Enhancing Scrum Life Cycle experience with Disciplined Agile Toolkit

ENHANCING
SCRUM LIFE CYCLE EXPERIENCE
WITH DISCIPLINED AGILE TOOLKIT
Valentin Tudor Mocanu CDAC/CDAI | PMI Disciplined Agile
25 11 2020

PMI Disciplined Agile Toolkit
https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile

Valentin Tudor Mocanu
• Iterative development (1999)
• Agile development (2000)
• Agile training (2013)
• Disciplined Agile partner, instructor and coach (2015)
• DA Advisory Council
• PMP, PSM
• Training: Agile, Lean, Scrum, XP
• Training PMI DA workshops: DA Scrum Master, DA Senior Scrum Master
• Areas of interest: continuous improvement, agile & lean, agile products, clean architecture,
collaborative work.
valentinmocanu.com
@ValentinTudor
© 2020 Valentin Tudor Mocanu

Scrum Guide 2020
• This presentation will address first the known Scrum approach (before changes)
• Some Scrum changes are strongly related to discussed subjects

Software development context
• Incertitude, complexity and knowledge work
• Changing requirements
• Solution inherent complexity

Waterfall
• Big up front: requirements, solution, planning
• Not feasible for complex problems
• The requirements will change
• BUF Solution & Planning: do not make sense with unclear/uncertain requirements
• “Paper”-only solutions do not prove nothing
• Late acceptance and very few feedback
• Cannot develop the right product

Iterative
development
Slice the work inside a release: iterations
Lightweight up-front requirements, solution, planning
Iteration – all aspects of the development
Defer decisions
Acquire knowledge & take informed decisions
Real solution progress demonstrated with working software

Agile
• Iterative-adaptive
• “Responding to change over following a plan” – Agile Manifesto value
• Collaborative work
• Target the nature of the problem:
• often changing requirements, complexity, knowledge work

Scrum Approach
• Focus on iteration ~ what is generic in iterative development
• Very little about releases ~ big variation depending on the context
• Sprint – Scrum approach for iterations
• Time boxes
• Specific ceremonial – small set of fixed practices
• Product backlog – Serialize the work
• Scrum: how to execute the PB incoming work with Sprint after Sprint

Sprint ceremonial
Before the Sprint
• Refine the work ~ similar with Sprint planning → Ready state
Sprint
• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum + Development work
• Sprint Review → Product Increment in Done state
• Spring Retrospective

Sprint Summary
What and how: Sprint Backlog
Planning:
Acceptance – PO explain what is/isn’t done and why
Product Increment (what is done) is potentially releasable
Inspect & adapt the release vision: market, budget, scope
Review

Scrum – a solution for Waterfall problems
No big up-front decisions
• defer part of requirements, solution, planning to Sprints
The Sprint
• like “a project with no more than a one-month horizon” will reduce complexity and risks
Sprint end
• Real Progress ~ Product Increment with “done” work
• Feedback to adapt the release vision

Scrum Life-cycle - 2017
Release
Planning
Release Backlog
Architecture
Vision
Sprints
Refining
Planning:
- Sprint Backlog
Review:
- Accept (done/not done)
- Inspect & Adapt
- Potential release
Transition
Included in
Sprints
Reference: https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide-2017.html

How generic is this approach?

Questions
What is the agile approach?
What is the necessary support for frequent deliveries?
What is necessary support for often changing requirements?
What is necessary support for high incertitude cases?

Agile Manifesto, life-cycle approach
Related Values
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
Related Principles
• Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter
timescale.
www.agilemanifesto.org

Agile approach – Small Releases
• Early & often delivery, preferably in no more than two weeks
• Production deployment included
• 2001, Agile Manifesto – no more than two weeks
• Today – also days, day, hours

Small Releases Advantages
• Reduce overall complexity
• Value delivered early
• More stable release scope (fewer CRs)
• Easy to manage the change requests
• Real feedback more often

Quick value delivery
• Big batches ~ delayed delivery
• Cost of delay ~ lost revenue or opportunity
• Delay ~ high risk of producing junk stories
• Quick delivery ~ small releases

Support for Small Releases
• Scrum
• No explicit recommendation
• Some implicit support via releasable Sprint Product Increment
• Extreme Programming
• Recommend small releases
• Explain advantages
• XP practices and small releases are symbiotic (user stories, etc.)
• Disciplined Agile
• Recommend small releases ~ minimum business increments
• Offer substantial guidance (how to/tailoring): mindset, life-cycles, process goals, practices
• Explain advantages of accelerated value delivery

Disciplined Agile -
Minimum Business Increment
• Small Release with a business meaning
• Value early delivery
Life-cycle option in DA Small releases support Scrum compatibility
Agile (iteration based) Small and very few iterations Yes
Lean Release must be small No (Scrum 2017)
Continuous Delivery Agile By default, small release Yes, with very few one-week Sprints
Continuous Delivery Lean By default, very small releases No

Scrum and Small Releases
Sprint ~“a project with no more than a one-month horizon” … not really
Only often release to production will give real feedback & value + reduce complexity & risks
Scrum
• Product increment is releasable (potentially)
• Iterations could be small
….but there is no explicit recommendation to do that
?

