BSG tackling the fallacy of "Agile"

At BSG, we believe in being a proactive force for positive change,

making a difference in everything we do.

Unlocking potential. Accelerating performance

Tackling the

fallacy of “Agile”

27th November 2013

Clinton Bosch, Sandra Rheeder and Daniël Maree

How to maximise the benefits

on your journey to Agile excellence

Agile | a reaction to plan-driven methodologies like RUP

Agile origins

Plan-driven derived from

other engineering Heavy on initial planning

Software development is

not civil engineering

Over time more information

is uncovered

Requirements guaranteed

to change

Agile fluency

Fluency | how a team develops software when it’s under pressure

distinct stages of agile, each with specific benefits

and challenges

“Star”

system

Entire teams fluency –

not individuals Teams evolve in a

predictable order

Fluency at all

previous levels

3

1 2

4

One-star create business value

• Management pillar

• Easiest

• Focus on team success

Benefit: Greater visibility into team’s work; ability to redirect

Investment: Team development and work process design

Core Metric: Team regularly reports progress from a business value

perspective

Achievement: 45%

Time: 2 - 6months

Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

team

Two-star ship at will

• Technical pillar

• Deliver to market cadence

• Technical skills take time & effort, reduce productivity


Benefit: Low defects and high productivity

Investment: Lowered productivity during technical skill development

Core Metric: Team ships on market cadence

Achievement: 35%

Time: 3 - 24months

EXTREME PROGRAMMING “moments to learn, lifetime to master”

Three-star optimise value

• Deliver the most value possible for your investment

• Understand what market / business needs • Delivers MVP

• Value added vs. opportunity cost

• Pivot if not producing sufficient value

• Cross functional teams

Benefit: Higher value deliveries and better product decisions

Investment: Social capital expended on incorporating business

expertise into team

Core Metric: Team provides concrete business metrics

Achievement: 5%

Time: 1 – 5 years


Four-star optimise system

• Understand organisational priorities and business direction

• Support the needs of a product critical to business success

• Cross-pollination between teams

• Bleeding edge of agile practice

Benefit: Alignment with organisational goals, synergistic effects

Investment: Significant effort in establishing organisational culture, inventing new practices

Core Metric: Team reports how its actions impact the overall organisation

Achievement: Very few

Time: unknown


In summary



Pa

th t

hro

ug

h A

gile f

luen

cy

/ˈadʒʌɪl manɪdʒm(ə)nt/

Agile management

Management at one-star fluency

Stakeholders

Interpreting

Collaborating

Team

Welcome change

Short feedback loop

Adapting to the situation and environment

Principles > process

Demonstrating the benefits

Engaged customers = happy customers

Management at two-star fluency

Management at three-star fluency

Where

becomes

Management at four-star fluency

Who drives Agile excellence?

Scrum. Scrum. Scrum.




Agile Principles …………

…………………………………

……………………………

………….

Learning

Organisation

Ag

ile

fra

mew

ork

key principles • Long-running, multi-functional teams

• Small batch sizes (which are regularly released)

• Continual review and prioritisation

• Embrace cheap failure

• Self-similarity across all levels in the organisation

• Fix time and cost, not scope (but within a broader context)

specific practices • Adopted and customised by

teams as they move through the

fluency model

interrelated

values

Feedback Respect

Courage

Simplicity

Communication

What about the BA?

“…the Agile Business Analyst will rely much

more on people facilitation skills than they may

have on traditional projects. The BA’s role is to

facilitate a discussion between the Product

Owner and the technical team”

“…the agile BA needs to think about the

software development process in new ways.

Agile encourages us to decouple the breadth

of the solution from the depth of the solution in

order to continuously deliver smaller

increments of production-ready code”

What is my

role?

Source: “The Agile Business Analyst” white paper, Mike Cottmeyer, V. Lee Henson

(www.versionone.com)

I hear there is no

documentation…

requirements don’t

get signed off??!!

The developers are

talking directly to

business and it’s

working! What am I

going to do??

Extreme

programming is

not really my

thing…

Fluency and BA skills

A shift from documenting exhaustive detailed

requirements up front, to documenting as-

needed priority requirements per iteration

Focus on new skills

• Creating clear direction in terms of the

“breadth” of scope

• Conceptual domain / business

understanding

• Facilitation of discussions between

business and developers, especially in

terms of courageous feedback

• The ability to question and unpack the

requirements which will deliver specific

business value in the short term, and meet

longer term objectives

• Writing specific, detailed user stories

• Understanding how to “slice the cake

vertically”

• User experience design skills

Fluency and BA skills

A shift to become an “extension”

of business, a strategic questioner

to allow for a pivot in approach

based on feedback across the

board

Focus on new skills

• Driving the concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) – the simplicity value

• Deeper understanding of and alignment with business

• Strategic business understanding

Ask why the analytical role


Alignment the “questioner”…

• Are we doing the right things in the

medium term?

Translation

vs

Team Participation

Revolutionary change

Evolutionary change “Don’t do the wrong

things righter…” Implementation the “doer”…

• Focus on efficiency and adjusting to

feedback

• Question how and functional relevance to

modules as a whole

Definition the “requester”…

• Prioritisation

• Focus on effective delivery in terms of

business value

• Shorter-term rollout of needed requirements

UXD and Lean

Learn

Adoption of Agile

Refactoring | a technique where you improve the design of your

code without adding functionality to it

• Agile means business value-oriented

• Encourage change

• Change requires refactoring

• Minimise risk of refactoring

Xtreme programming

• Big decision

• Initial investment cost

• Buy in from ALL senior stakeholders

Extreme Programming | communication simplicity feedback

CORE PRACTICES

Team forms around

a “customer”

Small fully-

integrated releases

Pair programming,

simple design,

improvement

Continuous

integration, code in

a consistent style

Simple rule

The sooner you test,

the cheaper to fix

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Design Implementation Test Post Release

Cost of change

A critical concept that motivates full lifecycle testing is the cost of change

Cost o

f C

ha

nge

Development Time

Traditional

TDD / Agile

By retaining the minimum amount of project artefacts required to support the

project, there is less to update when a change does occur

Initial slowdown

Ongoing extra effort mitigated over time

There is

an initial

cost!

Unused code

Waterfall requires users list ALL requirements

Agile focused on business value Always, 7%

Frequently, 13%

Sometimes, 16%

Rarely, 19%

Never, 45%

Standish Group | Features used on failed projects

Does it really work?

In summary

The Fluency model = representation of Agile maturity

1 Star fluency is the first step enabling stakeholders to adapt to

change. This is NOT the end goal

2 Star fluency is the necessary next step allowing the system

technically to keep up with this change

3 Star fluency seeks to maximise delivery of business value and minimise accumulation of liability software

BSG believes this should be the goal

Contact Us

Jurie Schoeman:

[email protected]

C: +27 83 302 7169

T: + 27 11 215 6666

Johannesburg office:

33 Fricker Road

Illovo Boulevard

2196

Talk to us about how we can unlock your potential

www.bsg.co.za

www.bsgdelivers.com

mailto:[email protected]

BSG tackling the fallacy of "Agile"

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Transcript of BSG tackling the fallacy of "Agile"