Itag Jan09 Agile Coclarity

War Stories
Experiences applying Agile in many types of business

gerard.hartnett@coclarity.com

ITAG
Cairnes Business School, NUI Galway, Ireland.
22-Jan-2009

Overview
• Introduction
• Patterns, PLOPS and OOPSLA
• Scrum
• eXtreme Programming
• GTD and 4HWW
• Conclusion
Copyright © 2009 coClarity Ltd. 2

Introduction
• 20-years SW experience
• Currently: coClarity, Limerick
• Intel, Basis & Tellabs, Shannon
• Digital, Galway
• Motorola, Cork, & USA
• QC-Data, Cork & Canada

Conclusion
• Great ideas cross boundaries between
disciplines
• Software has Borrowed from Everywhere
• Agile techniques can be applied in any kind
of business
• Customer Focus, Deliver Early & Often,
Simplicity (Product & Plans), Self-Organising


Patterns, PLOPS and
OOPSLA

Patterns
• Reusable solution to a
common problem
• Borrowed from
Architecture (Alexander)
• 1987 OOPSLA, Beck &
Cunningham
• 1994, Gang of Four

PLOPs

• Pattern Languages of
Programs
• Conferences Started
1994
• PLOP-2, paper on
Episodes (Cunningham)


OOPSLA 98
• Birds-of-a-feather
session
• 100s arrived
• One page handout of
the key practices
• Diagram of how they
related to each other


Overview

• A light-weight methodology
• For small-to-medium-sized teams
• Vague or rapidly-changing requirements
• Values: communication, feedback, simplicity,
courage and respect


Practices
• Quick Plan • Pair Programming
• Small Releases • Collective Ownership
• Metaphor • Continuous Integration
• Simple Design • 40-Hour Week
• Testing • On-Site Customers
• Refactoring • Coding Standards

A-La-Carte
• The books warn against taking an a-la carte
approach
• We tailored it out of necessity
• Didn’t really use: Metaphor, On-site
Customers
• Modiﬁed: Scrum for planning, Collective
Ownership within Team


Pair Programming

Photo credit ﬂickr.com/people/lucadex

Pair Programming our
Experience
• The most controversial practice
• Some components pair programmed
• Lowest defect rates
• Smaller code sizes
• Small sample set

Pair Lessons Learned
• No Keyboard Wrestling, Large Fonts
• Think about neighbours
• No editor wars
• Set key objectives
• Not as useful during bug-ﬁx phase
• Can be done remotely (gotomeeting)

New New Product
Development Game
• Article in Harvard
Business Review 1986
• Study of companies in
Japan & US
• Fuji-Xerox, Canon,
Honda, NEC, HP, 3M


Six Characteristics
• Built in instability - broad challenging goal
• Self-organising teams
• Overlapping Development Phases
• Multilearning
• Subtle Control
• Organisational transfer of learning

Scrum

• Computer guys
borrowed from
“New New...”

• Called it Scrum

• I suspect they were
never in a real Scrum

Photo credit ﬂickr.com/photos/bohane/

Scrum Overview
• You can manage any kind of project with
Scrum
• I’ve used on tiny and large projects
• Not rocket science or expensive (although
an “industry” has popped up)
• It works & viral

“Opportunities”
• All projects have chickens
and pigs
• Pigs are happy: no status
reports or boring meetings
• Chickens are happy: they
know what’s happening
without getting in the way

Photo credit ﬂickr.com/photos/7326810@N08

The Theory
• Software engineering is complex adaptive
system
• Traditional planning - illusion of control
• Empirical process not a “deﬁned process”
• Complexity theory - better to do frequent
samples and small adjustments
• Adaptability is better than predicability

The Team

• Should be small (6 max) - if bigger, split
• Ideally co-located (can work distributed)


The Project

Diagram by Lakeworks http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Scrum_process.svg

• Punctuated Equilibrium - balance team focus, management
visibility, and adaptability

The Sprint

• Easier for team to focus on something a
month away
• Daily short meetings
• At the end - write-up or demo


The Daily Meeting
• KISS - 15 minutes max, same time & place
• 3 questions
• what did you do? (binary - all or nothing)
• what roadblocks?
• what will you do by tomorrow?
• Everyone responsible for their own tasks

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Consequence of “Loads
of post-its”
• Low effort - visualisation of progress
• Preparation is fast - post-its on monitors
• Occasional trips to the “big sheet”
• Not great for distributed teams
• 3M make loads of money

Planning
• More KISS
• No complex Gannt chart
• Plan is a series of sprints
• Dependencies only at a sprint level
• Can use sophisticated estimation
techniques
• Shorter sprints at the start and end

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Planning - Full Project
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Planning - Sprint
• At the start check project plan & look at
new backlog items
• Allocate to individuals - could use simple
spreadsheet
• Efforts based on “ideal days”
• Inside/Outside end-date
• At the end: write-up, demo, release

The Big Chickens
• Start to trust it - less reporting needed
• Can show up at daily meetings - must
remember they are chickens
• Can add new items to backlog
• Other possibilities - earned value, wide-
band-delphi, comparison to estimates


Scrum Conclusion

• Simple, low-overhead, adaptable any kind/
size project
• Everyone gets involved in planning and
tracking, team “gells”
• The chickens can actually contribute
• Scrum was more sticky than eXP

GTD

• Getting Things Done
• A new cult for the info age
- Wired
• Levels: Actions, Projects,
Areas,Yearly, 5-Year, Life
• Collect, Process, Organise,
Review, Do

Actions and Projects
• Action: always something that needs to be
done ﬁrst
• Each action has a context
• Project: requires more than one action
• Don’t need to plan projects in detail but
deﬁne outcome
• Choose actions based on context

4HWW

• The 4 Hour Workweek
• 80/20 Rule
• Decide two meaningful
things to accomplish
• Email twice a day


Common Patterns
• Bottom Up Planning (take care of days...)
• Simple Top Down Plan - it will change
• Adaptable more important than predictable
• Don’t Just React - Make Active Choices
• Feedback Loops
• Encourage self-organisation

Conclusion
• Great ideas cross boundaries between
disciplines
• Software has Borrowed from Everywhere
• Agile techniques can be applied in any kind
of business
• Customer Focus, Deliver Early & Often,
Simplicity (Product & Plans), Self-Organising


Next Steps
Decide what aspects you are interested in
Read about them on wikipedia
Read the paper: Fitzgerald, Hartnett “Agile
inside Intel” (short.ie/uehtqv)
Try some of the Patterns even on your
personal work
Consider trying Scrum with your team


Thank You
Happy to talk about
SCRUM Startups
coclarity
GTD
OO Design Web-collaboration
Entrepreneurship Ruby on Rails


Itag Jan09 Agile Coclarity

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