Going Agile with PBS

Public Broadcasting Service •  170+ member stations •  1500+ total websites PBS.Org / PBSKids.org

(PBS Interactive) •  national websites from

Crystal City, VA •  local server cluster in VA

Technologies

•  LAMP servers •  Amazon Web Services / Rightscale •  Redhat / CentOS

Tools

•  Komodo, Vim, Emacs •  Atlassian Suite •  Gliffy, Balsamiq, Theme Builder •  SVN, Git, Gitorious •  TestLink

About Me

•  Joined PBSi in 2008 •  Tools management, infrastructure, QA •  Comp Sci from SUNY Buffalo, 2005 •  Background in IT / support, QA, coding /

scripting

High Level Themes

•  Our dev process has gone agile recently •  Atlassian tools used extensively •  Process evolution has had clear benefits

Logins Per User, 9/08

Challenges in September 2008

•  Jira was being used sporadically •  No standard for QA process •  difficult to have visibility

•  risk management = headaches •  shifting priorities hard to track

PBS Video Player

•  Difficult vendor handoff and dev •  Highlighted procedural problems

Needs as of Winter 2008

•  insight into priorities •  dynamic process that can adapt to unforeseen

changes •  infrastructure of software tools that facilitate

collaboration •  comprehensive solution for documentation

Evolution - Prioritization

•  weekly “greenlighting” •  gives all parties visibility •  Priorities xls in external SaaS repo

Evolution - Process

•  What is agile?

Agile - Definition •  Empowering teams with the tools and communication

to succeed •  accepting that changing priorities are the norm •  developing products in an incremental way •  minimize time to market, maximize value per release

Agile Workflow - Envision

•  a several hour session where all project stakeholders identify the needs of end-users and suggest possible features

•  must-have, should-have or nice-to-have?

Envision

User Stories •  Envision features become Jira stories •  Assigned estimated point value (t-shirt size)

Iteration & Release Planning •  Stories grouped into release •  Releases broken into 2-week iterations

Stand-Up Meetings •  Daily 15-30 minute meeting driven by GH task board

Bamboo

•  CI tool to automate builds, unit tests, UI tests

TestLink

•  Tracks execution of manual testing tasks •  Ensures consistency of manual testing

Code Reviews

•  Fisheye/Crucible driven

Documentation Needs

•  Public data (announcements, available apps) •  Externally relevant technical docs •  Internally relevant product dev docs •  Infrastructure / architecture docs

Enter Confluence

•  4 basic spaces, plus team specific collab spaces

Tying it all Together

Access Control (Crowd)

•  Role driven (plus groups-by-role)

Overall gains

•  Visibility – internal and external •  Transparency – better management of

expectations •  Efficiency – Improves as a direct result of above

2 points

Logins Per User, Revisited >>Past >>Present >>Future?

Evangelism (Utilization)

•  Jira, Confluence – dev, qa, product management, executive, infrastructure, external

•  Fisheye / Crucible – dev, qa •  Bamboo – dev, qa •  Crowd – Universal (invisible)

The Future

•  Jira API Work (Django based?) •  Connecting Crowd to our own OID? •  Further Standardization of processes?

The End!

•  Tristan Mayshark •  PBS Interactive •  http://www.pbs.org •  ttdmayshark@pbs.org