Agile Project Management

Desktop Technology Program 1

Agile Project Management

Frank MaurerUniversity of CalgaryComputer Science

e-Business Engineering [email protected]

http://ebe.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Frank.Maurer/

Copyright © 2006 Frank Maurer. All Rights Reserved.

20-Sep-07 Agile Project Management 2

Project Management?

• What is it?

• Why do we need it?

• What is important?

• Best experience?

• Worst experience?

mailto:[email protected]

http://ebe.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Frank.Maurer/




Why estimate effort?








Common Management Issues

• Building teams

• Risk management

• Project planning

• Team coordination

• Progress tracking

• Quality assurance




Team Formation: Tayloristic Way

• role-based (functional, horizontal)

• follow detailed plans of entire software development

lifecycle

• the focus is not on individuals but on the process itself!

• teams are tailored to repeatable, manufacturing-like

process

• tend to lead to isolated islands of knowledge

• what is to be done

• how it is to be done

• the exact time allowed for doing it



Team Formation: Agile Way

• cross-functional teams (vertical)

• require less knowledge transfer (because there

is no intermediates who may loose/alter

knowledge)

• facilitate better knowledge transfer (informally)

• rotations from one role to another are common

• highly specialized experts can be shared among

several teams




Empowerment

• Self-determination

• Motivation

• Leadership

• Expertise

• Amplify learning by

feedback and frequent

synchronization



Risk Management

• Risk identification

– E.g. unknown technologies, tools

• Risk quantification

• Risk resolution

– Reserve time for

overcoming troubles

– Define tasks that reduce

risks

• Contingency planhttp://www.pru.uts.edu.au/images/risk_management_benefits.gif




Typical Risks

• Changing scope

• Technology is immature or unknown to

developers

• Wrong effort estimates

• Low quality

• …






Four Project Variables

• Cost

– CHAOS Reports, Standish Group, 1994-2002

• Scope

– Feature creep

– Requirements churn

• Time

– “Adding people to a late project just makes it later”

Brooks, Mythical Man Month

• Quality

– Disasters and software bugs

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rzdalea/cs100/software_disasters/sd.htm

http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html



Software Project Overruns

• Kjetil Moløkken-Østvold, Kristian Marius Furulund: “The Relationship between Customer Collaboration and Software Project Overruns”, Proc Agile 2007, IEEE:– About 70-80% of all projects encounter effort (cost) overruns

– The average magnitude of effort overruns is 30-40%

– Similar results for schedule overruns

– No apparent change the past 30-40 years

• Moløkken-Østvold and Jørgensen, "A Comparison of Software Project Overruns“, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2004:– Effort overruns based on development process

• Projects using sequential processes: Median= 60% (Mean=55%)

• Projects using flexible processes: Median=1% (Mean=24%)

• Interviews found that flexible development processes fostered good collaboration with the customer

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rzdalea/cs100/software_disasters/sd.htm

http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html




Project Management

• Project management =

planning, organizing, controlling of tasks &

resources to accomplish a defined objective

• What, who, when, how much (i.e. costs)

• Command and control



Project Management Tasks

• Planning the project– Define tasks, task dependencies and milestones

• Estimate effort

– How long will it take to do something

• Scheduling the tasks

– Define start and finish dates

• Assign tasks– Who will work on it

– Resource leveling

– Myth: “if we fall behind the schedule, we can always add more programmers and catch up later in the project”

• Tracking progress – Conducting periodic project status meetings

– Determine whether formal project milestones have been accomplished

– Compare planned and actual end dates




Gantt Chart



Managers and Leaders

• Managers: command and control

– Define and assign tasks

– Gather status reports and track progress

• Leaders: convince and steer

– Help team to plan project

– Coach team members

– Remove obstacles




Agile Management Strategy

• Team members accept responsibility

– Tasks are not assigned but team members sign up for

them

• Committed to do quality work

• Not much management overhead

• Coaching & mentoring (software apprentice)



Four Values

• Communication

– “problems with projects can invariably be traced to somebody not

talking to somebody else about something important” XP p. 29

• Simplicity

– “what is the simplest thing that could possibly work?”

