1. Agile Familiarisation
Overview of what Agile is June 2008
Responding To Change

2. Sound Familiar
Time to market for projects is too long
Unrealistic deadlines
Poor Estimation
Requirement Changes
Immature architecture and design
No Documentation or too much
Inadequate Testing

3. Projects today are... Too slow
“My needs are changing, but IT can’t keep up”
“Nothing gets done in less than a year”
Not valuable enough
“Project scope is wrong. And we’ve already coded half the system”
“I’ve got lots of documentation that no one uses for a system that doesn’t meet my needs.”
“We waste time designing and building features that are never used”
Not responsive
“Projects force the agency to close on requirements before they really know what they want”
“Every little modification results in a change order”
Not in control
“Don’t know what’s going on with the project”
“I’m stuck with consultants that don’t provide value”

4. Waterfall versus Agile

5. Comparing Typical water fall model development (With some overlap)
Agile model with Iterations
Design
Development
Test
Requirements
Small iterations help in getting early feedback
Requirements
Requirements
Requirements
Design
Design
Design
Development
Development
Development
Testing team peak
Test
Test
Test
Development team peak
Design team peak
Requirements peak
No big team peaks/Spikes
Development team is idle or not formed
Requirements and test team are not on project
All the teams formed at start of project
Close communication reduces re work
Better requirements understanding with user stories
Better quality products with regular demos and testing
Each iteration gives value to business
In production early
Ability to absorb change requests easily
Little scope in the project plan for accepting changes with out re-planning and long Change request cycles
Re work due to late feed back and unclear requirements
Business only see finished article during UAT
Benefits not realised till end

6. Iterative Incremental Development
“Iterative development is an approach to building software (or anything) in which the overall lifecycle is composed of several iterations in sequence.
Each iteration is a self-contained mini-project composed of activities such as requirements analysis, design, programming, and test.
Usually the partial system grows incrementally with new features, iteration by iteration; in other words, incremental development.”
--Craig Larman

7. Iterative Development
Time
Visibility
Iterative Development
All-At-Once Development

8. Incremental Development
Time
Value
All-At-Once Delivery
Incremental Delivery

9. What is an Agile methodology?
Agile development is a methodology of software development that
emphasizes customer satisfaction through continuous delivery of
Functional software. Based on a variety of iterative development
disciplines Agile methods put developers to work in small teams to
tight budgets and short timescales.
Agile methods are considered
Lightweight
People-based rather than Process-based
Adaptive rather than predictive
Less document oriented than rigorous methods

10. Why Agile Create and build the right requirements Reduce waste
Accelerate client value
Improve predictability
Provide unparalleled transparency and control to the client

11. What is an Agile methodology? (Contd..)
Agile Method Types

12. What is an Agile methodology?
Agile Manifesto: Values
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Continuous Testing
Short iterations (Incremental cycles)
Responding to change over following a plan
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

13. Agile summary - on a postage stamp..
establish a vision
change always happens
so prioritise your activity
do something small
get feedback
decide next steps
Personal view of Agile – my words

14. Agile Myths …. no design no testing no documentation
no idea of progress
poor quality
no plan
auditors won’t allow it

15. Key benefits of Agile
Increases Flexibility - Minimizes up-front investment and maximizes return on investment (ROI) by creating an efficient IT development process
Delivers the right solution - Aligns users and stakeholders with the right people to deliver the solution that the business actually needs
Accelerates Delivery - Iterations get to the right solution faster
Reduces risk and increases Quality - Greater stakeholder visibility and control

16. Key benefits of Agile…Contd
Increases Flexibility
2003 Standish Group report highlighted an alarming statistic with technology projects:
Nearly two-thirds of the features built into these solutions are rarely or never used
Solution: Evolutionary design
It is a nonlinear approach where change is expected, and where the team uses actual development to gain empirical data to inform the design
Blind alleys or requirements that simply don’t work are abandoned early on or are identified and eliminated before they are even reached
The solution evolves over multiple cycles (known as iterations), converging on an optimal response to the business problem with minimal waste.

17. Key benefits of Agile…Contd
Accelerates Delivery Iterations reinforce evolutionary design and form a repetitive 'timebox' mentality for the project teams and clients. This translates into speed: the solution gets delivered faster and earlier
Solution
The development teams deliver working, fully production-grade software much earlier in the engagement This early software is not merely a proof of concept.
The team focuses development first on high-risk and high-value aspects, which means the earliest completed software is actually the most critical part of the solution.
Stakeholders can choose to deploy this functionality (they may also elect to learn and improve it to converge on an optimal solution over multiple iterations)
Putting working software in front of business users early yields other critical benefits: it helps legitimize the project spend, drives eventual adoption, and, thus, facilitates organizational change

18. Key benefits of Agile…Contd.
Reduces risk and increases quality
Stakeholders know exactly where the project stands at all times and can change its course as the business needs change
Solution
The Story Log
The story log is an active, living scope of work that stakeholders use to drive the initiative
A story is a work item that delivers tangible stakeholder value within the iteration. Examples include implementing a report, adding a new feature to a web application, etc.

19. Agile Disadvantages It’s hard! Makes all dysfunction visible
Its doesn’t fix anything: the team has to do it
Feels like things are worse at the beginning
Bad products will be delivered sooner, and doomed projects will fail faster
Partial adoption may be worse than none at all

20. (sumit_gupta2001@yahoo.com)