moving gradually to agile development by kavita gupta

© Copyright GlobalLogic 2009 1

Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.

Moving Gradually

Towards

Agile

Presented BY:

Kavita [email protected] / [email protected]

Mobile:+91-9971770228


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Speaker Profile : Kavita Gupta

Kavita Gupta is an Agile coach at GlobalLogic where she helps large and distributed project teams to transition to agile ways of project planning and execution. She does process assessments and advisory for organizations and conducts agile workshops. Kavita has been working in agile methodologies for last 7 years in various roles and has also worked with ThoughtWorks for 5 years. This has given her a good understanding of various challenges of working in agile environment and ways to manage the same.


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Agenda

• What is the GOAL for Agile Adoption ?• Why Gradual Transition to Agile ?• Step by Step Approach for moving towards Agile• Soft Launch

– Phase1: Pre-requisites– Phase 2: Team Setup & Release Planning – Phase 3: Time boxed 2 week iterations aimed at increasing quality

• Preparation : Before Moving to Hard Launch….• Hard Launch

– Phase 4: Increase Team Ownership & Collaboration – Phase 5: Improve Engineering Practices to Increase Quality – Phase 6: Strengthen your Agile Environment

• Keep doing Reality Check in Between!


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Agile Adoption Goal

What is the GOAL for

Agile Adoption ?

Increasing Business Benefits by Adopting Agile?

Agile Adoption / Compliance?

OR


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Agile Adoption as Goal

•Adoption of Agile practices = COST + TIME for the team & client •This is usually called by teams as Hybrid Methodology ( X% Agile )•It is suppose to mean that we are transitioning to Agile gradually!


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.What should be the Goal?

Goal: “ Get Business

Benefits using Agile”

You may adopt 50 / 60% of its practices to X degree in few months timeframe

But yet there are limited business benefits seen by the client or the team…..and so it stops there!

Goal: “Agile Adoption / Compliance”

Measurable benefits grow with time meaning you are getting better at Agile.

Only then, we will be encouraged as a team and client to go agile !

Follow Agile to build better software


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Understanding Business Benefits – make them measurable!

Some of the business benefits you can achieve being Agile as the means


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Why should we move towards agile gradually?

Transition to Agile Gradually

•Sounds sensible!•Looks like only if you do everything you will see business benefits!•BUT•Agile methodology has many practices and when we try to adopt everything together, being Agile will in itself become the GOAL

Adopt Agile Big Bang

•Demonstrate increased business benefits with time•Let us tackle various transition related issues one at a time and not all together•Commitment from stakeholders increases over time when they see benefits•Limited investment of cost and time•Get started with current level of team expertise in agile and build it over a period of time


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Gradually Moving to Agile

Apr 10, 2023

Soft Launch

•Stakeholders soft Buy-in

•Governance Model

Hard Launch

•Team Structure

•Trainings

•Tracking tool

•Release Planning

•Req. analysis for 1st iteration.

•Requirements tracking on board

•Prioritization

•Acceptance scenarios

•Early Test builds

•Parallel Dev QA

•Product demo

•Defect first approach

•Customer test builds

•Determine Velocity

•Team restructuring

•Daily Standup

•Burn down ch

•Auto build

•Assign work themselves

•Retrospectives

•Daily builds

•Unit Testing

•Test Automation

•Smoke tests with build

•Unit tests against build

•TDD

•Parallel test automation

•Create good user stories

•……..

• Start from soft Buy in and then Show Business Benefits and get Stakeholder Hard Buy-in

Pre -requisites

Team Setup & Release Planning

Short Release: Time Boxed

Iterations with high quality

Team Ownership & Collaboratio

n

Engineering

Practices to inc. quality

Strengthen Practices

• Once Hard Buy in Move Towards agile project management completely and finer Points of Agile


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase1: Pre-requisites

Buy in from stakeholders:

Governance Model:


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase 2: Team Setup & Release Planning (2-4 weeks)

1. Structure team:1. Size not more than 10 = 4-6 devs+1-2 Bas+1 Manager+2-3 QAs2. Team is based on functional area and not technical layer3. Co-located4. Possibly start with 1 team and then scale up

2. Initial Agile Session for the team3. Identify the project management and tracking tool (if required)4. Release Planning: client prioritizes requirements and team plans for 2 week sprints:

1. Identify the list of requirements with your client2. Ask your client to prioritize the requirements3. Break them into small tasks4. Estimate to determine release date and what can be pulled into release

5. Analysis of requirements for next 2-3 weeks development6. Put the requirements for 1st iteration on a board or software to track


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase 3: Time boxed 2 week iterations aimed at increasing quality (4-5 iterations of 2 weeks each)

BENEFITS:•Customer understands his role in prioritization•QA – BA- Dev collaboration•Major defects closed during development itself•QA starts raising defects during 2nd week itself

BENEFITS:•Increased and early feedback•Greater customer interaction•Stable product with lesser open defects

BENEFITS:•Velocity to offer predictability


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Preparation : Before Moving to Hard Launch….

Governance Model:

Get Hard Buy in of Stakeholders for Agile as Project Methodology

Plan for Next Release / Phase/ Hard Launch


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase 4: Increase team ownership & collaboration (2-3 Iterations)

Co Located Team

Cross Functional

Team

Daily Stand-up Meetings

Release Burn Down Charts

Automated Build

Framework

Self Assignment of

Work

Introduce Point Based Estimations

Retrospective Meetings

•Issues within team that hamper productivity get resolved•Improved productivity•Team ownership and collaboration increases•Focus on areas of improvements•Self Managed Team•Introduction to finer points of Agile in its core values

Benefits


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase 5: Improve engineering practices to increase quality (2-4 Iterations)

Day end stable build discipline:•Continuous build framework is used•Build cop role

Unit tests written as part of development

Test Automation Strategy if not already in place

Automated regression/ smoke tests integrated with build

Unit tests run against the build

Bene

fits

•Lesser defects created as part of development

•More robust and maintainable code base

•Stable product build always

•Higher quality

•Regression cycle shortened


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Phase 6: Strengthen your Agile Environment

• Test Driven Development

• Functional Test Automation…Automated Regression

• Ensure structured small User Stories as the form of documentation of requirements with Acceptance Scenarios

• Domain Driven Design

Look for areas where you need to improve Look for new ideas/ practices which can be implementedStrengthen your engineering practicesTrainings in identified areasRoll out Agile in other projects


Connect. Collaborate. Innovate.Keep doing Reality Check in Between!

• Ask the team: What has changed for you since agile adoption?• +ve responses:

– Our plans are realistic – We are closing defects every iteration– We are planning based on Velocity

• -ve responses:– We are only doing more meetings like stand ups, IPMS and retros of no value add– We have CIF but don’t have a stable build – Our client has not seen the product and has never given feedback– We don’t know our Velocity



Q&A Time

Contact:Kavita Gupta

[email protected] / [email protected]:+91-9971770228



Thanks for your time

moving gradually to agile development by kavita gupta

Technology