– YAGNI – you ain‟t gone need it

• Feedback

– Put system in production ASAP

– “Have you written a test case for that yet?”

• Courage

– Hill climbing (simple, complex, simpler,..)

– Big jumps take courage






Project Vision

• Vision =Statement of what the business will look like once the new system is implemented.

• Used to establish a project budget

• Established by product owner– Provides/finds funding for projects

• Vision includes– Anticipated benefits for business

– Assessment criteria for management to evaluate progress and conformance to vision Management oversight needed




Product Owner

• Defines project vision big picture

• Provides/finds funding for projects

• Checks ROI

• Prioritizes backlog

• One person – must represent all stakeholders



DSDM Process

Feasibility

Functional Model

Review Prototype

Identify

Functional

Prototype

Agree schedule

Create

Functional

Prototype

Implementation

User approval and

user guidelines

Train

users

Implement

Review

business

Design and Build

Iteration

Create

Design Prototype

Review

Design

Prototype

Identify

Design prototype

Agree

Schedule

Feasibility

Review Prototype

Identify

Functional

Prototype

Agree schedule

Create

Functional

Prototype

User approval and

user guidelines

Train

users

Implement

Review

busines

s

Create

Design Prototype

Review

Design

Prototype

Identify

Design prototype

Agree

ScheduleDesign and Build

Iteration

Functional Model Implementation




Return on Investment (ROI)

• Payback time

• Net present value, internal rate of return SE Economics

• Monetary versus non-monetary payback

Software by Numbers, p. 16



A Matter of Trust: Business Contracts

• Fixed scope/fixed price contracts– Trust by contract

– Attempts to move technical risk to development side

– Contract requires documentation imposes process

– Opposing sides of table

• How are fixed prices derived by development organization?

• Time and expenses contracts: Fixed budget/variable scope/early termination– Trust by feedback and involvement

– Collaborative environment

– Changes easy

– Issues: • No time limit on project

• No guaranteed functionality

Honest effort estimate

Risk multiplier

(Insurance premium)

How urgently do

I need the contract?

Cost of

change requests




The Relationship between Customer Collaboration and

Software Project Overruns

• Good collaboration is subjective, and not precisely defined

• This paper (and presentation) highlights these collaboration issues

– Communication

– Contracts

– Customer capability

• In-depth analysis of 18 projects conducted by a contractor

– Follow up of the large-scale study in 18 different organizations

– Personal interviews

• Overrun measure =),min(

)(

estimateactual

estimateactualBREbias

Moløkken-Østvold, Furulund: “The Relationship between Customer Collaboration and Software Project Overruns”, slide used with permission



Contracts

• Contracts are important since they often regulate collaboration (directly or indirectly)

