the long march

THE LONG MARCHAgile in large organizations - after 1 year

Problems, sharing of misery, and some possible solutions

JOE LITTLE

• CST (certified Scrum trainer).

• MBA, business value focus

• 20+ years experience in projects, including as PM

• Have trained lean-agile-scrum for 10 years. US, Canada, Romania, France, UK, Peru, Argentina, etc.

ASSUMPTION

• Every knows agile a decent amount (maybe not accurate)

• We are going to focus on ‘1 year out’…what do we do now?

SITUATION - 1 YEAR

• You tried to implement Scrum, and got ScrumButt

• The culture has not changed enough

• You have some better results from most teams, but not as impressive as you had hoped

• The Dark Side is fighting back (it seems)

WHAT DO I WANT• The values and principles understood (by some)

• The basics of real teams, working on one release at a time

• The basics of Scrum, using it all, and somewhat effectively

• 100% improvement

• Started on other improvements

• The culture starting to change

CSM v9.5 © Jeff Sutherland 1993-2013

Agile Manifesto

www.agilemanifesto.org We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

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The Principles behind the Agile Manifesto - 1

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

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The Principles behind the Agile Manifesto - 2

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7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

10. Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

MORE IDEAS

• There are actually lots more ideas behind lean-agile-scrum. But we simplify.

REAL TEAM• A dedicated team

• A stable team

• A team with one mission

• A team that believes in the mission

• Not a dysfunctional team (team players that want to work together)

THIS REQUIRES…

• The org must prioritize and allow each team to do the next most important thing.

• Again, a team only works on one mission (project) at a time.

• A BIG problem now, I find.

THE BASICS OF SCRUM

• Scrum is really very simple

• Let’s review the basics

© Joe Little 2013

Scrum is a Simple Framework

Scrum

Meetings

Sprint Planning

Daily Scrum

Roles

Team

Product Owner

ScrumMasterArtifactsBurndown Charts

Sprint Backlog

Product Backlog

Sprint Review

Retro-spective

Imped List

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Working Product

WHAT ELSE?

• Not much else is required (lots possible)

• Agile Release Planning

• Continuous Release Plan Refactoring (my words)

AGILE RELEASE PLANNING• Bring Scrum Team & BSH together for 1 day

• Vision

• Build Product Backlog

• Estimate Business Value

• Estimate Effort

• Calculate ROI …(cont’d)

ARP - 2

• Consider Risks, Dependencies, Learning, MMFS and other

• Draw the Line (on releases)

• Calculate expected velocity

• Finalize the ‘today’ plan

RELEASE PLAN REFACTORING• Must have a concept of delivering faster

• Must include some reliability

• Must include the Pareto idea

• Must include the Ready-Ready idea

• Must be continuous…and that is Good.

KEY

• Identify good impediments to work on

• Devote energy to ‘sharpening the saw’ (14%)

• Fix one impediment each sprint

• Double the velocity (without more hours)

IN ADDITION…

• Each team really needs to do much more than Scrum to be effective…and these things too need to be improved…

CHANGE

• Change is easy…in part.

• “People are remarkably good at doing what they want to do.” (c) Joe Little

• Real, lasting change is hard

DRUCKER

SOLUTIONS FOR CHANGE

1. Fearless Change - Manns/Rising

2. Leading Change - John Kotter

3. Open Agile Adoption - Dan Mezick

4. Lots of others…

KOTTER’S 8 STEPS

OPEN AGILE ADOPTION

SIMPLE TO COMPLEX• Yikes!

• We have problems with all the above, and…

• We don’t keep it simple

• Esp: We add ‘scaling’

• And, we try to change too fast

WHAT IS SCALING?

• Multiple teams working together on one product.

• Too many people.

• Communication across many people is hard!! (Duh!)

• Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!!!

WHAT TO DO?

• Identify biggest problems

• Implement one pattern at a time; get it to work

• Only solve your biggest problems

• Focus on implementation issues… get each pattern to work.

METRICS

• We need evidence that ‘agile’ has been successful.

• We need to ‘tell the story…’ much better.

• Metrics help make the story more believable.

• BV delivered, velocity, higher quality, faster releases…and more.

YOUR QUESTIONS

IF WE CAN HELP…

• Joseph Little

• 917-887-1669

• Courses: $100 off if member of PMI Greenville

• [email protected]

the long march

Technology