Scrum_BLR 10th meet up 13 sept-2014 - The Slippery Slope from Agile to Scrum Fall - Avinash Rao

1. ©2013, Cognizant
Paved with Good Intentions: The slippery slope from Agile to Scrum-Fall
Avinash Rao

2. The Session Today
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Belief in the Agile Tooth Fairy is eroding
The Fall of Waterfall, and Agile Success
Scrum-Fall
Lessons Learnt – Beyond the Case
The Empire Strikes Back
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
Epilogue
Prologue

3. | ©2013, Cognizant
Tooth Fairy, Silver Bullets, etc.
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4. | ©2014, Cognizant
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5. Agile has moved to the Enterprise mainstream …
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6.  Scope based funding
 “Do Agile” for the same approved scope and budget
 Use outsourcing partners to cut costs – have Scrum teams on tap
 “Hmm, so you need a Process Owner from the Business? We are very Busy, but lets see … ”
“Go Agile” makes it easy for programs to J<expletive deleted>DI
We’ve gone from not accounting for evolution and emergence, to making it up as we go along, with the funding process still asking for predictable Progress
… but “Management” hasn’t changed
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7.  A committed scope (backlog) of functional items, delivered with dispersed teams and SMEs representing the Business; overlaid by the usual corporate IT governance processes
 Leading to:
'We'll figure it out as we go along' Architecture
Evolution in corporate security and IT governance guidelines
The Agency problem between business and the representatives of the business
The temptation to build functionality quickly to demonstrate progress
What We Get when we Go Agile
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Act 1: The Fall of Waterfall, and Agile Success
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10.  High visibility Board-reviewed NPD program
 ~100,000 FP Product Suite
 50% budget spent, 25% scope completed
 Design Silos – caught only at integration test
 At risk of scrappage for the second time!
The Situation
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11.  Requirements phase that takes forever
 and then some …
 Supporting applications built, and approaching obsolescence
 Search for the Perfect solutions
The Usual Suspects were in Play
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12.  Finite scope for 18 month period
 Release to business POs, no production releases
 Common governance for 3 IT vendors
 Continuous Integration
 2 week iterations
 One Team, common tooling
 Full time DevOps team
 Clear DoD, with defined Coding and Test coverage standards
The Move to Agile
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13.  3 fold Productivity gain / FP delivered
 55% cost reductions / FP delivered
 60% reduction in defects slipped out of Dev
 On-time deliveries every 2 weeks, integration tested
 Agile Awards in UK and USA
The Results
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14. Happy ending !
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15. Happy ending !
Right?
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16. | ©2013, Cognizant
Act 2: The Empire Strikes Back
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17.  But Business wasn’t entirely pleased
 As all IT Managers know, this was because Business is Evil
So, IT achieved a famous victory …
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18.  Original scope was not a full replacement for current system in Production
 POs had validated Use Cases, not end to end Business Process flows
 Fit and Finish issues – anything not in the DoD was inconsistent
 However, additional funding provided to complete the product; the Business teams took direct control of the project – IT SMEs replaced by Business POs for direction setting
Alternate Theories for Business Displeasure
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19. POs now set scope for each release
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
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Rework increased 72% when backlog set by POs for each iteration
Designated Process Owners rarely have financial control (or sometimes even an understanding of the overall business case and trade-offs) needed to balance progress on improvements v/s the funding to completed committed scope and Quality.

20.  IT vendors instructed to increase productivity
 In return, iteration timelines were doubled
 The BA doesn’t contribute to code velocity, why not replace him with a developer?
Higher Rework Increased Cost Pressures
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80
90
100
1
2
3
4
5
6
PQ
Decreasing PQ Targets

21. Defects Up, Productivity Down
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0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0
5
10
15
As defects ballooned, teams were overwhelmed by defect fix effort
Productivity became erratic, and decreasing (12 month view)
Attrition increased, leading to ….

22. | ©2013, Cognizant
Scrum-Fall!
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23. Scrum-Fall
Fixed Scope
Committed, fixed scope to be delivered every iteration
Game-playing with Buffers to ensure scope committed is achievable
Additional Teams and Stages
Additional Test Teams, Validation teams … Added layers mimicking traditional QA
Measures to increase velocity actually decreased velocity Defect fix effort a major drag on productivity
Decreased Velocity
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Lessons Learnt
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25. Funding Agile Projects
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Phase 1 complete
CRs on Phase 1
Acceptance
Project completion
Benefit realization
Project size: 100 FPs; Work done equivalent to 180 FPs
Measured by size (often the basis for funding), Agile projects show a slower rate of progress because of rework – this rework would have been funded by CRs on traditional projects

26. Test the Business Process, not the Use Case
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Business Process
Pass/ Fail
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Achieves A
2
Achieves B
3
Achieves C
4
Achieves D
5
Achieves E
6
Achieves F
UC 1
UC 2
UC 3
UC 4
Though UCs may Pass testing, Business Processes must Pass for Business acceptance

27. Fixing later costs as much as Right-First-Time
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 Agile provides a seemingly easy chance to change and improve later … this is not true for NFR and Architectural items
100%
150%
300%
0%
50%
100%
150%
200%
250%
300%
350%
Original cost of
component
Cost of 80%
improvement
Cost of an
additional 10%
improvement on
original NFR

28. Thank You