• Common contract types– Time and material

– Fixed price

– Target price (better: Flexible pricing)• Mutual sharing of cost overruns (and

vice versa)• Floors and ceilings for cost sharing


Target PricingA pricing method that involves (1) identifying

the price at which a product will be

competitive in the marketplace, (2) defining

the desired profit to be made on the product,

and (3) computing the target cost for the

product by subtracting the desired profit from

the competitive market price. The formula

Target Price - Desired Profit = Target Cost

Target cost is then given to the engineers and

product designers, who use it as the

maximum cost to be incurred for the materials

and other resources needed to design and

manufacture the product. It is their

responsibility to create the product at or

below its target cost.http://www.answers.com/topic/target-pricing?cat=biz-fin

http://www.answers.com/topic/target-pricing?cat=biz-fin








Contract form and overruns

N Mean Median

By the hour 4 0.55 0.37

Fixed price 5 0.33 0.19

Target price 7 0.10 0.21

Other 2 0.13 0.13

Contract form

BR

EB

ias

4 - Other3 - Target price2 - Fixed price1 - By the hour

1,5

1,0

0,5

0,0

-0,5

Boxplot of BREBias vs Contract form




Contact frequency and overruns

• A Kruskal-Wallis test for difference results in p=0.023

• The corresponding size of effect is d=1.25, indicating a large size of effect

Communication frequency

BR

EB

ias

Not dailyDaily

2,0

1,5

1,0

0,5

0,0

Boxplot of BREBias by Communication frequency Level Mean Median

Daily 0.09 0.19

Not Daily 0.58 0.35







Why we plan

• Reduce risk

• Reduce uncertainty

• Support better decision making

• Establishing trust

• Conveying information

“Planning is everything. Plans are nothing.”

Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke

Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning


Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning, p. 4

Barry Boehm’s Cone of Uncertainty



Upfront Planning and the Cost of Change

Costof

change

time

Standard SE

Agile assumption




Why plans fail

• Completion of activity vs feature delivery– Activities don‟t finish early

Parkinson‟s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

– Lateness is passed down the schedule: One thing that goes wrong is passed on (while all things must go right for early start)

– Activities are not independent

• Multitasking causes further delays

Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning

Ibid. p 15






Some Terminology

• Project planning, iteration planning, planning

game (XP), sprint planning (Scrum)

• Story card/index card (XP), backlog entry

(Scrum), feature/feature set (FDD)

• Customer, goal donor/user, gold owner/client,

product owner, scrum master

• Spike



Architectural Spike

• Throw-away prototype

• Answers technical issue

• Reduce technical risk or improve reliability

• Usually: Pair for 1-2 weeks




Project Planning: Agile Way

• Business value focused

– User stories, features

• Project scope not fixed at beginning

reactive to changing business needs

• Short timeframes

– 1 week – 3 months

• Planning and coordination are team efforts

– Planning game

– Product backlog

– Daily standup meeting (scrum)

– Estimates done by developers



Time Boxes

• Never slip a date change scope

• Sometimes external deadlines are HARD

• Advantages

– Increased motivation

• Successful delivery keeps developers and customers happy

– Faster feedback

– Creates a constant project heartbeat

– Deadlines create pressure (counters: work fills time available)

• Advantages of flexible dates

– Release only when required scope is completed

– Overly optimistic deadlines are made more realistic




Feature-Driven Development (Coad, Lefevbre, De Luca)

• Deliver frequent, tangible, working results that

are “useful in the eyes of the client”

• A feature defines a task

• Group features into business-related sets

• Focus on delivering results every two weeks

• Track and report progress by feature progress



The Five FDD Processes

Peter Coad et al: Java Modeling Color with UML, Prentice Hall 1999, p.190




FDD Process

Peter Coad et al: Java Modeling Color with UML, Prentice Hall 1999, p.198



Agile Project Planning

• Project vision the really big picture

• Release planning strategic picture– Chooses a few months worth of user stories/features

– Date and scope

– Can be changed

– Creates product backlog

• Iteration planning tactical picture– Few weeks

– Set of stories prioritized by customer

– Creates sprint backlog

– Define set of tasks for each story

– Task granularity: 1-3 work days estimation accuracy






Agile Requirements Definition

• User stories/Backlog EntriesFeature requests– On index cards

– Short descriptions of a feature

– In customer language, no techno babble

– Provide value to customer

– Independent of each other

– Testable

– Small decompose large stories

• Estimated by developers:best case, most likely, worst case

• Collect story cards and prioritize them




When is a User Story Done?

• All unit tests pass

• All acceptance test pass

• The customer accepts it

• All refactorings are done



Who Decides ?

