need to deliver while the need still exists

• Satisfy customers with early and often delivery

• Understand that project discoveries (i.e. change) will not be eliminated with extensive upfront planning

• Remove communication waste and misunderstandings

• Pursue continuous improvement

• Deliver code that is extensible

• Manage and track delivery metrics, but mainly focusing on how much software is complete for project status

What are your realistic expectations for Agile?

For best results, Executives need to:

• Prioritize the projects

• Limit how many projects the team works on concurrently

• Ensure organization support

What are your realistic expectations for Agile?

Courtesy VersionOne

• Metrics on Agile are of marginal value • Difficult to compare Agile to Waterfall • Measure based on organizational KPIs

How will you define success for using Agile?

ARE YOU READY TO ADOPT AGILE?

Effective Steps for Agile Adoption

1. Understand your current state

2. Assess your potential

3. Design your framework

4. Pilot your framework

5. Review the output

6. Determine how/if to scale & sustain

Understand Your Current State

• Interviews • Surveys • Review what you

currently do

Summarize your findings and review them • What things do you keep • The areas with the biggest

opportunity • The biggest risks • The practices you think you

are ready for • Practices that would be good

for you down the road • Reach an agreement and

outline a design

Understand Your Current State

Document Existing Agile Practices

Understand Your Current State

Assess your Potential

Leverage what you already know • Which practices are easy to roll out?

• Which ones are easy to roll out and provide high value?

• Which ones can be used stand alone?

• Which practices tie most directly to business goals?

Assess your Potential

Valuable Current

Practices Practices

Within Capabilities

Low Resistance, High Value

Compliance Requirements

Design Your Framework

Pick Practices that are Within Your Capabilities and Provide High Value

4.4 Story Point Estimation 4.5 Requirements Prioritization 4.6 Requirements Modeling 4.7 Interaction Flows 4.8 Wireframes for Entire Project 4.9 UI Designs for Next Sprint 4.10 User Research Plan 4.11 Test Strategy 4.12 Architectural Spikes/ Spike Solutions 4.13 Gold Standard Stories Sprint Planning 5.1 Story Design and JAD Sessions 5.2 Story Acceptance Criteria 5.3 Definition of “Complete” by User Story 5.4 Task Identification 5.5 Task Estimates 5.6 Burn Down Reports 5.7 Task Dependencies 5.8 Team Availability 5.9 Build Schedule Construction Sprint 6.1 Unit Tests 6.2 Functional Test Cases

Design Your Framework

Design Your Framework

Condition XP Scrum Lean FDD AUP Crystal DSDM

Small Team √ √ √ X X - √

Highly Volatile Requirements

√ √ √ √ - - X

Distributed Teams

X √ √ √ √ X X

High Ceremony Culture

X X - - √ - √

High Criticality Systems

X - - - - √ X

Multiple Customers / Stakeholders

X √ √ - - - X

Rod Coffin and Derek Lane, 2006

(√) Favor (X) Discourage (-) Neutral

Pick a lifecycle to Pilot

Train Executives – How they set up the teams – Socializing agile – Tying agile support to manager

goals Train Managers

– Driving agile in your area – Your critical mentoring role – Rewarding agile support

Train the Business – Backlog fundamentals – Functional Prioritization

Train the Team – Agile fundamentals – Pilot Practices

Pilot your Framework

• Leverage SME training/coaching

• Look for items missed during the current state assessment

• Look for items that have been misunderstood during training

Pilot your Framework

Review Pilot Findings • 1st Pilot is slow • A lot of stops for “re-

training” • Some practices work better

than others • Integration issues identified

Pilot your Framework

• Grow the coaching skills in the company

• Get employees to seminars, workshops, conferences

• Have each manager establish an Agile roadmap for their area

• Have Executives communicate about Agile often

Determine how/if to Scale & Sustain

Other Thoughts on Agile

• Process Springboards

• Agile Tools

• Agile Trends

• Sample Case Study

Process centric Springboards - For companies who are averse to customization, you can:

Roll Out Pure Scrum •Most Scrum practices are level 1

•Easy to build on

•Numerous Resources

Roll Out Lean / Kanban

•You don’t have to do sprints

•Expose all of your work

•Follow the lean principles and examine your process for non-value add steps

o Waste – Often due to context switching o Quality Issues o Bottlenecks

•Switch to more Agile on your own schedule

Thoughts on Tools

• Pilot without tools

• Develop an effective process, then choose a tool that will work

• Main reasons for using tools: - No team rooms - Distributed development - Portfolio management - Gather team wide metrics - ALM goals

• The most effective and collaborative teams manage their projects with cards on a wall (even when using tools)

A Few Current Trends in Agile

• TDD & BDD – More coding, but better quality – Increased team collaboration

• Pair Programming – Improved design quality – Reduced defects

• Lean/UX – Lean User Experience (team design

collaboration) • Complete offshore distributed teams

– Gauge velocity based on team contribution versus team role(s)

Case Study Organization

• Fortune 100 ecommerce Company • Using a waterfall lifecycle • Competitive business environment • Main goal of projects is to not get blamed • Formal signoff on requirements and

estimates • Average time spent on documentation and

signoffs – 3 months, projects – 8 months • Tried Agile 3 years ago and failed • Team members leery of Agile

Assessment • Interviewed 40 employees, followed flows • Reviewed findings with management • Suggested an initial Agile lifecycle that

matched business model and team maturity

Agile – Pilot Results

The Plan • Created an Agile Core Team within the company • Reviewed and refined suggested lifecycle with core team • Identified 3 projects to pilot Agile on • Trained pilot teams on the custom Agile lifecycle • Coached teams through pilots • Provided a contract Scrum Master to one pilot team

The Results • Average project time down to 4 months • Project managers became Agile project managers • Team collaboration up 60 % per surveys • Product managers report better flexibility in dealing with

business environment changes mid-project • First delivery usually within 2 months (vs. 8 months) • “Us vs. Them” feelings subsided • Business more confident in projects

Agile – Post Pilot Results

After the 3 pilots • Took Agile across the enterprise (16 teams) • Evaluated Agile tools for 3 months and helped the

company make a selection • Added Agile to the portfolio management process • Scaled Agile to offshore teams in India and China • Attacked lifecycle constraints outside of the Agile

teams: - Time needed to provision environments - Time needed for integration and release - A model for production support

• Modified the Agile lifecycle to support localization and international applications

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Q & A

? • Please step up to the floor microphone to ask a question

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Contact Information • Speaker: Dennis L. Baldwin • Company: Experis • Website: www.linkedin.com/pub/dennis-baldwin/0/806/66a/ • Phone: 214.202.9363 • E-mail: dennis.baldwin@experis.com

Thank You

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