Agile: What Is It, Why Use It

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L e a d i n g C h a n g e T h r o u g h C o l
l a b o r a t i o n
Agile What Is It, Why Use It
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L e a d i n g C h a n g e T h r o u g h C o
l l a b o r a t i o n
Pollyanna Pixton Founder, Accelinnova President,
Evolutionary Systems Director Institute of
Collaborative Leadership
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Agenda

• What is Agile
• How Agile Works
• Agile Methods
• Business Valuewith Agile
• Example

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Project Methods

• Waterfall
• Function Definition, Design, Build, Check

Functions
Design
Build

• New Methods
• Single Cycle Review and Adjust
• Spiral Multiple Cycles of Waterfall
• Agile Adapt As You Go Short Iterations

Check
Done
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What is Agile?

• From recognition and acceptance of increasing
  levels of unpredictability in our turbulent
  economy
• A chaordic perspective
• Collaborative values and principles
• Barely sufficient methodology
• - Jim Highsmith

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What is Agile?

• A development process that conforms to the values
  and principles of the Agile Alliance(agileallianc
  e.org)
• Originally for software development

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Agile Manifesto

• While there is value in the items on the right we
  value the items on the left more.
• Individuals and interactions over processes and
  tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

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Agile Overview

• Agile
• Iterative and Incremental
• Light-Weight
• Meets Changing Needs of Stakeholders
• Highly Collaborative Involves Customers
• Minimizes Documentation
• Test First

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Agile Principles

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Light Weight

• Utilize only practices that make sense for the
  project and environment
• Barely sufficient artifacts, methodology, and
  documentation
• Appropriate vs Best Practices

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Practice Excellence

• Requires self discipline to improved quality
• Relies on the team to practice technical
  excellence instead of imposing discipline
• Adopt technical practices that support the other
  practices such as
• Continuous Integration
• Test Driven Development
• Refactoring

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Reflect and Adapt

• Learn from past to improve performance
• Retrospectives after each iteration
• Harness change for improved efficiency
• Multi-Horizon planning allows adaptation

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The Process Pendulum

Code and Fix
Waterfall
Agile
No Process
Prescriptive
Empirical

• Empirical
• Frequent inspection
• Collaboration
• Adaptive responses

• Prescriptive
• Defined set of steps to follow
• Plan the work, work the plan
• Plan is assumed to be correct

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How Does Agile Work?

• Requirements called features, defined using
  user storiesAs a _____ I want to_______
• Pick a project. Define the major features in
  terms of user stories.

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Agile Process

• Features listed in a backlog
• Backlog prioritized based on value
• Highest priorities estimated and grouped into an
  iteration, one-four weeks long
• At end of iteration, ask if enough value to go to
  market?
• Add any new features to backlog and reprioritize
  and select next iteration

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Project Methods

• Envision
• Iterate
• Plan
• Implement
• Done?
• Adapt
• Complete

Project Definition and Iterations
Planning
Review and Adjust
Implement
NO
Done?
YES
Completed Deliverables
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Agile Cycles

Iteration Planning
Vision
Iterations Plan
Iteration Plan
Review / Adapt
Planning
Develop
High Level Planning
Detailed Planning
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Agile Process

• Test cases are written first, before anything is
  developed
• Go/no-go decisions reached early and often

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Agile Methods
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Agile Methods

• eXtreme Programming, XP (Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries,
  Ward Cunningham)
• Scrum (Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, Mike
  Beedle)
• Feature Driven Development, FDD (Peter Coad, Jeff
  DeLuca)
• Crystal Methods (Alistair Cockburn)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method, DSDM (DSDM
  Consortium)
• Lean Development (Bob Charette, Mary and Tom
  Poppendieck)
• Kanban

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Agile Overview

• Agile projects succeed when the team gets the
  spirit of agility. Ron Jeffries,
  XP Thought Leader

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eXtreme Programming
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XP Values and Principles

• Communication
• Simplicity
• Feedback
• Courage
• Quality Work

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XP Practices

• The Planning Game
• Small Releases
• Metaphor
• Simple Design
• Refactoring
• Test-First Development

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XP Practices

• Pair Programming
• Collective Ownership
• Continuous Integration
• Sustainable Pace
• On Site Customer
• Coding Standards

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XP Roles

• The Customer
• Sets project goals and makes business decisions
• The Developer
• Turn customer stories into working code
• The Tracker
• Keeps track of any metrics used by team
• The Coach
• Guides and mentors team

