1. Equifax UK Agile Review
Presentation created to communicate Equifax UK’s Agile adoption challenges and successes
First “true” UK Agile project kicked off 2011
Now most teams are using Agile practices to drive delivery (Scrum & Kanban)
FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS THROUGHOUT

2. British Computer Society
G.A. Green
Head of Agile Delivery
13th March 2014

3. WARNING! ! This is what worked for us / me WARNING
This is how we adapted and the lessons we learnt
WARNING
Not preaching here
No magic pill or silver bullet
We are on a journey
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4. Equifax has global credibility
Equifax has global credibility. We help organisations make decisions about their customers
158bn
MONTHLY
CREDIT
SCORE
UPDATES
7,000
EMPLOYEES
600m
CONSUMERS
81m
BUSINESSES
International… not global
205m
EMPLOYEE
FILES
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5. We operate successfully in 17 countries across the globe
North America
UK&I
EUROPE
ASIA
SOUTH
AMERICA
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6. And have been helping people for over 110 years
And have been helping people get what they want for over 110 years
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7. Our insight can help your business perform better
We deliver insight to you by identifying the intricate connections
The breadth and depth of the consumer and commercial data we hold is extensive
We help protect businesses by reducing levels of fraud and providing tools that help meet regulatory and compliance needs.
We predict the behaviour of new and existing customers to support managing risk and decisions making.
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

8. Why are we embracing Agile?
Embrace Voice of the Customer
Hit the market fast
Fixed cost and dates
Deliver often – higher release cadences
One team
Leverage global resources, knowledge and skill
Make delivery FUN
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

9. Why did we chose Scrum? Agile adoption patterns Scrum adoption levels
Scrum based models account for almost 2/3 of adoption patterns
Source: VersionOne’s annual Agile development survey
Skill availability
The team preferred it
I really like it!
Source: State of Agile Survey:
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

10. Leveraging global capabilities into Agile delivery capacity
Equifax is large and international
Means sweating global assets
Current project has:
Product, PM and BA in Bradford
Sales in London
Tech Lead in Eire
Lead Engineer in Colorado
Architect in Atlanta
Web Design in Missouri
Engineers and QA in Bangalore & Mumbai
Engineers and QA in Chile
Agile Manifesto discusses Face-to-face communication… so how did we overcome this…?
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying
information to and within a development  team is face-to-face conversation”
Agile Manifesto
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

11. Some key challenges caused by Distributed Agile Teams?
Time-zone
Language / Culture
Over reliance on written communication and tools
Offshore teams left out of decision making
Offshore team lose context
Delays in decisions / escalations
Service hours
Public Holidays
Time-zones – 12 hours end to end
Culture
Addresses, Public Sector
Commitment
not saying no, not wanting to ask the question
We need to take accountability for that!!!!
Can’t communicated face-to-face
Offshore can’t be in every meeting
Non-production service hours suit a UK business day
Very few public holidays overlap
Ask the right questions, do not ask: Do you understand that? Have you got everything you need?
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

12. How can we minimise the impacts caused by time-zones?
Time-zones are killers to Agility and empowerment
Context gap
Block out overlapping time and give priority to collaboration with offshore partners
Flexible / shift working for periods
Onshore proxies
Ask the right questions
Requires real effort to reduce impact and flexibility
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

13. Make the effort to build relationships with peers and do it Face-to-Face!
Built 1:1 Peer to peer relationships
Make relationships that make sense
Delivery
Engineering QA
Product / Business Analysts
Talk daily
Leverage desktop video conferencing
Empower
Ask the right questions
prefer the term person to person
As well as the standard Scrum ceremonies…
Take the effort to build relationships with peers
Talk daily… really… even if there is nothing to talk about… build relationships… talk about the weather, kids…
Use tools to share context
Empower your offshore partner to make decisions for you
Make it a bonus-able objective
Lead by example
Relationships can overcome cultural challenges
Consider yourselves peers, equals
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

14. How do you keep remote attendees engaged?
Use Video conferencing, Lync, Skype to read the room
Also good for building rapport and relationships
Empower people out of the room to lead
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

