Topic: Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Notebook: PMP® Certification

Created: 05-Nov-18 1:46 PM Updated: 22-May-19 2:42 PM
Author: ajaymeganathan@ymail.com
URL: https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/

Topic: Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Course: PMP® Certification
Date: 11/05/18
Professor: Jeff Allen

Overview

Basic Approach of Project Management: 2 

Waterfall: clear requirement/plan/measurement against the plan
Agile: complex projects/unclear requirements/frequent variation
PMI In-demand Agile Methodologies:
SCRUM
XP
CLEAR
LEAN
KANBAN
CRYSTAL
Test Driven Development
PMI EXAM CONTENT:
agile principles and mindset
value driven delivery
stake holder management
team performance
adaptive planning
problem detection and resolution
continuous improvement

Domain 00

Benefits of Agile principles and practices:

adaptability to changing requirement
reduces product/process waste
early detection of problems
continuous customer feedback
return of investment (early/measurable)
Resources:
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great: Esther Derby ISBN
#0977616649
 Coaching Agile Teams: Lyssa Adkins ISBN #0321637704
Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products: Jim Highsmith ISBN
#0321658396
Becoming Agile: in an imperfect world: Greg Smith
Agile Estimating and Planning: Mike Cohn
The Art of Agile Development: James Shore ISBN #0596527675
Agile Project Management with Scrum: Ken Schwaber ISBN #073561993X

Domain 01: Agile Principles and Mindset

Agile: constant change of plan, collaboration and delivery

Agile Best Practices (software development):
Face-to-Face communication
Shorter development cycle
Business and Developer collaboration
Working software as the primary demonstration of progress
Effective engineering practices
Frequent demonstrations of progress and early ROI
Inspect and adapt to business changes
Retrospectives and continuous improvement
Agile Evolution:
Test Driven Development
Continuous Integration
Refactoring (restructuring without changing behavior)
User Stories
Agile Manifestos (guiding principles) - Feb 2001 by 17 leading software developers
Value/Against: Individuals and interactions/processes and tools, Working
software/comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration/contract
negotiation and Responding to change/following a plan
12 principles of Agile
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes
harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from every couple of weeks to couple of
months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the
project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and
support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within
a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers,
and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing
teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then
tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Agile, More Enabling
Continuous Improvement
Focus on the Value Chain
Business Value Emphasis
 Incremental Delivery
Agile core principles and practices
Early delivery of value through Iterations
User Stories
Continuous Involvement of the Customer
Acceptance tests for requirements
Retrospectives (team)
Sustainable pace
Communication
High Visibility

Domain 01: Agile Principles and Mindset (2)

Agile Methodologies, Frameworks, and Processes: existing methodologies

Scrum:
Simplicity and proven results
Changes to requirements
Daily status meetings
3 PILLARS: Transparency/Inspection/Adaptation
(5-9 team members) - 3 Key roles: Product Owner, ScrumMaster and
Development Team
Key Terms: Product Backlog (plan/requirement of all tasks to be
performed) - Sprint (30 day deliverable) - Sprint Backlog (requirement
for incremental deliverable) - Scrum (daily meeting)
Scrum Meetings: 
Sprint planning - 8 hours meeting/effort estimation
Daily stand-up meeting - 15 mins (completion/status/blocker)
Sprint Review - 4 hours/monthly (demo of product)
Retrospection - 3 hours/monthly (end of each sprint/what went
well/improvements)
Scrum Roles - Key Points:

Extreme Programming (XP)

High cost of changing requirement/software development centric agile
method
Revolutionary concepts:
Test driven development
Continuous integration
Iterations
User stories
Five core principles of XP
Communication
Simplicity
Feedback (unit - system/acceptance - customer/planning - team)
Courage
 Respect
XP practices:
Fine-scale feedback
Continuous process
Shared understanding
Programmer welfare

Crystal - categorized according to size of project, criticality and team.