• Business decisions– Scope: which “user stories” should be developed

– Priority of stories

– Composition of releases

– Release dates

• Technical decisions– Time estimates for features/stories

– Elaborate consequences of business decisions

– Team organization and process

– Scheduling




Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning, p 135



Managing a Release

• Value Driven Releases

• Business value = f(cost, time, functionality, quality)

• 80% of the business value can be derived from

20% of the functionality

• Linear development: Christmas wish lists

• Iterative development: prioritized wish list




Minimum Marketable Features

• Components with intrinsic marketable value

• Creates business value by

– Competitive differentiation

– Revenue generation

– Cost Saving

– Brand projection

– Enhanced loyalty

M. Denne, J. Cleland-Huang: Software by Numbers,

Prentise-Hall, 2004



Prioritization of features

• Financial value

• Development cost

• Amount of learning

• Amount of risk removal

High risk

Low Value

Avoid

High risk

High Value

Do first

Low risk

High Value

Do second

Low risk

Low Value

Do lastLow

Low

High

HighValue

Ris

k

Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning, p 83+85






Low fi prototypes describing product vision

• Sketches

• Storyboards

• Pictive

• Wizard of Oz


Sketching and Prototyping

Early design

Late design

Brainstorm different representations

Choose a representation

Rough out interface style

Sketches & low fidelity paper prototypes (LO-FI)

Task centered walkthrough and redesign

Fine tune interface, screen design

Heuristic evaluation and redesign

Usability testing and redesign

Medium fidelity prototypes

Limited field testing

Alpha/Beta tests

High fidelity prototypes

Working systems

Courtesy of Dr Sharlin/Greenberg (CPSC 481)

Sketches & Low Fidelity Prototypes

• Paper mock-up of the interface look, feel, functionality– quick and cheap to prepare and modify

• Purpose– brainstorm competing

representations

– bring out user reactions

– bring out user modifications / suggestions



Sketches– drawing of the outward appearance of the intended

system

– crudity means people concentrate on high level

concepts

– but hard to envision a dialog‟s progression

Computer Telephone

Last Name:

First Name:

Phone:

Place Call Help


The attributes of sketches

• Quick

– to make

• Timely

– provided when needed

• Disposable

– investment in the concept,

not the execution

• Plentiful

– they make sense in a

collection or series of ideas

• Clear vocabulary

– rendering & style indicates

it‟s a sketch, not an

implementation

• Constrained resolution

– doesn‟t restrain concept

exploration

• Consistency with state

– refinement of rendering

matches the actual state of

development of the

concept

• Suggest & explore

rather than confirm

– value lies in suggesting

and provoking what could

be

– sketches are the medium

to conversation and

interaction



Storyboarding– a series of key frames as sketches

• originally from film; used to get the idea of a scene

• snapshots of the interface at particular points in the

interaction

– users can evaluate quickly the direction the interface

is heading

Excerpts from Disney’s Robin Hood storyboard


note how each scene in this storyboard is annotated


http://www.animaart.com/Cellar/disneyart/Page5.html


Scan the stroller ->

Change the color ->

Place the order ->

Initial screen


Scan the shirt ->

Touch previous item ->

Delete that item->

Alternatepath…



Pictive plastic interface for collaborative technology initiatives through video exploration

Muller, CHI 1991

• Designing with office supplies– multiple layers of sticky notes and plastic overlays

– different sized stickies represent icons, menus, windows etc.

• interaction demonstrated by manipulating notes– new interfaces built on the fly

• session videotaped for later analysis– usually end up with mess of paper

and plastic!


Pictive

• Can pre-make paper interface components

buttons menu alert

box

combo box

tabs

entries

list box



Medium Fidelity Prototypes• “With a computer”

• Many different types

– from simple computer drawn images to partially working systems

• May take longer to generate and change than low-fi

• Benefits

– Seems more like the completed detailed system, provides a clearer

idea of how it works

– May allow user testing (not true for all medium fidelity prototypes).

• Pitfalls

– User‟s reactions are usually “in the small”

• Blinds people to major representational flaws because of a tendency to

focus on more minor details

– Users more reluctant to challenge/change the design itself

• Designs are too “pretty”, developers‟ egos…

– Management may think its real!