15. Games can make a dull activity interesting
Use games like Innovation games to bring it to life
Allows you to virtualise a wall of post-its
Pass the keyboard around
Use Mind-Maps
Pass the baton… let offshore lead
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16. Use tools to support communication across distributed teams
Build Relationships
Regular travel
Desktop VC & Sharing
Daily calls
Instant Messaging
Wikis
Use tools to support communication - MASSIVE DEPENDENCY ON TOOLS
Visualisation
Build context
Minute meetings
Travel – kick-offs, releases, travel both ways
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

17. Use tools to support communication across distributed teams
Replacing documents
Promoting collaboration
Allow to evolve
Simple and WYSIWYG
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

18. Use tools to support communication across distributed teams
Are burn-downs enough?
Team came up with this
Talk through the columns and principals
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

19. Use tools to support communication across distributed teams
Again… team came up with this
Not very efficient, but helps them plan and understand if they are slipping
Also helps ensure all parties are on the same page and understand expectations
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

20. [Technology allows risks to be assigned and tracked]
JIRA helps replace the card-wall
Also used for RAID
Allows team visualisation of the Sprint
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21. A little visualisation goes a long way
Wiki pages
Burn-downs
Summarise goals, scope, definition of done
Burn-down is not enough
WIKI page per Sprint
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22. How do you know you are delivering?
An Agile Gantt chart and burndown does not tell you a lot
Trust and empower the team
Agree key metrics
Start and end dates
Sprint Goals
Velocity
Quality (static analysis)
Number and severity of bugs raised by QA
Number of bugs re-opened
Be warned… metrics drive behaviour too – Hawthorne effect
Make it meaningful
Make it valuable
Make it indicative of success / failure
Make it appropriate
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

23. Bad habits – Ceremony creep
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
08:45
09:00
Daily Scrum
09:15
09:30
09:45
10:00
10:15
10:30
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
08:45
09:00
Daily Scrum
09:15
Breakout
(if needed)
09:30
09:45
10:00
10:15
10:30
Keep Daily Scrum Short!
Block out extra time for
break-outs
Only attend if needed
Have daily calls at times that suit all parties…
May be necessary to have more than one…
Block out time
Overlapping time is precious
Protect it
And make sure you are using is appropriately
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

24. Adapt, collaborate and adapt
We got best results by adapting Scrum to fit us
Called on a lot of advice and external and internal sources
Mike Cohn / Mountain Goat Software
Agile 101
Agile Alliance
Scrum.org
Books, books and more books
Equifax Global
And adapted to what worked and had value to us…. The team decided
The same applied to the UK SDLC
Make it fit!
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

25. Sprint Planning
Takes up to three days but does not always utilise the entire team
Use Video Conferencing and desktop sharing, then leave the team time to plan and ask questions
Product owner and tech leads on stand-by to support planning
The outputs were:
Sprint commitment, definition of done per Story as well as a Sprint Confluence pages
Sub-tasks for all the candidate stories, with estimates
A standard set of sub-tasks are used as a template
Kicks of with the retrospective. Then the product owner and leads walk through the stories
Goal to have a predictive Sprint plan / commitment
All team need to agree
Again video conferencing help read body language
Ask the right questions!!!!
May need to ask team to flex working hours to optimise productivity and collaboration – but goes both ways
May need product owner and key leads to be available via IM or for questions
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26. Be ready for Sprint Product Team Tech Lead New Story Nursery
Elementary
Junior High
High School
New Story logged
Decompose into Sprint-sized Story candidates
Story Estimate (Shirt-Size)
Prioritise
Full description
Tech. Design approach
Acceptance criteria
Compliance criteria
UI Design
Re-Estimate
Re-Prioritise
Review
Sprint scheduling
Story maturity model
Filters
Source: Nationwide Insurance 2009
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

