1. Damon Poole, Chief Agilist, Eliassen Group
Agile Vital Signs
Presented by
Damon Poole, Chief Agilist, Eliassen Group

2. Agile Values and Principles

3. Agile Manifesto – Values and Principles
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
“Individuals and interactions over process and tools”
“Working software over comprehensive documentation”
“Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”
“Responding to change over following a plan”
Values
Scrum?
Kanban?
XP? ?
“Build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
“Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.”
“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
Principles
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
“Working software is the primary measure of progress.”
“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.”
Agile is really more of a philosophy or culture than it is a methodology. You won’t find “Scrum” or anything like it in the Manifesto. Only values, principles, and beliefs.
“Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.”
“Simplicity -- the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.”
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
“Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.”
“The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams”

4. Agile Techniques Come From the Agile Community
Agile Manifesto
Agile Community
Agile Toolkit
Scrum
User stories
Continuous Integration
TDD
Unit testing
Kanban XP
SAFe
Enterprise Agility
Etc.
All of the Agile practices, methods, technologies, come from the Agile Community. The Agile Community follows the principles and values of the Agile Manifesto.
Not everything that has been labeled as “Agile” actually is Agile. Sometimes it takes a while to realize it. If something doesn’t feel Agile, hold it up to the Agile Manifesto to see if it measures up.
For instance, burning down by hours has nothing to do with measuring working software, but burning up by story points of done stories does.
Agile – an adjective that describes anything that supports the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.

5. Agile Maturity Matrix

6. Change Requires Sustained Effort Until New Level
Complacency
Inertia
Resistance
Impediments
4 – Ideal
Agile Maturity
Being held regularly and on their way to stage 2.
Not being held.
Positively adapted to the needs of the team
Daily, short, effective. Runs well even without somebody officially responsible for the meeting. Team does an on-the-spot analysis of progress towards shippability and takes corrective action if needed.
80% daily participation from the team, main meeting is less than 20 minutes, real impediments regularly raised, focus is on the team’s stories, team wants to be there.
3 – Agile
You
2 – Sustainable
1 – In transition
0 – Impeded
Standups

7. Example Current State 50 Indicators 1 2 3 4 Organizational Support1 2 3 4
50 Indicators
Organizational Support
Team Dynamics
Team Structure
Set reasonable goals for progress as well as an expected timeline. It will likely take longer than expected, but as progress is made or not made, having goals and a timeline are useful for helping to structure the conversations around progress and what needs to be done.
Product
Per Team
Process Mechanics
Engineering Practices

8. Agile Maturity Matrix Tool
The Maturity Matrix is useful for
Understanding your current state
Describing where you want to be
Tracking progress towards goals
Organizationally
Team-by-team

9. Enterprise Agility Maturity Matrix 1. 2. 3.
Direct Download
Enterprise Agility Maturity Matrix

10. Frankenteam?

11. Check Your Allocation Levels
Try to keep allocation levels above 70%

12. Long Standing Teams are More Effective
Team effectiveness
Long Standing Teams are More Effective
If teams are forming around projects and projects are constantly being started and new teams formed every 6-12 months, people will never get to the performing stage and you will actually be severely hurting the potential performance of your people.
Jerking people around from team to team has the same effect because they are effectively on a different team each time you re-assign them.
People are not like blade servers.
Combine not having real teams with the Tuckman theory and you’ve got a severe impact on potential performance.
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
Model created by
Bruce Tuckman in 1965

13. It’s Dead Jim “We’re doing Scrum!”1 2 3 4
Organizational Support
“We’re doing Scrum!”
Team Dynamics
Team Structure
Product
Set reasonable goals for progress as well as an expected timeline. It will likely take longer than expected, but as progress is made or not made, having goals and a timeline are useful for helping to structure the conversations around progress and what needs to be done.
Translation: “we require developers to go to a one hour standup meeting every day”
Process Mechanics
Engineering Practices

14. Vital Signs at Standup

15. Is the Patient Alive? Dead? Is there a Patient?
I worked on #5316 yesterday and I’ll be in meetings all day today, no impediments
I was working on the id module again yesterday. I think it is almost done and I’ll finish it today, no impediments.
Etc, etc, etc, etc, …
I was in a meeting for the web team yesterday and also caught up on some code reviews for people. Today I have to catch up on my , no impediments.
Ok everybody, good standup, see you tomorrow!

16. Burn Down
160
128 96
Hours 64 32 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Days

17. Card Wall & Measuring Progress10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 20
Story Points
Days
Ready to accept
todo
implementing
testing
done
Seller wants to remove an ad 5
Seller wants to show an ad 5
Traveller wants to delete a booking 1
Traveller wants to register with the system 3
Way too much work started compared to other columns
Traveller wants to a hotel booking 2
Traveller wants to see their upcoming trips 2
Traveller wants to enter a booking 3
Traveller wants to a car booking 2
Admin wants a report of site-wide activity 5
Traveller wants to copy a booking 2
Traveller wants to edit a booking 2

18. Card Wall & Measuring Progress10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 20
Story Points
Days
Ready to accept
todo
implementing
testing
done
Seller wants to remove an ad 5
Seller wants to show an ad 5
Traveller wants to edit a booking 2
Traveller wants to register with the system 3
Looking good!
Traveller wants to a hotel booking 2
Traveller wants to see their upcoming trips 2
Traveller wants to delete a booking 1
Traveller wants to enter a booking 3
Traveller wants to a car booking 2
Admin wants a report of site-wide activity 5
Traveller wants to copy a booking 2

