Agile Development

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Agile Development

• ACS
• Melbourne, 2006
• Martin Bauer - Managing Director
• www.designit.com.au

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Contents

• What is Agile?
• Agile Processes
• Agile Practices

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Agile

• The definition of agile is
• the ability to move quickly and easily

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Background

• 84 of projects fail (Standish report 1994)
• Emergence of light weight methodologies
• Coming together of minds in Snowbird 2001
• Kent Beck, Jim Highsmith, Alistair Cockburn,
  Martin Fowler, Ron Jeffries, Ward Cunningham, Ken
  Schwaber...etc
• Drafting of the Agile Manifesto

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Agile Manifesto

• 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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Agile Methodologies

• XP
• Scrum
• FDD

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XP

• A discipline of software development based on
  values of simplicity, communication, feedback,
  and courage.
• It works by bringing the whole team together in
  the presence of simple practices, with enough
  feedback to enable the team to see where they are
  and to tune the practices to their unique
  situation.

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XP

• An attempt to reconcile humanity and productivity
  
• A mechanism for social change
• A path to improvement
• A style of development
• A software development discipline

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XP Values

• Communication
• Simplicity
• Feedback
• Courage
• Respect

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XP
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Scrum

• A wrapper for existing engineering practices.
• A team-based approach to iteratively,
  incrementally develop systems and products when
  requirements are rapidly changing
• A process that controls the chaos of conflicting
  interests and needs.
• A way to improve communications and maximize
  co-operation.
• A way to detect and cause the removal of anything
  that gets in the way of developing and delivering
  products.

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Scrum
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FDD

• Feature Driven Development
• Developed from the field
• Invented by Jeff Deluca (melbourne based)
• Objective is to repeatedly deliver on budget, on
  time with agreed functionality
• 5 clear processes

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FDD
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Agile Practices

• Project objectives
• Client Interaction
• Team Dynamics
• Open Management
• Staged Approach
• Progress Reports

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Project Objectives

• Not a business case
• Not comprehensive requirements
• Not complete documentation
• A clear, concise and measureable statement of the
  business outcomes the project is supposed to
  achieve.

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Grand Prix Corporation

• Increase ticket sales
• Provide easy access to event information
• Market the event

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Client Interaction

• Avoid the US vs. THEM syndrome
• Build rapport
• Make them a part of the team
• eg. AGPC

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Grand Prix Corporation
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Open Management

• No secrets!!!!
• Central repository for all information
• Accessible to all team members (including the
  client naturally!)
• Publish news regularly, publish weekly progress
  reports

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Team Dynamics

• Talk to everyone EVERYDAY
• Another obvious one be clear on roles
  responsibilities
• Make sure people know what the priorities are
  each week.

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Staged Approach

• Get a holistic view
• Get the wishlist
• Cost
• Catch client when they faint
• Suggest staged approach

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Progress Reports

• Produced weekly
• Primary purpose is to enforce regular
  communication
• Secondary purpose is protection

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Progress Reports

• Achievements
• Dependencies
• Assumptions
• Issues
• Resolutions

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Progress Reports
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Achievements

• Simple what have we achieved in the last week
• If nothing why not
• Forces review, avoids slippage

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Dependencies

• Are we waiting on anything?
• If so what?
• Whos responsible?
• Eg.
• Waiting on design approval
• waiting on supplier listing

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Assumptions

• The cause of many problems
• Always EXPLICITLY state assumptions
• Non confrontational way to raise issues
• Eg. I assume that means well have to format the
  content by hand

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Issues Risks

• Raise any problems that have occurred during
  production
• Raise any new risks that have surfaced
• Update any existing risks that have changed

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Resolutions

• State details of how issues are resolved
• State details of any problems fixed
• Useful as a historical reference

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Sample Progress Report

• Achievements 
• Addition of GC specific Admin interface
• CG Approval process
• Homepage design applied
• Wish lifecycle complete
• Wish reporting complete
• Assumptions
• Dont need to support IE 5.0
• Dependencies
• Design sign off required by 15th Oct to meet 31st
  Oct release date
• Issues Risks
• Design ConceptsFurther revision required.
• Community SignupAs a part of initial
  registration, need to ensure we collect,
  confirmation of DGR status, organisation name,
  location (NSW Vic only)
• Resolutions
• Resolve WishNo need for the text field "reason
  for wish being resolved" - this will come out of
  the reports each party has to fill out.

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Wrap Up

• Agile Development means
• being able to move quickly and easily
• everyone is on the same page
• everyone is working together
• there is openness, honest and trust
• there is realism about what can be done
• Agile Development means producing results!

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Thats All Folks!

• Questions?
• Email me martin_at_designit.com.au