DA milestones – a risk-value approach
Address life-cycle risks
• Unaligned stakeholders
• Inappropriate architecture
• Delivery team gets off track
• Insufficient functionality
• Solution isn’t ready to be shipped
• Stakeholders don’t like what they get
https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/lifecycle/risk-value-lifecycle

End-to-end Agile Scrum-based life-cycle
https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/lifecycle

Often changing requirements
• Scrum vs Lean lifecycle
• Scrum looks like Waterfall in this context
ACTIVITY SCRUM LEAN
Look Ahead Sprint level (~ rigid in this case) Mostly opportunistically look ahead and JIT
Daily meeting Usually Development Team only PO work closer with the team
Work Validation Manual testing – not so feasible here Automated tests – highly desired
Demo and Acceptance Mostly in Spring review (Scrum 2017) Opportunistically and often

Lean Life-cycle

Week example with Lean life-cycle
• The Product Owner participate to the daily meetings
• One or more days per week
• The PO Look Ahead or have JIT discussion with the team
• The team demonstrate their working software to the PO
• The customer is involved in demos
• Daily
• TDD/ATDD
• Refactoring
• Continuous Integration

Very Often Releases • Scrum versus Lean Continuous Delivery
Activity Scrum Lean Continuous Delivery (DA has options)
Work verification Manual testing is an option Manual testing is not feasible: involve more
handoffs, testing cycles are slow.
TDD/ATDD, code analysis, continuous integration
and others are highly desired
PO involvement Sprint level ceremonial (we have
guidance)
Daily and opportunistic.
Help building the automated tests
Daily Meeting Inspect progress toward the Sprint
Goal
(2017)
Progress is not between days but inside the day

Continuous Delivery Lean
• Very small increments
• Very small release
• Very small Transition
• Fast validation
• Advanced practices
• High skills

Day example with Lean Continuous Delivery
• The Product Owner participate to the daily meetings
• The PO participate to creation of automated tests
• The PO and possible the customer are available for JIT clarifications/demos
• Team work
• Capture requirements in tests
• Implement and test
• Pair and mob programming
• Demonstrate working software to PO/business people
• Get feedback and change
• Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment
• Code Analysis tool for automatic review
• Code review
• Collaborative work with DevOps team
• Production deployment*

High Incertitude cases • Scrum versus Exploratory Lean Startup
ACTIVITY SCRUM Exploratory Lean Startup
Work container Iterations Produce working software opportunistically
Work Pace Fixed length iterations Faster cycles – to get feedback & address
incertitude
Uncertain timing for exploratory work
Product
Increment
Potentially releasable Many prototypes
Demonstrate, get feedback and continue with
several options:
• Accept and continue development
• Pivot and change
• Drop

Exploratory Lean Startup
• Start with hypotheses
• Build & observe & measure
• Continue or Pivot
• Many experiments

Scrum for all?
• Centralized organization decision
• Our organization will use Scrum
• Translation: all products, all teams, all projects must use Scrum
• What really happening?
• Scrum ceremonial is respected
• In some situations this ceremonial does not help
• A good part of the work performed without Agile & Lean guidance
• Ad-hoc process

Adapt to the context – DA Principles
• Context Count
• Our situation is unique and evolve over time
• Be Pragmatic
• Our goal is not to use one method or another, it's to be effective and to improve
• Choice is Good
• We need to choose our WoW in a context-driven manner
• We need to know our choices & the associated tradeoffs
• We need guidance – PMI DA Toolkit

Scrum Guide 2020 changes
• Less guidance for Scrum Events & Rules
• More generic, more potential options but only because of removed guidance
• Same small set of events/practices
• Fundamental & not commented changes
• More increments in one Sprint
• What is done/not done acceptance – before Scrum Review

Release
Planning
Release Backlog
Architecture
Vision
Sprints
Refining
Planning:
- Sprint Backlog
Review:
- Product Increment
- Inspect & Adapt
- Potential release
Transition
Included in Sprints
Reference: https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide-2017.html

Releases
Planning
More releases
Architecture
Vision
Sprints
Refining
Planning:
- Sprint Backlog
Increments (unmanaged)
- Potential release
Review:
- Inspect & Adapt
Transition
Unmanaged
Reference: https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html

What is the purpose of the change?
Classic Sprint
• Full Sprint ceremonial / one increment
• The Scrum Ceremonial cannot be executed for a small increment
• Only Agile-iterative lifecycle could be used
New Sprint
• Sprint ceremonial could applied to more small increments
• Lean lifecycle & small increments become compatible

What is the problem with the change?
• The Sprint is no longer an iteration and that is not a problem but …
• The Sprint (Scrum) become more generic, but …
• There is less explicit support in Scrum Events for releasing product increments
• …. and for organizing a release

Life-cycle support transformation in Scrum
Scrum 2017 life-cycle support
Product
Release
Sprint/Increment
Sprint/Increment
Sprint/Increment
Release … Sprint/Increment
Scrum 2020 life-cycle support
Product
Release
Release
increments
Release
Increments
Plan +
Inspect/Adapt
Sprint
Sprint

What is next?
• Scrum changes acknowledge the need to be less prescriptive
• Scrum-only approach has too little guidance for solution delivery aspects
• Main question: How we will prepare our releases?
• We need guidance for different ways of delivery
• DA is an excellent option for such guidance
• DA support Scrum, XP, or other working styles

Using New Scrum with DA guidance - Examples
Agile life-cycle
• One Increment per Sprint
• Sprint timebox = Iteration timebox
• Old Scrum style logic apply
• How to
• Lightweight release milestones
• Select practices
Lean life-cycle
• More increments per Sprint
• Sprint Events – very high granularity
• How to
• Lightweight release milestones
• PO collaborate with the development
• Stakeholders collaboration
• Verify and validate fast
• Select practices that support fast changes

Questions ?

References
• [R1] The 2017 Scrum GuideTM - https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
• [R2] The 2020 Scrum GuideTM - https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide-2017.html
• PMI Disciplined Agile - Lifecycles - https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/lifecycle
• PMI Disciplined Agile – Risk Value Lifecycle - https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/lifecycle/risk-value-lifecycle

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