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Scrum

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Scrum Roles

• Scrum Team
• Scrum Master
• Carries water and moves boulders
• Product Owner
• Responsible for maintaining product backlog

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Scrum Control Points

• Meetings
• Sprint Planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review(retrospectives)

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Feature Driven Development (FDD)
Model-driven short-iteration process that
consists of five basic activities
Build Feature List
Plan By Feature
Develop Model
Design by Feature
Build By Feature
Deploy
- Jeff deLuca, 1997
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FDD Focus

• (Object) Modeling centric
• Client centric
• Architecture centric
• Pragmatic
• Functional decomposition
• Subject Area
• Business Activity
• Business Activity Step

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FDD Roles

• Chief Programmers
• Team lead, mentor, developer
• Class owner
• Developer with responsibility for a class
• Feature teams
• Temporary groups of developers formed around
  classes

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Crystal Clear

• Frequent Delivery
• Reflective Improvement
• Osmotic Communication
• Personal Safety
• Focus
• Easy Access to Expert Users
• Automated Tests
• Configuration Management
• Frequent Integration

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Crystal Clear

• The team can reduce intermediate work products
  as it produces running code more frequently, as
  it uses richer communication channels between
  people.
• Every product is slightly different and evolves
  over time, so the methodology, the set of
  conventions the team adopts, must be tuned and
  evolve.
• - Alistair Cockburn

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Crystal Clear Roles

• Sponsor Allocates money for the project
• Expert User
• Lead Designer
• Lead Technical person, mentors less experienced
  team members
• Designer-Programmer
• Each person designs and programs

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DSDM

• Active user involvement
• Teams empowered to make decisions
• Frequent delivery of products
• Fitness for business purpose
• Iterative and incremental delivery
• All changes reversible
• Testing throughout lifecycle
• Collaboration with all stakeholders

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Agile Methods Focus

Methodology
DSDM
Project Management
Engineering
Scrum
Crystal
FDD
XP
Structure
DSDM
Structured
Unstructured
FDD
Crystal
Scrum
XP
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Lean Manufacturing

• Optimizing production through removal of waste
  and improving flow
• A process management philosophy based on Toyota
  Production System (TPS)
• Focus effort on producing value-added features
• Just in time delivery

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Lean Software Development

• Everything not adding value to customer is waste
  includes
• Unnecessary code and features
• Delay in development
• Unclear requirements
• Bureaucracy
• Slow internal communications
• By Mary and Tom Poppendieck

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Kanban
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Kanban

• Improves the throughput and reduces cycle times
• Delivers iterationless development
• Kanban limits create a pull system
• White board provides visualization of flow
  through to delivery

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Kanban

Kanban Limit regulates WIP at each stage in the
process
Pull
Flow from Engineering Ready to Release Ready
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Project Management

• Agile Project Management
• Following the values and principles of the
  Declaration of Interdependence (DOI)
• Written by the founders of the Agile Project
  Leadership Network (apln.org)

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Declaration of Interdependence

• Continuous flow of value
• Engage customers
• Create an environment where individuals can make
  a difference
• Expect uncertainty and manage for it
• Context specific strategies, processes, and
  practices
• Group accountability

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Why Use Agile
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Project Challenges
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Project Statistics

Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim
Johnson, CIO.com, How to Spot a Failing Project
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Project Statistics

• Improvements
• Due To Better
• Tools
• Project Managers
• Adaptive Methods
• Breaking projects into small chunks
• Delivering pieces faster for user feedback

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Features and Functions

Always or Often Used 20
Always 7
Often 13
Never Used 45
Sometimes 16
Rarely Used 19
Never or Rarely Used 64
Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim
Johnson, XP2002
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Failures

• Main Reasons For Project Failure
• Lack of end user involvement
• Poor requirements
• Unrealistic schedules
• Inadequate change control
• Lack of testing
• Inflexible processes

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Success Factors

• User involvement
• Management support
• Clear vision objectives
• Proper planning
• Realistic expectations
• Smaller milestones
• Competent staff
• Ownership

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Challenges

• The way you will thrive in this environment is
  by innovating innovating in technologies,
  innovating strategies, innovating business
  models.
• - IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano
  BusinessWeek,
  April 24, 2006

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Challenges

• Its no longer enough to respond to change
• today organizations must lead change
• or be left behind.
• - Pollyanna Pixton

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Challenges

• Deliver the right product
• Meet customers changing needs
• Deliver to rapidly moving market windows
• Innovate on both sides of your business model
• Get more done by doing less
• Lead in the marketplace

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Companies Must

• Deliver Business Value
• Increase Productivity
• Lead Change
• Find Solutions
• Innovate

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How Do We Deliver Business Value Using Agile?
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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
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Why do it?