27. Backlog Grooming / Release Planning
Based on a 3 week sprint
Week 1 - Support the team to plan
Week 2 - Prep for next Sprint
Week 3 - Support the team to close
Sprint x close
Sprint x+1 kick-off
Sprint x+2+ Prep
Sprint x+1 close
Sprint x+1+ Prep
We use 3 – 4 week Sprints, chosen by the team and reviewed regularly
3 – 4 week Sprints easier as the cadence
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28. There are many Sprint Planning dangers and pitfalls
WARNING
DO NOT Over-Commit
Pace can be a killer – make it sustainable
Sprints should not be “sprints”, it’s a marathon
There’s always work the team can do, even if it is not committed, just don’t pollute the code stream
Caution:
Learn from past Sprints, try not to repeat mistakes
The do’er is the estimator for the task –not to be imposed
Consider planning from Done backwards with QA driving planning
Test Driven Planning
Done
Commitment is a killer
TDE
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29. There are many Planning dangers and pitfalls
WARNING !
External
Dependencies
may cause scope to be compromised or committed too early
Other work-streams may struggle (infrastructure)
Working with other Agile work-streams can be difficult as need to tied down dependencies
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

30. Planning – Change Happens
Scrum Guide 2013
No changes are made that will effect the Sprint Goal
Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated
Change still happens
Welcome change
Change still needs to be impacted and renegotiated by the team
The team should be in the driving seat
Welcome change does not mean blindly do it
Impact
Empower the team to call out impacts and options… product owner to make the decision
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

31. People not technology drive the process
Product
Defines what is needed, supports QA and Engineering
(Product Owner)
Delivery
Facilitates & communicates progress
Removes impediments
(Scrum Master) QA
Supports the Product Owner and team
Tells us when we are done!
Engineering
Supports the Engineers - Ensures that levels of technical debt are acceptable and that we are aligned to architectural governance.
We still need leaders
Not every wants to lead
Leaders emerge
Fully engaged product owner
The tactical BA anti-pattern
Team needs time to self-organise
Sprint -1, 0
Best lessons learnt from failure
Celebrate failure
BUT learn from it and do not repeat
Four key lead roles
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

32. Sprint Definition of Done Sprint Goal
QA Leadership
Strong QA Leadership offshore was essential
QA Lead acting as Scrum Master leads to a conflict of interest
Drive delivery vs. remain impartial
Sprint Definition of Done
QA & Product tells us we have met the Acceptance Criteria!
Sprint Goal
Usable & potentially releasable product
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18
QA is VITAL!!!!!!
Scrum Lead challenge – thought I had a winner with QA Lead as Scrum Lead!!!!!
Close collaboration essential
Balance drive
Engineering = Vanity
QA & Product = Sanity
Gary Green 2013
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

33. Usable & potentially releasable product
Achieving Done
Ratio of 2 Eng : 1 QA worked best for us
Working as Units of three
Close Collaboration (Eng : QA : Product)
Engineers can test too!
Automation, Automation…. And more Automation
But automation does cost… especially the impact of change
Manual regression can be a killer with multi- Sprint / multi-Release Projects
Sprint Goal
Usable & potentially releasable product
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

34. What was the outcome? Able to adapt quickly Concept to delivery
time dramatically reduced
Delivered On-Time
Delivered Under-Budget
It really did deliver!!!
Did it deliver everything from the original requirements spec… NO…. Did it deliver everything the product owner, sales and customer needed… YES
Also got lucky
GREAT TEAM!!!
Some lucky savings on infrastructure that allowed me to add resources for last 6 months
Delivered What
the customer wanted!
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

35. Key Success Factors People Dedication, commitment and collaboration
Product Leadership, vision, drive and support
Technical Leadership
Engineering and QA
Dedication, commitment and collaboration
Open and honest communication
Take time to communicate, make it a priority… build relationships
Tools
Leverage internal and external sources
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

36. MAGIC = Right People + Dedication + Resources + Empowerment Product QA
Engineer QA
Delivery
Right People + Dedication + Resources + Empowerment =
MAGIC
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

37. Summary Requires commitment, dedication and effort to make it work
Everyone is part of the solution, no exceptions
Does not guarantee outcomes
The right tools
Watch for over-commitment
Ask the right questions
Build strong relationships
Empower
Make it fun!!!
Commercial in confidence — Equifax UK Agile Review

38. Thank you, any questions?

39. G.A. Green
Head of Agile Delivery
March 2014

40. Equifax UK Agile Review