Agile Planning: Effective Practices and Challenges

1. Agile Planning:
Effective Practices and Challenges
Harpreet Singh

2. My Self..
Name: Harpreet Singh
Industry Experience: 22 Years
Contact: harpreet.singh@rsystems.com
harpreet20oct@yahoo.com,
9818775067
Website: www.LearningPulser8.com
Qualification & Certifications: MCA, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, Scrum Master Certified,
Scrum Developer Certified, Agile Expert
Certified, Scrum Study Certified Trainer.
Certified Internal Quality Auditor (CMMi),
Certified Information Security Auditor, ITIL V3 (F), Six Sigma
Green belt.

3. Agile planning
 How it is different from traditional project planning
 No upfront Detailed planning
 Planning at different level
 Minimum documentation
 Based on collaboration and not on approval.

4. Paradigm Shift From a Plan-Driven To
Value Driven
 The value-driven agile approach switches the whole mindset. It
assumes from the start that whatever requirements exist up front
are not fixed and that they will change.
 Traditional Approach is plan Driven and
originated from construction Industry, the
blueprints, which are the requirements, are
fixed and probably won’t change while
the building is being built.
A study by the Standish Group indicates how
often features are used in a typical
application.

5. 5
Planning Levels in Agile
Product Vision
Product Roadmap
Release Plan
Iteration Plan
Daily Plan
What, Who, Why, When, Constraints and Assumptions
Releases, Date, Theme/Feature set, objectives, Development
Approach
Iteration Team Capacity, Stories Priority ,Size, Estimates,
Definition of Done
Stories-task, Definition of done, level of effort, commitment
>> What did I Yesterday ?
>> What will I do today ?
>> What is blocking me ?

6. Something wrong?

7. Something wrong?

8. VerticalSlicing

9. Unsustainable Development
 Myopic focus on the features in the next release, the next quarter, and
the current issues such as defects and escalations reported by
customers.
 over- (or under-) design, a code first then fix defects later (code-then-
fix) mentality, too many dependencies between code modules
 Lack of automated tests, and use of temporary patches or
workarounds that are never addressed.
 Team is reactive to changes in their ecosystem and are caught in a
vicious cycle of reacting to events and
 working harder and longer hours just like walking up a down escalator.
The result is a project Death Spiral.

11. Death Spiral

12. Unsustainable Development

13. Sustainable Development
 Achieve and maintain an optimal development pace
indefinitely.
 Teams are able to be proactive about changes in their
ecosystem.
 These teams are in a virtuous cycle where the more
team is able to improve themselves and how they work
together, the greater their ability to deal with increasing
complexity and change. (No fundamental Attribution
Error)

14. Striving for Sustainable Development Is
Like Juggling
Features
Bug Fixing
Design
Emphasis
Working
Product
Defect
Prevention
Continual
Refinement

15. The Causes of Unsustainable Development
Project
Stresses
Project
Controls
Collaboration
Expertise
Decision Making
Simplicity
Cost
Management
External
Dependencies
Disruptive
Technologies
Disruptive
Business Model

16. Working Product
1. No "Broken Windows"
2. Be Uncompromising about Defects
3. "Barely Sufficient" Documentation
4. Continuous Integration
5. Nightly Builds
6. Prototyping (quick and dirty approach ,Throwaway, Tracer Bullet)
7. Don't Neglect Performance
8. Zero Tolerance for Memory and Resource Leaks
9. Coding Standards and Guidelines
10. Adopt Standards (Concentrate on Your Value-Add)
Working
Product

17. Defect Prevention
1. Ruthless Testing
2. Use Available Tools
3. Pair Programming and Code Reviews
4. Lightweight Root-Cause Analysis
Defect
Prevention

18. Design Emphasis
1. Design Vision
2. Guiding Principles
3. Simple Design
4. Refactoring
5. Design Patterns
6. Frequent Rapid Design Meetings
7. Commitment to Re-Architecture
8. Design for Reuse
Design
Emphasis

19. Continual Refinement
1. Iterative Development
2. Release Planning
3. Daily Standup Meetings
4. Refactoring
5. Retrospectives
6. Coaching and Team Development
7. Make Key Matrices visible
Continual
Refinement

20. Time Management: Time Robbers
 Procrastination
 Overreaching
 Unnecessary Travel
 Email and paperwork
 Timewasting Meetings
 Distractions and Switching Cost
 Time Wasting Boss

21. Time Management: Pomodoro
Technique
 developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s
 The "Pomodoro Technique" is named after the
tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used
when he was a university student
 Decide on the task to be done
 Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally
25)
 Work on the task until the timer rings; record with
an x
 Take a short break (3–5 minutes)
 After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30
minutes)

22. How do you spend time?
Making Activity log Helps in:
 Make a realistic estimate of the time spend during the day on job orders
 Pinpoint the critical areas:-time spend on low value jobs
 Finding the high yielding time of our day

23. Sustainable Development Culture
 Disciplined
 Responsible
 Leadership
 Visionary and Tactical
 Shared Sense of Urgency
 Highly Collaborative
 Complementary Talents and Skills
 Continually Improving and Learning
 Change Tolerant
 Risk-Aware
 Fun

24. Thank You
Harpreet Singh