• Leadership Influence

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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
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Purpose Based AlignmentEveryone inline with
company goals

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Strategy

• Traditional Strategic Planning Starts at the
  Top and Cascades Down
• Can be IncompleteFor Project teams and Daily
  Decisions

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Strategic Development

Mission
Vision
Values
Strategic
Strategic Intent Strategy Purpose
Long-Range Goals
SCO / 5Q
Annual Objectives
Action Plans (what, who, when)
Tactical
Individual Business Objectives
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Strategic Development

Mission
Vision
Values
Strategic Intent Strategy Purpose
Strategic
Long-Range Goals
Start Here
SCO / 5Q
Annual Objectives
Action Plans (what, who, when)
Tactical
Individual Business Objectives
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Purpose-Based Alignment

High
Innovate
Do We Take This On?
Market Differentiating
Achieve and Maintain Parity
Who Cares?
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Purpose-Based Alignment

High
Intellectual Capital
Partner
Market Differentiating
Dont Do More Than Others
Dont Do It
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Start Up

• Exercise Pick a project.

Pick a project.
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Purpose-Based Alignment

What is the purpose of your project?
High
Innovate
Do We Take This On?
Market Differentiating
Achieve and Maintain Parity
Who Cares?
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Strategy

• Decision Filters
• To make daily decisions
• Schedule projects
• Which features to develop

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Whats On Your Billboard?
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Strategy

• The Five Questions
• Whom do we serve and what do they want and need
  most?
• What do we provide to help them?
• What is the best way to provide this?
• How do we know we are succeeding?
• How should we organize to deliver?

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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
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Definitions
Business Value Models Get More Done by Doing Less
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Business Value Models

Purpose
Value Model
Benefits
Business Value
Considerations
- Kent McDonald
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Business Value Decision Models

Purpose

• What do we do?
• When do we do it?
• When do we decide?

Benefits
Considerations
- Kent McDonald
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Business Value Velocity

• BV Differences (use collaboration and planning
  cards)
• Recalcualte BV at the end of every iteration
• Calcualte the BV Velocity (BV2).
• Is each iteration giving you enough BV?
• When will you have enough BV to go to market?

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Real Options
- Chris Matts
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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
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Projects
Balancing Project Portfolios Doing Things Right

• Why Projects Are Different

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Project Differences

High
Bulls
Colts
Simple, young projects.
Agility to handle uncertainty
Process definition to cope with complexity
Need agility
Tight Teams
Skunks
Uncertainty
Cows
laissez faire
Complex, mature market
Dogs
Need defined interfaces
Dogs
Low
Low
High
Project Complexity
- Todd Little
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Partitioning

Colt Project
Bull Program
Dog Project
Cow Project
Remember Loose Coupling and Strong Cohesion
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Project Complexity

• Team size
• Mission criticality
• Team location
• Team capacity
• Domain knowledge gaps
• Dependencies

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Project Uncertainty

• Market Uncertainty
• Technical Uncertainty
• Project Duration
• Dependents

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Reduce Uncertainty or Complexity

Uncertainty Complexity

Opportunities to Reduce Uncertainty Use proven technologies Reduce project duration Opportunities to Reduce Complexity Collocate the team Break project into sub-projects
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Leadership Development

People
Business
Technology
Process
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Leadership Development
People Process Technology Business
Read Read Read Read
Read Read Write Write
Write Write Read Read
Delete Write Write Write

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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
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Project Management

• How Do We Deliver?

None of us are as smart as all of us. - Japanese
Proverb
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Leading Agile

• Collaboration Model
• Collaboration Process

Collaboration Tools
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Project Management

• Quality Management

Create an Open Environment
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Open Environment

• What Kind of Environment Do We Need To
• Foster creativity and innovation?
• Encourage ideas?
• Create team ownership and commitment?
• Implement mission critical and differentiation
  ideas?
• What Is an Open Environment?

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Collaboration Model

• Convene the Right People From the Entire
  Enterprise!
• Customers
• Marketing
• Sales
• Finance
• Technology
• Manufacturing
• Stakeholders

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Collaboration Model

• Foster
• Creativity
• Innovation
• via
• Collaboration Process

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Collaboration Model

• Stand back,
• Let
• Them
• Work.

