Attend|Learn|Grow Taking Your Career to the Next Level 4th Annual Professional Development Days! May 23-24th, 2018

Larry Schriver 29 years - primarily software development and maintenance Several IT shops using various software development approaches Collection of observations and comparisons

How can I take my career to the next level? By gaining knowledge and skills that create opportunities to lead business change in a variety of business situations We are marketable to a wider selection of organizations

Selecting the Approach Waterfall? PRINCE2? Agile Scrum?

What’s to stop us from using elements of all 3 approaches? Or other approaches?

Many things are common across approaches There is already overlap in PM processes Initiate Manage Scope Manage Risk Manage issues Estimate report progress Manage dependencies

Variations When the artifacts are delivered When the code is delivered When the code is tested

Overview of Approaches Waterfall PRINCE2 Agile Scrum

Waterfall Initiate Plan Analyze Design Construct Test Implement Close

PRINCE2 Startup Initiate Manage Stage Boundary Control Stage Manage Product Delivery Close Project

Scrum Initiate Release Planning Sprints: stories/design/construct/test/demo “Minimum Viable Product” Close

Pros and Cons Situation-dependent

Waterfall - pros Allows different groups to complete their work at pre-defined stages Groups can provide value to the organization on other projects / meet operational commitments while development continues

Waterfall - pros The team builds deep knowledge of the desired functionality onboarding a new team member less disruptive than other approaches

Waterfall pros Developers with much experience with an application can design from the user perspective

Waterfall - cons Incomplete or inaccurate requirements result in major re-work

Waterfall - cons Takes longer to deliver initial business value than some other approaches…probably

PRINCE2 – pros Excellent templates for project definition and execution

PRINCE2 – pros Can be used in virtually every situation

PRINCE2 – pros Much focus on gating Business owners have control – and understanding - at each stage

PRINCE2 - cons Large amount of documentation is required up front The Project Initiation Documentation can be time consuming

Scrum - Pros PM and the team are “close to the action” daily -ability to identify problems immediately -

Scrum - Pros “Minimum Viable Product” means deliver business value as early as possible

Scrum - cons Much re-factoring of code (examine some of the Manifesto principles here)

Scrum - cons Probably much more re-testing required than the other approaches, especially regression testing Do we have automated testing tools and the knowledge to build scripts for regression?

Scrum - cons Getting the MVP live with the intent to develop more phases results in: planning and executing multiple system implementations, and developing the next enhancements, and supporting production application at the same time stress

How do we determine the best approach? If we work in an organization that uses a single approach the decision is already made for us But if recognize serious constraints, can we promote another way?

What is our daily objective? Predictable and Repeatable

Predictable and Repeatable What are the questions we need to ask? What are the PM processes we need to implement? Considerations

Scenario 1 Entire team is in-house Business Team is experienced Technical team is experienced Both business and technical teams have worked with Waterfall, PRINCE2 and Scrum Existing technical architecture – enhance existing application

Scenario 1 Conclusion – Part 1 Scrum using story points and sub-tasks with hours of effort/burndown But only if both the business team and technical team accept that each task will be estimated (ideally before before next sprint) for burndown reporting Immediate awareness of sprint deadline being missed PRINCE2 artifacts: PID Highlight Report, Exception Report …however…

Scenario 1 Conclusion - Part 2 ...if the team wishes to manage the work based on story points, I would reconsider: With such an experienced team, a waterfall approach might work just as well because of the increased chances of getting the major requirements right

Sample Burndown Chart

Scenario 2 Summary Entire team is in-house Business Team is experienced Technical team is experienced Both business and technical teams have worked with Waterfall, PRINCE2 and Scrum New technical architecture – microservices introduced for deployment efficiencies

Scenario 2 Conclusion – Part 1 New architecture – Scrum by default?

Scenario 2 Conclusion – Part 2 Waterfall prototype?

Insourced/Outsourced perspective is relevant Internal perspective – we want resourcing to be adequate External perspective – gaps in roles might mean there’s an opportunity to hire another resource

Each individual situation will have its own best approach

“Taking Your Career to the Next Level” Summary Gain knowledge and skills that allow us to work around organizational constraints Predictable and Repeatable

Questions / Discussion