Why the "A" in A-Game Stands for Agile

1. © 2016 Information Services Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chuck Walker and Bill Shoemaker
Why the “A” in A-Game
Stands for Agile

2. © 2016 Information Services Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved 22
Service providers are seeing:
 30% growth in projects completed with a distributed agile
delivery model
 75% of their development projects are now completed in
a distributed agile model

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Agile Adoption
Challenges
Organization
Pricing &
Contracting
Governance

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Big challenges
remain in agile
adoption.
How to integrate:
1. The best attributes of a
geographically distributed
delivery model
2. Agile development methods
3. A robust contract that fosters
collaboration, feedback, quality
and frequent delivery.

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Delivery Team Structure
Agile Organization

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Agile
Development
Pods
Pods are small, dedicated teams
responsible for completing stories,
new features and functionalities.
They consist of:
• An embedded scrum master
• Proxy product owner(s)
• A development team
• Quality assurance team.

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Small Agile Development Pods
Shared Proxy
Product Owner
Scrum Master
& Developer
Developer Developer Tester Tester

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Medium Agile Development Pods
Shared Proxy
Product Owner
Scrum Master Developer DeveloperOffshore Scrum
& Developer
Developer
Developer Tester Tester Tester

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Large Agile Development Pods
Proxy Product
Owner
Scrum Master
DeveloperOffshore Scrum
& Developer
Developer Developer
TesterDeveloper
or Tester
TesterTester
Offshore Scrum
& Developer
Developer Developer Developer
Developer
or Tester
Tester Tester

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Agile Governance

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Governance, the Agile Challenge
Cost
QualityDelivery

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Agile
Governance
Best Practices
1. Adopt pragmatic governance
2. Promote self-organizing teams
3. Build a business-driven project pipeline
4. Ensure continuous improvement

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Agile Pricing

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Pricing Agile Development
Scope
Schedule Budget
Traditional
Schedule Budget
Scope
Agile
Versatile
Fixed

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Pod-Based Pricing
POD Type Throughput Onsite Offshore Integrated
Small 20-25
Story Point/Month
$$ $ $ ½
Medium 30-40
Story Points/Month
$$$ $ ½ $$
Large
60-80
Story Point per Month
$$$$ $$ $$$

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Agile Contracting

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Contracting Agile Development
 Fix duration and cost.
 Estimate scope.
 Focus on collaboration,
feedback and quality.

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Agile Delivery Cycle and Acceptance
Base acceptance on:
1. Conformance to a prior agreed-on acceptance-test set
—or in the case of a scrum—the “definition of done.”
2. The “definition of done” as defined by users of the new system.

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Agile Service Levels
Metric Parameter Measurement Methodology
Ratio of
successful
sprints
Degree to which the team is able
to meet their commitment.
Measured as the ratio of successful sprints as a
percentage by dividing the number of successful
sprints by the total number of sprints.
Reliability The ability of teams to meet the
story points they committed to for
a sprint.
Measured as a percentage by dividing the amount
of committed story points by the amount of earned
story points.
Velocity The velocity is a relative
measure of the amount of work
delivered during a sprint.
Measure the velocity in story points.

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Agile Best Practices

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Best Practices
1. Establish product owners and proxy product owners for each Pod
2. Establish onshore and offshore scrum masters; make agile coaches
available in offshore locations
3. Create strong governance to monitor, report and manage processes and
stakeholder impacts.
4. Deploy automated environments and agile collaboration tools like Jira,
Confluence and Rally; deploy continuous integration tools like Maven,
Jenkins, Chef and Perforce.
5. Construct teams of 10 or less; and ensure at least two working hours of
time zone overlap between onshore and offshore locations.
6. Virtualize the application test environments and test data management.

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And finally…
the biggest agile
success factor
A culture of openness
and transparency on
the team and
organization level.

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