Basics and Breakdowns from the SCEA perspective

Speaker InformationJoe Riego, PMP, Certified Scrum Master,

Certified Scrum Product OwnerSr. Technical Project Manager, SCEA

Working as Project Manager/Business Systems Analyst since 1999

Last 3 years at SCEA SDLC and IT Project ManagementSOX AuditSDLC Project Management Consulting

Blog and Social Networking Sitehttp://rcubedprojectmanagement.blogspot.com/http://pmi-sdchapter.ning.com/

Working AgreementsAn attitude of what could be… Suspend what

you knowOne Conversation at a timeStart and Finish On TimeStay on Topic

Who are you… and What do you Do?NameRoleOrganizationFavorite Comic Book Super Hero -

Purpose of the WorkshopTo provide a primer on Agile Project

Management using SCRUM and to show how Agile and SCRUM address scheduling, planning, estimating, and risk management.

Road MapOverview Agile

Project Management

SCRUM Project/Product Planning

QA and Fun Time

•Opening

•Why Agile?

•Working Agreements

•Intro - Scrum and Agile Project Management

•"The Agile Manifesto“

•Waterfall and Agile Project Management Bumped Comparison

•Iterative Development

•What is SCRUM all about?

•The SCRUM Machine

•Bits and Pieces of SCRUM

•The Product Backlog

•The Road Map

•Velocity

•Q and A 

So What is Scrum and Agile Project Management?Not going into any overly specific jargon or

canned answers:Agile is a Project Management Methodology that

focuses on Iteration Interaction Transparency Productized Delivery

SCRUM is: A meeting and project tracking format used heavily in

organizations that practice Agile Project Management

The “Agile Manifesto”Individuals and interactions over

processes and tools Working software over comprehensive

documentation Customer collaboration over contract

negotiation Responding to change over following a

plan

Pasted from <http://agilemanifesto.org/>

Traditional Project Mgmt and SCRUM/Agile Project MgmtTraditional Project Management places emphasis on

MilestonesArtifact managementHistorical reportingMinimizing Change

SCRUM/Agile Project Management places emphasis on : IterationProduct oriented deliveryTransparencyExtensive “Product Owner” InvolvementChange is expected and incorporated in the process to

provide “value add”.Does not rely heavily on historical or artifact management

but rather how much work remains moving forward.

Iterative Development

Iterative DevelopmentDeveloping End to End, a working product

with the assumption that improvement and gains can be made throughout the development iterations

The product may not have 100% of the feature set but could be used in production

The general concept is to flesh out and improve over each iteration to meet the requirements/expectation of the business

SCRUM… What’s it all about?SCRUM is the default process for Agile Project

Management and has the following assumptions in its pure form:Senior Team Members Dedicated Team100% Product Owner InvolvementProduct BacklogSprint BacklogDaily MeetingThe BurndownSprint Planning MeetingPigs - CommittedChickens - Not Committed

The SCRUM Machine

Source: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/hidden_asset/file/17/ScrumLargeLabelled.png

Pigs and Chickens

The Daily Meeting15min or lessWhat are we doing?What is planned? What is blocking us?Take a look at the "Burn Down" or whatever

graphical representation of the project the team uses

That’s it. No muss no fuss

The Pitfalls of the Daily!!!"Lets talk about implementation details" - Good

Idea, wrong time"Logorreha" - The idea is to keep meetings short so

the communication used is supposed to be boiled down, too much talking and team members not on your portion of the sprint loose interest and slows morale

"What are we supposed to be doing" - No product owner no sprint is what I say, he's the guy/gal that breaks ties on what has to happen and should be the definitive authority on the project Prioritizing and Deprecating as the process moves forward.

"Scrum Master does that? Right?" – Scrum Master doesn't do very much but act as the alarm for the team and escalate issues and run interference for the development team (Pigs and Chickens)

A common misconception of Agile…

More Common MisconceptionsNot a Silver BulletDoes not mean no oversightThere is no plan nor a scheduleIt’s easy - its actually pretty hardIt can’t scaleTeams Self Manage so that means they don’t

need managers

The Burn DownThis is the Graphical

Representation of Agile it measures velocity of completing a sprint.

It looks to work remaining as the metric as opposed to how much is done.

Seems counter intuitive but from a line perspective it allows the resource to see what is remaining and how much its going to take as opposed to looking at the Gantt and seeing what was done and have no idea how much its going to take given the current time frame.

The Product BacklogAnalogous to WBSContinually Pruned and managed

PriorityBusiness ValueSize

The RoadmapFuzzy Estimates the Further we get outThe Product Backlog stretched over timeThematic and High level

Velocity – When will we be done?Planning Points

Complexity, Effort, DifficultyHow many Points can Be done over an

Ite.ration/Sprint = a teams velocityHow many points are in the BacklogGiven current Velocity the remaining work in

back log will take X# of iterations. What about time? – Time Boxing = 1 month =

160h no matter what. Or whatever iteration duration.

Agile ResourcesRally Dev – www.agilecommons.comBlog - The Agile Executive –

www.theagileexecutive.comBlog – Agile Game Development –

www.agilegamedevelopmen.comMountain Goat Software –

www.mountaingoatsoftware.comAgile (Like Ninjas) Project Management

Group – www.pmi-sdchapter.ning.com

Question 1:Are Unplanned items usually unexpected production

support related issues? What else is unplanned?Well from the SCEA perspective we prioritize the

production issues and weigh them against the constraints to hitting the sprint as negotiated by the product owner.

If the product owner says this product support issue trumps a feature; the issue gets the appropriate development effort and the feature gets pushed to the product backlog for reallocation to a future sprint.

Remember because of the Transparency (in this case finite resources and product owner involvement) Delivery expectations match what the product owner wants. Note: As soon as the Product Owner assigns the task to a

sprint and gives it a priority it stops being unplanned.

Question 2:If we determine part of the way into a sprint

that existing code (Created before the Sprint) needs refactoring, should that be included as an unplanned itemIn the sprint the, User Story should take into

account potential unplanned tasks and reflect it in the Complexity Points (If you use them).

This should at the very least be brought up as a blocker in the Daily for discussion on inclusion into the sprint and requiring Product Owner resolution.

Question 3:If we start work on a story and realize the

initial estimate of the story was way off, do we modify the total number of points in the sprint? I wouldn't. This should be brought up in the daily that the

sprint as it currently sits is in jeopardy and that the product owner needs to re-assess the Sprint as a whole and reprioritize the Tasks/User Stories approriately.

Question 4:If we start work on a sprint and the product

owner decides he/she doesn’t want a story anymore do we modify the number of points in the sprint? Yes. However it's been my experience that the

Product Owner never wants to take things off without adding more. The reason is typically to assign more work.

Question 5:What sort of requirement gathering process

do you go through before you start a new sprint?I have a pre-planning meeting:

Attending Product Owner Lead Engineer(s), We review the product backlog, and then pick the

brains to identify additional work.

Question 6:If we have a project that is only 1-2 weeks

worth of work would you recommend setting this up as a sprint? If not how would you choose to handle it?I would assess is it really an independent

initiative or if I could roll it up as a User Story in the

forthcoming sprint.