Agile Adoption Framework

Indian Institute of Management Lucknow
Prabandh Nagar, Off Sitapur Road, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh - 226013, INDIA.

Post Graduate Programme in Management
2010-2012

Framework for determination of
organizational readiness to adopt agile
methodologies in software development

A Course of Independent Study Report

By
Vaibhav Sathe
PGP26182

Under guidance of
Dr. Bharat Bhasker
Information Technology and Systems Area

©2012. Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. All Rights Reserved.

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Agile Adoption Readiness Framework

APPROVED FOR SUBMISSION TO PGP OFFICE TOWARDS TERM VI REQUIREMENTS
OF PGP COURSE

Signature:

Dr. Bharat Bhasker
Professor,
Information Technology & Systems Area,
IIM Lucknow

Date: 22.02.2012

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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Prof. Bharat Bhasker for the most valuable help and guidance he
provided throughout the course of this project, without which it was impossible to achieve the
completion.

The author acknowledges Mr. M. U. Raja and the staff of IIM Lucknow Library, who promptly
procured all the books required in this massive literature survey. Author also thanks library and
administration of IIM Lucknow and ESCP Europe, Paris campus for the rich collection of journals
and digital database subscriptions without which the project could not have been completed.

Author thanks numerous authors of books, articles, papers, blogs and other publications whose
references are cited in this project report.

The author acknowledges contribution of following individuals in making this project successful.

Aniket Mokashi, Sr. Software Engineer, Netflix, Inc.
Ashish Bhangale, Software Development Engineer in Test, Microsoft Corporation
Bhavik Vora, Sr. Software Engineer, Microsoft India R&D Pvt. Ltd.
G. Nagraj, Director, TeamDecode Software Pvt. Ltd.
Krunal Dedhia, Sr. Software Engineer, Accenture
Naveen Babu Monthri, Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft India R&D Pvt. Ltd.
Pranav Karkhanis, Software Development Lead, Microsoft India R&D Pvt. Ltd.
R. Venkata Konda Reddy, Staff R&D Engineer, IBM India
Rohit Ratnakar Mallya, Global System Engineering Lead, Microsoft Corporation
Sandhya Rithe, Program Office Manager, Barclays
Sanjay BK, PGDM Student, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow
Sudheesh S, Associate Consultant, MindTree Ltd.
Swati Patil, PGDM Student, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow
Vikas Gupta, General Manager and Global Practice Head (Cloud Computing), MindTree Ltd.
Vinayak Rakkasagi, PGDM Student, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow
Vivekananda Parepalli, PGDM Student, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research

Author also acknowledges the contribution of all survey participants including those who chose to
remain anonymous, while helping this project.

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Executive Summary

The objective of this study was to identify factors that affect adoption of agile methodologies in
software organizations. The study also aimed at establishing relative importance of these factors.

The executive summary provides brief introduction of structure of this report organized based on
chapters dedicated to each topic as below.

Chapter 1

This study included a detailed literature survey in which we have taken overview of evolution of
various software engineering methods. Later on we have discussed how the principles of agile
manifesto formed foundation to various agile methods like Scrum, Kanban and Extreme
Programming.

Chapter 2, 3 and 4

Then we have discussed in brief the three agile methods mentioned above with detailed explanation
of terminologies, meetings, tracking methods, delivery cycles and various tools that are used. We
have analyzed these methods from perspectives of customer and developers.

Chapter 5 - 9

In later section, literature survey was carried out to identify list of possible variables that impact
adoption of agile methods. Various case studies, published papers, interviews and websites of
consultants were reviewed. A list of 51 such variables was finalized organized in 5 sections which are
different organizational aspects of software development – Software Design, Business Process, HR
Practices, Delivery Model and IT Management.

Chapter 10

Primary survey was conducted to gather expert opinion on criticality of these factors. Statistical
Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to identify correlated factors together. A summarization
exercised reduced these 51 variables into 22 factors organized in 5 sections mentioned a bove. Also,
the variability explained by each factor was identified which indicates importance of factors in
adoption process.

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Contents

1. Chapter-1: Agile Evolution 6

2. Chapter-2: The Scrum 12

3. Chapter-3: eXtreme Programming 17

4. Chapter-4: Lead Agile 22

5. Chapter-5: Software Design 27

6. Chapter-6: Business Process 33

7. Chapter-7: HR Practices 39

8. Chapter-8: Delivery Model 45

9. Chapter-9: IT Management 52

10. Chapter-10: The Framework 57

Web Companion

For additional updates, references, SPSS outputs and appendices, refer to project homepage:

http://agile.vaibhavsathe.com

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Chapter 1: History of Agile Development

Chapter 1:
Agile Evolution

In this chapter…

 Waterfall model and its shortfalls
 Techniques from manufacturing
 Toyota Production Systems (TPS)
 Agile Manifesto, 2001

Waterfall software development model

Since pre-historic times, most projects were executed sequentially. For example, in that
era construction projects were most prominent. Hypotheses on construction of
Egyptian Pyramids suggest that the approach followed was – Specification of
requirements, designs and models, creation of building blocks, assembly, various
verifications and necessary modifications. The similar approach was followed in
manufacturing industry later on and then when software industry was born, naturally
this sequential approach was adopted as there were no new techniques available.

As explained by Maurer and
Melnik[1] in their white paper on
Agile Methods, Waterfall model
finds its roots in scientific
management principles of
Frederick Taylor. With objectives
of improving economic efficiency
and labor productivity, the theory
focused on devising analyzed and
synthesized workflows thereby
engineering processes,
encouraging standardization. It
mainly focusses on continuous
learning and improved efficiency
through repetitive work and
hence focusses also on labor work
division, where a particular worker
would work on same problem
Figure 1 Pressman (1994) Waterfall Software Model again and again, thereby gaining

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expertise and improving efficiency through learning. Maurer and Melnik also state that key reason
why such methods are inapplicable to software development is because fundamentally it is non-
repeatable process.

Steps in Waterfall Model

Pressman[2] defines waterfall model for software engineering as follows. It consists of steps like
Requirements gathering, Analysis of the problem statement and various approaches of solution,
preparation of high level and detailed level design, Coding or development, testing or verification of
actual against expected specifications and finally acceptance or actual deployment of system into the
business. Important thing to note here is most of these activities happen in a strict sequence with very
little or no scope for backtracking more than two steps without restarting the whole process.

Problems with waterfall

The biggest issue is that the waterfall expects requirements to be frozen in order to begin analysis
and design phases. Project managers working on waterfall models expect requirement signoffs in
order to begin their effort on estimates and functional specifications. And once they freeze their
specifications, downstream developers begin coding work. All hell breaks when certain requirement is
invalidated, added or even modified. Reality is that it is impossible for business to freeze requirements
several months in advance (before they get delivery of entire project through above steps). Alan
Shalloway[3], in his book “Design Patterns Explained: A New perspective on Object-oriented Design”
states changing requirements throughout project life cycle is natural and those cannot be frozen in
advance. Software design and processes therefore, should mature in order to handle changing
requirements.

Other problem includes that working version of the project is available only in the end. It creates two
problems, one in terms of justifying investments without seeing returns and other is risk of increasing
gap from stakeholders’ expectations.

