Executing large distributed projects using agile methodologies india agile week 2015 chennai

Location : Chennai
Date : 13th June 2015
Name of the Speaker : Mahesh Varadharajan
www.unicomlearning.com
Chennai
Executing Large Distributed
Projects using Agile Methodologies
http://www.agileinbusiness.com/chennai/2015/India_agile_week/

Chennai
• Agile is all about delivering business value in short iterations at a
sustainable pace, adapting to changing business needs.
• Focus on early delivery of working software, considered as the primary
measure of progress
• Distributed agile software development and testing is simply applying agile
principles and practices to software projects executed by distributed teams
or teams located at different sites
• These could be at two or more floors of the same building, different
buildings, cities or countries across geographies and time zones
What is Distributed Agile development?

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• Today more than 80% of the software development is done by the
distributed teams
• Thus, distribution is inevitable in multi national organizations today
• Practicing distributed development is not easy
• Teams are not able to communicate effectively
• Large Distributed projects are generally considered very high risk as only
16.2% of the projects are completed on-time and budget (says a Standish
Chaos report)
• Can we ignore the positives of distributed development?
Some Facts

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Reasons for Distributed Agile development
Cost savings
Faster go-to market speeds
Increased productivity
Better operational effectiveness like “Follow the Sun”
model

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• The question isn’t whether Agile can be applied
to distributed projects or not
• It’s rather!
• Can Distributed projects afford not to apply
Agile practices?
Food for Thought

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• Everyone knows Agile works well for:
• Small teams
• Collocated teams
• When customer is available to team all the time
• What about real scenario?
• Big teams
• Globally Distributed teams
• Large Projects (Multiple teams)
• When real customer is unavailable to team all the time
Agile – Does it work?

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• Building trust
• Time zone, language, and cultural barriers
• Communication
• Technical alignments like bias towards some
technologies in a location
• Project and process management
Challenges that must be overcome

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• Isolated Scrums: Teams are isolated across different locations. Some teams
may not be using Scrum.
• Distributed Scrum of Scrums: Cross-functional Scrum teams are isolated
across locations and integrated by a Scrum-of-Scrums that meets regularly
across locations. This model partitions work among cross-functional, isolated
Scrum teams in different locations while eliminating most dependencies
between teams. The Scrum Alliance recommends this model.
• Totally Integrated Scrums: Scrum team members are distributed across
locations. This model is not recommended for team members who are not
experienced in Agile.
Distributed Scrum Models

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• Boot Camp – during kickoff or release start bringing all together
• Rotating Guru visiting each location regularly, cross-pollination effect
• High Communication Modes – F2F, Overlapping working hours, VPN
• Remote Pairing – preferably at a fixed time and on a fixed schedule.
• Ambassador – local champion for remote team, complements rotating guru
• Shared Community
• Wiki and blogs
• Online project management tool
• Shared mailing list and folder:
• Integrated global code base and single continuous integration server
• Technology Alignments
Distributed Team Patterns

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• Product Owners daily meetings
• Hourly automated builds
• No class system
Other Distributed Team Best Practices

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• Success of Distributed agile substantially depends on real-time
collaboration
• Avoid depending heavily on the use of E-mails for knowledge sharing
• Wiki and Collaboration systems gaining popularity
• IM tools, NetMeeting, and video conferencing enable effective collaboration
• Robust and Scalable engineering platform to enable:
• Real-time Collaboration and transparency
• Re-usability and Refactoring
• Collective Code Ownership
• Continuous Integration
Critical Success Factors in Distributed Agile

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• The various modes of communication – email, telephone, face-to-face conversation –
can be placed on an “richness” continuum, which looks something like this:
Enabling Communication
• The higher up the continuum you are, the higher the richness and ease of
communication – in other words, the more natural the interaction, the more articulate
the expression, and the more rapid and faithful the understanding between people.

