Lessons Learned from successful and failed agile implementation

1. Necessary but not Sufficient
Copyright 2013
Suradet Jitprapaikulsarn

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5. Topics
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About Me
Do What I Peach
That how we do it here
Agility we love it
Mission Impossible
Questions
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6. About Me
• Suradet Jitprapaikulsarn, Ph.D.
• Lecturer
• Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
• Naresuan University
• Phitsanulok
• Email: suradet.j@gmail.com
• Facebook: Suradet Jitprapaikulsarn
• Url: www.ajarnsuradet.com
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7. About Me (Cont.)
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Apply PSP since 1997
Apply TDD since 1999
1st Thai ScrumMaster since 2009
Was the only authorized PSP instructor in
Southeast Asia
• 1st Thai Certified PSP developer
• 5 times CMMI appraisal team member
• Only Asian instructor to be invited for Software
Architecture workshop at SEI, 8 year in a row
(since 2006)
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8. Do What I Peach
• Case 1 An In-house IT department of an
international company
– The organization invested in a lot of agile
training
– Hire outside experts
• Result
– Agile practices disappear within a few years
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9. Key Problems
• Management want agile favor but not the
work to be agile
• Training ≠ Practicing
• Too many approaches to agility
• Big bang
• Traditional metrics
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10. Do What I Peach
• Case 2 An In-house IT department of an
international company
– Start with one team was interested in Agile
– The whole team took a course in agility
– Hire an outside expert
• Result
– Agility is still here (since 2007)
– Not the entire organization is agile but
growing
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11. Key Success Factor
• Freedom given by management
• Osmosis approach
• One approach at a time
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12. That How we do it here
• Case 1: An IT company
– Long established (Since 1994)
– Planned to implement agility the whole
organization (2001)
• Result
– Agility is still being talked here (But not
practice)
– The first three agile projects failed
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13. Key Problems
• Change before try
• Individual performance is the key for
advancement
• Only profit is matter
• Schedule is the most important
• No management involvement
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14. That How we do it here
• Case 2: An IT company
– Long established (Since 2001)
• Result
– Not everyone know that they are actually
practice agility
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15. Key Success Factors
• Agile is ingrained in how the company do
things starting from management
• Flexible and willing to change
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16. Agility we love it
• Case 1: A medium-sized software
company
– Agile practices from the start (2005)
• Result
– Went bankrupt in 2011
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17. Key Failure
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Poor contract management
Financial management
Poor Marketing
No architect
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18. Agility we love it
• Case 2: A medium-sized software
company
– Agile practices from the start (2006)
• Result
– Triple the size of the company
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19. Key Success
• Carefully select the customers
• Good strategic planning
• Excellent tactical execution (At least one
architect in every project and every tem)
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20. Missing Impossible
• Case 1 Revise a legacy product
– A very long-life product (Since 1998)
• Result
– 9 hours of testing time
– Only a few practices still used
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21. Key Problems
• Document is not necessary
• Testing is necessary evil
• Change before try
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22. Missing Impossible
• Case 2 Revise a legacy product
– A very long-life product (Since 1995)
– Start agility in version 12 (2009)
• Result
– Reduce test time from 9 hr to 10 minutes
– Continuous testing (2010)
– Continuous integration (2012)
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23. Key Success Factor
• One component at a time
• Test-driven change
• Document as code
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24. Conclusion
• Agile is necessary but not sufficient
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