1. What does agile mean?

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(No Transcript)
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Obstacles to Agility

• 1. What does agile mean?
• 2. What keeps us from being agile?
• 3. What can we do about this?
• Total of 25 slides

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What does agile mean?

• Per the Agile Manifesto, 2001
• Software is developed in short time-boxes
  (iterations).
• Each iteration results in functioning build.
• The team values real time communication over
  documentation.
• The team--including programmers and subject
  matter experts--is collocated.
• Progress is measured in working software.

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What does agile look like?

• Your development plan/task list is in short,
  1-to-4 week iterations. A project is made up of
  many iterations.
• At the end of each one, you generate a
  functioning build, creating prototypes whenever
  possible.
• Also at the end of each iteration, you identify
  what can be done in the next cycle.
• Your team includes a subject matter expert.
• You work closely with your teammates, holding
  brief, stand-up meetings often.
• You measure progress with complete iterations.

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Why bother?

• Short answer
• To solve problems for your usersmore quickly and
  more frequently.
• Its also an exciting way to work

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Is this important?

• Our users expect simplicity and immediate reward
  and Amazon, Google, and iTunes are the standards
  against which we are judged.
• University of California Libraries Bibliographic
  Services Task Force, Dec. 2005
• Academic libraries might just have a window of
  opportunity to leap into a future where we add
  value to our institutions in ways we've never
  imagined before or are only beginning to
  envision. But that window may already be in the
  process of slamming shut.
• Roy Tennant, Library Journal, Dec. 2006

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Sowhat keeps us from agility?

• Academic culture our dear customers themselves!
• Project management practices
• Institutional hiring processes
• Our own work practices

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Academic culture

• Academic culture a non-participatory democracy
• Individuals do not want to be involved but do
  want veto power.
• Individuals do not want to be represented by
  anyone else. They want a voice. Or not.

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Academic culture

• What this means
• It can be difficultif not impossibleto identify
  a small number of subject matter experts who can
  represent the customer base at large.
• Project teams end up working with large
  committees of users. Committees of committees

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What keeps us from agility?

• Aspects of academic culture
• Project management practices how we run things!
• Institutional hiring processes
• Our own work practices

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Project management practices

• Projects typically do not have a single
  individual or committee that takes ownership
  responsibility for the projects outcome.
• Major project decisions often require input from
  a very diffuse decision-making structure.
• Projects are allowed to drag on for years,
  sucking life from all surrounding beings.

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Project management practices

• What this means
• Because no single entity can adjudicate conflicts
  over requirements, schedule, or funding, many
  players must be consulted. Time passes. Then,
  more time passes.
• Individual team members have the life sucked out
  of them.
• By the time it is delivered, the solution is out
  of date.

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What keeps us from agility?

• Aspects of academic culture
• Project management practices
• Hiring processesat the beloved institutions
  where we work!
• Our own work practices

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Hiring processes

• Hiring processes and systems built for the
  academic job market are a bad fit for the
  technology market.
• Many months elapse between the identification of
  a staffing need and the start date of a new
  employee.
• Some shops dont even have administrative control
  over their own openings.
• Grant-funded staff members cant be moved around
  as project work might require.

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Hiring processes

• What this means
• Project teams are not able to get help when and
  where they need it.
• Projects are slowed schedules are warped to
  less-than-optimal configurations.

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What keeps us from agility?

• Aspects of academic culture
• Project management practices
• Institutional hiring processes
• Work practices time to look in the mirror

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Work practices

• We value space and privacy over team collocation.
• We dont want to share work in progress.
• We arent practiced in estimating how long it
  will take to accomplish project tasks.
• We measure progress, well how do we measure
  progress? Do we measure progress?

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Work practices

• What this means
• We lose time communicating/coordinating with
  people in other locations.
• We aim for perfection before getting feedback.
• We cant reliably predict what we can get done in
  the next time block.
• We may not be working on what our customers
  want/expect.

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What can we do about this?

• 1. Start small
• 2. with a new project
• 3. and introduce it as a pilot.

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What can we do about Academic culture

• Create a project Steering Committee/Advisory
  Council, with representatives from the
  stakeholding committees. Establish the group
  expectation of decision-making.
• Identify a subject matter expert to serve as a
  user representative on the team. Give this person
  a meaningful role.
• Use the Pilot Project label to encourage
  adoption of the new approach.

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What can we do about Project management

• Identify a time-to-market goal, and review
  progress toward this goal at the close of each
  iteration.
• Implement first versions (with 80 of
  functionality) quicklyin a few weeks or months.
• Automate well-understood processes first.
• Empower user representative as decision-makers.
• Aim for functionality, not perfection.

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What can we do about Hiring Staffing

• No quick fix, so adopt a work-around strategy
• Look for trade possibilities with other tech
  shops in your university system (salary
  transfer)
• Establish standing relationships with contracting
  agencies
• Use independent contractors.
• Assign temporary workers to production support
  activities, freeing up employees to do the cool
  (agile) work.

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What can we do about Work practices

• Learn about and practice
• agile programming techniques.

Graphic from www.plunge.in
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A few resources

• The Agile Alliance http//www.agilealliance.org/
• Extreme Programming http//www.extremeprogramming
  .org
• Scrum http//www.controlchaos.com
• Dynamic Systems Development Model
  http//www.dsdm.org

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Questions?

• joan.starr_at_ucop.edu