Agile Practice Guide

Two Principles Motivate Change management in agile contexts:

- Changes associated with accelerated delivery (the receiving org isn't always ready for the products getting released quickly and frequently) - Changes associated with agile approaches (orgs that just started using agile may require more frequent handoffs between teams, depts, etc.)

3 Common Agile Roles:

1. Cross-functional team members (designers and developers and testers and anyone else required to get work done). These teams can deliver completed work in the shortest possible time. EX: TECH TEAM 2. Product owner (responsible for guiding the direction of the product, and as such, rank the work based on business value). They provide feedback and set direction on function development. TYPICALLY HAVE A BUSINESS BACKGROUND AND SME. They create the backlog for AND WITH the team. EX: ALLESANDRA 3. Team facilitator - SERVANT LEADER (also called project manager, scrum master, project team lead, team coach). Sometimes orgs bring in an external agile coach at first. EX: IAN

Common Roadblocks to achieving org change

1. Departments work in silos, creating dependencies that prevent accelerated delivery instead of building cross-functional teams 2. Procurement strategies are based on short term-pricing (??) 3. Leaders are rewarded for local efficiencies rather than end-to-end flow of project delivery or optimizing the whole org 4. Employees are I shaped instead of T 5. Decentralized portfolios pull employees into too many projects

Four responsiblities of servant leaders:

1. Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile 2. Support the team through mentoring and support 3. Help the team with tech project management activities 4. Celebrate team successes and support and bridge building activities with external groups

5 Ways to Assess Org Readiness for Change

1. Exec management willingness 2. Org willingness to shift the way is views, reviews, and assesses employees (empowers them more basically and hears them out more) 3. Centralization or decentralization of project or program management functions (agile all about pulling the PM out of the central role) 4. Focus on short term budgeting and metrics over long term goals 5. Talent management maturity

What are the two reasons that more people are using agile approaches now?

1. Exponential advances in technology 2. Customer demands for more immediate delivery of value

Three main objectives of servant leaders:

1. Facilitate (help everyone else do their best thinking and work). they promote collab and conversation. 2. Remove org impediments (look at processes that are lengthy and causing bottlenecks, allow the team to spend more time working) 3. Pave the way for others to contribute (because agile teams manage work processes and products)

Twelve Clarifying Principles of Agile

1. Highest priority is satisfying the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. 2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development 3. Deliver working software frequently (from a couple of weeks to a couple of months) 4. Business people and developers must work together DAILY throughout the project. 5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support that they need to get the job done. 6. Best way to convey information is face-to-face conversation. 7. Working software is the primary measure of progress 8. Agile processes promote sustainable development (people 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 done - is essential. 11. The best designs and requirements emerge from self-organizing teams. 12. At regular intervals, the team should reflect on how to become more effective.

Four Values of the Agile Manifesto

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 2. Working software over comprehensive documentation 3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 4. Responding to change over following a plan

Ways to pursue win win customer collaboration (in procurement realm)

1. Multitiered structure (dont live in one master doc; describe diff aspects in diff docs -- master agreement, schedule of services, statement of work, etc). 2. Emphasize value delivered (look at deliverables more than phase/kill gates) 3. Fixed price increments (decompose scope into multiple fixed price micro-deliverables) 4. Early Cancellation option 5. Time and material limits (not to exceed) 6. Dynamic scope option (flexible as project goes) 7. Team augmentation (embed supplier's services straight into customer org).

How to get an org ready to change:

1. Promote visible and active exec sponsorship 2. Communicate and coach on change management 3. Progressively pace the adoption of agile practice on a project by project basis 4. Incrementally introduce agile practices to the team 5. Lead by example by using agile techniques and practices where possible

TAILORING OPTIONS TABLE: 1. Steady or sporadic demand pattern 2. Rate of process improvement required by level of team exp. 3. Flow of work is interrupted by delays 4. Quality of product improvements is poor 5. Multiple teams needed to build a project 6. Team members are inexperienced

1. Use flow-based agile with a cadence of some sort. 2. Retrospect more often and select improvements 3. Make work visible using a kanban board 4. Use test-drive development practices 5. learn about agile PM then craft an approach that fits the context/sit 6. train team members on agile fundamentals

