1. The OSASC Web Advising System: Building an Airplane While Flying Educause Midwest Regional Conference March 19, 2008 Chicago, IL USA

2. Today’s Session OSASC Case Study –Web App for Advising –16,000 students/qtr., 100+ advisors in 30 buildings (Columbus) OSASC - from Waterfall to Agile What is Agile? How do we use Agile daily? How can you get started?

3. Student with ASC Advisor Student with Major Advisor Overview of OSASC Online Student Advising & Service Center Arts Biological Sciences Humanities Mathematical & Physical Sciences Social & Behavioral Sciences Colleges of the Arts & Sciences “Federation”

4. Project Environment Clear goals –Documentation & reporting –Efficient operations –Communication among advisors (via notes) –Proactive communication w/ students –Students assigned to advisors Constraints –Received $0 extra funding –Had to keep “trains” running –Had to prove ourselves

5. Original Plan – A Perfect Waterfall! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model May-June 2006July 2006 July-August 2006 RELEASE: September 2006 October 2006 and beyond Programmer Resigned Governance Structure Executive Sponsors (3) Core Team (10) Implementation Team (3) Advisory Teams (50+) MUST start coding! New Programmer Started Aug 15 Deadline over Features! Orientation

6. From Waterfall to Agile Fix These Estimate These FeaturesCostSchedule CostSchedule The plan creates cost/schedule estimates Features The vision creates feature estimates Waterfall Plan Driven Agile Vision / Value Driven Adapted from: Introduction to Scrum, Hubert Smits (2007)

7. Winter 2007 RELEASE tweaks fixes minor features Requirements Proactive Communication Tool Students assigned to advisor rosters Dec. 2006 – Jan. 2007 RELEASE Appointments Notes Rosters Sept. 2006 RELEASE Search Results Student Details Agile Delivers Results!

8. Spring 2007 RELEASE minor features Coding/testing ProComm Tool Requirements Dept. Pilot Dept. Interface Roster assignments (cont’d) Summer 2007 RELEASE ProComm Tool Dept. Pilot Coding/testing of Dept. Interface Autumn 2007 RELEASE Dept. Interface Requirements OSU-wide Notes Pilot (w/ SIS) Agile Delivers Results! (cont’d)

9. 37,000 student appointments in 2007 61,000 notes about student contacts 15,000 students assigned to advisors 10,000 reminder emails to students

10. Better Communication, Better Service!

11. Agile Manifesto Individuals and Interactions Working Software Customer Collaboration Responding to Change Processes and Tools Comprehensive Documentation Contract Negotiation Following a Plan http://agilemanifesto.org http://agilemanifesto.org Agile Alliance

12. Individuals and Interactions Formal governance structure Sequential phases Original Goal: Follow the recipe! Shadowing users Hallway usability One-on-one discussions New Goal: Understand what users really need!

13. Working Software Detailed requirements documents Design and architectural blueprints Original Goal: Planned perfection! Paper prototypes Focused testing New Goal: Functioning features!

14. Customer Collaboration Assigned responsibilities Sign-off documents Formal change management Original Goal: Stay in your role! SME/”bridge” person Tech team became business process consultants New Goal: True collaboration!

15. Responding to Change Stick to the plan Defer requests Original Goal: No surprises! User feedback drove designs Redesigned pages over and over again New Goal: Be flexible!

16. What’s up Next? Transition to new university data stores as a result of PeopleSoft project Design tutorial site for social and behavioral sciences students in orientation Develop online student center for General Education Requirements Support degree certification and academic review applications Release OSASC “Notes” university-wide Redesign International Studies program web site Release new course content management tool Work through queue of new feature requests for OSASC 25 web sites in queue for new designs and content updates Update navigation and graphic design of Arts and Sciences Honors web site Make Arts and Sciences Advising web site more “self- service” for students Build new interactive web site for American Sign Language program Build General Education course database Develop reporting dashboard for report delivery, ad hoc querying, and unit-specific data

17. The Reality of Higher Education Tight budgets Fixed schedules Expanding workloads Market competition for tech staff How can we do it? Must incorporate agility into the way we do business!

18. Scrum: One Agile Framework Deliver Business Value Simple Rules Timeboxed Iterations Incremental Delivery of Features On-Site Customers Self-Organizing/Self-Managing Teams “Just in Time/Just Enough” Documentation (Mike Cohn) Scrum: One Agile Framework http://www.flickr.com/photos/somerslea/145022630/

19. Example of (our) Scrum: Course Tool

20. Graphics from Mike Cohn’s fully redistributable and customizable presentation at http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com Product Owner Scrum Team Scrum Master Scrum Roles

21. Product Backlog 1. Define user stories “As a user, I can…” No censoring Evolves over time 2. Assign story points Relative difficulty Preparation Meeting (Sprint 0) Artifact: Product Backlog http://flickr.com/photos/improveit/1469850305/in/set-72157602233041553/

22. Sprint Backlog 1.PO: Choose user stories for iteration (sprint) Team’s velocity (in story points) PO’s priorities 2.Team: Break into tasks and estimate hours (maybe) Artifact: Sprint Backlog Sprint Planning Meeting

23. Sprint Backlog

24. Sprint 15 minute standup w/PO Do yesterday? Do today? Any impediments? Remember goal: Delivery of business value, not perfect planning and not timekeeping Daily Scrum Scrum Master Coaches team Facilitates meetings Removes impediments Reviews sprint burndown Adjusts stories with PO Artifact: Sprint Burndown Chart Hours left to finish task, not hours worked!

25. Sprint Review Sprint goal: “Increment of Potentially Shippable Product” (Ken Schwaber) Informal (no ppts) demonstration to stakeholders DoD (“definition of done”) Deploy: yes or no? N sprints = 1 release Sprint Review Meeting

26. Sprint Retrospective Off-site after every sprint Inspect and Adapt What went wrong, what went right, how can we improve? Rinse and repeat

27. Graphics from Mike Cohn’s fully redistributable and customizable presentation at http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com True involvement Transparency Get what I want, when I want it! Collaborative team Higher productivity Manageable chunks More accurate reporting Empowerment Autonomy Produce something, often Opportunity to be creative Fun! Happier customers! Happier employees! Scrum: What’s in it for me?

28. Why not start tomorrow? Schedule 15-minute stand-up meetings Allow the team to make decisions Remove an impediment Shadow an end user Try paper prototyping Sit together/pair program Release something next week

29. Q&A Diane Dagefoerde dagefoerde.2@osu.edu Documents will be posted to the Educause site. More information about Scrum: Agile Software Development with SCRUM Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle, 2001 Scrum & XP From the Trenches Henrik Kniberg, 2007 Mike Cohn Mountaingoatsoftware.com Beth Snapp snapp.6@osu.edu Please complete the session evaluation form. Copyright Diane Dagefoerde and Mary Beth Snapp 2008. This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the authors. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.