The simplicity of agile frameworks makes many of us believe that agile is simple. However, it’s actually extremely hard to make it working in a non-agile environment. By non-agile environment, I mean organizations which are fundamentally driven by heavy controls and governance; systems which are legacy large, complex & tightly coupled; multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities and list goes on. This paper is share my experiences of one such journey of implementing agile in such non-agile world. It was quite a bumpy ride but in the end, we got a recipe with perfect blend of scrum, XP and Kanban practices – something which was generating visible value and truly in line with agile principles.

1. June 13-14, 2015, at Hotel Holiday Inn Mayur Vihar, Delhi
Discuss Agile Conference Delhi-2015
www.discussagile.com ThoughtWorks
Kshitij Agrawal
Implementing Agile in Non-Agile World

2. Discuss Agile Conference
DELHI 2015
Photo by will_cyclist - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License https://www.flickr.com/photos/88379351@N00 Created with Haiku Deck

3. Agenda
Agile Implementation Challenges
Case Study Context
Next Steps
Agile Journey
Summary

4. Project Context
Multiple Brands
24 x 7
Multiple ChannelsCustomers
Multiple
Geographies
Retail
Corporate
Private / Wealth
Java Front End MF Legacy Backend Other Systems
Tightly coupled system. Slow Development
Multiple Stakeholders
Distributed Team

5. Type of work
High
Work Stack
Constituents
Strategic
Enhancement
Support
Initiated
Prod Issues
Regulatory
Campaigns
& Offers
New Product
Launches or
Customizations
All this was being delivered in the form of multiple waterfall
projects with serious issues about quality and timelines.

6. Agile Challenges

7. Agile Challenges – Matrix Organization
 Business Technology Misalignment
 Support Functions Misalignment
 Lack of synergy between departments Pic from: http://www.illustrationsource.com/

8. Agile Challenges – Hierarchical Organization
Hierarchical Org Growth = Climbing the ladder
Pic from: http://johngerber.world.edu/2012/08/10/hierarchy/
Pic from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanhall/2013/04/11/get-noticed-four-easy-steps-to-climbing-the-corporate-ladder/
In hierarchical organizations bringing change is difficult. Also, team members see
growth as getting bigger job title rather than adding more value.

9. Agile Challenges - Command & Control Culture
Improvement = More controls
Pic from: http://www.slideshare.net/apanitsch/the-management-rowing-race
Failures indicates complexity and complexity is best tacked by adaptive approach but often
reverse is done and more controls are added to prevent failures.

10. Agile Challenges - Heavy Processes
High Governance
Multiple Approval Board
Rigid Processes
Focus on compliance
Pic from: http://globe-views.com/dreams/lawyer.html

11. Agile Challenges- Rigid Processes
More than amount of processes, the issue is with one Size fits all approach
Pic from: http://hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com/2014/12/17/one-size-not-fit/

12. Agile Challenges – Lack of Technical Agility
Is business agility feasible without technical agility?
Legacy Systems
Slow development
Tight coupling
Complex dependencies
Pic from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroeneijkhof/4533163799

13. Agile Challenges – Tools & Infrastructure
Lack of tools & technical infrastructure

14. First attempt towards agile
There is serious problem of
scope creep and you are
suggesting we do development
without covering all
requirements.
We think there is need of more
controls to handle this chaos
and what made you think that
we should remove processes

15. Solving the right problem …
Finding out the most important problems and their causes is the key.
Pic from: http://dilbert.com/strip/2013-02-15

16. Solving the right problem
• Too Many
Stakeholders
• Demand Supply
mismatch
Causes
• Interdependencies
Leading to Deadlock
• Wastage in building
consensus
• Flow Jams
• Quality Issues
Effects
• Poor Time to
Market
• Production
Disruptions
Outcome

17. Solving the business problem
Stakeholders
Development Team
 Dedicated product Owner Team.
Product Owner
Business Analysts
Lead / Release Manager
 Building Consensus
 Breaking down requirements
 Prioritization (focus on MVP)
 Managing dependencies
 Guide development
 User acceptance testing  Facilitate
 Guide team and PO
 Remove blockers

18. Solving the business problem
 Combining work requests and doing quarterly releases
This proposal was accepted as it gives management more control
& more visibility along with improved time to market and less
production disruption.
Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Release 1
Release 2
Release 3
 Smaller work requests, focus on ‘must haves’ and match demand
to supply

19. Challenges post new model
Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Release 1
Release 2
Release 3
 Scope creep, Adhoc work requests still causing issues
 Changes costly and discouraged
 Six months is still long period to see outcome
 Slow development, Quality issues, release overheads
This was just iterative waterfall but sometimes a working waterfall is better
place to start agile journey. Also, one major win was to have a single product
owner.

