Today many teams and companies are turning to Agile product development. Scrum is among the most popular choices. The promises from Agile are several. Still it is good advice to do a couple of things before you go Agile. In the following I will list and discuss five things to do before you go Agile.

1. Five things to do
before you go Agile
Arne Åhlander 安儒宣

2. Five things do do before you go Agile
1. Identify your Why
2. Inform and Educate
3. Define your Engineering Practices
4. Define your Product Backlog
5. Set your definition of Done

3. • Today many teams and companies are turning
to Agile product development. Scrum is
among the most popular choices.
• The promises from Agile are several. Still it is
good advice to do a couple of things before
you go Agile.
• In the following I will list and discuss five
things to do before you go Agile.

4. Identify your Why
• Agile in it self is not a
goal. Therefore it is of
importance for a
successful implemen-
tation to understand
and know why you want
to go Agile and what
benefits you expect
from going Agile.

5. Why Agile?
• Shorten Time to
Market;
• Increase control of a
project;
• Increase the quality of
the product
• Reduce the risk;
• Maximize Return on
Investment; and,
• Increase probability of
success.

6. More why
• Customers, users, and
stakeholders are active
participants throughout
the project
• Requirements change
rapidly
• Primary focus is on
software development
rather than processes or
documentation
• Aim is for simplicity in
terms of tools and models
used

7. Benefits of Agile
• Simplicity and transparency
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Greater staff morale and
retention
• Improved quality deliverables
• Improved business value
• Quicker Return on Investment
(ROI)
• Increased productivity and
decreased development costs
• Ability to rapidly change
direction

8. How to?
• Define your vision
– Where do you want to
go?
• Create a guiding
coalition
– Senior people with
decision power

9. Inform and Educate
• Since Agile ways of working
often include different ways
of thinking than traditional
product development it is
well adviced to inform and
train the team or teams
turning Agile as well as the
rest of the organization.
• Often Agile development
will have an effect not only
on the development depart-
ment but also on other
parts of the organization.

10. Define your Engineering Practices
• One of the important parts
of Agile is the Engineering
Practices. In eXtreme
Programming (XP) the
engineering practices is an
integral part.
• In Scrum the are up to the
team or the organization to
choose. In both cases you
benefit from having a base-
line of existing practices and
a plan on which practices to
add and introduce.

11. Define your Product Backlog
• The Product Backlog is per-
haps the most important
artifact of Scrum. It contains
the What of product
development.
• It should be based on the
Product Vision and it should
constantly be up to date.
• Any team having a Product
Backlog that is current and
up to date will be better at
increasing their product-
ivity.

12. Define your Definition of Done
• In Agile we want frequent
feedback. Both on what we
have developed and how we
are working.
• One way of getting feedback is
to demonstrate the results
after each iteration.The team
should focus on developing
working Software that is
possible to demonstrate and
deliver after each iteration.
• Developing a Definition of
Done helps the team to focus
and it helps stakeholders to
know on what level they
should give feedback.

13. Five things do do before you go Agile
1. Identify your Why
2. Inform and Educate
3. Define your Engineering Practices
4. Define your Product Backlog
5. Set your definition of Done

15. • Arne Åhlander 安儒宣
• arne.ahlander@aqqurite.se
• www.twitter.com/arneahl
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/arneahlander