Given by Steve Ropa: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Agile”

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©VersionOne, Inc. 2010; All Rights Reserved
The Agile PM
Or How I learned to Stop Worrying
and Love Agile

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Welcome & Introductions
• Steve Ropa
– Agile Coach
– Product Consultant
– Certified Scrum Master
– Certified Scrum Product Owner
– 17 years software development
• 11 years programming
• 8 years director of development
– 10 years Agile experience
• XP
• Scrum
– Blog: http://blog.versionone.com/blog/agile-musings
– Email: steven.ropa@versionone.com

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Initial Poll – What do I think about
agile and Project Management
• It will make my job harder
• It will make my job easier
• Its really the same thing, different packaging
• I’m going to lose my job

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Some Myths About Agile PM
• “We’re Agile, we don’t need a Project
Manager.”
• Agile projects are small, so there just isn’t
that much for a PM to do.
• My job is in jeopardy unless I become a
Scrum Master
• These agile projects all eventually fail, then
I’m going to have to clean up the mess.

5. The Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.”
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have
come to value:
-- http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

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Poll
• What are the top five duties a project
manager performs?

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Agile embraces change
• And requires even more change
• We change how we write code
• We change how we test code
• We change how we release products
• We change how we organize our teams

8. Project Manager Stereotypes
• Slaves to the schedule
• Don’t really understand
how hard software is.
• Want me to spend all
my time “updating
status”
• Man, and I thought the
testers were anal!

9. Project Manager Changes
• Where is the new job
that fits our role?!
• We may be asked to
become Scrum Masters
– An *extremely* different
view of a project
• I’m still being asked to
ensure a project will be
on time
• Focus on scope instead
of time…feels weird

10. Where’s the new job?
• Product
Owner/Customer
– Might be a shared role
– Represent the
project/product to the
business
– About more than the
schedule, but schedules
still matter

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I may be asked to be a scrum master
• There are worse fates
• A scrum master is a servant leader
• This is a very different view of the project
• There are some overlaps, such as removing
obstacles for a project and to some extent
reporting on progress

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One more poll
• Which job feels like a better fit
– Scrum Master
– Product Owner
– A little of each

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How to ensure timeliness of a project
• Dates are fixed in agile.
• Scope changes
• Important items are prioritized first, so by the time
the release rolls around, we are just “tucking in the
corners”
• Test is constant and continuous, less ugly surprises

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Focus on Scope, not Time
• We are continuously defining what the order of
completion will be for features
• Having the most valuable features done first
enables a less stress inducing release cycle.
• It is much easier to say “this feature will be in the
next release” when releases are frequent
• No more having to announce a date will slip

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So Why Should I love this?
• Programmers are going to give you the best possible
estimates as to the size of stories, so your identification of
deliverable scope will become easier
• Testers will ensure that the features that are released are
“done” and therefore there will be less rework.
• Business Analysts will be managing and clarifying stories so
that you will be able to have the predictability that every
PM really wants

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What else will we be doing
differently?
• As the Manifesto implies, if we were
document centric, we won’t be anymore
• No more Gantt charts!
• Since we will learn all we need to know from
the team room and Big Visible Charts, we
won’t need to be “pestering for updates”.
• Focus is on visibility, no surprises

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A few other details – where we
might struggle a little
• Letting go. The team will learn to
self correct, so we won’t need to
do as much
• Estimate accuracy is not
necessarily something we should
strive for
• Velocity is a value neutral
measurement.

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Talk to each other
• Talk to each other a lot
• Remember to listen more than you talk
• Avoid arguments like
– “But that’s not Agile”
– “You aren’t doing that the way I read its supposed to be done”

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In the end, its all about the team