Architecture in an Agile Organization Managing our Software as a Valuable Asset while Delivering Incrementally Chris Sterling Principal Consultant, Certified.

Architecture in an Agile Organization Managing our Software as a Valuable Asset while Delivering Incrementally Chris Sterling Principal Consultant, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Agile Coach SolutionsIQ Mickey Phoenix Senior Software Development Engineer SolutionsIQ

2 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Architecture in an Agile Organization As companies begin to embrace Agile methods, such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP), questions about architecture begin to emerge. – How is architecture implemented in an Agile organization? – What is the software architect's role with Agile development? – How should architecture be discussed with business stakeholders? Too often, Agile software development methods are tagged as "architecturally weak" or "disconnected from the realities of delivering large systems." However, leading software architects are pushing through the noise to rapidly evolve the Agile architecture discipline. This session will focus on the experiences of two experts and the approaches they have taken to better align businesses with architecture goals. Presented by: – Chris Sterling, Principal Consultant and Certified Scrum Trainer at SolutionsIQ – Mickey Phoenix, Senior Software Development Engineer at SolutionsIQ 2

3 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Topics to Discuss Self-Organizing Project Teams Practices versus Guidelines Managing Software Debt Coherent Architecture Strategy Where can we start? 3

4 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Questions for You... What does architecture mean to you? What issues are you having currently with architecture? Why do we worry about architecture? 4

Self-organizing Project Teams

7 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. * Self-organizing Project Teams Autonomy: top management provides guidance, money, and morale support Self-transcendence: team seems on never-ending quest for the limit within guidelines set forth by top management Cross-fertilization: team consisting of varying functional specializations, thought processes, and behavior patterns * From Harvard Business Review Jan/Feb 1986 The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujira Nonaka

Practices versus Guidelines

10 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Practices: techniques, methodologies, procedures, and processes that are used to get the job done Guidelines: aim to streamline particular processes according although, by definition, following a guideline is never mandatory. Guidelines are an essential part of the larger process of governance to make delivery more predictable, and presumably of higher quality Practices versus Guidelines

Practices are not bad but may impede a teams self- organization.

13 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Example Guidelines 75% Code Coverage Audit Trail for all System User Interactions Have all Source Control Check-ins Reviewed Each Team Member Checks in an Artifact every Day Applicable Features Pass Security Audit Policies 13

Managing Software Debt

15 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Software gets more difcult to add features to as it ages Business expectations do not lessen as software ages Software must remain maintainable and changeable to meet needs of business over time Lack of emphasis on quality attributes to keep software maintainable The Problem...

16 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Like-to-like migrations Limited experts capable to work on a system Long release stabilization periods Increasing duration of costly regression test phases Higher costs for people to work on legacy software Software Asset Liabilities

17 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Like-to-Like Migrations It will be easy since we worked on the original version - although we understand the domain we will be fighting with new features, technology, tools, and processes We dont have any other options - Refactoring and test automation are potential alternatives to like-to- like migrations. 17

21 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Higher Costs for People Legacy software expenses increase with time High demand for limited reserve of experienced programmers (ie. COBOL) Specialized tools have a limited following with higher bill rates 21

Technical Debt Issues in software implementation that will impede future development if left unresolved

27 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Technical Debt includes those internal things that you choose not to do now, but which will impede future development if left undone. This includes deferred refactoring. Technical Debt doesnt include deferred functionality, except possibly in edge cases where delivered functionality is good enough for the customer, but doesnt satisfy some standard (e.g., a UI element that isnt fully compliant with some UI standard). * Ward Cunningham - Technical Debt - http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TechnicalDebthttp://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TechnicalDebt * Technical Debt

Quality Debt A lack of quality, either technical or functional, will minimize value per feature added increasingly over time

A Fit Case Study Cost reduction using Fit for test automation and data conversion

32 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Testing was taking 75 person hours during 2 full test runs consisting of: Comprehensive manual regression testing Data conversion and validation Cost for testing was $17,000 each iteration Manual Regression Testing

