These slides accompanied Andy Walters' presentation on principles behind Agile.

1. AGILE
WHY IT WORKS, HOW IT WORKS,
AND HOW TO ADOPT IT

2. MARSHMALLOW
CHALLENGE
ACTIVITY

3. MARSHMALLOW
CHALLENGE
RULES
INSTRUCTIONS: Use the materials supplied to build a
free-standing structure with a Marshmallow on top.
The team with the tallest structure wins.
TOTAL TIME: 18 minutes
MATERIALS PER TEAM: 20 spaghetti sticks, one yard
tape & twine, one marshmallow.
DEFINITION OF SUCCESS: Marshmallow MUST be
on top of the structure. Structures must be free-
standing.

4. AGILE
MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE DISCUSSION
▸ What didn’t work?
▸ What worked?
▸ What can we learn?

5. AGILE
MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE DISCUSSION
▸ The power of prototyping
▸ Iteration
▸ Collaboration
▸ Feedback

6. Andy Walters
DIGITAL PROJECT MANAGER

7. @atendesign aten.io

8. @atendesign aten.io

9. AGILE
HOW ABOUT YOU?
▸ Quick Introductions
▸ Name
▸ Role
▸ What you’re hoping to get out of this session
▸ Your favorite film

10. CARGO CULT AGILE

11. SOFTWARE
VS.
SKYSCRAPERS

12. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Suppose I hand you $2 billion and ask you to build a skyscraper.
How would you do it?
▸ Traditional Approach:
▸ Initiate
▸ Plan
▸ Execute
▸ Close
▸ Profit!

13. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Is the traditional approach right for skyscrapers?
▸ YES. It’s used all the time for skyscrapers.

14. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
Skyscrapers Software
Stable Requirements? Yes No
Internal alignment
straightforward?
Yes-ish No
External alignment
straightforward?
Yes-ish No

15. SOFTWARE IS
FEEDBACK-
SENSITIVE.
SKYSCRAPERS
AREN’T.

16. AGILE
WHAT IS AGILE?
▸ Agile is a development methodology that facilitates
product feedback at short, regular intervals forcing internal
and external alignment and catching bad assumptions
earlier.
▸ Agile incorporates a concept of:
▸ Increments (chunks of work)
▸ Iterations (chunks of time)

17. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Suppose that instead of a Skyscraper, I’ve asked you to
build a news app that aggregates your friend’s
recommendations.
▸ Consider using a traditional vs. agile approach while
dealing with some contingencies.

18. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Contingency #1: We discover people value news recommendations from
experts more than friends.
▸ Traditional approach:
▸ Agile approach:
Month 1 Month 2 Month3 Month 4 Month 5 LAUNCH
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5 Sprint 6

19. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Contingency #2: Our designers create an interface which can’t be implemented
by the developers.
▸ Traditional approach:
▸ Agile approach:
Month 1 Month 2 Month3 Month 4 Month 5 LAUNCH
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5 Sprint 6

20. “IF YOU COULD GET ALL
THE PEOPLE IN AN
ORGANIZATION ROWING
THE SAME DIRECTION
YOU COULD DOMINATE
ANY INDUSTRY […]”
—Melania Trump

21. AGILE
SOFTWARE VS. SKYSCRAPERS
▸ Contingency #3: Product manager discovers app will not easily port to Android,
but has promoted the app as Android-compatible.
▸ Traditional approach:
▸ Agile approach:
Month 1 Month 2 Month3 Month 4 Month 5 LAUNCH
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5 Sprint 6

22. AGILE
PREDICTIVE VS. ADAPTIVE
▸ Predictive Methodologies (Skyscrapers)
▸ Focus on planning the future in detail, knowing exactly
the features and tasks for the entire length of the project
duration.
▸ Predictive teams have difficulty implementing changes.
▸ Most suited to projects with stable requirements, such as
building a skyscraper.

23. AGILE
PREDICTIVE VS. ADAPTIVE
▸ Adaptive Methodologies (Software)
▸ Focus on planning only the immediate future in detail,
knowing requirements will change.
▸ Adaptive teams will have difficulty describing exactly
what will happen in the future. The farther away the
date, the more vague the plan is.
▸ Most suited to projects with unstable requirements, such
as building a website or web application.

24. AGILE
WE COULD END THE TALK HERE.
▸ A man once promised to convert to Judaism if an old
Rabbi could stand on one leg and cite the whole of the
Torah.
▸ The rabbi stood one one leg and said “What is hateful to
you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole of the
Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it!”
▸ Adapt at regular intervals. The rest is commentary!

