My presentation at NASSCOM Tech Series session on Agile Methodology at NOIDA on Jan 17. managewell.net

1. why agile?
Tathagat Varma
Sr. Director
Yahoo!

2. the world around
us…yesterday!

3. Microsoft Windows timeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Microsoft_Windows

4. Other major OS and tools
timeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugzilla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)

5. A typical support timeline
http://itconvergence.blogspot.in/2012/10/oow-12-elison-extradata-oracle-r122.html

6. As a contrast, what are consumer
internet companies doing?
 Continuous Integration -> Continuous Delivery ->
Continuous Deployment
 On ‘good days’, Flickr releases a new version every
half an hour (Jun 20, 2005)
 IMVU pushes a revision of code to the website every
nine minutes (Feb 10, 2009)
 The other day we passed product release number
25,000 for WordPress. That means we’ve averaged
about 16 product releases a day, every day for the
last four and a half years! (May 19, 2010)
 A new version of Google Chrome now due every six
weeks (Jul 22, 2010)
 Facebook does code push twice a day (Aug 4, 2012)

7. adoption @ net speed!!!
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-SQ1ugOgu8Ds/TimaHjH0VpI/AAAAAAAAApU/za0BhEjhoio/w402/google%2Bplus%2Bgrowth%2B20mil.png http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/a-moment-of-our-time/

8. darwin at work on internet
2006 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/sizes/o/in/photostream/ http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2009/05/rapid_turnover.html

9. yet, our product development
sucks!
http://blog.amplifiedanalytics.com/2011/07/musing-on-difference-between-successful-product-innovation/ http://www.nickblack.org/2009/10/how-brand-trust-affects-new-products.html

10. Let’s understand the ‘craft’
first…
 Sheer joy of making things
 Pleasure of things that are useful to other
people
 Fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-
like objects of interlocking moving parts and
watching them work in subtle cycles
 Joys of always learning, which sprints from
the non-repeating nature of the task
 Delight of working in such a tractable
medium
The Mythical Man Month – Fred Brooks, 1975

11. software development life
cycles
 Ad-hoc
 Serial
 Iterative
 Incremental
 Iterative/Incremental

12. risk management in SDLCs

13. notion of ‘progress’ vs. time

14. Waterfall Model
 Wrongly inspired by assembly-line manufacturing
processes of the day
 Economics supported ―measure twice, cut once‖
leading to up-front planning and BDUF
 Single-pass, sequential process with hand-offs and
feedback loops between adjoining phases
 Transition to next phase only upon completion of
current phase

15. Waterfall Software Development
Limitations and Assumptions
1. Wrong analogy: Software development ≠ Production
2. Customers know EVERYTHING upfront and that requirement won‘t change
3. Legacy from the past: implicitly assumes CPU time is costly, so focuses on
doing everything upfront to minimize ‗machine time‘ for trial and error
4. ―Wicked Problem‖: Designers and developers know how exactly how to build
5. Very long feedback cycles not suitable for today‘s pace of innovation
Picture from http://damonpoole.blogspot.in/2009/07/traditional-development-game-of.html

16. As a result, software is…
Costly
Buggy
Late

17. and the costs…?
http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/estimating/
http://www.agileforall.com/dyk/

18. Holy Grail of Software
Development
 Better: higher
quality, more
reliability, higher
performance, more
usable…
 Faster: speedier
development
 Cheaper: no budget

19. But the reality?

20. Preamble to Agile
Movement
Software Crisis, 1965-85: The major cause of the
software crisis is that the machines have become
several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it
quite bluntly: as long as there were no
machines, programming was no problem at all; when
we had a few weak computers, programming
became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic
computers, programming has become an equally
gigantic problem. — Edsger Dijkstra, The Humble
Programmer

21. Software Crisis
The causes of the software crisis were linked to
the overall complexity of hardware and the
software development process. The crisis
manifested itself in several ways:
 Projects running over-budget.
 Projects running over-time.
 Software was very inefficient.
 Software was of low quality.
 Software often did not meet requirements.
 Projects were unmanageable and code difficult to
maintain.
 Software was never delivered.

22. and the response?
Frameworks, Standards and Certifications

23. …and the result?…good
start…

24. …but poor finish!

25. and sadly, none of these came
out of ‘process factories’…
2011 -
• Instagram
2000-2010
•2010: Pinterest, SnapDeal,
•2009: Square, Quora, Sina Weibo
1975-2000
•2008: Groupon, AirBnB, GoGo
•2000: Baidu
•1997: Yandex
•2007:
•1994: Yahoo!, Amazon, Dropbox, Zynga, Flipkart, InMobi, Hul
NetScape, u, Tumblr,
•1986: Pixar •2006: Twitter, SlideShare, Badoo
•1984: Sybase
Spotify
•1983: Intuit, Borland,
•1982: Sun, Symantec, Adobe, •2005: YouTube, Renren
EA •2004: Facebook
•1980: Informix
•1979: EMC •2003:
•1977: Oracle Myspace, Skype, Rovio, Gameforge,
•1976: CA, Apple •2002: LinkedIn
•1975: Microsoft
•2001: StumbleUpon, Mail.ru