2 main strategies to fulfill agile values and principles:

1. adopt a formal agile approach, designed and proven to achieve the desired result 2. implement changes to project practices in a manner that fits the project context (end goal isnt being agile for agile sake; make it fit the org)

Questions answered in an agile project charter

1. why are we doing this project? this is visionm 2. who benefits and how? this is part of the vision and the purpose 3. what does done mean for this project? this gives us release criteria 4. how are we going to work together? this gives intended flow of work

Ideal agile teams:

3-9 people, colocated in one space, 100% dedicated to the team, self-managing who does what work, limiting works in progress, cross-functional team members, mixed team of generalists and specialists, stable work environment

A feature chart combines _____________________. It shows how __________________

A burnup and burndown chart a project's total features change over time

Disruptive Technology

A new way of doing things that initially does not meet the needs of existing customers

Applying agile in stakeholder management

ALL ABOUT INVOLVEMENT AND ACTIVITY AND COLLABORATION. we talk to them directly rather than going through layers of management. these frequent interactions (a) build trust (b) mitigate risk and (c) support adjustments all about aggressive transparency

Applying agile in project quality management

Agile methods call for frequent quality and review checks built in throughout the project rather than all at the end; retrospectives also look at quality of the process and people's feeligns

Dynamic Systems Development Method

Agile project delivery framework designed to add more rigor to existing iterative methods; ALL ABOUT CONSTRAINT DRIVEN DELIVERY (whatever that is) all about collaborating, focusing on business, delivering on time, having high quality, build incrementally, developing iteratively, communicating lots, demonstrating control

Applying agile in Communication Management

Agile projects drive an inherent need to communicate more with the customer/stakeholders. they also make us want to collaborate and communicate more internally, ensuring everyone has access to necessary info and knows of flow of work

Applying agile in Project Integration

Agile projects engage the team members in integration. We empower the team to help in product planning and delivery. The PM (or team facilitator) focuses on building a collab decision making environment in which the team participates

Two clean types of hybrid life cycles

All agile (1,2,3) then all predictive (4>5>6) vs Agile & predictive simultaneous approach (1a1b, 2a2b, 3a3b)

Iterative Life Cycle

Allows feedback for unfinished work that is then improved and modified

Incremental

An approach that provides finished deliverables that the customer can use immediately

Agile term for shared workspaces versus quiet ones

Caves and commons

Agile

Combo of interactive and iterative

Execution Practices to help the team deliver value:

Continuous integration (frequently incorporate work into the whole) and then retest the larger product Test at all levels (feature and full system) Acceptance Test Driven Development (entire team gets together and discusses acceptance criteria for a work product) Test Driven Development (write automated tests before creating the product) Spikes (helps the team unearth new info, requirements or elements)

Crystal Methods

Designed to SCALE Uses diff colors based on weight to determine which methodology to use

Definable work projects have low levels of....... (2 things)

Execution uncertainty and risk

Agile Principles used in classrooms today:

Face-to-face interaction; meaningful learning; self-organizing teams; incremental or iterative learning

Three main lean concepts

Ficus on value; small batch sizes; elimination of waste

Two ways to up communication in dispersed teams:

Fishbowl windows (long live video conferences) remote pairing

Scaled Agile (SAFe)

Focuses on providing a knowledge base of patterns for scaling development across whole enterprise. - take an economic view -apply systems thinking - assume variability - build incrementally - base milestones on objective evaluations - limit WIP - DECENTRALIZE DECISION MAKING - SYNCHRONIZE WITH CROSS DOMAIN PLANNING - motivate workers

Enterprise Scrum

Framework used to apply scrum to holistic organization rather than a single project/product. it advises org leaders to: - extend the use of scrum across all parts of the org - Generalize scrum techniques to apply easily - scale thee scrum method with supplemental techniques

Two types of agile are.... Defining differences between the two are....

