Presentation by Gudjon Mar on agile and Scrum methodologies at the Agilis 2007 conference in Iceland

1. Industria
Powering Digital Living®
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Industria at AGILIS 2007
Agile Management and Scrum
Gudjon Gudjonsson, CEO
gudjon@industria.com
mobile: +354 820 0000

2. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
What is Zignal?
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 Zignal is Web 2.0 for Television
 It connects you with entertainment content
Both your own or walled garden

 First “media portal” offering for devices
Runs on multiple popular devices
©2007 Industria

3. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Zignal is Web 2.0 for Television RGB 5, 79, 142
©2007 Industria

4. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Challenges we faced
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Distributed development teams

Reykjavik, Iceland

Dublin, Ireland

Sofia, Bulgaria

Urgency and Speed of Deliverables

Software used in a critical-path business environment

Decision can change

New business needs and requirement came up

Difficulties in staying within the restricted time limit

Delivery delays

Complex undertakings with too many stakeholders

Lean budgets

©2007 Industria

5. Industria
Powering Digital Living®
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Our Solution:
“Scrum at Industria”
Utilizing the Scrum Framework and
key methods from the Agile
community

6. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Organizing around the 3 Roles of Scrum
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First step was to train or hire;
Product Owner

Representing the interest of all stakeholders

Achieves funding for the work

Creating the project's initial overall requirements (product backlog)

ScrumMaster

Responsible for the Scrum process

Teaches Scrum to his team

For ensuring that every one follows scrum rules and practices

Team

Developing the functionality

Are cross-functional, self-organizing and self-managing

Responsible for the success of each iteration and the project as a whole

©2007 Industria

7. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
The Industria Organization
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The Customer
Sales
Product Professional
Management Services
Engineering
CFO
CEO
COO
CTO
CIO
©2007 Industria

8. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
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Sales &
• Sales Engineers
Marketing
Management
Professional
Services • Scrum Product Owners
• Business Analysts
Product
• Scrum Product Owner
Management
Release Plan 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.0 2.1
Engineering • Scrum Masters
• Teams
Product Owner: Scrum Master: Team Member:
©2007 Industria

9. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Second step; get the product backlog in shape
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Owned by the Product Owner

Written in the form of “User Stories”

Prioritized with business value

Each User Story has a description for the acceptance test

Should contain at least 2-3 Sprints worth of work

Backlog list is simply managed in Excel by the Product Owner

Visible to all through the intranet (wiki)

©2007 Industria

10. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
The Tools we Use
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Product Backlog using Excel and Wiki

Sprint Backlog on our various “planning

walls” using yellow stickers
Wiki for online collaboration, managing;

Team pages where we have a specific wiki

page for each sprint that includes;
Sprint info, like goal and key dates

Burn-down charts

Team Participation / Availability

Notes / Impediments

Sprint Retrospective minutes

Documentation like release notes, product

handbook and all technical documentation
©2007 Industria

11. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Seven events and its process
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Industria
Powering Digital Living®
©2007 Industria

12. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
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Industria
Powering Digital Living®
©2007 Industria

13. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
These are the only meetings that should take place
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Industria is following the 5 Level of Agile Planning

Level/Event 1: Vision Planning (1-2 per year)

Developing the Vision Statement

Level/Event 2: Roadmap Planning (1-4 per year)

Planning how the product evolution over time, using goals

Level/Event 3: Release Planning (4-12 per year)

Implementing the Release Plan, in the form of User Stories

Level/Event 4: Sprint Planning (Every Sprint 1-4 weeks)

Implementing the Sprint Backlog in the form of User Stories

Level/Event 5: Daily Scrum (Every day)

The Team is managing the sprint backlog on the planning wall

Level 6: Review/Demo (After each sprint)

The team demonstrates to the Product Owner what was accomplished during the sprint

Level 7: Retrospective (After each sprint)

To determine what could be changed that might make the next sprint more enjoyable or

productive
©2007 Industria

14. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 1: Product Vision Planning (1-2 per year)
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©2007 Industria

15. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 2: Product Roadmap Planning (1-4 per year)
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Define the product evolution over time, as goals

©2007 Industria

16. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Level 3: Product Release Planning (4-12 per year)
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Planning from a distance

Acknowledge that planning can't be done with any real precision

Define a plan that is good enough and revise it as things move forward

Requirements based on the “User Stories” format

©2007 Industria

17. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 4: Sprint Planning (Every Sprint 1-4 weeks) RGB 5, 79, 142
(Scrum Ceremony 1/4)
Let the game begin!

©2007 Industria

18. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 5: Daily Scrum (Every day) RGB 5, 79, 142
(Scrum Ceremony 2/4)
15 minutes standing up at same time every day, at the same place

Heartbeat of Scrum

Members co-ordinate today's work and check progress

Provides daily status snapshot to all stakeholders

ScrumMaster coordinates

the activity and summarises
on our wiki
©2007 Industria

19. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 6: Sprint Review / Demonstration RGB 5, 79, 142
(Scrum Ceremony 3/4)
The team demonstrates to the

Product Owner what was
accomplished during the
sprint
Product Owner inspects

completed business value
Establishes whether Sprint

Goal has been satisfied
Accepts/rejects functionality

delivered by user stories
Provide feedback

©2007 Industria

20. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Event 7: Retrospective Meeting (after each sprint) RGB 5, 79, 142
(Scrum Ceremony 4/4)
Time to reflect

ScrumMaster and Team determine

what could be changed that might
make the next sprint more
enjoyable or productive
Good and Bad events are discussed

and actions are created for both
the team and the organization
©2007 Industria

21. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Successful increment delivered, or not?
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Nevertheless, let’s take a short break before the next sprint!

©2007 Industria

22. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
Now, let the game continue!
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Product Product
Product
Roadmap Release
Vision
Planning Planning
1-2 per year 1-4 per year 4-12 per year Every sprint (1-4 weeks) ©2007 Industria

23. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
What did we accomplish?
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Dramatic improvements on the throughput

More and deeper involvement from development team members

Full transparency giving more visibility on the progress

Easier for management to reward

Management will not be ‘bossing around’

Better moral, happier engineers

Easier to change tactics or replace members

Easier to scale the organization

Practises, processes and frameworks well defined

We have now a firm plan on how to expand engineering in both Eastern

Europe and China
©2007 Industria

24. Industria
AGILIS 2007 Powering Digital Living®
What we learned?
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We have learned that we are still learning

It will be a constant learning experience

Don’t try to buy your company into Agile and Scrum by just installing a

new type of project management software
Importance of filling all the three roles of Scrum

The Product Owner, the Team and the ScrumMaster

The organization will need some readjustments

Training

Sponsor your ScrumMasters and Product Owners to participate in key Agile

conferences, like Agile 2008 in US
Get formal certification for your ScrumMasters and Product Owners

©2007 Industria

25. Industria
Powering Digital Living®
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Any questions?
All welcome to contact me at:
gudjon@industria.com
mobile: +354 - 820 0000