19. Card Wall & Measuring Progress10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 20
Story Points
Days
Ready to accept
todo
implementing
testing
done
Seller wants to remove an ad 5
Seller wants to show an ad 5
Admin wants a report of site-wide activity 5
Traveller wants to edit a booking 2
Traveller wants to delete a booking 1
Traveller wants to register with the system 3
Insufficient progress
Traveller wants to a hotel booking 2
Traveller wants to see their upcoming trips 2
Traveller wants to enter a booking 3
Traveller wants to a car booking 2
Traveller wants to copy a booking 2

20. Trust, the Lifeblood of an Agile Team

21. Four Pillars of Trust: ABCD
Ability, Competence
Have the necessary skills.
Believable, Sincerity
Speak and act with integrity
Think things through
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Care, collaborative
Works well with others
Interested, sharing, connected, helping
Dependability, reliability
Keep promises
Act responsibly
Manage workload
From “Trust Works” and “Thin Book of Trust”

22. Taking the Collective Pulse
Methods
Rock-scissors-paper Fist of Five
Secret ballot
Standup questions
How is your morale?
How confident are you that we will have all of our stories shippable according to our definition of done at the end of the iteration?
Retrospective questions
How would you rate the performance of our team?
What is your level of trust in the team?
ICAGILELO: 1.2.2
Rock scissors paper as in shake fist once, twice, three times and show your number. Kind of the same idea as simultaneous reveal on planning poker.

23. Level across whole team%
75-51 %
50-26 %
25-0 %
others
Ability me
others
Believability me
others
Collaboration me
others
Dependability me

24. Product Planning

25. Agile Feedback Loop Iteration Review Do the planned work
New Backlog Items
Iteration Planning
Agile welcomes changes. After the iteration review *WE MAY HAVE TO UPDATE THE BACKLOG AND CHANGE THE PLAN!!*
In traditional development we would call potential changes “scope creep.” But wait, if we discover new value, why would we want to call that a bad thing? Yes, it is tricky to change the plan, but without change, you don’t get the full value of Agile.
Shippable Software

26. One Person Acts as Gateway to the Team
Team Backlog Owner
GATEWAY
PRODUCTBACKLOG
ITERATION BACKLOG
TEAM
One Person Acts as Gateway to the Team
Attending all iteration planning meetings
Having at least two iterations worth of ready stories
Stories prioritized for the iteration being planned
Attending all iteration reviews
Answering all questions regarding the iteration backlog
Immediately most of the time
A few hours delay once in a while

27. Healthy Agile Schedule

28. Example Schedule Total: 6:30 / 2 weeks (avg 3:15 / week)
Iteration Planning (1 hr)
Standup (15 min)
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Uninterrupted work
Scrum actually takes up very little time. This schedule is to help illustrate this. Whatever is happening in the “uninterrupted work” other than uninterrupted work should be considered a potential impediment. One of the main points of following Scrum is to focus most of the team’s time on valuable work.
Backlog Grooming (1 hr)
Iteration Review (1 hr)
Retrospective (1 hr)
Total: 6:30 / 2 weeks (avg 3:15 / week)

29. Regular Checkups

30. Regular Checkups
Make sure that somebody is responsible for monitoring the Agile vital signs
Check on a regular basis
When there is a problem, take prompt action

31. Agile Vital Signs Summary
Iteration planning
The product owner is present
The meeting is no longer than 2 hours
There is very little discussion of “how”
The iteration plan takes into account new information learned in the previous iteration
Standup
The main meeting is no longer than 20 minutes
The team re-affirms that work planned for the iteration will meet definition of done within the iteration
It is clear to even a casual observer how things stand by the end of the meeting
Iteration review
It is clear that all planned stories are done and shippable
Retrospective
It is shown that at least 1 action item from a previous retrospective has been accomplished
The meeting is at least 30 minutes long and can be extended if there is a desire by the team to do so
In general
Morale is high
All stakeholders are satisfied with the team

32. www.egagile.com Damon Poole dpoole@eliassen.com
@EliassenAgile
Facebook.com/Eliassen Group
LinkedIn.com/Eliassen Group 84 32

33. www.synerzip.com Hemant Elhence hemant@synerzip.com 469.374.050084 33

34. Synerzip in a Nutshell
Software product development partner for small/mid-sized technology companies
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Dedicated team of high caliber software professionals for each client
Seamlessly extends client’s local team, offering full transparency
Stable teams with very low turn-over
NOT just “staff augmentation”, but provide full mgmt support
Actually reduces risk of development/delivery
Experienced team - uses appropriate level of engineering discipline
Practices Agile development – responsive, yet disciplined
Reduces cost – dual-shore team, 50% cost advantage
Offers long term flexibility – allows (facilitates) taking offshore team captive – aka “BOT” option 34 34

35. Our Clients 35 35

36. Thanks! Call Us for a Free Consultation! Hemant Elhence
linkedin.com/company/synerzip
@Synerzip_Agile
facebook.com/Synerzip 36 36