Introduction to the agile methodologies: history, types, evolution and misconceptions. By Roger Villas in the the first meetup on the 20/12/2022

1. Agile in real life
Roger Villas Kirchner roger@sivalltech.com

2. Agile in real life
Roger Villas Kirchner roger@sivalltech.com

3. Agenda
A new hope in Software
Development
Do the right thing
Do the thing right
Agile in real life
Q&A
AGILE IN REAL LIFE 20/12/2022 3

4. A new hope in the Software Development
Episode IV

5. Back in the times when the dark side ruled the sofware
development processes, we had:
• Project Managers to report progress to;
• Waterfall-structured phases;
• Projects with fixed length and budget, most
failed to accomplish;
• All scoping beforehand, therefore incomplete
and wrongly estimated;
• No deliverables until the very last moment,
thus frustrating both customers and developers
as the final product didn’t meet the
expectations;
• …
AGILE IN REAL LIFE – A NEW HOPE IN THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT 20/12/2022 5

6. For quite some time now, Agile metholodogies have risen and
spread to provide a more fitting structure to the Software
Development process:
• Agile: enforces iterative development among other
values;
• Lean: enforces maximizing efficiency;
• Design Thinking: gives a customer centric approach to
the Product design and development;
• Scrum: brings an specific framework for developing
products on complex scenarios;
• Extreme programming (XP): provides concrete
development practices to enforce quality;
• Kanban: enables visualization of the workflow specially
when it comes to maintenance;
• DevOps: puts together development and operations to
support the E2E lifecycle of a product;
• …
AGILE IN REAL LIFE – A NEW HOPE IN THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT 20/12/2022 6

7. Do the right thing
Episode V

8. The Agile Manifesto started it all back in 2001…
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Check out its twelve principles here:
https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
Recommended reading:
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/ho
w-12-principles-agile-manifesto-work-real-
life

9. In the end, we want to deliver value often by releasing quality,
fully-usable, bug free outcomes in a regular basis
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• We live in a VUCA world, we cannot afford
planning everything beforehand, as things will
surely change. Using an Agile aproach reduces risk
in today’s complex, changing projects.
• Waterfall approach can still be useful in very predictable
environments where we don’t need to iterate

10. If you do Scrum, make sure everyone in the company
understands its values and enforces its pillars, based on
empiricism. We want self-organizing, cross-functional teams
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11. Do the thing right
Episode VI

12. So… do the thing that suits best your needs. But don’t do Agile
for the sake of it! It may end being an undercover Waterfall
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13. Mesure value, not velocity
CHANGE THE WAY YOU
VALIDATE SUCCESS
• Of course, velocity matters, but it
is not a measure of team
performance. Instead, it’s a tool
the Scrum team can use to plan
and forecast work.
• It is more important to constantly
deliver impactful, fully usable
features than delivering a bunch
of half-done, buggy features that
no one asked for or no one wants
to use.
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14. Common Scrum misconceptions and anti-patterns!
PLANNING
• In Scrum, we DO plan! But we do it in
more detail for the more imminent
things, and save the effort for later
regarding future, unforeseen work.
• PO can give estimated delivery /
release schedules based on the
estimated size of items in the Product
Backlog and their priority (US mapping
and a prioritized and frequently
inspected roadmap are useful tools
here).
DURING THE SPRINT
• Scope can change! (as long as don’t affect the
goal).
• Too many meetings in Scrum? They are meant
for the developers to self-organize towards
their goals.
• Daily is not a reporting meeting, but a sync-up!
SM and PO need NOT to attend the daily.
• SM is not there to solve ALL problems! Dev
Team needs to be empowered to do so.
• “Done” items during the sprint are fully usable,
quality-tested, bug-free, potentially
releaseable increments
METHODOLOGY
• Architecture and design emerge as more
requirements are known.
• Constant refactoring and adaptation is
welcome. We embrace change!
• In Scrum, we DO document! But only
what’s valuable, we don’t do it for the
sake of it. The documentation, as well as
the testing, is done continuously as part
of the DoD of each item.
• Metrics are value-oriented.
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15. Agile in real life
Episode VII

16. Not everything we call Agile in the real life is truly Agile…
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• Scrum works best in small teams.
• When scaling is needed, dependencies,
hierarchies and the need for more planning
beforehand increase. The release periods
are usally extended too as the integration is
very complex.
• We have to be very careful with these kind
of approaches because they can easily lead
to the dark side: values like constant
deliveries, quick adaptation or self-
autonomy of the teams are likely to be
endangered with such a heavy structure.
• Avoid ending doing a “Scrum but”
methodology, it might end being
counterproductive.

17. The problem with these methodologies is that they are forced by
the company or an Agile Coach… not by the actual developers
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• The Agile Teams should be truly self-managed and
led by the Developers.
• Company managers and leaders should support
and empower the Agile Teams, and don’t interfer
on how they do the work (they can attend the
Sprint Review as stakeholders and get in touch
with the PO anytime).
• Managers have to lead by example to develop a
collaborative, fail-safe / fail-fast culture, with Lean
and value-driven mindset (Business Agility).
• The true Agility resides in giving the decision
power to the ones that make the product – the
developers. If we let them do it and they are
engaged, then Agile it’s likely to be a success.

18. Thanks! QA
Time
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19. Apendix
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Content that was dropped
off because lack of time

20. Several agile frameworks and methods can be combined
together at each “phase”
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21. Don’t do Agile IT, search Business Agility instead
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• Engage the whole company to embrace agile
values.
• Get sponsorship and support from leaders.
They have to lead by example to develop a
collaborative, fail-safe / fail-fast culture, with
a value-driven mindset.
• Rely on Lean principles
• Be Customer Centric and use Design
Thinking to deliver great products