Iteration-based and flow-based iteration timeboxes are the same size and result in working tested features; in flow, the time it takes to complete a feature is not the same for each size, the team pulls feature from the backlog based on its capacity to start the work. all about WIP limits. THINK VARYING WIDTH FOR THE BOXES

Agile and the Kanban method are both subsets of _______________.

Lean thinking

____________ organizations find themselves competing with ____________ organizations and ___________ that are able to rapidly __________________________________

More mature; smaller, startups; produce products that fit customer needs.

Predictive Life Cycle (and other names)

More traditional with the bulk of planning happening upfront, then executing in a single pass

Agile ways of collaboration

Pairing - two programmers working together at the same workstation Swarming - as many team members as possible work simultaneously on the same priority item Mobbing - a style of work in which a team constantly works together and 'mobs' any issues that arise

Having dedicated team members is so important because.....

People only partially allocated to a project multitask; this reduces throughput of work for the team. People also experience productivity loss when task switching People also make more mistakes as they multitask

Characteristics of servant leadership:

Promote self awareness Listen Serve all on the team Help others grow Coaching vs controlling Promote safety, respect, and trust, Promote the energy and intelligence of others

Servant leaders approach work through the three Ps:

Purpose: help the team define the why so they can coalesce around the goal People: encourage the team to create an environmennt where everyone can succeed Process: don't look for the perfect process; look fore results

Iterative Cumulative Flow Diagrams map:

Response time, lead time, and cycle team

#1 priorities for incremental projects

SPEED OF DELIVERY

Non-software example of incremental

Show someone a single finished room of a house; show someone a car seat, rather than the whole car

eXtreme Programming give primary practices

Software development method based on frequent cycles; all about distilling a given practice to its simplest purest form sit together, whole team; pair programming, incrementally design; plan user stories on a weekly or quarterly cycle; use 10 minute build to integrate work

Velocity (used by ______________)

Sum of story point sizes for the features actually completed in the iteration (story points/time) iterative based agile teams

Document sharing, video conferencing, and virtual collaboration are all

TOOLS to help people collaborate

Backlog Refinement: Who does it? What's it used for? Many iteration based agile teams timebox it:

The product owner works WITH THE TEAM to prepare stories for the upcoming iteration Understanding how large stories are in comparison to one another At an hour halfway through a sprint

Predictive projects dont normally deliver business value until........

The very end of the project

Definable work projects (and examples)

Those characterized by clear procedures that have proven successful on similar projects in the past ex: constructing a car, building a home, etc.

SCRUM 3 roles

Used to manage product development; uses an iterative approach to deliver working product; runs on timeboxes scrum master, development team, product owner

Agile PMOs are three things:

Value-drive (all about customer collab) invitation-oriented (allow ENGAGED EMPLOYEES to work with them) multidisciplinary (offer courses, provide templates, manage stakeholders, recruit good team leaders, executive specialized tasks, etc).

Applying agile in Project Scope

We deliberately spend less time trying to define and agree on full scope early on (with the understanding the requirements will arise as we work); we build and review prototypes to validate scope and refine requirements

Iteration-based standup questions

What did I complete since the last one? What am I planning to complete today? What are my impediments?

Flow-based standup questions

What must we do to advance this work? Is anyone working on stuff not on the board? What must we finish as a team? Are there any bottlenecks or blockers?

Stacey Complexity Model

XY graph with requirements uncertainty and tech degree of uncertainty. It moves projects from simple > complicated > complex > chaos

Larger companies are left with no choice but to.......

adopt an agile mindset in order to stay competitive and keep their existing market share

Kanban

all about scheduling inventory and replenishment; thinking about grocery store restocking; KANBAN MEANS VISUAL CARD OR SIGN start where you are method all about flexibility (not bound by timeboxes) continuous delivery (flow of work to completion THEN you can start new work) and increased quality (result of limited WIP) increased efficiency, team member focys (only on WIP), reduction of waste.