20. Agile Journey

21. Transition Backlog
Collaboration
Feedback Loops
Technical Agility
Key elements of agile transition backlog : -

22. Technical Agility
Technical Backlog
Testing Improvements &
Automation Backlog
Reusable Tools
Improving Infrastructure
Continuous Integration
Technical Agility
Business Agility
Leads To
Supports
Pair Programming &
Test Driven Development

23. Strategic verses tactical
Business
Functionality
Technical
Enhancements
Technical
Backlog
Infrastructure
Testing
Automation
Enhancements
Mandatory
Prod Fixes

24. Team Collaboration
Daily Stand-up with task board
Brainstorming
Collaboration Tools
Pair Programming
Stand-up Photo by Acarlos1000 - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/73694110@N00 Created with Haiku Deck
Pic from: https://www.airpair.com/
Pic From: www.friendshipcircle.org

25. Team Distribution
Distributed across locations based on speciality
Throw over the wall attitude
Collaboration
Tools
To reduce cross location dependencies, rebalanced team to have independent team with
specialities at each location.

26. Feedback Loops
Customer Showcases
Retrospectives
Photo by justin - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/35034345586@N01 Created with Haiku Deck
Pic From: https://hakanforss.wordpress.com

27. Agile Training and Coaching

28. Collaboration with authorities

29. Customizations of processes
User
Stories
Features
Work
Requests
WR 1
Feature 11
User Story
11-01
User Story
11-02
Feature 12
User Story
12-01
Isn’t this same as what you call as traceability Matrix?
Customization of processes for agile - To fulfill the same purpose
but in a different way.

30. Current Model

31. Current Model
Weeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Release1
Release2
Release3
Scoping, Release plannning, Story Writing, Estimation, high level architecture discussion
Development and Testing
Deployment to test environment and skim test
Hardening - UAT, NFT, End to End testing
Implementation Preparations, Audit, Approvals
Production Deployment
 Three releases running in parallel but only one development/execution phase at a time.
 Execution phase means design, coding, testing by self organized team in any sequence
but based on priorities set by product owner. Frequent delivery of working software and
frequent customer showcases.
 Backlog grooming also happens during development cycle.
 Due to test environment constraints, governance requirements and other constraints,
need to have a hardening phase.

32. Current Model - Kanban
Iterative Frameworks
No work in progress limit
within iteration
WIPLimit=2
Work in progress limit but
no iteration boundary
KANBAN
During execution phase, Kanban is followed instead of Scrum. The reasons are:
 Due to legacy code issues, some stories take more than 2 weeks to develop. Don’t
want to break these as these would loose relevance and become tasks.
 Due to hardening defects, prod fixes, high priority work requests, backlog is more
fluid than ideal for iterative development.

33. Current Model
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8
Retrospectives (4w)
Planning Cadence (2w)
Showcase cadence (2w)
Backlog grooming discussions multiple times a week (on demand)

34. High level planning & estimation
Size Estimate
Small 1
Medium 2
Large 3
Extra Large 5
Velocity = 10
High Level Planning & funding approval happens when there are no user stories.
How to confirm doability at that level?
 A custom model is to divide the work requests into size categories.
 The normal velocity driven planning model has been extended for high level
planning. Velocity is known based on historic data and refined constantly.
 Also factor in risks and external dependencies.

35. Backlog Management & Estimation
 Divide the work requests into features and
prioritize.
 Use Fibonacci series for estimation.
 Focus on ‘Must Have’ features
 Maintain 20-40% ‘Good to have’ features as
planning buffer.
Reference: http://www.expertprogrammanagement.com/

36. Next Steps
 Further automation to reduce hardening period.
 Resolving test environment constraints to have better ‘DONE
DONE’ definition.
 Continue with technical enhancements to speed up development.

37. Summary
 Focus on business problems first
 Don’t sell agile, just show the value
 Avoid jargons, use the language which people understand
 Engage performing organization
 Collaborate and build relationships with PMOs & support
functions
 Focus on technical agility
 Focus on being agile rather than doing agile
 Remember AGILE is a journey rather than destination

38. Questions ?

39. Thank You 