The document discusses agile fluency and its stages of development for teams. It describes the four stages of agile fluency - one-star, two-star, three-star, and four-star - and the benefits, investments, metrics, and time needed to achieve each stage. One-star focuses on team success and business value. Two-star is about delivering working software frequently. Three-star optimizes for delivering the most business value. Four-star aligns the team with organizational goals. The path through these stages of agile fluency allows teams to continuously improve.

1. At BSG, we believe in being a proactive force for positive change,
making a difference in everything we do.
Unlocking potential. Accelerating performance
Tackling the
fallacy of “Agile”
22nd May 2014
Clinton Bosch, Sandra Rheeder and Daniël Maree
How to maximise the benefits
on your journey to Agile excellence

2. Agile | a reaction to plan-driven methodologies like RUP
Agile origins
Plan-driven derived from
other engineering Heavy on initial planning
Software development is
not civil engineering
Over time more information
is uncovered
Requirements guaranteed
to change

3. Agile fluency
Fluency | how a team develops software when it’s under pressure
distinct stages of agile, each with specific benefits
and challenges
“Star”
system
Entire teams fluency –
not individuals
Teams evolve in a
predictable order
Fluency at all
previous levels
3
1 2
4

4. One-star create business value
• Management pillar
• Easiest
• Focus on team success
Benefit: Greater visibility into team’s work; ability to redirect
Investment: Team development and work process design
Core Metric: Team regularly reports progress from a business value
perspective
Achievement: 45%
Time: 2 - 6months
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
team

5. Two-star ship at will
• Technical pillar
• Deliver to market cadence
• Technical skills take time & effort, reduce productivity
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
Benefit: Low defects and high productivity
Investment: Lowered productivity during technical skill development
Core Metric: Team ships on market cadence
Achievement: 35%
Time: 3 - 24months
EXTREME PROGRAMMING
“moments to learn, lifetime to master”

6. Three-star optimise value
• Deliver the most value possible for your investment
• Understand what market / business needs
• Delivers MVP
• Value added vs. opportunity cost
• Pivot if not producing sufficient value
• Cross functional teams
Benefit: Higher value deliveries and better product decisions
Investment: Social capital expended on incorporating business
expertise into team
Core Metric: Team provides concrete business metrics
Achievement: 5%
Time: 1 – 5 years
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

7. Four-star optimise system
• Understand organisational priorities and business direction
• Support the needs of a product critical to business success
• Cross-pollination between teams
• Bleeding edge of agile practice
Benefit: Alignment with organisational goals, synergistic effects
Investment: Significant effort in establishing organisational culture, inventing new practices
Core Metric: Team reports how its actions impact the overall organisation
Achievement: Very few
Time: unknown
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

8. In summary
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

9. Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
PaththroughAgilefluency

10. Questions

11. /ˈadʒʌɪl manɪdʒm(ə)nt/
Agile management

12. Management at one-star fluency
Stakeholders
Interpreting
Collaborating
Team
Welcome change
Short feedback loop
Adapting to the situation and environment
Principles > process
Demonstrating the benefits
Engaged customers = happy customers

13. Management at two-star fluency

14. Management at three-star fluency
Where
becomes

15. Management at four-star fluency

16. Who drives Agile excellence?
Scrum. Scrum. Scrum.
Scrum. Scrum. Scrum.
Scrum. Scrum. Scrum.
Scrum. Scrum. Scrum.
Agile Principles …………
…………………………………
……………………………
………….
Learning
Organisation

17. Questions

18. Agileframework
key principles
• Long-running, multi-functional teams
• Small batch sizes (which are regularly released)
• Continual review and prioritisation
• Embrace cheap failure
• Self-similarity across all levels in the organisation
• Fix time and cost, not scope (but within a broader context)
specific practices
• Adopted and customised by
teams as they move through the
fluency model
interrelated
values
Feedback Respect
Courage
Simplicity
Communication

19. What about the BA?
“…the Agile Business Analyst will rely much
more on people facilitation skills than they may
have on traditional projects. The BA’s role is to
facilitate a discussion between the Product
Owner and the technical team”
“…the agile BA needs to think about the
software development process in new ways.
Agile encourages us to decouple the breadth
of the solution from the depth of the solution in
order to continuously deliver smaller
increments of production-ready code”
What is my
role?
Source: “The Agile Business Analyst” white paper, Mike Cottmeyer, V. Lee Henson
(www.versionone.com)
I hear there is no
documentation…
requirements don’t
get signed off??!!
The developers are
talking directly to
business and it’s
working! What am I
going to do??
Extreme
programming is
not really my
thing…

20. Fluency and BA skills
A shift from documenting exhaustive detailed
requirements up front, to documenting as-
needed priority requirements per iteration
Focus on new skills
• Creating clear direction in terms of the
“breadth” of scope
• Conceptual domain / business
understanding
• Facilitation of discussions between
business and developers, especially in
terms of courageous feedback
• The ability to question and unpack the
requirements which will deliver specific
business value in the short term, and meet
longer term objectives
• Writing specific, detailed user stories
• Understanding how to “slice the cake
vertically”
• User experience design skills

21. Fluency and BA skills
A shift to become an “extension”
of business, a strategic questioner
to allow for a pivot in approach
based on feedback across the
board
Focus on new skills
• Driving the concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) – the simplicity value
• Deeper understanding of and alignment with business
• Strategic business understanding

22. Ask why the analytical role
Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
Alignment the “questioner”…
• Are we doing the right things in the
medium term?
Translation
vs
Team Participation
Revolutionary change
Evolutionary change“Don’t do the wrong
things righter…” Implementation the “doer”…
• Focus on efficiency and adjusting to
feedback
• Question how and functional relevance to
modules as a whole
Definition the “requester”…
• Prioritisation
• Focus on effective delivery in terms of
business value
• Shorter-term rollout of needed requirements

23. UXD and Lean
Learn

24. Questions

25. Adoption of Agile
Refactoring | a technique where you improve the design of your
code without adding functionality to it
• Agile means business value-oriented
• Encourage change
• Change requires refactoring
• Minimise risk of refactoring

26. Xtreme programming
• Big decision
• Initial investment cost
• Buy in from ALL senior stakeholders
Extreme Programming | communication simplicity feedback
CORE PRACTICES
Team forms around
a “customer”
Small fully-
integrated releases
Pair programming,
simple design,
improvement
Continuous
integration, code in
a consistent style

27. Simple rule
The sooner you test,
the cheaper to fix
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Design Implementation Test Post Release

28. Cost of change
A critical concept that motivates full lifecycle testing is the cost of change
CostofChange
Development Time
Traditional
TDD / Agile
By retaining the minimum amount of project artefacts required to support the
project, there is less to update when a change does occur

29. Initial slowdown
Ongoing extra effort mitigated over time
There is
an initial
cost!

30. Unused code
Waterfall requires users list ALL requirements
Agile focused on business value Always,
7%
Frequently,
13%
Sometimes,
16%
Rarely, 19%
Never, 45%
Standish Group | Features used on failed projects

31. Does it really work?

32. Questions

33. In summary
The Fluency model = representation of Agile maturity
1 Star fluency is the first step enabling stakeholders to adapt to
change. This is NOT the end goal
2 Star fluency is the necessary next step allowing the system
technically to keep up with this change
3 Star fluency seeks to maximise delivery of business value
and minimise accumulation of liability software
BSG believes this should be the goal

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