Introduction to Agile and Scrum

• > 70% of organizations have incorporated some Agile approaches. — Project Management Institute
• 28% more successful using agile than traditional projects. — Price Waterhouse Coopers
• 47% agile transformations’ failure rate. — Forbes
  • #1 reason is inexperience with implementing and integrating the Agile methodology. — VersionOne
• Agile is a mindset that requires culture change.
• It’s hard to learn Agile from just reading a book.
• Recognizing when something is wrong is just as important as knowing how to do something right.

Introduction to Agile Philosophy: Agile Principles

What is Agile?

Agile is an iterative approach to project management that helps teams be responsive and deliver value to their customers faster

Agile defining characteristics:

Agile emphasizes:

• Adaptive planning
• Evolutionary development
• Early delivery
• Continual improvement
• Responsiveness to change

Agile Manifesto:

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.

Agile Software development:

• An iterative approach to software development consistent with Agile Manifesto
• Emphasizes flexibility, interactivity, and a high level of transparency
• Uses small, co-located, cross-functional, self-organizing teams

Key takeaway:

Build what is needed, not what was planned.

Methodologies Overview

Traditional Waterfall Development:

Problems with waterfall approach:

• No provisions for changing requirements
• No idea if it works until the end
• Each step ends when the next begins
• Mistakes found in the later stages are more expensive to fix
• There is usually a long time between software releases
• Teams work separately, unaware of their impact on each other
• The people who know the least about the code are deploying it into production

Extreme Programming (XP)

• In 1996 Kent Beck introduced XP
• Based on an interactive approach to software development
• Intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements
• One of the first Agile method

Extreme Programming values:

• Simplicity
• Communication
• Feedback
• Respect
• Courage

Kanban

What is Kanban?

Kanban | ‘kanban | noun

(also Kanban system) a Japanese manufacturing system in which the supply of components is regulated through the use of an instruction card sent along the production line.

• An instruction card used in a Kanban system.

Origin

1970s: Japanese, Literally mean ‘billboard, sign’

Core principles of Kanban:

• Visualize the workflow
• Limit work in progress (WIP)
• Manage and enhance the flow
• Make process policies explicit
• Continuously improve

Working Agile

• Working in small batches
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
• Test Driven Development (TDD) (Gherkin Syntax — Developed by Cucumber Company)
• Pair programming

Introduction to Scrum Methodology

Agile and Scrum:

• Agile is a philosophy for doing work (not prescriptive)
• Scrum is a methodology for doing work (add process)

Scrum Overview

Scrum:

• Is a management framework for incremental product development

• Prescribes small, cross-functional, self-organizing teams

• Provides a structure of roles, meeting, rules, and artifacts

• Uses fixed-length iterations called sprints

• Has a goal to build a potentially shippable product increment with every iteration

• Easy to Understand – Difficult to master

  Sprint:

• A sprint is one iteration through the design, code, test, and deploy cycle

• Every sprint should have a goal

• 2 weeks in duration

Steps in the Scrum process:

Agile development is iterative:

The 3 Roles of Scrum

Scrum roles:

• Product owner
• Scrum master
• Scrum team

1. Product owner:

• Represents the stakeholder interests
• Articulates the product vision
• Is the final arbiter of requirements’ questions
• Constantly re-prioritizes the product backlog, adjusting any expectations
• Accepts or rejects each product increment
• Decides whether to ship
• Decides whether to continue development

1. Scrum master:

• If your team is experienced, you might skip this role, but if you have a team new to Scrum, you require an experienced Scrum master.
  • Facilitates the Scrum process
  • Coaches the team
  • Creates an environment to allow the team to be self-organizing
  • Shields the team from external interference to keep it “in the zone”
  • Helps resolve impediments
  • Enforces sprint timeboxes
  • Captures empirical data to adjust forecasts
  • Has no management authority over the team

2. Scrum Team:

• A cross-functional team consisting of
  • Developers
  • Testers
  • Business analysts
  • Domain experts
  • Others
• Self-organizing
  • There are no externally assigned roles
• Self-managing
  • They self-assign their own work
• Membership: consists of 7 ± 2 collaborative members
• Co-located: most successful when located in one team room, particularly for the first few Sprints
• Dedicated: Most successful with long-term, full-time membership
• Negotiates commitments with the product owner – one sprint at a time
• Has autonomy regarding how to reach commitments

Artifacts, Events, and Benefits

Scrum Artifacts:

• Product backlog

• Sprint backlog

• Done increment

  Scrum events:

• Sprint planning meeting

• Daily Scrum meeting (a.k.a. daily stand-up)

• Sprint

• Sprint review

• Sprint retrospective

  Benefits of Scrum:

• Higher productivity

• Better product quality

• Reduced time to market

• Increased stakeholders satisfaction

• Better team dynamics

• Happier employees

  Scrum vs. Kanban:

Organizing for Success: Organizational impact of Agile

Organize for success:

• Proper organization is critical to success

• Existing teams may need to be reorganized

  Conway’s Law:

  “Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.”

  — Melvin Conway, Datamation, 1968

  Examples of Conway’s Law:

  If you ask an organization with four teams to write a compiler … you will get a 4-pass compiler!

  How teams should be aligned?

• Teams are loosely coupled, tightly aligned

• Each team has its own mission aligned with the business (like a “mini startup”)

• Teams have end-to-end responsibility for what they build

• The long-term mission is usually around a single business domain

  Autonomy is important:

• It’s motivating – and motivated people build better stuff

• It’s fast – decisions happen locally in the team

• It minimizes handoffs and waiting, so teams don’t get bogged down

The Agile dilemma!

The entire organization must be Agile:

Agile + DevOps = Alignment

Mistaking Iterative Development for Agile

The biggest pitfall for companies is that, they think they’re agile, but actually they’re just doing an iterative work.

Agile is not…

• Agile isn’t a new version of a waterfall, software development life cycle (SDLC), where you do legacy development in sprints
• Agile isn’t just the developers working in each sprint, it involves a cross-functional team
• The Agile Manifesto doesn’t include the term “Agile project management” (and so there are no “project managers” in Agile)