AGILE notes

Four values of Agile Manifesto

o Individuals and Interactions over processes & tools
o Working software over comprehensive docn
o Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
o Responding to change over foll a plan
12 Agile Principles flowed from these values
o Customer satisfaction
o Welcome Change
o Deliver working S/w frequently
o Business ppl and developers wrk together
o Build proj around motivated individuals
o Face-to-face conversation
o Working S/w primary measure of progress
o Sustainable development
o Continuous attn to tech excellence & good design
o Simplicity
o Self-org teams
o Teams adjusts to behavior accordingly
One way to think about the relationship between lean, agile, and the Kanban
Method is to consider Agile and the Kanban Method as descendants of LEAN
thinking
In other words, LEAN thinking is a superset, sharing attributes with Agile and
Kanban
Iterative and Incremental approaches reduce waste and rework because the
teams gain feedback. These approaches use:
o Very short feedback loops
o Frequent adaptation of process
o Reprioritization
o Regularly updated plans
o Frequent delivery
Iterative, Incremental, and Agile approaches work well for projects that involve
new or novel tools, techniques, materials, or application domains. Also work well
for projects that:
o Require research and development
o Have high rates of change
o Have unclear or unknown requirements, uncertainty, or risk
o Have a final goal that is hard to describe
All three of these characteristics
o product specification
o production capability
o process suitability
typically have elements of high uncertainty
o It is important to note that all projects have these characteristics—no
project is completely devoid of considerations around reqs, delivery,
change, and goals
o A project’s inherent characteristics determine which life cycle is the best fit
for that project
Predictive Life Cycle:

Iterative Life Cycle:

Incremental Life Cycle:

Iteration and Flow based Agile Life Cycle:
Implementing Agile:
Servant Leadership empowers team
The role of a servant leader is to facilitate the team’s discovery and definition of
agile
Servant leaders practice and radiate agile and approach project work in the foll
order:
1. Purpose
2. People
3. Process
Characteristics of servant leadership
o Promoting self-awareness
o Listening
o Serving those on the team
o Helping people grow
o Coaching vs. controlling
o Promoting safety, respect, and trust
o Promoting the energy and intelligence of others

Servant Leader Responsibilities

o Facilitate
o Remove org impediments
o Pave the way for others contribution

Examples of responsibilities of Servant Leader:

o Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile
o Support the team through mentoring, encouragement, and support
o Help the team with tech project mgmt act like Quantitative Risk Analysis
o Celebrate team successes and support and bridge building activities with
external groups

Role of the PM in the Agile Project is somewhat of an “unknown” because many

agile frameworks and approaches do not address the role of the PM
PMs uses Servant Leadership
Agile Teams
o Most effective agile teams tend to range in size from three to nine
members
o Agile teams are co-located in a team space
o Agile encourages self-managing teams, where team members decide who
will perform the work within the next period’s defined scope
o Agile teams thrive with servant leadership
o Cross-functional agile teams produce functional product increments
frequently
o Team members in successful agile teams work to collaborate in various
ways (such as pairing, swarming, and mobbing) so they do not fall into the
trap of mini-waterfalls instead of collaborative work
Agile Roles - 3 common roles are:
o Cross-functional team members
o Product Owner
o Team Facilitator

Common Agile Practices

o Retrospectives – helps team to work from its prev work on the product and
its process
o Backlog preparation – ordered list of the work, presented in story form
o Backlog refinement – product owner works with team to prepare stories for
upcoming iteration sessions
o Daily standups – Use daily standups to micro-commit to each other,
uncover problems and ensure work flows smoothly, no longer than 15mins
o Demo/reviews
o Planning for Iteration based Agile
o Execution Practices that help Teams deliver value
o How Iterations and Increments help delivering working product

Agile pain points and Troubleshooting Possibilities – print pg 58, 59

Agile Measurements
o Problem with predictive measurements is that they often do not reflect
reality
o Surrogate measurements such as percent done are less useful than
empirical measurements such as finished features
o Metrics for agile projects contain meaningful information that provide a
historical track record, because agile projects deliver value (finished work)
on a regular basis
o In addition to quantitative measures, the team can consider collecting
qualitative measures. For e.g.
o Business satisfaction
o Morale of the team
Flow-based agile teams use different measurements:
o Lead time – Total time it takes to deliver an item, measured from the time
it is added to the board to the moment it is completed
o Cycle time – Time required to process an item
o Response time - Time that an item waits until work starts
Example of Kanban Board
o Earned value in agile is based on finished features
o The product backlog burnup chart shows completed work compared to
total expected work at interval milestones or iterations
Earned Value in Agile Context

Cumulative Flow Diagram of Completed Features

Drivers for Change Management in Agile
o Changes associated with accelerated delivery
o Changes associated with agile approaches
Readiness for Change – change friendly characteristics incl:
o Executive mgmt’s willingness to change
o Org’s willingness to shift the way it views, reviews, and assesses employees
o Centralization or decentralization of project, program & portfolio mgmt fn
o Focus on short-term budgeting and metrics versus long-term goals
o Talent management maturity and capabilities

Example of Assessing Org Culture

Procurement and Contracts
Some contracting techniques incl:
o Multi-tiered structure – more changing elements into Single document
o Emphasized value delivered – fixed milestones or “phase gates”
o Fixed-price increments – fixed price micro-delvs, such as user stories
o Not-to-exceed time and materials – limit overall budget to fixed amt
o Graduated time and materials – shared Financial risk approach
o Early cancellation option
o Dynamic scope option – for Fixed budget
o Team augmentation – most collaborative contracting approach
o Favor full-service suppliers

Agile PMO is
o Value-driven
o Invitation-oriented
o Multidisciplinary

Fig-1 Ranked Backlog for changes

Fig -2 Using backups and Kanban board to Org and Track Changes

One truth remains constant for Agile

o Inspection
o Adaptation
o Transparency
All are critical to successfully delivering value