Medium Fidelity

Painting/drawing packages

• draw each storyboard scene on computer

– very thin horizontal prototype (across features, no

functionality)

– does not capture the interaction “feel”

Control panel for pump 2

coolant flow 45 %

retardant 20%

speed 100%


coolant flow 0 %

retardant 20%

speed 100%

DANGER!

next drawing

Shut Down Shut Down

(for shut down condition)




coolant flow 45 %

retardant 20%

speed 100%

Shut Down

Medium Fidelity

Scripted simulations• create storyboard with media tools on a

computer

– scene transition activated by simple user inputs

– a simple vertical prototype

– Can use PowerPoint…

• user given a very tight script/task to follow

– appears to behave as a real system

– script deviations blow the

simulation


coolant flow 0 %

retardant 20%

speed 100%

DANGER!

Shut Down


Medium Fidelity

Interface builders

–Tools for letting a designer layout the common widgets

–Construct mode

• Change attributes of objects

–Test mode:

• Objects behave as they would under real situations

–Excellent for showing look and

feel

• A broader horizontal prototype

• But constrained to widget library

–Vertical functionality added

selectively

• Through programming



• “pay no attention to

the man behind the

curtain!”


Wizard of Oz

• A method of testing a system that does not exist

– the listening typewriter, IBM 1984

Dear Henry

What the user sees

SpeechComputer

From Gould, Conti & Hovanvecz, Comm ACM 26(4) 1983.



Wizard of Oz

• A method of testing a system that does not exist

– the listening typewriter, IBM 1984

What the user sees The wizard

SpeechComputer

Dear Henry

Dear Henry

From Gould, Conti & Hovanvecz, Comm ACM 26(4) 1983.


Wizard of Oz

• Human „wizard‟ simulates system response

– interprets user input according to an algorithm

– controls computer to simulate appropriate output

– uses real or mock interface

– wizard sometimes visible, sometimes hidden

• “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

• good for:

– adding simulated and complex vertical

functionality

– testing futuristic ideas





Scrum Flow (Sutherland, Schwaber and Beedle)

Ken Schwaber, Agile Project Management with Scrum,

Microsoft Press: 2004.

Scrum: 15 min daily meetings

Team members respond to basics:

-What did you do since last Scrum?

-Do you have any obstacles?

-What will you do before next meeting?

Features assigned to Sprint

Sprint: 30 days

Potentially Shippable Functionality




Cohn‟s Iteration Planning (p 145ff)

• Tasks are not allocated during iteration planning

devs pick 1-2 at start of iteration and then the next

when these are done

built “we‟re all in this together” attitude

• Iteration vs Release Planning (p. 149

Release Plan Iteration Plan

Planning horizon 3-9 months 1-4 weeks

Items in plan User stories Tasks

Estimated in Story points or

ideal days

Ideal hours



Agile estimation process




Size estimation

• Story points or Ideal Days (Gummy Bears, Effort, …) – “Complexity” or “size” of task

– Relative to other tasks

• Based on experiences from the past

• Team effort– Optimism wins

– Team usually does not overrule the estimate of programmers responsible for a task

• Presumed Issue: Effort estimates done by developers might lead to slack

Estimates

are not

commitments



Ideal days

• How long is an American football game:– 4 x 15min = 60min (ideal time

– Approx. 3h (elapsed time)

• Elapsed time is influenced by – amount of none-development tasks

– estimation accuracy

– available developer time

– experience

– number of concurrent projects

– …




Story points vs ideal days

• Story points

– Help drive cross-functional behavior

– Estimates do not decay

– Pure size measure

– Often faster

– My ideal days are not your ideal days

• Ideal days

– Easier to explain to outsiders

– Easier at first

Mike Cohn: Agile Estimating & Planning, p 69ff



Techniques for estimating

• You will NOT be 100% accurate

• Diminishing return of more estimation effort

• Estimation scale: stay within one order of magnitude

– User stories, epics, themes

• Deriving an estimate

– Expert opinion

– Analogy

– Disaggregation

– Planning poker


“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”

