Short introduction to Agile focusing on 5 of the core practices

1. allan kelly
Twitter: @allankellynet
http://www.allankelly.net
Agile Basics webinar
June 2014

2. Allan Kelly…
 Author
 Software Development Consultant
 Training for Agile
Books
– Changing Software Development: Learning to be Agile (2008)
– Business Patterns for Software Developers (2012)
– Xanpan: Team Centric Agile Software Development (2014)
http://www.xanpan.org
Xanpan eBook (LeanPub)
Xanpan printed book (Lulu)

3. Focus on (just) 5 Agile Basics
• Quality
• Visualize work
• Iterations
• Work in the small (batch size)
• Vertical Teams

4. Quality
Build in Quality
Bug prevention
Keep code maintainability

5. Capers Jones, 2008
Applied Software Measurement
the cost of repairing defects is
the most expensive single
activity [in software
development].
• Defects are expensive
– Very expensive
• Defects destroy
schedules
• Defects destroy
predictability
• Defects destroy trust

6. Invest in quality, invest in code
Test Driven Development (TDD)
Test First Development, Design Driven Development,
Automated Unit Testing
Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
Continuous Integration (CI)
(Pair programming)

7. Invest in technical practices to save
money
Spend a little
Save a lot

8. Visualize
See the work
See to learn

9. Use a whiteboard daily

10. Use a board tomorrow

11. Graph the work
0
50
100
150
200
250
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Iteration
Basic Product Burn-Down Chart
Work to do

12. Use information rich charts
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Iteration
Work to do Total done Released

13. Iterations

14. Iterations repeat
Continually
Iterations impose
regular deadlines
and limit work in
progress
Iterations create
rhythm and regularity

15. Humans are bad at estimating time
Humans are good at working to deadlines
Fit the work to the time
Work to the deadline

16. Thursday
Friday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Iteration - 2 week routine
Thursday
Friday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Work
Release
Demo
Prioritization
Breakdown
Agreement

17. Thursday
Friday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Everything in Iteration
Thursday
Friday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Releasableatend
ofIteration
To release or not is a business decision
Programmers: Coding, Design & Unit Testing
Product Owner: Requirement discover & explanation
Testers: Automated & Exploratory testing

18. Releasable at the end of the iteration
Is more important
Then Released

19. First Base
Releasable product
every 2nd Thursday
Give business options
Go
No Go

20. Iterations alone make you better
Fixing all the things that stop you
working in iterations, slow you down or
prevent 2 weekly releases will make
you far far better still.
More importantly

21. Small

22. Software development does not have
economies of scale
Software development has dis-economies of
scale

23. Milk is cheapest
in BIG cartons
Software is
cheapest in
lots of small
cartons
Small cartons of
software also
reduce the risk

24. Work in the small
Software development does not have
economies of scale
Software development has dis-economies of
scale
For software bigger means more expensive &
more risk

25. Lots and lots of small steps
Keep It small
Get good at working in the small

26. Small
Small tests
Small pieces of code
Small stories for development
Small tasks for work
Small releases
Short iterations
Get good at small

27. Teams

28. Effective Teams
Vertical teams
Fully staff (all the time)
Devolve decision making
Keep teams together
Flow the work to the team

29. Horizontal
Teams
Business Logic
Database
Test
User Interface
Business Analysis

30. Vertical
Teams

31. Programme
manager
Project Manager Architect Analyst
Team Lead
Dev 1 Dev 2 Tester
Hay! Should this
be blue or red?
Let me
find out…
Let me escalate
that… Red
Delay
Delay
Delay
Delay
Delay
Delay

32. Devolve decisions to the team to
speed up decision making

33. We should talk more….
Customer involvement
Requirements & Specifications
Retrospectives
Planning
Testing
Stand-up meetings
….

34. Any 1 of these points will make you better
Doing the all 5 is even better
Doing even more is better still!

35. 1. Invest in quality
2. Visualize work
3. Get good at iterations
4. Work in the small
5. Vertical teams
5 Basics
allan kelly
@allankellynet
allan@allankelly.net
http://www.xanpan.org - http://leanpub.com/xanpan
½ price until 16 June
https://leanpub.com/xanpan/c/June04Webinar