26. Why?
 Process: Long-lead development process
ineffective in a dynamic and global world
 Management: Command and control model
unsuitable for fostering collaboration required
to solve complex problems
 Technology: Advancements in
computers, compiler technology and
debugging and testing tools greatly improved
the economics of software development
 Innovation: in the age of hyper-innovation, old
processes were simply ineffective

27. What is the most important part
in these two machines?
―The Brakes!!!‖
They let you go faster…

28. Agility vs. Discipline?
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/edge/08/feb08/lines_barnes_holmes_ambler/

29. Advent of Agile and Lean
Methodologies
 1970: Royce critiques Waterfall and offers improvement ideas
 1986: Barry Boehm proposes Spiral Model
 1971: Harlan Mills proposes Incremental Development
 1987: Cleanroom Software engineering
 1991: Sashimi Overlapping Waterfall Model
 1992: Crystal family of methodologies
 1994: DSDM
 1995: Scrum
 1996: Rational Unified Process framework
 1997: Feature Driven Development
 1999: Extreme Programming Explained
 2001: Agile Manifesto is born
 2003: Lean Software Development
 2005: PM Declaration of Interdependence
 2007: Kanban-based software engineering
 2008: Lean Startup
 2009: Scrumban
 20xx: Something new !?! (hopefully!)

31. What is agile really all
about?
• Empowered individuals
• Collaboration
Motivated • Democratic decision-
Individuals making and transparency
Self- • Shorter feedback cycle
organizing • Manage changing
x-
functional priorities
Teams • Increased productivity
Agile
Businesses
• Higher ROI
• Faster time to market
• Better User Experience

32. Why is it so hard?
52 39 34 % %
%
Organizational Resistance to Management
Culture Change Support

33. feedback loop in agile
lifecycles

34. from daily builds to
project

35. Scrum

36. What’s happening here?
http://ayagebeely.blogspot.in/2008_08_01_archive.html

37. Feedback Loops in Traditional
Techniques vs. Agile Techniques

38. Agile Development Value
Proposition
http://www.versionone.com/Agile101/Agile_Benefits.asp

39. Does Agile work?
http://www.bigvisible.com/2009/12/taking-agile-beyond-faster/
http://www.testingthefuture.net/page/2/

40. does iterating help?
http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/12/12/when-do-you-throw-in-the-towel-on-your-struggling-project/

41. are small teams more
productive?
http://drewcrawfordapps.com/2.0/the-agility-of-small-teams/

42. does colocation impact team
performance?
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2009-summer/50412/how-to-manage-virtual-teams/

43. is small batch size
faster?
http://www.andrejkoelewijn.com/wp/2011/06/30/is-team-productivity-a-responsibility-of-the-product-owner/

44. Let’s build a car
…and I
need it
delivered…
next week!

45. www.wikispeed.com

46. The Wikispeed Process
 At WIKISPEED, some of our projects move more than 10,000% faster than
industry norms because of our blend of Agile, Lean, Scrum, and Extreme
Programming/Manufacturing practices.
 Team WIKISPEED uses methods developed by the fastest-moving software
companies. In fact, in many ways we have more in common with Google or
Twitter than with GM or Toyota.
 Manufacturing and old-thought software teams gather requirements, design
the solution, build the solution, test the solution, then deliver the solution. In
existing automotive companies, the design portion of that process alone
takes 3 to 12 years, and then the vehicle design is built for 5 to 14 years. This
means it is possible to buy a brand new car from a dealer and that car
represents the engineering team's understanding of what the customer
might have wanted 26 years ago!
 Team WIKISPEED follows the model of Agile software teams, compressing the
entire development cycle into one-week "sprints." We iterate the entire car
every 7 days, meaning that every 7 days we reevaluate each part of the
car and reinvent the highest-priority aspects, instead of waiting 8 to 26 years
to upgrade.

47. Wikispeed uses…
 Lean Software Design: Use less stuff
 XP: Pairing and Swarming
 Agile: Reducing costs to make
changes
 Scrum: Clearly defined team roles
and responsibilities
 TDD: start with failing tests and
develop solutions
 OOP: contract-first development

48. Recap
 agile ≠ Faster, but Sooner
 agile ≠ No planning, but Adaptive Planning
 agile ≠ More work, but ‗Done‘
 agile ≠ No documentation, but Just Enough
 agile doesn‘t just change the development
process, but bring a radical change in
organizational culture, leadership and
management practices that is more in line with
business needs and social values and norms of
today

49. It’s not about the
method!
A photographer went to a
socialite party in New York. As
he entered the front door, the
host said ‘I love your pictures
– they’re wonderful; you must
have a fantastic camera.’
He said nothing until dinner
was finished, then: ‘That was
a wonderful dinner; you must
have a terrific stove.’
– Sam Haskins
http://www.haskins.com/ImageShop/Image_Shop_60s/60s_Books_A.Image_01.html

50. Connect
Blog: http://managewell.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TathagatVarma
Presentations: http://slideshare.net/managewell