The waterfall processes do not encourage larger stakeholder participation in multiple stages. It rather
focusses on each party playing its role in each stage and handing over control to next on completion.
This leads to poor coordination. Iterations in waterfall models create confusion, leads to poor quality
of output as processes, people and design is not ready to handle such deviations. Software
development fundamentally differs from manufacturing activities in terms of huge time take n for
development and availability of option of reversal. These two differences result in dynamic
requirements and hence the thought process began on adopting processes to this phenomenon.

Techniques from Manufacturing

Manufacturing firms realized that the key competitive advantage lies in their efficiency which will
enable them to retain profit margins while becoming cost competitive in the market. Various new
techniques evolved to increase efficiency, throughput, quality and productivity of manufacturing and
supply chains. Software industry borrowed many of the ideas, concepts or methods and developed
several new methods to address problems of similar nature. We will look into some key
methodologies.

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Six Sigma

Developed by Motorola in 1986, Six Sigma focusses on defect removal and variability reduction,
thereby creating quality based framework for people within organization. The key problems with Six
Sigma in Software are that since software development is non-repetitive, statistical methods are
ineffective and inability to link software metrics to direct economic or customer centric metrics for
most companies. As per Dr. Fehlmann[8], The software implementation of Six Sigma is based on three
principles. (1) Use customer centric metrics only. (2) Adjust to moving targets (3) Enforce
measurement.

The key similarity between Six Sigma and Agile Techniques is in its principle to recognize that change
is imminent and processes need to adapt. Also, both methods make project more transparent to the
management and the customer.

CMMI

Capability Maturity Model Integration in Software Engineering is process developed by Software
Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Melon University. It focusses on integrating separate
organizational functions, defines objectives for process improvements, defines organizational
priorities, provide guidance for quality processes and provide point of reference for improvements in
current processes. The CMMI defines various stages of maturity as Maturity Level 2-5 in Software
Development, Services and Acquisitions areas. This indicates systematic synergistic approach of
process evolution.

Broad opinion considers CMMI as complete opposite ideology of Agile methods. However, many
researchers differ. They find increasing commonalities and cross-influences of one another as both
processes have evolved. Some of notable work includes, presentation by Dr. Russwurm [7] from
Siemens AG. He states that estimation, lessons learned steps in Agile have commonalities with CMMI.
While CMMI focusses more on what and when to do leaving how portion to organizational processes,
Agile processes focus more on how those underlying processes are improved.

TSP/PSP

TSP stands for Team Software Process and PSP stands for Personal Software Process. Both were
developed by Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Melon University. These processes guide
engineering teams in developing software intensive products and claim to produce secure and
reliable software in less time and lower cost.

Personal Software Process
PSP focusses on individual learning in steps – (1) Process Discipline and Measurements (2) Estimation
and Planning and (3) Quality Management and Design. Again, PSP is considered Predictive while Agile
is considered in contrast, Adaptive methodology. But, PSP focusses on individual developers and
hence can be adapted to suit needs of Agile development. Commonalities include focus on realistic
schedules, estimations and continuous modifications in schedules.

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Team Software Process
The detailed information, cases and research papers on Team Software Process can be found
on TSP homepage on SEI site at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/tsp.

Consolidation of PSP process of entire team results in TSP. Key commonalities between scrum team
and the TSP team are that both believe in team members taking complete responsibility for their
work. They work on creating environment of trust and accountability and they work together on
realistic plans.

Toyota Production Systems

Toyota Motor Corporation consolidated its managerial philosophy in “The Toyota Way” [6] written by
Jeffrey Liker, which is based on two primary principles “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for
people”. Dr. Liker explains the system in following 14 principles.

Section I: Long-term philosophy

1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term
financial goals.

Section II: The right process will produce the right results

2. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
3. Use the "pull" system to avoid overproduction.
4. Level out the workload (heijunka).
5. Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right from the first.
6. Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
7. Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.

Section III: Add value to the organization by developing your people and partners

9. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
10. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy.
11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them
improve.

Section IV: Continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning

12. Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi Genbutsu)
13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options (Nemawashi); implement
decisions rapidly;
14. Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (Hansei) and continuous
improvement (Kaizen).

Software industry has always borrowed various techniques from operations. The most recent is
bringing Kanban or Lean techniques which are largely influenced by TPS. Key ideological
commonalities between TPS and Agile methods are building continuous process, focus on visual
representations, increased coordination between all stakeholders, higher visibility to management at

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all stages and decentralization of decision making. We will see Kanban implementation for software in
greater details in Chapter 4.

Agile Manifesto, 2001

The alternatives to waterfall model started surfacing in mid-1990s targeting different problems. This
includes Extreme Programming (1996), Scrum (1995), Feature Driven Development or Test Driven
Development. These methods were later rebranded under the agile umbrella after declaration of Agile
Manifesto in 2001.

In February 2001, 17 software developers met at Snowbird resort and published Manifesto for Agile
Software Development[4]. This was beginning of agile revolution in software world. These authors later
formed the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization for promotion of development based on
principles outlined in manifesto.

Exact wording of manifesto [4] is as follows:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through
this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

While the manifesto is largely self-explanatory, the most important point is its focus on encouraging
dynamic changes, hard plans, interaction among stakeholders and identification of real deliverables.

The twelve guiding principles behind the agile manifesto can be found on manifesto’s site at
address http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html.

10 years of Manifesto

In February 2011, on the day of 10 th anniversary of manifesto, many senior agile development
professionals met once again at same location and presented new questions for discussion. [5]

1. What problems in software have we solved and therefore we should not keep simply re -
solving?
2. What problems are fundamentally unsolvable so we should not keep solving them?
3. What problems we can sensibly address or mitigate with money, effort or innovation and
therefore focus our attention on?

During the discussion, the framework posted by Michael Hugos [5] from “Center for Systems
Innovation” is worth mentioning here. It mentions how the Agile IT practices are going to drive agility
in the business thereby creating larger value in the future.

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Agile IT would be employed to drive three
simultaneous feedback loops which would
make real time operations possible. First loop,
called Awareness, identifies threats and
opportunities in changing environment. The
second loop, called Balance, continuously
adjusts existing operations and processes to
fit changing circumstances. The third loop,
called Agility, enables companies to create
new products and processes in order to seize
new opportunities.

Based on WHAT from loop 1 and HOW from
loop 2 and 3, real-time organization in this
century can continuously navigate through its
environment and can adjust itself as its
situation changes. This framework is useful to
discuss how Agile can expand into wider business world with cloud, social media and consumer IT.

References

1. Maurer, Frank and Melnik, Grigori, (2006) Agile Methods: Moving towards the Mainstream of the
software industry downloaded from ACM Digital Library on Jan 2, 2012.
2. Pressman, Roger S. (2001), Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach, Fifth Edition, Mcgraw-
Hill.
3. Shalloway, Alan and Trott, James R. (2004), Design Patterns Explained: A New perspective on
Object Oriented Design, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley.
4. The Agile Manifesto, Actual wording and the principles, Official Website of the Agile Manifesto,
http://agilemanifesto.org, retrieved on Jan 2, 2012.
5. 10th anniversary of Agile Manifesto, weblog of discussion by eminent agile professionals, retrieved
from http://10yearsagile.org on Jan 2, 2012.
6. Liker, Jeffrey K. (2004), The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the world’s greatest
manufacturer, First Edition, Tata McGraw-Hill.
7. Russwurm, Winfried (2010), Hidden Treasure: The Implementation of CMMI practices by Agile
Methods, Siemens AG retrieved from http://www.sei.cmu.edu on Jan 2, 2012.
8. Fehlmann, Thomas M., Six Sigma For Software. Euro Project Office AG, Switzerland.