Key Principles - frequent delivery, reflective improvement, osmotic
communication, personal safety, focus, ease of access to experts,
technical environment with automated tests, configuration
management, and frequent integration

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM Atern) - Rapid Application

Development (RAD) 
Prioritization technique - MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could and Won't)

Principles of DSDM Atern:

 Phases of DSDM:
Pre-project (project selection)
Feasibility (identify feasible solution)
Foundation (identify foundation/standards business and technical
front)
Exploration (develop solution - not production ready)
Engineering (develop product production ready)
Deployment (live environment - deploy)
Post-project (business benefit assessment)
Feature Driven Development (FDD) - iterative and incremental approach to
software development
domain models are broken into subject areas as business activites
business activities are features should not take more than 2 weeks
to complete
Agile Project Management (APM)
Broaden Agile techniques into a cohesive whole

Value - extrinsic and Quality - intrinsic 

APM Framework (5 phases)
Envision (project scope/vision)
Speculate (develop milestones/feature release)
Explore (deliver tested features)
Adapt (review results and adapt)
Close (conclude project)
Lean Kanban (Toyota Production System) to address issues in manufacturing:
Muri (overuse - unnecessary stress), Mura (irregularities - waste due to process
irregularities) and Muda (non-value add waste - activity or process)
Lean Principles:

Kanban: Signal board that reflect the throughput of a sprint or iteration

 Lean Kanban Method (3 principles/5 core practices)
start with what you know
agree to pursue incremental change
respect current roles/responsibilities
visualize
limit work in progress
manage flow
make management policies
"safe to fail" experiments
OpenUP: IBM (open-source) variant of the Rational Unified Process (RUP)
structured product lifecycle with agile incremental approach
targets small, co-located teams
4 phases of OpenUP:

Information Radiators: display of information (current

status/progress/task boards/burndown charts/health indicators)
Simple/Stark/Current/Transient/Influential/Highly visible/Minimal
in number
Knowledge sharing - structured/with specific goal

Servant Leadership - leader as the enabler who helps the team, obstacles
and provide required tools

Domain 02: Value Driven Delivery (1)

Value: project/program benefits (Revenue per employee, Innovation rate, customer

satisfaction, repeat customer, ROI) - Forecasting project value
Time Value of Money concepts: Money available in present is worth more in future /
potential to earn more money through interest is capitalized
Present Value - Future Value - Period - Rate of Interest
Financial Feasibility of Projects: metrics used ROI, Net present value (NPV), Internal rate
of return (IRR), Payback period
ROI: efficiency of investment 

 
NPV: net monitory benefit (gain or loss) - expected to be positive

IRR: interest rate at which NPV is 0

Payback period: regain of amount invested as net cash inflows

Discount factor = 1/(1+discount%) -> PROGRESS AS: discount
factor/(1+discount%)
Prioritization: order of requirement 

Agile Customer: Value Prioritization (collaborating with customers, focus groups,

reducing technical debts)
Prioritization Techniques: MoSCoW - Kano Model - Relative Weighting
Pruning the Backlog: continuously prioritizing the backlog
MoSCoW (DSDM):

Kano Model: Basic needs - Performance needs - Excitement needs

Kano Model Categories:

Relative Weighting: features with highest benefits after adjustment for costs,
risk and penalties should have highest priority

Priority = value% / (cost% + risk%)

Risk Management: EMV (expected monetary value) of negative risks
EMV = risk impact (in $) X risk probability (as %)

Non-Functional Requirements: define how well the product should perform.

SUMMARY:
Domain 02: Value Driven Delivery (2)

MMF (Minimum Marketable Feature) & steps involved in project planning using MMF
smallest functionality providing maximum benefits (Pareto 80/20)

STEP 1: determine MMF (basic features required)

STEP 2: introduce slack or buffer (duration for nice-to-have
feature implementation)
STEP 3: manage change (addition of new features by reducing slack or
removing low priority feature)
STEP 4: increase the MMF (customer request and prioritisation) 
STEP 5: accommodate the new feature (new feature accepted and
accommodated as part of MMF
Kanban card and JIT (Just-In-Time) Production
Kanban board with segments representing activities
stories - index card 
status - location of the card
WIP limit - if exceeded downstream stops to clear backlog / if met upstream
process halts
 JIP - develop, deliver or consume what is required in a particular point of time,
instead of stacking
Kanban - pull, JIT - flow of task
Incremental delivery (process of building product developed in one or more iterations)
early feedback on products
early ROI
cost-effective
Feedback techniques (system's output -> input for improvement)