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• Enable and encourage informal, lateral communication between members of different
teams for day-to-day effectiveness such as resolving any blocks.
• Setup a Project wide Wiki with team members contact info and domain area
• SoS meeting to be held at agreed intervals attended by all team representatives
• update each other on progress
• surface and resolve inter-Team blocks and dependencies
• make cross-team technical decisions
• Otherwise provide a forum for cross-project visibility and impediment resolution
• Establish cross-geographic “coordinating groups,” to enable Team members with
particular specialties (for example, architecture) to work across team boundaries and
together guide the overall direction and evolution of the project.
Scrum of Scrums (SoS)

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• Have a common, Integrated Tracker
• Integrated with Version control and Build tools
• Continuous Integration
• centralized code repository
• hourly/nightly builds are in place
• Automated Deployment
• Automated unit/regression testing
• Sprint Health check
• By the use of a common dashboard
• Passed vs. Failed test cases for each build
• Code Review/Code Coverage Statistics
• Real time visibility into the sprint progress
Engineering Solution to Distributed Agile

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• Location A Product Owner and Location B Single Team
• Location A Product Owner and Location B Multiple Teams
• Location A PO + Part of Single Team and Location B rest of single team
• Location A PO + Part of Multiple Teams and Location B rest of multiple
teams
• Location A PO, Location B Part of Single Team + Location C rest of single
team
• Location A PO, Location B One or more Teams + Location C One or more teams
Some Models of Distributed Agile – For Discussion

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• Most commonly used and successful model
• Key Practices to focus are
• Enabling multiple modes of communication
• In-person Project Kick-off with PO to build trust
• Scrum Master collocated with the team
• Scrum Ceremonies conducted effectively
Model 1: Location A PO and Location B Single Team

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• Most commonly used and successful model
• Key Practices to focus are:
• Enabling multiple modes of communication
• In-person Project Kick-off with the PO to build trust
• Scrum Master collocated with each team
• Scrum Ceremonies conducted effectively
• Teams can offset their sprints by a day to help PO participate in the team
meetings
• Team members truly collocated
• Scrum of Scrums
• One Sprint Review attended by all teams to see each other work products
Model 2: Location A PO and Location B Multiple Teams

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• Here, team itself is split so need more care to drive efficiency
• Tensions may often arise between two locations like onshore – offshore model where
onshore members may have advantage of access to more information and influence
than their offshore counterparts
• Temporary Colocation of whole team
• Right technical tools and practices such as Continuous Integration,
• Enabling a Quality Communication
• Building Trust
• One Master in each location for effective facilitation
Model 3: Location A PO + Part of Single Team and Location B rest of single team

Chennai
• Three Main Challenges in this model are
• Ensuring effective communication and collaboration between the PO and the
Teams
• Ensuring effective communication and collaboration between Teams
• Ensuring effective communication and collaboration within Teams
• All mentioned in Model 3 +
• For Scrum of Scrums, it is important to have one representative from each Team
location participating
• E,g If there are three teams, each split between two locations, the Scrum of
Scrums will have 6 people participating: one from each Team location.
Model 4: Location A PO + Part of Multiple Teams and Location B rest of multiple
teams

Chennai
• Challenges in this model are
• Even with a strong commitment to communication and collaboration, there will
be more difficulties and missteps
• Difficulties in operating as a single team will be magnified if each location has
people with one capability like coders in one location and testers in another
location,
• If each location is managed by a different vendor, then a true team mindset and
identity will be very unlikely to appear
• All mentioned in Model 3 +
• For Scrum of Scrums, it is important to have one representative from each Team
location participating
Model 5: Location A PO + Part of Single Team and Location C rest of single team

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• Challenges in this model are
• How best to allocate the functionality among the various Teams and locations, to
provide individual Teams with as much independence as possible, and create
looser and more flexible coupling between Teams that are far apart
• All mentioned in Model 3 + Communication within and between teams
• Scrum of Scrums conducted regularly
• Sprints offset by a day for PO to participate in each of the team meetings
• One Sprint demo or review attended by all the teams demoing their work to
each other
Model 6: Location A PO, Location B One or more teams and Location C One or more
teams

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Do the principles change with distributed agile?
Principles and practices of Agile in a
distributed project are no different from the
principles and practices of Agile in a single-
location project
It’s simply Scrum, but with added challenges
brought on by the distances and differences
between locations.

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Values to be focused
Drive continuous improvement through a simple framework of
inspect and adapt
Surface dysfunction
Add transparency
To deliver customer value early and often

Speaker Name: Mahesh Varadharajan
Email ID: mahesh.mkr@gmail.com
Organized by
UNICOM Trainings & Seminars Pvt. Ltd.
contact@unicomlearning.com
India Agile Week 2015,
Chennai
Chennai

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