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Chapter 2: The Scrum

Chapter 2:
The Scrum

In this chapter…

 Scrum framework
 Scrum Team
 Scrum Process
 Scrum tools and documentation

Introduction

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management classified under
the Agile techniques umbrella. Scrum principles are based on Agile Manifesto.
Although scrum was defined originally from product development point of view, its
most common usage is for managing software development and/or maintenance
projects. The scrum process was developed by Jeff Sutherland in 1993. The method
evolved over a decade by work of many and was formalized through release of
Schwaber’s book named Agile Software Development with Scrum in 2001.

As per scrum alliance website [1], the scrum can be extended even to any non-software
development but complex and innovative project. In this chapter, the technicalities of
methodology are explained in brief.

Figure 2 ScrumAlliance® The Scrum Framework [1]

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Product Backlog Product Owner creates prioritized outstanding list of work items or features.

Sprint Backlog From top of the wish list, the team picks up small chunk of the work items
based on its bandwidth and prepares plan to implement them.

Sprint Sprint is the unit block of work. One sprint runs usually for 2-4 weeks. It is
duration in which selected features are targeted completion for delivery.

Daily Standup Meet During the sprint, daily reviews are conducted called as daily standup
meetings.

Shippable Product At end of sprint, work should be potentially shippable, ready in hand to
Increment customer, put on store or show to stakeholder. Sprint ends with review and
retrospective.

The Scrum Team

Roles in scrum are defined as Pigs and Chickens. Pigs are working or core members. Chickens are
ancillary or non-working members. Scrum requires regular coordination among these members.

Pigs

ScrumMaster: The team’s process leader is called as Scrum Master, usually ScrumAlliance® Certified
ScrumMaster. He ensures that scrum process is followed as intended. He may also be member of
working team. Schwaber says that the authority of ScrumMaster is indirect and comes from his
knowledge of the process. He increases success probability by helping Product Owner select most
valuable backlog and helping team to turn that into functionality. [2]

Product Owner: Representative of customer is called product owner. He/she provides and prioritizes
requirements and has authority to alter/control changes. Generally, product owners are not team
members and may belong to client organization.

Team: All other members of scrum team carry out various tasks like documentation, communication,
coding, testing, deployment, review etc.

Chickens

Managers: Managers are people or project managers who control the work environment and
possibly budget for the teams. They are also responsible for performance reviews of the team
members.

Stakeholders: Stakeholders include customers and vendors other than Product Owner who is active
member of scrum team. These are potential suppliers or benefactors of the project work and are
generally involved only during sprint reviews.

The Scrum Process

The scrum process includes following key activities. [6]

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Plan the Project

Planning process sets expectations of stakeholders, who are beneficiaries, sponsors or someone who
is affected by delivery or non-delivery of the project. Amount of budget, time duration, expected
deliverables and identified risks are included in the plan. The minimum plan consists of a vision and a
product backlog. Vision is the motive, desired end state and impact of project on various
stakeholders.

User Stories
User stories highlight scrum’s customer centric focus. It is functionality explained from point of view
of user or purchaser of software under development. Product Backlog includes user stories. Example:

Technical requirement: Ability of system to retain login and activity history for registered users.

User Story: As a returning customer, I want to find a meal that I have ordered before.

Scrum team estimates size of each user story point by point or step by step. It helps in achieving
higher accuracy in estimations and work division.

Team Velocity
Team velocity is number of story point it can complete it given duration of sprint. This is obtained
based on historical data or rough estimations in absence of history. This is more generalized estimate
which helps in planning how many stories to include in given sprint or decide team size. Accurate
estimations of tasks are only considered in individual sprint planning.

Release Plan
Iterative release plan is made based on which user stories are dependent on each other, and how
much value they add to end user. Also, for each sprint, new stories can be added or removed. Groups
of user stories are made, which represent releasable feature, something that can provide s ufficient
business value to customer.

Sprint

Team starts work in sprints of fixed duration.

Sprint Planning Meeting
During Sprint Planning meeting which runs for a day, team breaks down stories to identify exact tasks
and develops estimates. Commonly used estimation methodology is Planning Poker which is based
on consensus between team members on sizes of each work item. Team then commits to this agreed
upon user stories for delivery during that sprint. This is similar to baseline stage in waterfall.

To know more about Planning Poker, you can check this Wikipedia article at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker

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Daily Stand-up meetings
Team members meet daily for short time (hence stand up) and share their accomplishments of last
day, plan for today, and any possible issues they foresee.

Finishing the Sprint

Sprint Review Meeting
In the end, Sprint Review is conducted where team presents deliverables. Customers accept the
stories if expectations are met. Incomplete and new stories are added back to product backlog.

Retrospective
In alignment to Agile principle of self-organization, team tries to identify success factors and failures.
Based on feedback from all members, it tries to readapt processes for next sprints. It gauges general
effectiveness, productivity and quality of the teamwork. Solutions identified are incorporated in
planning meeting of next sprint. They are also recorded in organizational KM systems for feedback to
other teams.

Scrum tools and documentation

Scrum does not focus on creation of excessive documentation. There are various tools available for
tracking scrum projects like Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visual Studio, IBM rational have add -ins. Let’s
review one of the simplest among them, an Excel based worksheet which is part of Mi crosoft Scrum
Kit.

Microsoft Scrum Kit

Microsoft Scrum Kit[5] includes Excel templates for product backlog, sprint backlog, burndown
tracking and various charts, which give visual representation of project status for consumption of
management. One excel document per sprint is prepared. It has following parts:

You can download the Microsoft Scrum Kit Excel template for strictly academic purpose from
http://www.vaibhavsathe.com/blog/?page_id=246 (Redistribution Forbidden)

Planning: Planning tab records team configuration, and availability for given scrum.

Sprint: Sprint tab tracks all work items which are part of backlog for current sprint. It has columns
corresponding to each day in sprint. Team member has to record time spent and time left on each
work item every day. This data is used to compute all required graphs and charts to report project
status.

Analysis: Analysis tab provides view what is to be discussed in Daily Stand up meetings. It gives view
of Not Started, In Progress and Completed work items. It gives idea to team if they are lagging
behind. It also shows burn down chart.

Burn down Chart[4]

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A burn down chart gives view of work remaining (Y axis) against time (X axis).
Generally Actual burn down plot is compared against Planned burn down chart. It
gives idea to reviewers if project work is lagging behind or ahead of schedule. It is
valuable tool in deciding continuous work adjustments during Sprint or project
development cycle.

Retrospective: On this tab, cumulative sprint report is generated which shows, Planned vs. Actual,
Work hours and Load factor. It gives idea to team about variability in their earlier estimations and
help plan better to achieve higher predictability in future. It also records member comments on What
Went Well and Areas of Improvement.

References

1. Scrum Basics, ScrumAlliance® website retrieved from http://scrumalliance.org on Jan 3, 2012.
2. Schwaber Ken, Agile Project Management with Scrum, First Edition 2004, Microsoft Press.
3. Schwaber Ken, The Enterprise and Scrum, First Edition 2007, Microsoft Press.
4. Joel Wenzel’s blog on In Point Form, Burn Down Chart Tutorial, retrieved from
http://joel.inpointform.net on Jan 6, 2012.
5. Microsoft Scrum Kit Excel Template for strictly academic use from http://vaibhavsathe.com
6. Sutherland Jeff, Schwaber Ken et al, Microsoft Corp., MSF For Agile Software Development v5.0,
MSDN Library, Visual Studio 2010, online publication, retrieved from http://msdn.com on Jan 6,
2012.

