Agile Familiarisation

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Agile Familiarisation

• Overview of what Agile is June 2008

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Sound Familiar

• Time to market for projects is too long
• Unrealistic deadlines
• Poor Estimation
• Requirement Changes
• Immature architecture and design
• No Documentation or too much
• Inadequate Testing

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Projects today are...

• Too slow
• My needs are changing, but IT cant keep up
• Nothing gets done in less than a year
• Not valuable enough
• Project scope is wrong. And weve already coded
  half the system
• Ive got lots of documentation that no one uses
  for a system that doesnt meet my needs.
• We waste time designing and building features
  that are never used
• Not responsive
• Projects force the agency to close on
  requirements before they really know what they
  want
• Every little modification results in a change
  order
• Not in control
• Dont know whats going on with the project
• Im stuck with consultants that dont provide
  value

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Waterfall versus Agile
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Comparing
Typical water fall model development (With some
overlap)
Agile model with Iterations
Small iterations help in getting early feedback
Requirements
Requirements
Requirements
Design
Design
Design
Development
Development
Development
Testing team peak
Test
Test
Test
Development team peak
Design team peak
Requirements peak
No big team peaks/Spikes
All the teams formed at start of project
Development team is idle or not formed
Requirements and test team are not on project

• Close communication reduces re work
• Better requirements understanding with user
  stories
• Better quality products with regular demos and
  testing
• Each iteration gives value to business
• In production early
• Ability to absorb change requests easily

• Little scope in the project plan for accepting
  changes with out re-planning and long Change
  request cycles
• Re work due to late feed back and unclear
  requirements
• Business only see finished article during UAT
• Benefits not realised till end

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Iterative Incremental Development

• Iterative development is an approach to
  building software (or anything) in which the
  overall lifecycle is composed of several
  iterations in sequence.
• Each iteration is a self-contained mini-project
  composed of activities such as requirements
  analysis, design, programming, and test.
• Usually the partial system grows incrementally
  with new features, iteration by iteration in
  other words, incremental development.
• --Craig Larman

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Iterative Development
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Incremental Development
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What is an Agile methodology?

• Agile development is a methodology of software
  development that
• emphasizes customer satisfaction through
  continuous delivery of
• Functional software. Based on a variety of
  iterative development
• disciplines Agile methods put developers to work
  in small teams to
• tight budgets and short timescales.
• Agile methods are considered
• Lightweight
• People-based rather than Process-based
• Adaptive rather than predictive
• Less document oriented than rigorous methods

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Why Agile

• Create and build the right requirements
• Reduce waste
• Accelerate client value
• Improve predictability
• Provide unparalleled transparency and control to
  the client

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What is an Agile methodology? (Contd..)

• Agile Method Types

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What is an Agile methodology?

• Agile Manifesto Values
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Continuous Testing
• Short iterations (Incremental cycles)
• Responding to change over following a plan
• Individuals and interactions over processes and
  tools

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Agile summary - on a postage stamp..

• establish a vision
• change always happens
• so prioritise your activity
• do something small
• get feedback
• decide next steps

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Agile Myths .

• no design
• no testing
• no documentation
• no idea of progress
• poor quality
• no plan
• auditors wont allow it

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Key benefits of Agile

• Increases Flexibility - Minimizes up-front
  investment and maximizes return on investment
  (ROI) by creating an efficient IT development
  process
• Delivers the right solution - Aligns users and
  stakeholders with the right people to deliver the
  solution that the business actually needs
• Accelerates Delivery - Iterations get to the
  right solution faster
• Reduces risk and increases Quality - Greater
  stakeholder visibility and control

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Key benefits of AgileContd

• Increases Flexibility
• 2003 Standish Group report highlighted an
  alarming statistic with technology projects
• Nearly two-thirds of the features built into
  these solutions are rarely or never used
• Solution Evolutionary design
• It is a nonlinear approach where change is
  expected, and where the team uses actual
  development to gain empirical data to inform the
  design
• Blind alleys or requirements that simply dont
  work are abandoned early on or are identified and
  eliminated before they are even reached
• The solution evolves over multiple cycles (known
  as iterations), converging on an optimal response
  to the business problem with minimal waste.

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Key benefits of AgileContd

• Accelerates DeliveryIterations reinforce
  evolutionary design and form a repetitive
  'timebox' mentality for the project teams and
  clients. This translates into speed the solution
  gets delivered faster and earlier
• Solution
• The development teams deliver working, fully
  production-grade software much earlier in the
  engagement This early software is not merely a
  proof of concept.
• The team focuses development first on high-risk
  and high-value aspects, which means the earliest
  completed software is actually the most critical
  part of the solution.
• Stakeholders can choose to deploy this
  functionality (they may also elect to learn and
  improve it to converge on an optimal solution
  over multiple iterations)
• Putting working software in front of business
  users early yields other critical benefits it
  helps legitimize the project spend, drives
  eventual adoption, and, thus, facilitates
  organizational change

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Key benefits of AgileContd.

• Reduces risk and increases quality
• Stakeholders know exactly where the project
  stands at all times and can change its course as
  the business needs change
• Solution
• The Story Log
• The story log is an active, living scope of work
  that stakeholders use to drive the initiative
• A story is a work item that delivers tangible
  stakeholder value within the iteration. Examples
  include implementing a report, adding a new
  feature to a web application, etc.

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Agile Disadvantages

• Its hard!
• Makes all dysfunction visible
• Its doesnt fix anything the team has to do it
• Feels like things are worse at the beginning
• Bad products will be delivered sooner, and doomed
  projects will fail faster
• Partial adoption may be worse than none at all

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• Sumit Gupta
• (sumit_gupta2001_at_yahoo.com)