25. AGILE
SO WHAT IS AGILE?: VALUES
▸ “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”
▸ The right people are more valuable than tools or
methods
▸ Resolutions to problems are found through interactions
and discussions

26. AGILE
SO WHAT IS AGILE?: VALUES
▸ “Working software over comprehensive documentation”
▸ The primary focus for teams must be delivering
something that works for the client.
▸ Documentation, though often necessary, needs to be
prioritized to those artifacts that, in the end, provide
value to the client.

27. AGILE
SO WHAT IS AGILE?: VALUES
▸ “Client collaboration over contract negotiations”
▸ Listening to what the client wants is more critical than
meeting the language of a contract.
▸ Projects should be a collaboration between the client
and the team rather than a hand-off between them.

28. AGILE
SO WHAT IS AGILE?: VALUES
▸ “Responding to change over following a plan”
▸ Plans are notoriously out of date as soon as they are
written.
▸ By embracing change as opposed to trying to prevent it,
the team delivers products the customer actually wants.

29. AGILE
SCRUM
▸ What is Scrum?
▸ Scrum is a teamwork methodology designed to
implement agile principles.
▸ The rest of what follows is how scrum implements Agile,
but there are more frameworks, such as Lean, XP,
Kanban, and Scrumban.

30. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS
▸ For the purposes of this talk, let’s create a fictitious project

31. TRUEGIFT

32. AGILE
TRUEGIFT
▸ Problem: Gift-giving is a pain point for some people
▸ Solution: Create a service that selects and sends pre-
wrapped gifts on behalf of users.
▸ Useful for birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

33. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - PRODUCT VISION
▸ A vision statement is key to success of the project. The
vision should be a short, compelling reflection of the
heartbeat of the project.
▸ For TrueGift: TrueGift empowers people to send
thoughtful, on-time gifts to their loved ones.

34. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - ROADMAP
▸ A product roadmap is a VERY high-level overview of the
project’s functionality.
▸ TrueGift Roadmap
▸ Implement signup process
▸ Implement checkout
▸ Implement gift notification & selection process
▸ Implement personalization & profiles

35. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - PRODUCT RELEASE PLAN
▸ A release plan is a projected schedule of releases for the roadmap.
▸ TrueGift Product Release Plan
▸ Release 1:
▸ Implement signup process
▸ Implement checkout
▸ Implement gift-notification & selection process
▸ Release 2:
▸ Implement personalization & profiles

36. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - THEMES & USER STORIES
▸ THEMES are a high-level requirement
▸ USER STORIES are are definitions of those requirements
which:
▸ Contain just enough information to produce a
reasonable estimate of the associated LOE (level of
effort).
▸ Contain clearly-defined acceptance criteria

37. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - THEMES & USER STORIES
▸ Example TrueGift User Stories for “Implement Signup Process”
▸ THEME: As an anonymous user, I want to sign up for the
service.
▸ USER STORY #1: As an anonymous user, I want to view
sample products which will be sent to my loved ones so
that I’m incentivized to sign up for the service.
▸ USER STORY #2: As an anonymous user, I want to enter
relevant enter information about my loved ones so that
they can receive gifts.

38. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SIZING USER STORIES
▸ Sizing can be done with hours or with story points.
▸ Hours
▸ The problem with hours is that we are all bad at
estimating our time to complete tasks.
▸ Solution: Story Points

39. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SIZING USER STORIES
▸ Story points are a psychological hack designed to trigger a
relative, rather than absolute mental sizing process when
determining the length of time it will take to complete a task.
Absolute Time (hours)
Shed 30 hours
House 3,000 hours
Neighborhood 300,000 hours
City 300,000,000 hours

40. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SIZING USER STORIES
Relative Time (hours)
Shed Smaller than a House
House
Smaller than a Neighborhood,
bigger than a Shed
Neighborhood
Smaller than a City,
bigger than a House
City Bigger than a Neighborhood

41. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SIZING USER STORIES
▸ Can be done in T-shirt sizes (Small, Medium, Large, Extra
Large)
▸ Can be done with the fibonacci sequence
▸ 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55

42. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SIZING USER STORIES
▸ Why Use Story Points?
▸ Quick: Estimating LOE should be fast
▸ Accuracy Improves: Over time, sizing trends will tend to
coalesce into a stable, predictive structure

43. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT BACKLOG
▸ A sprint backlog is just a prioritized list of user stories that
have been selected for a sprint. Sizing helps figure out
what is and isn’t possible to get into a sprint.
▸ The client and the team should work together to set the
priority of the sprint backlog.

44. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT TASK CREATION
▸ Before the sprint begins, user stories should be broken
down by the team to the task level.
▸ Tasks can be sized using story points or hours (hours is
often preferred at this granular level.)
▸ The team works together to assign tasks.

45. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINTS
▸ Agile incorporates the idea of a timebox, which is a fixed amount of
time for the team to work together to complete a set of user stories.
▸ A sprint is NOT just for development. A sprint should be the entire
team working together. There are several benefits to this:
▸ Better client expectation management and team satisfaction:
Increased likelihood design will not create something which
doesn’t get implemented.
▸ Increased velocity: as the team is awash in collaboration,
problems are spotted sooner.

46. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT BACKLOG FOR GIFTEX
▸ Sprint 1
▸ USER STORY #1: As an anonymous user, I want to view sample
products which will be sent to my loved ones so that I’m
incentivized to sign up for the service.
▸ Size: 2
▸ USER STORY #2: As an anonymous user, I want to enter relevant
enter information about my loved ones so that they can receive
gifts.
▸ Size: 5

47. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT STANDUP
▸ Standups are a common way of increasing collaboration
▸ Should be no more than 15 minutes
▸ Can be conducted in-person or via slack
▸ Three questions:
▸ What did you do yesterday?
▸ What are you doing today?
▸ Do you have any roadblocks?

48. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT REVIEWS
▸ At the end of a sprint, the working software that has been
built should be demonstrated to key stakeholders.
▸ This provides an opportunity for the team to show off their
work but also to gather important feedback about whether
the team is on the right track.
▸ Demos are a great time to review the product release
schedule and product roadmap to give stakeholders an
idea of progress.

49. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT REVIEWS
▸ Reviews should cover which stories were completed in the
previous sprint.

50. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT RETROSPECTIVES
▸ A retrospective is a meeting (or, in the language of Scrum, a
“ceremony”), in which the team reflects on the last sprint in order to
decide how they can improve.
▸ Review objective and subjective information to create a shared
picture of the sprint.
▸ Generate insights with discussion about what could be done better
next time.
▸ Record, prioritize, and implement those improvements.
▸ Retrospectives are most useful when conducted within a project
lifecycle, rather than at the end of it.

51. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT RETROSPECTIVES
▸ Retrospectives are not blamestorming sessions. Constructive
criticism is essential in these meetings but the facilitator should
focus on discovering root causes in order to craft solutions.
▸ Retrospectives are not a hugfest. Some teams, especially high-
performing teams, may want to avoid the hard work of
examining failures and instead pat themselves on the back. No
team is immune to improvement.
▸ Retrospectives are not a locker-room pep talk. If managers are
invited to retrospectives, they should assume an observer role
without speaking privileges.

52. AGILE
HOW AGILE WORKS - SPRINT RETROSPECTIVES
▸ There are plenty of formats for retrospectives; my favorite
is the Agile Sailboat:

53. INTERMISSION
10 MINUTE BREAK

54. AGILE

55. AGILE
SO HOW DO I BECOME AGILE?
▸ Agile is often adopted by the development team first and
pushed to management.
▸ When talking with management, cite examples like the FBI’s
“Sentinel” program.
▸ After a decade of traditional software management, the CIO
turned Sentinel into an agile project and two years later it is
live.
▸ Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has included the agile
methodology in his “Future First” initiative.

56. AGILE
SO HOW DO I BECOME AGILE?
▸ Read Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the
Time by Jeff Sutherland
▸ Begin to experiment, but take it seriously.
▸ Scrum-BUT’s
▸ Send your boss to an agile talk to build buy-in.

57. AGILE
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
▸ Agile is ADAPTIVE instead of PREDICTIVE
▸ Agile prefers COLLABORATION over NEGOTIATION &
DOCUMENTATION
▸ Agile is about building WORKING SOFTWARE at
REGULAR INTERVALS
▸ The whole of Agile: Adapt at regular intervals.

58. “PLANS ARE OF
LITTLE
IMPORTANCE, BUT
PLANNING IS
ESSENTIAL”
Winston Churchill

59. Q&A DISCUSSION
AGILE

60. AGILE
▸ In 2013, a survey with 173 respondents conducted by
Scott Ambler & Associates found that just 49% of software
projects using a traditional approach were successful.
▸ The Standish Group reports that “94 percent of large
federal information technology projects over the past 10
years were unsuccessful - more than half were delayed,
over budget, or didn’t meet user expectations.
—NYT
▸ What are some common reasons projects fail?

61. AGILE
▸ Reasons software projects fail:
▸ Inaccurate assumptions about product value
▸ Changing product requirements
▸ External misalignment due to lack of adequate stakeholder
involvement
▸ Internal misalignment due to miscommunication
▸ Inaccurate estimation of tasks and failure to control costs
▸ Failure to manage stakeholder expectations