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Chapter 3: eXtreme Programming

Chapter 3:
eXtreme Programming

In this chapter…

 XP framework
 XP practices
 XP team
 XP artifacts

Introduction

Extreme Programming (hereafter referred as XP) is a type of agile software
development technique focused on improving software quality while increasing
responsiveness to changing customer requirements. Contrary to popular claim in
software industry, XP claims “It’s possible to keep the cost of changing software from
rising dramatically with time.” [1] It is one of the methods that focus on customer
delivering what and when customer wants.

The methodology takes agile programming one step nearer to lean techniques by
emphasizing on Just In Time (JIT), i.e. build software features only when they are
required and not in advance, to reduce uncertainty of changing requirements. This of
course, require unprecedented amount of courage and coordination on team’s part.

Like all agile methods, XP has feature backlogs.
Based on budget & time, most important ones are
prioritized. This planning process then continues with
identifying honest estimates about selected stories.
As team works on those deliverables, a daily
communication is made to required stakeholders.
Organization ensures team is empowered with
required skills and resources in order to deliver on
commitment. Team develops in such a way that they
have the final software in deliverable state all time.
Whenever they finish with one cycle, the planning
starts for next.
Figure 3 XP WorkFlow [2]

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Basic Variables

XP identifies that software projects can be managed with four variables [1]: time, scope, resource,
quality. Change in any of them naturally affects others. To maintain one variable constant despite
change in other, remaining two variables will need to make sacrifice. E.g. If scope increases and
delivery date i.e. time needs to be kept constant, then naturally either resources or quality or both
need to take the heat.

XP suggests that agree on acceptable level of quality with customer and management. During the
duration keep time unit and resources fixed. Hence, only variable tha t remains is the scope. What and
when will be decided by customer. Team will deliver on that.

Extreme Programming Values

The four basic values of XP are [1]:

 Communication barriers are removed between developer and customer.
 Feedback from customer during testing, allowing immediate changes in the design if any.
 Simplicity means building only what is needed. Solve today’s problems today.
 Courage to take hard decisions. Deliver bad news before it is late. Meet challenge as one team.

The XP Team

Following are core and supplementary roles in Extreme Programming methodology. [1]

Core Roles

The Customer
The XP recognizes rights of customer to (1) Ensure ROI maximization (2) Change the project scope to
deal with schedule change (3) To determine and alter feature prioritization (4) Measure progress of
project any time and (5) Stop the project without losing his investment.

The XP also identifies customer’s responsibilities as (1) Trust developers’ technical decisions (2)
Analyze risks correctly (3) Choose stories that maximize business value (4) Provide precise and clear
stories and (5) Work in team providing guidelines and receive feedback.

The Developer
The XP recognizes rights of developers as (1) Estimate own work (2) Work on sensible schedule (3)
Produce code that meets customer needs and (4) Avoid need to make business decisions.

The XP identifies responsibilities of developers as (1) Follow team guidelines (2) Implement what is
necessary and (3) Communicate constantly with customer.

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Supplementary Roles

The Coach
The coach is an expert from whose example team learns. By virtue of experience, he provides his
wisdom to guide team through occasional obstacles and subtleties.

The Tracker
The tracker tracks the progress of the team and other numerical measures like % of test cases passed,
team velocity. He reports this information to the team and management as required.

The XP Process

Rules of Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming methodology defines basic rules for 5 stages of development. They are as
follows:

7. Planning: Create iteration cycles and decide user stories to be implemented.
8. Managing: Run the process on sustainable basis. Create required work environment.
9. Designing: Bring simplicity and design features only when they are needed.
10. Coding: Stress on customer communication, pair programming and unit testing.
11. Testing: Acceptance tests are run on regular basis and all code to pass unit testing.

You can find complete list of the Rules of Extreme Programming (Released in 1999 by Don
Wells) at: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

Project Life Cycle

Below self-explanatory diagram shows end-to-end release cycle of an XP project.

[2]
Figure 4 Extreme Programming Project; Source: extremeprogramming.org

Spike solution is implemented when a tough technical problem is encountered and solved by putting
pair of developers who are dedicated to solve that problem ignoring all other concerns.

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Iterative Development
Following diagram depicts single iteration of development in an extreme programming cycle.
Important point to be noted is it is against rules to look ahead and do something not scheduled in
this iteration.

[2]
Figure 5 An Iteration; Source: extremeprogramming.org

Pair Programming

In Pair programming technique, two programmers work together on single piece of code or module
on one workstation. While one types other does review. They switch roles frequently.

To know more about Pair Programming practice of Extreme Programming refer to wikipedia
article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming

Logically, this method doubles the cost of development and various experiments have yielded
contradictory results. However, Microsoft Research’s Andrew Begel and Nachiappan Nagappan [4]
conclude based on survey conducted among Microsoft developers that benefits of pair programming
outweigh the cost and other disadvantages. Key benefits are listed as bug reduction, shorter quality
code which is more maintainable.

Test Driven Development

XP projects follow TDD or Test Driven Development. Unit tests are written before code is written.
Code is set to complete when programmer cannot come up with further conditions which will bre ak
the code.

To know more about Test Driven Development practice of Agile Development refer to
wikipedia article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development

Page 20

XP artifacts

Core XP does not prescribe any documentation but the code itself. It asks code to be self-explanatory
and up-to-date.[3] This includes adhering to simple rules of OO programming like naming classes,
creating routines and functions and remove commented code, use of source control software.

However, variants of XP prescribe distinct artifacts to aid team in the process. Let’s review some of
them.

User Story Cards

These are tools of customer to specify what, how and when he wants the deliverable. Advantage of
cards is that they help developers visualize and organize each story easily. They can be put up on wall.

Task Board

During planning of iteration, user stories are translated to task cards, which are given to programmer
to whom the task is assigned. These task cards are put up on task board in different phases. Anyone
looking at board gets clear idea of progress made by team.

[6]
Figure 6 User Story Card; Source: Leigh Stringer
[5]
Figure 7 Task Board; Source: Mountain Goat Software

References

1. Extreme Programming Pocket Guide – Team Based Software Development, O’reilly Canada 2003.
2. Agile Process – Extreme Programming website, http://www.extremeprogramming.org/, retrieved
on Jan 10, 2012.
3. Hedin Gorel, Bendix Lars, Magnusson Boris, Lund University, Sweden, Introducing Software
Engineering by means of Extreme Engineering, published by IEEE, 2003.
4. Begel Anfrew and Nagappan Nachiappan, Microsoft Research, Pair Programming: What’s in it for
Me?, published by ACM as proceedings of second ACM-IEEE symposium ESEM’08.
5. Stringer Leigh, Blog on Agile Software Development, retrieved from http://www.leighstringer.com/
on Jan 11, 2012.
6. Cohn Mike, Consultant and Agile Coach, Mountain Goat Software website, retrieved from
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com on Jan 11, 2012.