33 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. After 8 iterations team had introduced healthy amount of Fit fixtures and automated tests Reduced 70+ hour test runtime down to 6 hours which now included: Fit automated regression testing Data conversion and validation automated with Fit fixtures Reduced cost of testing each iteration from $17,000 to $7,000 33 Introducing Fit into Testing Process

36 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Must be in next release which is 1 month away. Involves multiple user stories currently estimated to be delivered in 3 weeks based on velocity of Team. The Situation: New Features

37 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. The Situation: Should we work on bugs or enhancements first? Fix bug and deploy within 2 weeks or Finish 3 weeks of enhancements to deploy in next release The Catch: The release is due to go out in 1 month and doing both will not fit into this timeframe. 37

Definition of Done Define what is involved in delivering a potentially shippable product increment each iteration

41 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Capture Resulting Artifacts Be careful capturing delivered artifacts in Definition of Done Should capture resulting artifacts Minimize capture of transitory documentation Minimize capture of practices Different for each Team but may include enterprise guidelines when appropriate 41

Configuration Management Debt Debt in this area can be unpredictable, prone to error, and cause poor decision-making on quality attributes of a system

43 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Traditional Source Control Management Main Branch Debt Death March { Debt accrues quickly within stabilization periods Version 1 Branch Integrate for Version 2 Code Complete

Design Debt Design decays when not attended to so put effort into maintaining your software by designing all the time

48 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Refactoring: a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior.* Merciless: having or showing no [mercy - showing great kindness toward the distressed] Relieve your distressed code through kindness and disciplined restructuring * From http://www.refactoring.com/http://www.refactoring.com Merciless Refactoring

49 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Refactoring cannot be done effectively without automated tests surrounding code Start by creating automated test which fails If difcult to create at unit level look at automated acceptance tests from functional perspective Over time look for ways to create automated unit tests Automate Testing to Support Refactoring

Design Debt When the cost of adding new functionality to an existing system is more than writing it from scratch

51 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. * Architecture Risk Themes Observed that twice as many risk themes are risks of omission as are risks of commission. That is, risk themes identify decisions or investigations that were never made rather than those that were made and could lead to undesirable consequences. No discernible relationship between articulated business and mission goals of a system and risk themes from an ATAM evaluation of that system No discernible relationship between domain of system being evaluated and risk themes associated with development of that system * From Risk Themes Discovered Through Architecture Evaluations by Len Bass, Robert Nord, William Wood, and David Zubrow

Proper Architecture Design Provides Value Software is a business asset and our job is to produce the greatest Return on Investment (ROI) by delivering high value quickly

53 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. * Abuse User Stories Implement Security for User Information As a Malicious Hacker I want to steal credit card information so that I can make fraudulent charges * From User Stories Applied presented by Mike Cohn Agile 2006

Platform Experience Debt How many of you are writing Legacy Code?

55 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. How to Combat Platform Experience Debt Ignore it (I do not suggest this!) Make interface to underlying system Transfer learning of platform to more people Rewrite system on more current platform Slice functionality to more current platform over time

58 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Pros Share architecture ideas and needs across teams Based on verbal communication Cons Usually singles out special Team Member role Could lead to top-down architecture decisions IT may gain extensive influence and begin to run Product Backlog prioritization for architecture needs Virtual Architect Pattern

60 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Pros Reduces complexity on Feature Teams Forces delivery from Integration Team instead of interface and deployment designs Cons Perpetuates specialized roles Dont always work on highest value Product Backlog items Integration Team Pattern

62 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Pros Share more knowledge within organization to minimize platform experience debt Work on highest value Product Backlog items Cons Not always optimal as using individual knowledge Difficult to learn multiple systems across Teams Component Shepherd Pattern

64 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Pros Team owns architecture decisions Decisions are made close to implementation concerns Cons May not have appropriate experience on Team Team could get stuck on architecture decisions Team Architect Pattern

Coherent Architecture Strategy

67 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) COTS does 80% of what we need usually We conduct custom configurations to enable rest of what we need Automate functional tests for all customizations Automated functional tests can be executed against future upgrades to see what broke 67

Where do we start? Knowing areas to improve on is one thing. How can we make progress from where we are today?