Niels Bohr




Splitting user stories

• Split along the boundaries of the data supported by the story– E.g. Loan summary List of individual loans List of loans

with error handling

• Split based on operations performed within a story– E.g. separate CRUD operations

• Remove cross-cutting concerns– E.g. story without and with security

• Separate functional from non-functional requirements– Make it work, then make it fast

• Tracer bullet through all layers with partial story functionality




Reflecting plan uncertainty

• (Best case), most likely

case, worst case

• Project buffer:

– Max 70% of must have

features

– MoSCoW rule (must have,

should have, could have,

won‟t have) in DSDM

– Alternative: calculate

standard deviation

• Slack needed for learning

Tom DeMarco: Slack

n

i

ii mlcewce1

2

)(




Velocity

• Measures rate of progress of a team

• Amount of story points completed in the last iteration

• Best guess: next iteration = same as last iteration (“yesterday’s weather”)

• Story points (or ideal days) + velocity duration– Velocity corrects estimation error

– Accommodates developer optimism

– overcomes the issue of if story points are measured based on pairs or individuals



Comments on story points and velocity

• Task effort depends on the current development context – developer experience with technology

– “likeness” of task to others

– availability of reusable code

• Story points is not well defined what does 1 story point really mean?– Changing velocities over time can‟t use “old” numbers

• Customers sometimes prefer estimates in hours

• Velocity maps story points to person-hours available in iteration– blurs development effort for customers

open & honest communication?




Observations from Past Planning Exercises

• Effort: 2-4h for one week of work

– Brainstorming user stories usually not done

– Assignment of responsibilities missing

• Language for specifying requirements

– Often too much IT oriented

• useful for communicating with customer?

– Often to fine grained

• user stories need to have business value

– Testing tasks are not user stories

• Required to be done – no choice for customer

• Business value?

• Interaction with customer is NOT finished



Sprint Review Meeting Rules

• 2-3 hours

• Maximum 1 hour preparation

• No PowerPoint presentations

• Done on equipment where software was developed and tested

• Presented by team to Product Owner and customers/users

• Basis for planning next Sprint

• Must represent potentially shippable increment of product functionality




Scrum Study (Mann/Maurer)

• 2 year longitudinal case study

• Researcher embedded in development team

• Overall results:

– Reduced

overtime

– Increased

customer

satisfaction

Average Percent Overtime Worked By Team

-20.00

0.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

100.00

01-0

5-2

003

02-0

9-2

003

03-1

6-2

003

04-2

0-2

003

05-2

5-2

003

06-2

9-2

003

08-0

3-2

003

09-0

7-2

003

10-1

2-2

003

11-1

6-2

003

12-2

1-2

003

01-2

5-2

004

02-2

9-2

004

04-0

4-2

004

05-0

9-2

004

06-1

3-2

004

07-1

8-2

004

08-2

2-2

004

09-2

6-2

004

10-3

1-2

004

12-0

5-2

004

01-0

9-2

005

02-1

3-2

005

Week

%

Ho

urs

Overt

ime

Scrum Introduced

New Windows

App Release

Website Release

Windows App 1 support and

Windows App 2

Development






Daily Scrums (Stand-up Meetings)

• Daily 15 minute status meeting

• Same place and time every day

• Meeting room

• Chickens and pigs

• Three questions;

– What have you done since last meeting?

– What will you do before next meeting?

– What is in your way?

• Impediments and

• Decisions

Based on Ken Schwaber‟s Certified Scrum Master course



Chickens and Pigs

• A chicken and a pig are together when the chicken says, "Let's start a restaurant!“

• The pig thinks it over and says, "What would we call this restaurant?“

• The chicken says, "Ham n' Eggs!"

• The pig says, "No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved!"