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Chapter 4: Lean Agile

Chapter 4:
Lean Agile

In this chapter…

 Lean Principles
 Kanban in Software
 Kanban Practices
 Milestones and Meetings

Introduction

Adapted from Toyota Production Systems, Lean Agile is the translation of Lean
manufacturing principles into field of software development. The term originated in
book Lean Software development written by Poppendieck Mary & Tom.

Enterprise Agility

Agile process applied in Scrum or XP focusses largely on software development
project. But latest trend in agility is to look at entire value stream, stream of delivered
software flowing from delivering organization to customer or consumers of solutions,
driven by business need.[1] Enterprise Agility focusses on applying lean principles of
minimizing cycle time, eliminating waste in this end-to-end delivery flow.

Below diagram depicts scope of Scrum/Agile vs. Lean/Agile on organization’s value
chain.

[1]
Figure 8 Application of Agile methods on value chain, Source: Alan Shalloway - Lean/Agile

Page 22

Necessity of adopting Lean principles

Various implementations of Scrum and/or XP across organizations resulted in some common
problems over period of time. As Frank Vega [3] shares his experience, these are – (1) Business need to
integrate and collaborate in various applications, however various team operate in silos, (2) Over
period of time long backlog gets generated due to starvation of secondary items and (3) Velocity of
team fluctuates based on technical complexity, hence predictability becomes an issue.

Principles of Lean Development

The borrowing of Lean principles from TPS tries to address these problems. As described by
Poppendiecks, these principles are as follows [4].

1. Eliminate Waste: Extra features, requirement churn. Identify and eliminate them.
2. Build Quality In: Build quality from start. Defect avoidance than fixing later disturbs less code.
3. Create Knowledge: Predictions don’t make it predictable. No designs in advance. Decisions on
facts.
4. Defer Commitment: No hard commitments much in advance. Flexibility in process required.
5. Deliver Fast: Deliver software so fast that customers don’t have time to change their minds.
6. Respect People: No interference. From point of view of your work, complete ownership and trust.
7. Optimize the Whole: Minimize measurements to critical ones. Optimize whole value chain.

Lean Kanban

What is Kanban?

TPS [5] defines Kanban as signal of some kind e.g. sign, card, billboard, poster etc. Toyota’s Kanban
system means managing and ensuring flow and production of materials in just-in-time production
system. What this means is process flows are controlled through completion signal by preceding and
successive stages based on their availabilities statuses. This means overheads like complex
computerized schedules and processes to track inventory/progress are no more needed.

To know more on what Kanban is and how is it implemented by Toyota Production Systems,
refer to wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

Pull Replenishment System
Do you fill gas in your car prescribing to some schedule decided in advance? No. You f ill it once the
indicator on your car’s dashboard approaches empty. In simple words, this is Kanban or simple pull
replenishment system.

In Toyota plant, which manufactures automobiles, which is essentially a very large scale assembly
project of thousands of part. Typical stakeholders include suppliers, workers and dealers. Dealers
based on demand in market place orders to plant by placing kanban order cards. While such cards
exist in order boards, Toyota workers continue to build cars of those types. For particular car, they
start using spare parts to be assembled from stores. As they use parts, they place kanban order
supplies card in mailbox to supplier. As supplier receives such kanban card, he refills those stores with

Page 23

spare parts. As explained, whole system works end-to-end on trigger points and not on pre-decided
schedule.

Kanban in Software

David Anderson [2] defines Kanban in software as “virtual” system. The signal cards are replaced by
work items. There are no physical signal cards to function as signal to pull more work. Signal to pull
more work is inferred from visual quantity of work-in-progress subtracted from capacity (limit) at each
stage in development.

Kanban Process

There are many flavors of kanban process. But following objectives exist a t core.

Visualize the workflow

The card wall is the most popular form of coordination. Each stage is marked as column with limit
written on top. Work items are marked as “Ongoing” or “Done” in that particular stage. If there is any
capacity available (capacity – Ongoing is positive), card (work item) from previous stage’s “Done” will
move into next stage. There are no other long queues waiting due to starvation. Priority will be
applied while moving card to next level.

[6]
Figure 9 Kanban card wall. Source: crisp.

Limit Work In Progress

Working simultaneously on multiple work items especially in software development, reduces
efficiency and is error prone, due to context switches. Kanban believes in reducing this by putting
strict limits as indicated in above figure. Anderson [2] insists on limiting one request per developer at
any given time as a policy. Kanban, however, allows flexibility to alter this if team agrees.

Cycle Time measurement

Cycle time or lead time measures how quickly item moved from order to production. This is critical
metric from predictability point of view. Graphs are plotted for lead time against Service Level
Agreements (SLA). Average Lead time is not very useful as it neither indicates predictability nor
improvement opportunity. Spectral analysis is done to identify outliers and items that just failed to

Page 24

meet the target. Root cause analysis of cluster of such “just failed” category provides improvement
opportunity.

Kaizen – Continuous Improvement

Kaizen demands workforce to be empowered and motivated to dig deep into problems, discuss
options and free to do the right thing. It is important that organization has very less inertia.
Management must be tolerant of experimental failures. Matured change management capabilities are
required. Logically, only large scale organizations are capable of conducting such experiments. But,
such organizations have greater inertia or resistance to change. It needs executive commitment to
foster culture of ownership.

Key Milestones and Meetings

Replenishment During this meeting, kanban system’s empty queues are replenished at
Meeting different stages through prioritization of completed items in previous stage.

Backlog Triage To address problem of growing backlogs in scrum, Anderson recommends
backlog triage in Kanban. Purpose of such meeting is to go through each
item on backlog and decide on whether to keep it or remove it. Items which
are starved for long due to prioritization are given special attention. Smaller
backlog increases efficiency of prioritization at later stages in kanban
implementations.

Daily Standup Contrary to scrum, there is no need to check on three questions as looking at
Meetings visual card wall addresses them. During standup meeting of kanban focusses
on flow of work. Facilitator, typically project manager, walks the board
backwards i.e. from right to left through tickets on board. Emphasis is put on
items which are blocked.

After Meetings “After meeting” is spontaneous meeting of people after daily standup to
discuss on quality improvement or technical hurdle. These are process
equivalents of “Quality Circles” in lean manufacturing.

Sticky Buddies Corbis introduced the concept of sticky buddies, a system to
telecommunicate at least a week. If a person is absent for particular meeting
then he syncs his status with his sticky buddy, who in turn represents him in
the actual meeting.
[2]
Figure 10 Source: David Anderson - Kanban

References

1. Shalloway Alan, Beaver Guy, Trott James, Lean-Agile Software Development – Achieving Enterprise
Agility, Net Objectives Lean Agile Series, published by Addison-Wesley, USA, 2010.
2. Anderson David J, Kanban – Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business,
published by Blue Hole Press, USA, 2010.

Page 25

3. Vega Frank, Scrum, XP and Beyond – One Development Team’s Experience adding Kanban to the
Mix, published in Proceedings of Lean Software and Systems Conference, Atlanta USA 2010
retrieved from http://atlanta2010.leanssc.org/proceedings/ on Jan 11, 2012.
4. Poppendieck Mary & Tom, Implementing Lean Software Development – From Concept to Cash,
Addison-Wesley Professional, USA, 2006.
5. Liker Jeffrey K., The Toyota Way, Tata McGraw-Hill Edition, New Delhi, India, 2004.
6. Kanban for Software, crisp, retrieved from http://www.crisp.se/kanban on Jan 12, 2012.

