Discussing through how Agile is implemented in iconnect360's development and the various challenges along the way as our process and practices mature. Speaker: William Lim

1. William Lim & Chris Ng
Agile Development in
iconnect360

2. Back during the early days

3. and now
MONTLY
RELEASE CYCLE
IMPROVE QUALITY
GREATER CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY
REDUCEDRISK
SELF ORGANIZE TEAM
AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT
ADAPT AND RESPONSE FASTER

4. What do we do differently?

5. What do we do differently?

6. What do we do differently?

7. Going back to basic
“What is a user story?”
“Do our developers know how
to write testable code?”“How do we test?”
Is our team been trained for success?
Management needs to realize they need to provide
support and training to their team for them to be
successful
Do anyone know how to automate deployment?
“Do you know what are the 12 agile principles?

8. Being lean –
remove non
productive task
Take the first steps
Find someone to
inspire
Gradual
improvement –
productivity, test
coverage
Don’t push hard “If your training seems hard to the
average person (and it probably would),
then it’s because you have gradually
worked up to that level over a long period
of time. To you, it should not feel difficult
because you’ve adapted to it.”
“There will always be promoters and detractors”
“Change is always hard”
“Inspire advocate and influence”

9. “Kung Fu masters win not by
sprinting, but by pacing
themselves for the long run. And
they succeed beautifully.”
Be the marathoner and not sprinter
“Have a long term strategy or goals”
“Be consistent”
3 years roadmap to
achieve full
continuous
integration
Long term
technology roadmap
Continues
improvement
(process, technology
and individual)
Being lean

10. Be disciplined
“The big secret to discipline is
that it must be cultivated and
nurtured — slowly, steadily,
tenderly, not clobbered with a
club.”
“Know your True North and works towards it”
“Define a predictable and repeatable process”
“Everyone have to do their job well”
Define the job
scope and be
accountable
Define standards
Schedule recurring
meeting (weekly or
monthly)
Monthly release
cycle – 1st or 3rd
Thursday of the
month

11. Balance the Yin and Yang
“Kung Fu trains you not just to
defend yourself against
punches and kicks, but also to
defend yourself from colds and
flus, chronic illness, and even
from accidents.”“Balance between business requirement, technology and
user experience”
“Balance between features release and fixing technical debt”
“Balance between company growth and personal growth”
“Balance between scope and timeline”

12. Build the agile culture and not process
Schneider Model
• Collaboration culture
is about working
together.
• Control culture is
about getting and
keeping control.
• Competence culture is
about being the best.
• Cultivation culture is
about learning and
growing with a sense
of purpose.

13. Iconnect360 Agile Development
Process

14. Our development mantra – the 12 agile
principles
Satisfy the customer through early and
continuous delivery
Welcome changing requirements, even late
in development
Deliver working software frequently Business people and developers work
together daily.
Build projects around motivated individuals Maintain a constant pace indefinitely
Convey information via face-to-face
conversation
Give continuous attention to technical
excellence
Working software is the primary measure of
progress
Simplify: maximize the amount of work not
done
Teams self-organize Teams retrospect and tune their behaviours

15. Common issues we face
 Not having enough resources (UX and SETs are shared resources)
 No full-time product owner
 We need to meet release deadlines
 Difficult to balance between fixing technical debt and delivering
features
 Constantly changing requirements
 Poor communication

16. Common issues we face
 Not having enough resources (UX and SETs are shared resources)
 No full-time product owner
 We need to meet release deadlines
 Difficult to balance between fixing technical debt and delivering
features
 Constantly changing requirements
 Poor communication

17. Our Product Development Team
User Experience Engineering Test DevOps
Each team run their own scrum and their own sprint planning
Team alignment is from the quarterly release plan
UX team will always had the head start
UX and Test joins the engineering daily scrum
Everyone involved in the planning

18. Our development process

19. Our UX process
Concepts &
Prototype
Internal & External
validation
Document
requirements
Presentation
to stakeholder
for sign-off
Requirements
Gathering and
Design
Research
- Validate internally
to ensure business
goals met &
technically feasible
- Validate externally
with customers and
users to ensure their
needs are met &
expectations
managed
- Sketches and
conceptual design
and validation with
the developers
- Realistic clickable
prototype to
communicate user
journeys
- Gathering
requirements and
data from various
sources.
- Research to
understand users,
use cases & pain
points
- Documenting
key behaviours
and design
decisions for
future
reference
- Present
outcomes to
stakeholders in
Product Panel
for feedback
and sign-off
Presentation
to
development/
testing/instruct
ional design
team
- Present
outcomes to
team to enable
execution of
respective tasks
- Evangelise
knowledge on
the customer &
user
Iterate

20. Development Phase in details
Phases Description Communications
Requirement
Gathering
Initial phase of scoping and discussion Minutes and outcomes of product panel
meeting communicated to involved parties
Feature Development Software Development
Feature Stabilization Feature testing, bug fixing (production and
feature release) and product showcase
Show case agenda will be communicated to
relevant parties
Regression Testing Final testing and preparation for release Release communication to all staff after release
readiness meeting
UX Process Feature Development Feature Stabilization
Regression Testing /
Release
Product Panel
Meeting
Requirement
Review
Sprint
Planning
Test Case
Review
Development
Freeze
Product
Show case
Code
Freeze
Release
Readiness
Meeting
Release Release
Retrospective
Monthly sprint

21. Sprint planning for development
Technical analysis Estimation Choose story Task breakdown

22. Agile software

25. Summary
Be Lean
Be discipline
Agile is our culture
“Culture is process. Identify your culture and promote that.”

26. THANK YOU