Based on Ken Schwaber’s

Certified Scrum Master course




Benefits of the Daily Meeting

• Focuses people to think about what has to be

done in the short term

• Puts peer pressure to see who is working to

accomplish goals

• Surfaces roadblocks quickly

• Forces managers to not interfere with the project

team

From: http://www.controlchaos.com/old-site/meeting.htm



End-of-Sprint Review

Based on Ken Schwaber‟s


Proceed or terminate?

Proceed:

define next iteration




Sprint Review Meeting Rules

• 2-3 hours

• Maximum 1 hour preparation

• No PowerPoint presentations

• Done on equipment where software was developed and tested

• Presented by team to Product Owner and customers/users

• Basis for planning next Sprint

• Must represent potentially shippable increment of product functionality



Reporting: Tracking Progress & Metrics

• Two questions– How many hours/days have you worked?

– How many more does it take?

• Project metrics– Actual time worked on a task

– Work burndown graph• Per iteration

• #Backlog project

– #Bugs

– #Stories completed

– #Acceptance tests defined and passing

– #Unit tests

– Test coverage

– …

Which one is more important}




Iteration tracking

Ibid 228



Project Tracking: Work Burndown ChartsNo one home

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

1 3 5 7 9

11

13

15

17

19

21

23

25

27

29

31

No one home

Underestimating

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

1 3 5 7 9

11

13

15

17

19

21

23

25

27

29

31

Underestimating

Overestimating

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

1 3 5 7 9

11

13

15

17

19

21

23

25

27

29

31

Overestimating

Based on Ken Schwaber’s





Progress Tracking with FDD

http://www.togethercommunity.com/coad-letter/Coad-Letter-0070.html



Parking Lot Diagram

Pg. 201, Java Modeling in Color with UML




Agile Practices

• Agile methods lay out a vision and then nurtures project resources

to do the best possible to achieve the plan.

• Agile is the “art of the possible.”

• “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

• Agile employs the following practices:

– Frequent inspection and adaptation

– Emergence of requirements, technology, and team capabilities

– Self-organization and adaptation in response to what emerges

• Creativity

• Let the team figure out what to do and then do it

– Incremental emergence

– Dealing with reality, not artifacts

– Collaboration

Based on Ken Schwaber‟s Certified Scrum Master course



Scrum – Tips, Tricks, Observations

• Pay $1 for being late for a Scrum meeting

• Always deliver a vertical slice of user functionality

• Scrum backlog entries tend to be coarser grained than XP user stories

• Keep things visible in customer terms

• In Scrum meetings NO information is passed that is not potentially of interest for everybody

• Best case plan versus minimum promised to customer

• Sprint review & planning meeting: – 1.5days initially

– Later 1day

• Planning horizon: do not overlook the big picture

• Process improvement entries in backlog

• Inter-team learning: informal meeting of Scrum masters

• Scrum is scalable– Scrum of Scrums

– Multiple teams working together: 20% overhead

– Infrastructure teams (often: virtual teams): other teams are customers

• Architecture diagram for reporting progress visually




Common Impediments

• Workstation, network, and/or server are down;

• Network or server are slow;

• Required to attend human resource training session;

• Required to attend status meeting with management;

• Asked by management to do something else;

• Asked to do something other than what this team

member committed to for this Sprint;

• Unsure about how to proceed;

• Unsure of design decision; and

• Unsure how to use technology.Based on Ken Schwaber‟s Certified Scrum Master course



Why does it work?

• Replanning occurs frequently

• Separation of size and duration

• Plans at different levels

• Small cycle time (i.e small stores) keeps work

flowing

• Fuzzy states (e.g. 70% done) are elimnated

• Tracking at the team level

• Uncertainty is planned for

Ibid p 249ff




Summary

• Vision, release, iteration

• Short horizon for detailed planning

• Reporting needs to tie in with vision and

business value

• Adaptive and flexible

• Team effort

Discussion

[email protected]

http://ebe.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Frank.Maurer

mailto:[email protected]

http://ebe.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Frank.Maurer

Agile Project Management

Business

Transcript of Agile Project Management