Page 26

Chapter 5: Software Design

Chapter 5:
Software Design

In this chapter…

 OO Design and Design Patterns
 Unit testing
 Refactoring Old Code
 Architectural Strategy

Introduction

In this chapter, we will focus on technicalities of software designs (not documentations)
and impact of them on various agile techniques. This will help us decide on the role of
priorities of developers, technical soundness and organizational trainings on software
design process. We will look at how the Object Orientated Languages proved to be
boon for agile development and how design patterns helped achieve objectives of
managing change. We will also look at how code should be maintained through
refactoring in order to be more agile.

Priorities while Coding

What is important? Is it the number of lines of code or is it the performance or the
cosmetics like comments and naming conventions? The organizations all over the
world have different priorities set for their developers when it comes to writing code.
And most important is what matters when you need to develop fast and accept
change.

Maintainability vs. Performance

It is widely considered that a design is a tradeoff of Performance vs. Maintainability. A
high performing code is perceived to be difficult to understand, hence hard to
maintain. This is true to certain extent. With advent of high computing and memory
hardware, in typical IT setup, the performance need not be achieved at cost of
maintainability. A well written, self-explanatory and modular code is basic necessity for
agile adoption. Maintainable code is the one which is easy to understand, analyze and
modify by person other than author.

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New Lines of Code vs. Reusability

Methodologies like TSP rely on LOC or Lines of Code for quantitative measurement of productivity.
The defects per LOC, LOC per man hours etc. are computed. However, it is very easy to manipulate. As
developers try to maximize lines of code in order to inflate their estimates, they also get license for
more defects. These both are in contrast with the Agile principles. Organizations should not mandate
their LOC based measures for agile teams.

Reusability is likelihood that already written, time-tested piece of code can be reused in the new
software. This requires code organization in modules or classes. These are unit tested and preserved
in repository. Developers requiring similar functionality can reuse or extend these. This saves time and
improves maintainability and quality of code.

Object Oriented Design

Object Oriented Design

Object oriented programming is a programming paradigm using objects which are data structures
consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions.

For OO design tutorials, refer to 3 video lectures by Prof. B. Harvey, University of California at
Berkley at: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=CS+61A+Object+Oriented

Let’s look at four major principles of Object Oriented Design and how they ease Agile adoption
process.

Principle Description

Encapsulation Bundle data with methods. Bring related code together. It helps in improving
maintainability and modularity of the code.

Abstraction Real time representation of objects. Data patterns dissociated from actual storage. It
helps relating code segments more closely to real scenarios in terms of behaviors.

Inheritance Inheritance allows reuse and extension of existing code. Interface is modern form of
inheritance which protects calling object from changes in called module
code/version.

Polymorphism Overriding and overloading. It helps improve code readability by extending function
signatures with same names. E.g. Use of + operator to add two strings.

Doing it right
Simply having knowledge of Object Oriented Programming is not sufficient. The design process
should reflect the object oriented thought process. If designs prepared fail to address changes in
future, developers have tendency to patch the design as workaround. The system with such
patchworks, very common in IT systems today defeats the Object orientation purpose and becomes

Page 28

[8]
critical issue in agile adoptions. Stoecklin et al defines strict criteria for writing well formed OO
method as:

 High Cohesive: Similar functionality must be clubbed together. Avoid redundancy.
 Low Coupling: Least dependencies for execution on other objects. Independently testable.
 Low Complexity: Less than 10 paths in given method. This reduces risks of missing scenarios.
 Appropriately Sized: Improve readability through declarations, sections and blank lines.
 Well Documented: Self-explanatory code. Use of XML comments for auto-generating
documents.

Design Patterns

Design patterns are reusable designs based mainly on Object Oriented concepts which are generic
solutions to many common problems. Modern patterns were introduced by “Gang of Four” through
their legendary book [2], which is authority on this topic today. Some of popular patterns include
singleton, factory, bridge, memento and builder.

You can obtain brief information on design patterns with examples from Go4Experts
technical forum at http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5127

Alan Shalloway [3] strongly argues that Design Patterns form foundation for Agile Development if used
properly. As Mikio Aoyama [4] also agrees, we can identify key benefits of Design patterns as – (1) It
makes software design “Change Resistant”. What it means is that as requirements change, the design
is impacted minimally as there are no ripple effects of change in design through strict adherence to
Object oriented features described in above section. (2) Designs are developed faster. Several design
patterns are generic solutions to common problems. These are time tested. Use of patterns save time
to find logical solutions and improve quality. (3) It also increases maintainability of the program as
patterns are standard. (4) Learning design patterns help shape developers design skills and thinking
positively for agile adoption. They do not hate changes as most can be accommodated with minimal
design impact.

Unified Modeling Language

Unified Modeling Language, popularly called UML, is standardized general purpose language whic h
represents object oriented designs. There are 14 standard diagrams in UML representing structural
(static) and behavioral (dynamic) aspects.

Effective minimal documentation is necessity in agile adoption. The most effective way of maintaining
up-to-date knowledge base of designs is UML diagrams. Some key advantages are: (1) Developers are
trained to read these standard diagrams. So, no additional explanations are needed. (2) They are most
concise way of representing almost all issues regarding design. (3) Most of these diagrams can be
auto-generated from code. Hence, developers need not actually create them. That also ensures
diagrams are always up-to-date. (4) Sometimes code also can be generated directly from these
diagrams. E.g. Class definitions and function signatures are directly generated by most IDEs from UML
class diagram.

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Unit Testing

IEEE [6] defines Unit Testing as testing of individual hardware or software units or groups of related
units. This is a type of White Box testing, i.e. the tester is aware of intricacies of the unit and is testing
using interfaces to validate them.

Test Driven Development

The Extreme Programming requires developers to write their automated unit tests first and then write
code modules that satisfy those cases. Developers refactor the code later to prescribed standards
while ensuring that unit tests continue to pass. Since, this requires repeated running of same unit
tests, the automation is recommended.

Technical Specifications

Although not widely accepted, Agile methodology can consider well developed unit test suite as
alternative to technical documentation. This requires structuring of unit tests based on broken down
events from user stories. And then unit test suite in combination with UML diagrams can substitute
tedious task of developing technical documentation sand maintaining these current during iterative
development cycle. Extreme Programming with Test Driven Development approach favors this.

Refactoring Old Code

The developers don’t always work on new code. A major part of their work is modification or
extension. The structure of old code has large impact on the performance of agile teams. Across
organizations, it is the problem that most of the old code is procedural and written without unit tests.
It is also not aligned with enterprise architectural guidelines. Such code is primary sources of defects
and delays.

Refactoring is the activity of restructuring old code to follow Object oriented or design pattern
guidelines, without altering its external functionality. Modular structures and automated unit tests are
developed. As refactoring course tutor, Yoder [7] says, refactoring is the disciplined approach and adds
importance of regression testing. Refactoring can be considered as software equivalent of lean
principle “kaizen”.

Resistance from Business

Business owners and sponsors often see code refactoring initiatives as waste of resources. Refactoring
does not alter any business functionality. Hence, it does not yield any tangible benefit for them. Many
even see this activity as developer’s obsession for cleaner code [9]. This is where the role of product
owners who represent business sponsors of project is important. Being part of team they have higher
visibility into success factors of agile processes. And from sustainability point of view, the refactoring
activities must be viewed as investments rather than expenses. Also, business may fear that new
defects may be introduced as a result of refactoring activity. Hence, a comprehensive regression and
unit testing suite must be ready before venturing into refactoring space.

