Introduction to Agile Software Development

1. 2015 – OpenArc Campus – BIT UCSC
IT4305- Rapid Software Development
Upekha Vandebona
upe.vand@gmail.com

2. Rational of Agile
 Agile development isn’t a silver bullet
 Agile teams have above-average productivity
 Agile teams have ability to release software more
frequently
 …etc
 Will agile development help us be more successful?

3. Understanding Success
 Project 1 - “Completed on time, on budget, with all
features and functions as originally specified.”
 Project 2 - “Completed and operational but over
budget, over the time estimate”
 Project 3 - “Cancelled at some point during the
development cycle.”

5. Organizational Success
 Senior management and executives aren’t likely to care
whether your software is elegant, maintainable, or
even beloved by its users; they care about results.
 Agile methods set expectations early in the project, so
if your project won’t be an organizational success,
you’ll find out early enough to cancel it before your
organization has spent much money.

6. How to use Agile
 To “be agile,” you need to put the agile values and
principles into practice.
 Agile Manifesto

7. Lean Software Development
 Lean has its origins in manufacturing.
 Lean Production on Toyota : Producing JIT
 The lean software development principles are
 Eliminate waste, build in quality, create knowledge,
defer commitment, deliver quickly, respect people, and
optimize the whole.
 Five core pillars of Lean Thinking.
•Value
•Value Stream
•Flow
•Pull
•Perfection

8. Kanban (contd.)
 Two Kanban principles critical to success are
 Visualizing workflow
 Teams use a Kanban board (often a whiteboard, corkboard, or
electronic board) that displays kanbans (indications of where
in the process a piece of work is).
 The board is organized into columns, each one representing a
stage in the process, a work buffer, or queue; and optional
rows, indicating the allocation of capacity to classes of service.

9. Kanban (contd.)
 The board is updated by team members as work proceeds, and
blocking issues are identified during daily meetings.
 Limit work in progress (WIP)
 To limit WIP, understand where your blocking issues are,
address them quickly, and reduce queue and buffer sizes
wherever you can.