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Unleashing Innovation

• Collaboration Process

Collaboration Process
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Collaboration Process

• 1. Agree to
• Goals
• Objectives
• Purpose

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Collaboration Process

• 2. Brainstorm
• 3. Group
• 4. Prioritize
• Based on Business Value

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Collaboration Process

• 5. Individuals
• Volunteer
• For What
• And
• By When

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Case Study

• FFKR Architects

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Case Study Issues

• Reached Capacity
• Continue Growth Rate
• Need Succession Plan
• Tight Employment Market
• Need Improved Project Throughput

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Case Study

• Entry Point
• Strategic Planning
• SuccessionPlanning

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Case Study Before

High
- Excellence gt One of Principals -
Customer Service - Reputation - Diversity of
Design
Market Differentiating
- Project Management - Tracking Tools - IT
Tools - Project Support
Overtime Control
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Strategic Planning Qs

• Whats the Prize?
• Whats Getting in the Way?
• How to increase business?
• How to increase through put?
• How to find and train new leadership?

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Case Study Collaboration

• Team Meetings
• Whats an Open Environment?
• Whats Working?
• Whats Not Working?
• How Can You Fix Whats Not Working?

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Case Study Outcomes

• Whats Not Working
• Focus on Design Excellence
• Compensation
• Training
• Leadership
• Time
• Quality
• Empowerment

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Case Study Outcomes

• Form Collaborative Teams
• Add Client from start to finish
• Add Contractor Consultant as well
• Expected Improvements
• 20-60 decrease in costs
• 75-100 increase in customer satisfaction

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Project Differences

High
Bulls
Colts
Simple, young projects.
Agility to handle uncertainty
Process definition to cope with complexity
Need agility
Tight Teams
Skunks
Uncertainty
Cows
laissez faire
Complex, mature market
Dogs
Need defined interfaces
Dogs
Low
Low
High
Project Complexity
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Case Study

• You want to be leaders and youre acting like
  mice.

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Case Study After

High
- Excellence Design - Design Process - Customer
Service - Reputation - Hiring Process - Personnel
Dept.
Market Differentiating
- Project Management - Tracking Tools - IT
Tools - Project Support
Overtime Control
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Case Study

• Outcomes
• 90 increase in revenues in one year
• 35 increase in resources
• Customers notice a difference, positively

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Whats Not Working?

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Summary

• How Do
• You
• Want to
• Fix It?

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Project Management

• Remove Obstacles

Summary
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Agile Advantages

• Continuous and frequent delivery of working and
  valuable software
• Adapt to changing requirements
• Daily and direct communication between business
  and development
• Teams work at a sustained pace
• Teams learn from their successes and failures
• Simplicity in design and execution

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Iterate

• Timebox in which whole features of value are
  delivered
• Allows team to respond to changes in business
• Allows quicker realization of value from the
  project
• Provide feedback loops to measure progress
• Keeps project close to delivery
• Ensures that valuable functionality is developed
  first

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Leadership Models

Strategy
Collaboration
Cultivate Innovation
EmbraceChange
Decisions
Real Options
Delivery
116
Purpose-Based Alignment

High
Innovate
Do We Take This On?
Market Differentiating
Achieve and Maintain Parity
Who Cares?
Low
High
Low
Mission Critical
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Collaboration Model

• Open Environment
• Right People
• Foster Innovation Collaboration Process
• Step Aside

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Collaboration Process

• Agree to Goal
• Brainstorm
• Group
• Prioritize
• Individuals volunteer and by when

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Project Differences

High
Bulls
Colts
Simple, young projects.
Agility to handle uncertainty
Process definition to cope with complexity
Need agility
Tight Teams
Skunks
Uncertainty
Cows
laissez faire
Complex, mature market
Dogs
Need defined interfaces
Dogs
Low
Low
High
Project Complexity
120
Business Value Decision Models

Purpose

• What do we do?
• When do we do it?
• When do we decide?

Value Model
Benefits
Considerations
- Kent McDonald
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Real Options
- Chris Matts
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Summary

• Your
• Questions?

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Agile References

• What Is Agile Software Development? Jim
  Highsmith, CrossTalk, the Journal of Defense
  Software Engineering
• http//www.agilealliance.com/articles
• The New Methodology, Martin Fowler
  http//martinfowler.com/articles
• Publications accelinnova.com/publications.html

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Contact

• Pollyanna Pixton
• www.accelinnova.com
• www.evolutionarysystems.net
• www.collaborativeleadership.com
• 1 . 801 . 209 . 0195
• p2_at_ppixton.com