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Refactoring Types

Classic Fowlerian Approach
As described by Stoecklin [8], in this approach a working code is improved for clarity and design
quality.

Open Close Principle
Meyer [11] defines Open Close Principle as “software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should
be open for extension, but closed for modification”. Bain [9] applies it to code as the code which is
more Cohesive, less Coupled and the one that does not have redundant segments.

Refactoring for Open Close means, code is fine but not open-close for adding new requirement.
Making it open-close as descried above makes it less risky and generates less waste while it
undergoes imminent change. In this way, business value can be derived from the refactoring.

Emergent Design

Emergent or continuous or evolutionary design is a process of continuous refactoring resulting in
improvement of program’s overall design. Jim Shore [13], a XP consultant, recommends with (1)
Automated Unit Test (2) Team based approach of collective code ownership and (3) Continuous
Improvement commitment in face of schedule pressure. He cautions however not to mix it with
design extension goals and defeat each other’s objectives by creating delays and adding defects.

As authors Alan Harriman [11] et al narrate their experience with database development with XP, they
scrapped pre-designed database and instead worked on incremental design. This allowed them to
use their evolving domain skills to come up with more efficient design than they would have at
beginning with limited skills and domain knowledge.

Architectural Strategy

There is ongoing debate on role of architects in agile development setting. This is due to highly
requirement oriented nature of agile processes. XP and Kanban methods even perform the change
only when it is necessary. On other hand, enterprise architecture focusses on large picture and takes
long term view through roadmaps. While it is perceived that Agile methods take more short term
view to avoid impact of changes.

Cisco’s Steve Fraser [10] says in order to capture benefits of economics of scale and scope, architecture
is necessary. The feedback loop of Agile development can be integrated with Architectural learning
and both processes can work hand-in-hand. Microsoft’s Randy Miller [10] argues that Architecture is
not “Big Design Up Front” as many developers confuse the two. Hence, it is not necessary for
architecture to complete before development starts. Architecture is slow evolving process like agile
development is. However, it takes view of larger picture and is beneficial to both small as well as large
scale projects.

From organization setting, Agile demands Architecture to work closely with Agile teams and ensure
teams are developing aligned to enterprise architecture roadmap. But such architecture must not be
at micro-level. Clear demarcation between architecture and design needs to be highlighted.

Page 31

References

1. Ramsin Raman and Paige Richard F., Process-Centered Review of Object Oriented Software
Development Methodologies, published by ACM Computing Surveys Vol. 40, No. 1, Article 3 on
February 2008.
2. Gamma et al. “Gang of Four”, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software,
published by Addison-Wesley Professional, 1994, USA.
3. Alan Shalloway, Design Patterns Explained: A New perspective on Object Oriented Design 2 nd
Edition, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, “Net Objectives Series”, 2004, USA.
4. Mikio Aoyama, Evolutionary Patterns of Design and Design Patterns, published in proceedings of
International Symposium on Principles of Software Evolution, 2000. Available on IEEE Explore.
5. Runeson, P., A survey of unit testing practices, Software, IEEE , vol.23, no.4, pp.22-29, July-Aug.
2006.
6. IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, IEEE Std 610.12-1990, 1990. Current
Version 2002.
7. Yoder Joseph, Refactoring at the core of agile software development, published in proceedings of
AOSD’11. Retrieved from ACM digital library.
8. Sara Stoecklin et al, Teaching Students to Build Well Formed Object-oriented Methods through
Refactoring, proceedings of SIGCSE’07, USA. Retrieved from ACM digital library.
9. Bain, Scott L., Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development,
Pearson, 2008, USA.
10. Fraser Haden et al, Panel Discussion, Architecture in Agile World, proceedings of OOPSLA’09 –
ACM SIGPLAN conference. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
11. Meyer, Bertrand, Object-Oriented Software Construction, 1988, Prentice Hall, USA.
12. Harriman Alan, Hodgetts Paul, Leo Mike, Emergent Database Design: Liberating Database
Development with Agile Practices, proceedings of Agile Development Conference 2004, retrieved
from IEEE Computer Society.
13. Jim Shore, Continuous Design, published in IEEE Software, Vol. 21, Issue 1, Jan-Feb 2004 by IEEE
Computer Society.

Page 32

Chapter 6: Business Processes

Chapter 6:
Business Processes

In this chapter…

 Customer
 Function vs. Process orientation
 Business IT alignment
 Service Oriented Architecture

Introduction

Agile process adoption requires a mindset than just skills. In business context, agility
means capability of organization to readily adapt to changes in market and
environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways. But in practical there are
very few examples of truly agile organizations. Most organizations, in which agile
development projects will be undertaken, are themselves highly bureaucratic and
hierarchical. They will be resistant to change. This situation actually becomes hindering
factor for truly agile process on IT side as agile processes demand IT to have close
interaction with business throughout lifecycle of project.

Today, a lot of businesses worldwide are undergoing transformations. This is due to
larger adoption of IT, Management Information Systems, Analytics, Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) like initiatives, which
give them competitive advantage over their rivals. Businesses have also realized that
unless they are dynamic, they will perish. However, they are at different stages of
transformation. It also should be noted that IT teams (organization of CIO) have limited
control on modifications in business processes to make them suitable for IT adoption.
It is therefore imperative for IT managers to take pragmatic approach when situation
results in business processes limiting agile adoption.

In this chapter, we will look at various drivers of agility in business environment and
how they impact IT’s agile adoption initiatives. We will look at how business teams
(clients) manage change and prioritize their work.

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Customer

Let’s first define who is customer for IT. ITIL [3] defines customer as someone who buys goods or
Services. The Customer of an IT Service Provider is the person or group who defines and agrees to the
Service Level Targets. The term Customers is also sometimes informally used to mean Users.

Customer Involvement

Agile processes demand regular involvement of customers in the development phase of the project.
Xiaohua Wang et al [1] argue “On-site customer” is needed to facilitate zero-distant, face to face
communication with developers. In XP, customer activities include (1) Creating customer team to
represent requirements (2) Provide development environment (3) Review project plan (4) Feedback (5)
Requirement management (6) Consult throughout (7) Testing and demonstrations (8) Accepting
working software (signoff) (9) Trace and measure the developer’s process for ROI.

It is said, “Great Scrum needs great product owners” [6]. Judy highlights in his paper that close
collaboration beyond standard definition of roles of customers and developers is needed in order to
promote organizational efficiency and innovation that is expected out of scrum.

Common Issues
[1]
Various issues that impact agile process during interaction with customer are :

Participation: Low level of customer participation as they think it’s a waste of time and unproductive
activity. This comes due to traditional mindset on IT (waterfall model). Though IT teams are going
agile, most business processes still follow sequential waterfall model. Participation in agile processes
is additional burden for customers. Especially during peak business cycles like quarter close, they will
not prioritize time for developers. This impacts agile process.

Requirements Gaps: It’s difficult for customers to think of all scenarios in requirement phase. They
can’t visualize IT outputs. Only during testing or demonstrations, they realize certain pitfalls and want
to amend their user stories. This requires recoding those modules ultimately impacting Developer
teams.

Training: Sometimes customers are enthusiastic about interacting with developers but then they
should be provided with enough training so they understand the process better.