70 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Focus on guidelines rather than practices to influence quality of team deliveries Maintain one list of work Emphasize quality Evolve tools and infrastructure continually Improve system design always Check in project artifacts more often (Continuous Integration) Automate builds from compile to deploy Share knowledge across organization Hire the right people to work on your software! Some Suggestions

71 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Principles of Agile Software Quality The system always runs No code is written without a failing test Zero post-iteration bugs * From Flawless Iterations presented by Alex Pukinskis at Agile 2005 71

Thank you Questions and Answers

73 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Chris Sterling Principal Consultant, Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach at SolutionsIQ Consults on enterprise architecture and Agile software development practices across a spectrum of industries Founder of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) Puget Sound chapter Email: CSterling@SolutionsIQ.comCSterling@SolutionsIQ.com Blog: http://chrissterling.gettingagile.comhttp://chrissterling.gettingagile.com

74 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. More from SolutionsIQ at Agile2008 Domain-Specific Testing Languages (DSTLs) DSTLs help you keep the core testing tool simple while creating automated test scripts the customer can easily read, verify, and use as requirements - Rand Huso, Senior Software Development Engineer Narrative Testing: Tools for Story Test-Driven Development Increase your customers confidence in testing by leveraging script-based testing Tools and DSTLs to express Story Tests in the users own language. - Mickey Phoenix, Senior Software Development Engineer Panel Discussion: Troubleshooting Distributed Agile Team Projects Leading Agile experts Esther Derby, Hubert Smits, Tamara Sulaiman, Samir Shah join Monica Yap to share their experiences working with distributed Agile teams. - Monica Yap, Engagement Manager, ScrumMaster, Agile Coach Punctuated Continuity: Using Ritual and Ceremony to Avoid Process Fatigue Learn techniques that can be employed to keep repetitive Agile routines invigorating, pulled from actual experiences with teams practicing XP and Scrum. - Michael Tardiff, Agile Team Lead and Coach 74

75 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. More from SolutionsIQ at Agile2008 Swarming: The Birds and the Bees and Agile Discuss the fascinating set of swarming behaviors in the animal world that resonate strongly with some of the central tenets of Agile development. - Dhaval Panchal, Agile Coach, Analyst, Certified Scrum Practitioner Assembling a Real-Time Collaborative Development Platform in the Cloud SolutionsIQ CEO demonstrates a whole platform for Agile development featuring mashups of SaaS and open-source tools for development and continuous integration - Charlie Rudd, Chairman and CEO 75

76 Copyright © 2008 SolutionsIQ. All rights reserved. Thank You! Come to the SolutionsIQ booth at Agile 2008 – Pick up a free Agile t-shirt, and – Schedule one-on-one sessions with SolutionsIQ speakers Visit solutionsiq.com/agile2008 for additional Agile 2008 materials and related content from SolutionsIQsolutionsiq.com/agile2008 About SolutionsIQ SolutionsIQ offers a full spectrum of services to develop software and fulfill technical talent needs, while improving your Agile knowledge and capabilities. Clients include AT&T (Cingular), Amazon, Corbis, Expedia, Federal Home Loan Bank, InfoSpace, Key Bank, Nike, Nordstrom, Regence Blue Shield, Safeco, US Bank, and Washington State University. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, SolutionsIQ is also a member of the Java Community Process, Scrum Alliance, Software Association of Oregon, and Washington Technology Industry Association. Learn more at www.SolutionsIQ.com. www.SolutionsIQ.co 76

Architecture in an Agile Organization Managing our Software as a Valuable Asset while Delivering Incrementally Chris Sterling Principal Consultant, Certified.

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Architecture in an Agile Organization Managing our Software as a Valuable Asset while Delivering Incrementally Chris Sterling Principal Consultant, Certified.

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