Feedback system in Scrum methodology:

Reprioritization or Relative Prioritization: as new requirement emerge and the priority

of existing requirement change, overall capacity of the release is not altered.
Agile compliance (necessitates that the agile projects adhere to rules) and the focus
area (policy and standards to be achieved or maintained)
EVM (Earned value management is a technique that shows progress of project using
ratios and metrics) application, metrics and terminologies 
 EMV formulas:

Planning parameters:

EVM for Agile:

Agile Contracts: objectives, project structure, key personnel, payment terms,
termination clause, legal details
Agile Contracting methods:
fixed price or fixed scope (risk of cost escalation borne by the seller)

time and materials (risk of cost escalation borne by the buyer)

time and material with fixed scope and a cost ceiling (risk of cost escalation
borne by seller beyond an agreed point)
 time and material with variable scope and a cost ceiling (stops on hitting cost
ceiling)

bonus or penalty clauses  (on time - prior - post : benefits)

Summary:

Stakeholder Engagement (Part 1)

stake in the project - whose interest positively or negatively impact project outcome
Internal and external stakeholders (stakeholder management - key determinant of
project success)
Ten Principles of Stakeholder Management:

Project Charter: reference document that provides overview of project goals, budget,
deliverable, sponsor and communication
Agile charter documented on a whiteboard
make well informed decisions
value project delivers to business
W5H (what, why, when, who where, and how)
success criteria for the project
3 components of Agile Project Charter:

Business Case: justify the project with business benefits - risk of not undertaking the
project
User Story: lightweight requirement and agreement between customer and team to
deliver in an iteration
CCCs (Card, Conversation, Confirmation)
Attributes of User Story:
I - independent as individual unit
N - negotiable in terms of implementation
V - valuable (value to customer)
E - estimable (amount of work involved with accuracy)
S - small with an interation
T - testable for correct based on success criteria
Story Card Information:

User Story Card:

Agile Personas: A persona is an imaginary representation of a typical user, which can

be extended to user roles (interaction design).
Theme and Epic:
THEME: set of related user stories combined as single entity
EPIC: large user story with low priority
Product Backlog: list of items that could be needed in a product (functional/non-
functional requirement, enhancement)
DEEP - Detailed appropriately, Emergent, Evolving and Prioritized
Agile Story Maps: 2 dimensional arrangement of user story cards

Assessing and Incorporating Stakeholder values:

 SUMMARY:

Stakeholder Engagement (Part 2)

Objectives:

Communication Channel Effectiveness:

 Daily stand-up meeting
Demonstration of agile software development
Retrospectives
Planning sessions
Requirement gathering
Group based estimation
'Social Media' communication refers to computerized tools that allows share of
knowledge
WIKI/Blog spots/Livestreams/Knowledge share sites
Information Radiators: Proactively manage stakeholder expectation and provide
transparency to work being performed.
Burnup chart - 'Feature Complete Graph' in feature driven development (FDD) -
total work
Burndown chart - amount work remaining (actual velocity against expected)
Kanban or Task boards - stakeholders to understand the status of the sprint
Impediment Logs - factors prevents the team from achieving sprint goals
Visible Charts part of Extreme Programming (XP)
Agile modeling - JBGE (Just Barely Good Enough) to stakeholders feedback/iterations
Time Value of Money concepts: Money available in present is worth more in future /
potential to earn more money through interest is capitalized
Globalization Culture: Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing
Agile Facilitation Methods:

Agile Participatory Decision Making Models:

Agile Negotiation and Conflict Management:

5 levels of Conflict: 
Agile Conflict Resolution:

Summary:
Team Performance (1)

Bruce Tuck team formation stages:

High-Performance Team (HPT): right skills and motivation, consistent velocity, trust
established, committed and empowered, exceed expectation, good communication,
business knowledge.
Generalizing Specialist: deep expertise in the domain and wide exposure
Agile Leadership:

Doing Agile: Quality, Doing less, Engage/Inspire, Speed-to-value

Leadership Practices:
Management vs Leadership:

Agile Coaching and Mentoring:

Work with people/facilitate change/use systems thinking

Emotional Intelligence (EI) and EI Quotient (EIQ) - Scrum master
EI Skill Assessment Framework:
 Summary:

Team Performance (2)

Agile Team Motivation:

Maslow's Hierarchy:
 Boehm's Team Motivators: make everyone a winner

Frederick Herzberg:

David McClelland:

Team Space - War room

Co-located Teams/Distributed Teams:
Osmotic Communication: information overhead (co-located)
Collaboration - Coordination

Synchronous and Asynchronous collaboration

Agile Brainstorming Session:
stimulate creativity, generate ideas

Velocity - addition of story points (number of story points delivered in a iteration)

Agile Tools:

Summary:
Adaptive Planning (1)

Multiple levels for planning:

Themes and epics are high level team vision of portfolio

Release - product roadmap
Iteration and sprints support release
User stories part of iterations - details of the requirement
Rolling Wave Planning or Progressive Elaboration: evolves as project progresses,
project kicked off with limited information which is later used for high-level planning
(Rough Order of Magnitude - continuously refined)
Timeboxing: fixed time limit for activities - critical to determine velocity
Timeboxing advantages

Estimation: cost, effort, schedule and skill (ROI and IRR)

Accuracy (standards) - Precision (repeatability)
Relative sizing estimation based on story points
Story Points: overall size of user story with associated efforts

Value points for stories - delivering value and outcome to business

Ideal Days are perfect Engineering days without any disturbance or blocker (elapsed
day)

Estimation Scale: Non-linear: Fibonacci series and Doubles

Wideband Delphi - consensus based method (multiple rounds of discussion)
Planning Poker:

Affinity Estimation: estimate a large number of user stories

T-shirt sizing (xs, s, m, l ,xl)

Value: project/program benefits (Revenue per employee, Innovation rate, customer
satisfaction, repeat customer, ROI) - Forecasting project value
Summary:
Adaptive Planning (2)

Release Plan: how the team intends to achieve the product vision within the project
objectives and constraints identified
Requirement: average historic velocity of the team
number of sprints with a release

Agile Product Roadmap: product planning and communication with important

product milestones (product strategy/framework for changes/manage effect of
changes/long term product vision or goal)
Iteration Plan: low-level/detailed view of product plan (spreadsheet/set of note cards)
Velocity Driven Iteration Planning:

Commitment Driven Iteration Planning:

Iteration Lifecycle:
Value-Based Analysis and Decomposition: 

Determining Initial Schedule and Overall cost estimate:

Cone of Uncertainty: increase of estimate accuracy with project progress (with

additional information)
Velocity Variation:  variation to be kept minimum - multiple dependent factors
(complexity/code addition)
Sprint review - timeboxed session end of an iteration with all stakeholders
Sprint Retrospection: timeboxed to understand improvement
Backlog Grooming or Refinement: 10% towards it

Mid-Course Corrections:

Agile Games:
 Summary:

Problem Detection and Resolution (1)

The success of any project depends on how quickly and effectively problems faced by
the team are resolved.
Daily stand-up
sprint retrospective meeting 
Problem Detection Techniques:

Fishbone Diagram:
Whys Tool:

Control Charts:

Lead Time: (SIP - Software In Process)

Cycle Time: time required to convert requirement to working solution.

Escaped Defects: identified by the end user.
Work In Progress (WIP): started working and not yet completed.
Cumulative Flow Diagram: important tool for tracking and forecasting agile projects.
states: total scope, in-progress, completed

CFD-Little's law: CFD determines amount of inventory in the system

Little's law states that at a given WIP level, the ratio of WIP to Cycle Time equals
throughput (T). WIP=T x CT

Agile Problem Solving can occur on,

Best Practices:
 Summary:

Problem Detection and Resolution (1)

Metric and Measure:

metrics - standard for measuring
measure - quantity or qualitative comparison
Types of Metrics:
Metrics Baseline required:

Actual Metrics or Actuals:

Burn Charts: information radiator (total scope - amount of work completed - amount

of work remaining)

Variance Analysis: quantitative analysis of deviation between 'planned' and 'actuals'.

