An Overview of Agile L e a d i n g C h a n g e T h r o u g h C o l l a b o r a t i o n

Pollyanna Pixton Founder, Accelinnova President, Evolutionary Systems Director Institute of Collaborative Leadership L e a d i n g C h a n g e T h r o u g h C o l l a b o r a t i o n

Agile Manifesto  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools  Working software over comprehensive documentation  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation  Responding to change over following a plan While there is value in the items on the right we value the items on the left more.

Agile Overview Agile Principles:  Customer Involvement  Iterative Development  Embrace Change  Test First  Collaborative Communication Across Organization Boundaries  Simplify: Minimize Documentation

Declaration of Interdependence  Continuous flow of value  Engage customers  Create an environment where individuals can make a difference  Expect uncertainty and manage for it  Context specific strategies, processes, and practices  Group accountability

Iterate  Timebox in which whole features of value are delivered.  Prevents “requirement inventory”  Allows team to respond to changes in business  Allows quicker realization of value from the project  Provide feedback loops to measure progress  Keeps project close to delivery  Ensures that valuable functionality is developed first

Consider Context  Utilize only those practices that make sense for the project and environment  “Barely sufficient” artifacts and methodology  “Appropriate” vs “Best Practices”

Practice Excellence  Agility requires self discipline to lead to improved quality  Relies on the team to practice technical excellence instead of imposing discipline  Adopt technical practices that support the other practices such as:  Continuous integration  Test Driven Development  Refactoring

Reflect and Adapt  Learn from past to improve performance  Retrospectives after each iteration  Harness change for improved efficiency  Multi-Horizon planning allows adaptation

The Process Pendulum Code and FixWaterfallAgile No ProcessPrescriptiveEmpirical  Frequent inspection  Collaboration  Adaptive responses Prescriptive  Defined set of steps to follow  Plan the work, work the plan  Plan is assumed to be correct

Agile Principles

Agile Methods  eXtreme Programming (XP)  Scrum  Feature Driven Development (FDD)  Crystal  Kanban (?)

Agile Overview “Agile projects succeed when the team gets the spirit of agility.” – Ron Jeffries (APM Group)

eXtreme Programming

XP Values and Principles  Communication  Simplicity  Feedback  Courage  Quality work

XP Practices  The planning game  Small releases  Metaphor  Simple design  Refactoring  Testing  Pair programming  Collective Ownership  Continuous Integration  Sustainable Pace  On Site Customer  Coding Standards

XP Roles  The Customer Sets project goals and makes business decisions  The Developer Turn customer stories into working code  The Tracker Keeps track of any metrics used by team  The Coach Guides and mentors the team

Scrum

Scrum Roles  Scrum Team  Scrum Master  Carries water and moves boulders  Product Owner  Responsible for maintaining product backlog

Scrum Control Points Meetings:  Sprint Planning  Daily Scrum  Sprint Review (retrospectives)

Feature Driven Development Deploy Build Feature List Plan By Feature Design by Feature Build By Feature Develop Model Model-driven short-iteration process that consists of five basic activities: - Jeff deLuca, 1997

FDD Focus  (Object) Modeling centric  Client centric  Architecture centric  Pragmatic  Functional decomposition  Subject Area  Business Activity  Business Activity Step

FDD Roles  Chief Programmers Team lead, mentor, developer  Class owner Developer with responsibility for a class  Feature teams Temporary groups of developers formed around classes

Crystal Clear  Frequent Delivery  Reflective Improvement  Osmotic Communication  Personal Safety  Focus  Easy Access to Expert Users  Automated Tests  Configuration Management  Frequent Integration

Crystal Clear “The team can reduce intermediate work products as it produces running code more frequently, as it uses richer communication channels between people.” - Alistair Cockburn

Crystal Clear Every product is slightly different and evolves over time, so the methodology, the set of conventions the team adopts, must be tuned and evolve. - Alistair Cockburn

Crystal Clear Roles  Sponsor: Allocates money for the project  Expert User  Lead Designer  Lead Technical person, mentors less experienced team members  Designer-Programmer  Each person designs and programs

Agile Method’s Focus Scrum FDDXPCrystal Project ManagementEngineering Scrum FDD XP Crystal StructuredUnstructured Structure Methodology

What is a kanban system?

Kanban  Improves the throughput and reduces cycle times  Delivers iterationless development  Kanban limits create a pull system  White board provides visualization of flow through to delivery

Kanban

Pull Flow – from Engineering Ready to Release Ready Kanban Limit – regulates WIP at each stage in the process

Appropriate Practices What method to use? Don’t use a screwdriver to drive a nail.