4 parts of iterative life cycles

analyze > analyze design (with prototype loops) > rebuild test (with refine loops) > deliver

5 parts of predictive project life cycle

analyze, design, build, test, deliver

A retrospective is not about ________________. It's about looking at both ____________________________

blame qual data (people's feelings) and quant data (measurements)

Servant leadership is all about believing that everyone _____________

can grow and learn

Incremental: requirements, activities, delivery, goal

dynamic; performance once PER INCREMENT; multiple deliveries (that the customer can use at once); speed

Agile: requirements, activities, delivery, goal

dynamic; repeated until correct (for many increments); multiple deliveries; customer feedback & collab

Iterative: requirements, activities, delivery, goal

dynamic; repeated until correct; single delivery; pristine, correct solution (gained through feedback on prototypes)

Scales on which we assess org culture:

exploration vs execution speed vs stability quantity vs quality flexibility vs predictability

A servant leader ___________________ the project charteing process

facilitates.

Predictive: requirements, activities, delivery, goal

fixed; performed once; single delivery; manage cost

Applying agile in risk management

high variability environments, by definition, incur more uncertainty and risks. that's fine. we just address this by using adaptive approaches and more frequent reviews of incremental work. this ensures risks are identified and managed. work in agile projects can be reprioritized as the project progresses and more risks are identified

Applying agile in procurement

in agile, specific sellers may be used to extend the team. this collaborative working relationship can lead to shared risk procurement where both buyer and seller share risk AND rewards

In order to stay competitive, organizations can no longer remain ____________ focused; they must focus _______________________________.

internally; outwardly on the customer

Applying agile in project cost management

it's dumb to try to completely calculate cost early on in agile (due to changing reqs); instead, we use lightweight estimations methods to generate fast and high-level forecasts of projected labor

The larger and older an org is, the ___________________________. For that reason, it makes sense _______________________>

longer it will take to transition to agile. to plan a gradual transition and use a hybrid approach

iterative projects may be ________________ because _______________________

longer; they are meant for learning rather than speed of delivery

Feature Driven Developmennt 6 roles 5 processes

meant to meet the needs of a huge software project. has a PM, architect, development manager, chief programmer, class owner, and domain expert. develop an overall model / build a features list / plan by feature / design by feature / build by feauture

Every type of life cycle does have ________________; what differentiates them is how much _______________________ is done and ______________.

planning; planning is done; when

As project uncertainty increases, so too does the risk of ____________. To mitigate this, teams tackles projects via_____________________

rework; small increments of work

Other names for predictive life cycles

serial, waterfall, plan-driven

Agile approaches were created to explore feasibility in.....

short cycles and quickly adapt based on evaluation and feedback.

While agile approaches started with _____________ companies, they have since _________.

software; spread to many other industries

To scale up a full company to agile

start small, measure efficacy, iterate and get better

The Kanban method is known as the __________________________. Thus, project teams can start ___________________________________.

start where you are approach; applying it with relative ease

A common issue with standups is that they become: Another issue is people:

status meetings try to solve issues, when they should just be realizing them and adding them to a parking lot

In addition to a project charter (which explains why this project matters), agile teams need ____________________

team norms and an understanding of how to work together

A team charter will outline

team values, working agreements, ground rules, group norms

Cloud Computing

the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet ("the cloud") to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale

Who runs standups?

the team

What does it mean to spike a feature?

the team runs time-boxed research, exploration to learn about the issue or the possible solutions. As a result of the spike, the team can break down the features into stories and estimate them.

Lead time; cycle time; response time all used in Little LawFormula

total time it takes to deliver an item, from time it's added to SB to time it's completed; time required to process an item; time an item waits until work starts flow based agile WIP/throughput or Lead time/throughput

life cycle of incremental

we analyze, design, build, test, deliver. then we do it again. then we do it again. then we do it again.

Applying agile in project schedule management

we use short cycles to undertake work, review results and adapt as necessary. we use ITERATIVE SCHEDULING AND ON-DEMAND PULL-ABSED SCHEDULING

Applying agile in project resource management

with agile projects, we benefit from team structures that MAXIMIZE FOCUS AND COLLABORATION (like self organizing teams and generalizing specialists, or t shaped folx). altogether, it's harder to plan for both physical and human resoufces in agile projects due to their high variability

Strong Product Ownership is KEY because ___________________

without attention to the highest value for the customer, the team might create unappreciated or useless features