Trend Analysis: analyzing the measurements taken over time to gain better

understanding of performance of a metric.
Risk Management: repeated in every iteration.
4 steps in risk management life cycle: 

Risk Identification Stages:

PESTLE:
Rise Census: Framework for analyzing risk exposure of a project.

Risk Board: identified risk, probability, impact, risk response

Risk Response Strategy: 

Risk identified through risk management lifecycle are captured and tracked in risk log.
Progressive Risk Reduction:

Spike: a time-boxed period designated to reduce uncertainty by learning about a

feature, technology, or process.
Agile Failure Modes:

Agile Coach Failure Modes: Lyssa Atkins 7 types

 Summary:

Continuous Improvement (1)

Kaizen: change for the good - continuous improvement.

inspect and adapt - learning from one iteration is used in other.

Retrospective: regular review by the team on progress and opportunities.

Factors to consider while conducting retrospective,
Five steps of a retrospective are,

Retrospective techniques:

Brainstorming Techniques:

Process Analysis:
Agile Process Tailoring - ShuHaRi

Quality in Agile - Best Practices:

Exploratory Testing: manual testing with expertise on testing and relevant business
domain.
Usability Testing: gather end user feedback on the following aspects,
TDD: rapid cycle of testing with frequent improvement/enhancement (JIT)

Acceptance TTD: requirement in a user testable format.

Continuous Integration: continuous integration is one of the 12 practices of XP.

automated set of tests integrated with the process.
Best Practices of Continuous Integration:
 Definition of Done: has been tested and passed in-house review.
Definition of Done Checklist:

Summary:

Continuous Improvement (2)

Value Stream Mapping: to analyze the flow of information, people, materials required
to bring a product to the customer. (value-adding/non-value adding)
Seven Forms of Waste in software development:

Agile Flowchart: modeling technique to manage process and identify process gaps
Agile Spaghetti Diagram: continuous flow line tracing the path of an item or activity
Spaghetti Diagram Steps:

Organizational Self-Assessment:
 Principles of System Thinking: understand project complexity
Simple or Low complexity project
Anarchy or Chaos
Complex Projects

Summary:

What's next? -  Final Words

 Agile Team: product owner, development team and other team members
for selecting user stories primarily used concept "MOSCOW method"
for bottleneck use Kanban or Task boards
Benefits: eliminate waste, mid-course corrections, deliver customer requested value,
faster ROI, increased customer satisfaction and team building
Relative sizing and estimating - important
Prioritization: MASCOW, KANO Model and Relative Waiting

Tips and Tricks

Strategic Approach - Exam Strategies:

Value: project/program benefits (Revenue per employee, Innovation rate, customer

satisfaction, repeat

Eliminate answers like "all", "none", "always" and "never".

 Pairwise Connections: example: scrum - sprint, agile -complex/uncertain

Memorization Chart: mandatory for exam. "memorize the memorization chart"

Time Value of Money concepts: Money available in present is worth more in future /
potential to earn more money through interest is capitalized
Present Value - Future Value - Period - Rate of Interest

The Agile Practice Guide

Agile Mindset & Project Management:

Agile approach and Predictive project approach
4 types of project life cycle:

Life cycle characteristics:

Predictive:

Iterative:

Incremental:
 Agile (iteration-based/flow-based):

(1)

(2)

Hybrid life cycles:

Agile development followed by a Predictive rollout
Combined Agile and Predictive approach
Predominantly Predictive approach with some Agile components
Largely Agile approach with a Predictive component
Creating an Agile environment:

Delivering in a Agile Environment:

Agile Measurements:
Burn-down charts - shows progression of completed story point relative to
story point remaining
Burn-up charts - shows progression of completed story point relative to story
point target

Agile Organizational Considerations:

Blockers to Change:
Organizational culture 
Procurement strategies
Leader setup (decentralized portfolios) for local efficiency than end-to-
end project delivery
Agile Organizational Considerations:
procurement and contracts - value delivery, multi-tiered structure,
adherence to time and material constraints, early cancellation, dynamic
scope, team augmentation

Agile Principals and Practice Guide:

Summary:
Actions

Summary of Notes