I Don't Do Agile. I Am Agile

Private and Confidential. © 2011 ThoughtWorks, Ltd. All rights reserved.
I DON’T DO AGILE, I AM AGILE!
@BarryOReilly
www.barryoreilly.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barryoreilly

Who are ThoughtWorks?
Enterprise Agile and Technology
consulting
Offices in US, UK, Germany, India,
Brazil, China and Australia
1,800 people worldwide
Creators of GO!, Twist and Mingle
Martin Fowler & Jim Highsmith

What will we cover?

Problems adopting and practicing
Agile in organisations

Follow what is in the book
– we’re Agile!

Agile project failing to deliver or
live up to expectations

But we are doing everything
X
says to do

Maybe Agile isn’t for us
It does not work
A myth

Practices and Principles
Agile
– SCRUM
– XP
Lean and Kanban

SCRUM - Practices
Meetings
Daily Stand Up
Sprint Planning
Showcase
Retrospective
Time-boxing
Sprint
Spikes
Artifacts
Product Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Burn Down
Roles
SCRUM Team
SCRUM Master
Product Owner
Users

XP – Practices
Feedback
User Stories
(Planning)
Whole team
Test Driven
Development
Pair Programming
Welfare
Sustainable Pace
Shared Understanding
Simple Design
System Metaphor
Collective Code
Ownership
Continuous Process
Continuous
Integration
Design Improvement
Small Releases

Kanban
Visualise The Workflow
Limit Work In Progress
Manage Flow
Make Process Policies Explicit
Improve Collaboratively

Change your perspective

Instead of trying to do everything
that’s prescribed
Ask why are we doing it?

Do we need to do it?
Does it work for the product we
trying to build?

Reverse thinking

The best place to begin an
intellectual journey is at its end
– Russell Ackoff

Visionaries look ahead to a
desired end
Know where they want to be

Work backwards to find a way of
getting there

Bad smells

To do more of what is not working
now, is to do more of what will not
work in the future

Trying to do the wrong thing right

Being ineffective

How do we know?

Practices and Principles
Agile
– SCRUM
– XP
Lean
– Kanban
– Muda (Eliminating waste)
– Amplify learning
– Deliver as fast as possible

It is important that an aim never
be defined in terms of a specific
activity or method.
– Edward Deming

Go Compare

Compare
SCRUM
14 Practices
- Time boxed
- Cross Functional
teams
- Roles Prescribed
- Cannot Add Items
- Estimation
Required
XP
12 Practices
- Iterative
- Developer
centric
- Collective
Ownership
- Small releases
- Planning game
Kanban
3 Practices
- Event Driven
- Specialist teams
- No Roles
Prescribed
- Add Items when
capacity
- Estimation Optional
Prescriptive Adaptive

Focus on using the practices that
suit the context
Don’t simply stick with one
discipline and one alone

Great idea!
When do we start?

Day One to Last Day

Example

Day One
Management felt need to control and manage team
Showed a lack of involvement in the project (Agile too time
consuming)
Wanted progress reports every two weeks
SCRUM by the book
Time-boxing led to mini-Waterfall mentality
Sprint planning meeting (taking hours and all team members)
Build broken, still go to prescribed meetings
Estimate in points, task in hours, Burn down in hours

Change perspective
Planned On
Demand

Change Going Forward
Once
Planned
Now On
Demand
No Sprint
Planning
Story Showcase
No Time
Box
Retro Reporting
Trash
Hours
Abstract
Sizing

Last Day
Only formality
– Showcase to external stakeholders
– Report outwards on velocity covered since last report cycle
Stakeholders
– require continual engagement at story review and
showcase
– Forced to prioritised
Developers
– Story huddles meant they only review stories they work on
– Focus on writing code, not hang out in meetings

What are the indicators for what
practices to use?

What To Think About….
Project Brief
– Green or Brown Fields
– New Product Development
– Heavy Lifting
– Integration

Organisation
– Experience of Agile
– Open to change
– Culture
– People need to feel secure, otherwise
display defensive behaviour

Hand over and collaboration
– Always available
– Not with team continually
– Intermittently
– Only attend schedule meetings

Composition Of The Team
– Co-located
– Distributed
– Same working hours
– Different time zones

Environment
– Technology
– Tools
– Office Space
– Desk Space

Releasing
– Automated or Manual
– How often can you deploy?
– On demand
– Daily, Weekly, Monthly
– Scheduled cycle

Feedback loops
– Stakeholders
– Customers
– Users
– Cannot improve if you do not get it

So back to SCRUM, XP or Kanban

SCURM
14 Practices
- Time boxed
- Cross Functional
teams
- Roles Prescribed
- Cannot Add Items
- Estimation
Required
XP
12 Practices
- Iterative
- Developer
centric
- Collective
Ownership
- Small releases
- Planning game
Kanban
3 Practices
- Event Driven
- Specialist teams
- No Roles
Prescribed
- Add Items when
capacity

Stop thinking about what
discipline
to use
Starting thinking about what
practice will be useful

- Time boxed
- Cross Functional
teams
- Roles Prescribed
- Cannot Add Items
- Estimation
Required
- Iterative
- Developer
centric
- Collective
Ownership
- Small releases
- Planning game
- Event Driven
- Specialist teams
- No Roles
Prescribed
- Add Items when
capacity

Lean Thinking

There is nothing so useless as
doing efficiently that which
should not be done at all
- Peter Drucker

Minimum amount to succeed

Muda
– Eliminate waste
– Not helping get rid of it
– Using more tools, people or equipment than is
needed
– Software Development is a value creation
process
– Perfect process has no unneeded waste

Delivering as fast as possible
– End goal is to deliver a product
– Sooner the product is delivered
– Sooner you get feedback
– Sooner you can improve it

Amplified learning
– Continuous learning process
– Making mistakes and learning
– Increased feedback

Question Everything

Is what we are doing valuable or
slowing us down?

Is it relevant for what we are trying
to do?

What purpose is it meant to serve
- is it achieving it?

If we didn’t do it what would
happen?

Continuous Improvement

Team arrives at maturity when it
invests more in strategies and
tactics that do not work more than
ones that do

Learn more when things are
wrong not right

Try things out
Don’t be afraid to fail

Do not waste your failures

It's not FAILURE that we should
celebrate - but the LEARNING
that ensues

Kaizen
Envisage
Enact
Get Feedback
Feed Learning
Back In

Thank you
If you like what you saw talk to
me about joining ThoughtWorks

I Don't Do Agile. I Am Agile

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