Data issues: Customers may not be able to test all scenarios due to certain deficiencies in test data
and data flows. In test environment, end-to-end data generation is not mostly possible. Also, for agile
iterative releases, the focus is more on testing individual modules. Since, business customers are not
acquainted to such unit testing; they can’t perform exhaustive scenarios during test phase. All such
issues get leaked to the production.

Communication: Customers and development teams sometimes do not communicate each other
transparently or on time. This is especially true for bad news or delays.

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Function vs. Process Orientation

As Majchrzak defines [4], functional units are those which have limited responsibility specific to their
function. These units are largely dependent on one or more units for performing upstream and
downstream tasks. While process complete units are defined as those units which control larger value
chain including most manufacturing tasks, support tasks and customer interface.

As Majchrzak concludes, cycle times are higher in case of process complete teams. This is mainly due
to reduction in effort of aggregating efforts of autonomous units. When agile processes like
Lean/Kanban are to be implemented, the transformation can’t be li mited to IT organization. As
already explained in chapter on kanban, the business processes must be reengineered for such
transformation. Otherwise, agile adoption of kanban will not be able to produce desired results.

Functional Mindset

Majchrzak [4] also argues that just implementing process completeness through integrations in
responsibilities is not sufficient. The employees and managers need to develop mindset that is
process complete and not functional i.e. think about larger picture and beyond the team. It increases
organizational focus on collaboration, helps reduce bureaucratic approach. It also helps develop
common goals for front-end and back-end employees which are more closely aligned to business
goals.

In terms of Agile software development, this approach helps as agile demands customer focus and
larger business interaction from software developers.

Business IT alignment

Business IT alignment is defined in terms of
Business Business Processes, Information Technology
Processes Organization, Information and Applications.
Business Processes refer to workflows in
business operations of the firm, they define
how firm operates and delivers products or
IT Information services to customer and receives revenue.
Information Technology refers to
organizations that are catering to automate
these processes. Gartner says more than 85%
Applications Fortune 500 companis are fully operating on
ERP. There is also constant increase in ERP
adoption by small and medium businesses and
miscellaneous organizations like schools, NGOs and hospitals. Most of these o rganizations have
dedicated IT teams of varying size. Information refers to the business data that is generated, shared
and churned by IT systems as part of various business processes. Applications refer to various
platforms, UIs and tools that help business users and customers to carry out their operations. Many
applications may act at different stage in data pipeline.

For faster agile development cycles, the alignment of various teams in IT organization must be with
corresponding business units from operations. However, IT needs to account for shared dependencies
in terms of application platforms and data. For e. g. a customer may be enrolled for two different

Page 35

businesses with same firm. However, if corresponding IT units operate in silos, customer will nee d to
manage two separate accounts with the firm, which increases redundancy in data and costs for the
company.

ERP integration – a driver for change

Most organizational structures underwent changes once they embraced ERP. ERP aggregates
information spread across organizations. This highlights redundancies and inefficiencies in the
organization structures. For obtaining true ROI out of ERP integration and gain competitive
advantage, the businesses have to realign themselves. ERP integration creates efficient Business-IT
organization structure. Such structure favors adoption of agile development processes by IT
organizations.

Types of Alignment

Chen defines Business-IT alignment is of following types –

Alignment by Architecture

This alignment is mostly driven by Enterprise Architecture team which provides cross-functional and
cross-discipline collaboration to deliver complex business processes. This ensures application and
information systems are designed along with data flows in order to eliminate redundancy costs.

Alignment by Governance

IT Service management works on value propositions and aligning business-IT operations. Delivery,
performance, risks and resource management is aligned across Business and IT. Regulatory
compliances are ensured and IT audit handles managerial control.

Alignment by Communication

The communication gap between customer and developers exists due to cultural gaps. In this
method, organization provides trainings to bridge this gap. IT strategy is aligned to business strategy.
Effort is taken to develop common terminology to address business applications.

What Agile Development wants?
Alignment by Application is most desired and naturally most difficult to achieve. But from agile
development process point of view, for techniques like scrum and XP, a communication alignment is
sufficient as minimum condition. But, if organization is aiming for Lean/Kanban implementation, then
it needs to achieve governance alignment as basic minimum. In the long run, architectural roadmap
should include Architectural alignment as strategy.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Haki and Forte [7] define SOA from business perspective as set of services that business wants to
expose to its customers or partners or other portions of organization. The SOA appro ach for
organizational functioning gives interoperability, flexibility, transparency, cost-effectiveness and
innovation. Following diagram depicts the architecture proposed by Chen [8]. For detailed information
on various features of schematic, refer to the paper.

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[8]
Figure 11 Chen's IT Alignment with SOA schematic

Implications for Agile Development
The SOA in business have following implications on agile development process in IT organizations.

 Enabling the communication: This architecture enables communication within various parts of
organization including various business stakeholders and IT management or developers. This is
critical requirement for agile teams.
 Responding to Change: Businesses can respond to changes in market scenarios effectively. This
flexibility in business processes reduces impact of change on the agile development teams.
 Support for innovation: The innovation delivery is simplified in SOA organizations. Creative use
of IT resources can result in innovative customer strategies. The role of CIO expands into
innovation leader and IT becomes trusted business partner. Examples of such innovations can be
changing business processes due to implementation of cloud or social networking technologies.

References

1. Xiaohua Wang et al, The Relationship between Developers and Customers in Agile Methodology,
published in proceedings of Int’l conference on Computer Science and Information Technology,
retrieved from IEEE Computer Society.
2. Salhofer Peter, Ferbas David, A pragmatic approach to the introduction of e-government, published
in proceedings of dg.o’07. Retrieved from ACM digital library.
3. IT Infrastructure Library v3, An Introductory Overview of ITIL® V3, IT Service Management Forum.

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4. Ann Majchrzak, Qianwei Wang, Breaking the functional mindset in process organizations, Harvard
Business Review.
5. Oualid Ktata, Ghislain Lévesque, Agile development: issues and avenues requiring a substantial
enhancement of the business perspective in large projects, published in proceedings of C3S2E '09
retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
6. Judy, K.H., Great scrums need great Product owners: Unbounded collaboration and collective
Product Ownership, Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on system sciences,
2008
7. Haki, M.K., Forte, M.W., Proposal of a service oriented architecture governance model to serve as a
practical framework for business-IT Alignment, New Trends in Information Science and Service
Science (NISS), 2010 4th International Conference on, 2010. Retrieved from IEEE library.
8. Chen, Hong-Mei, “Towards Service Engineering: Service Orientation and Business-IT Alignment,”
Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2008.

Page 38

Chapter 7: HR Practices

Chapter 7:
HR Practices

In this chapter…

 Recruitment
 Performance Management
 Trainings
 HR policies

Introduction

Software organizations aiming adoption of agile methods for large projects need
holistic transformation. Vital change is required in firm’s Human Resource practices. As
David Moran [1] says the industry trend is generally towards “Doing more with less”,
and “Doing More” involves innovation. Moran [1] further adds that onus is on managers
of knowledge workers in order to create motivated, productive and innovative work
environment.

Toyota Production Systems (TPS) [3] highlights “developing people through Respect,
Challenge and Grow” as one of the key principal reasons of Toyota’s success. Liker [3]
elaborates these principles as –

Growing your leaders rather than purchasing them

Toyota grows leaders internally as they live in firm for longer time and understands its
day to day culture thoroughly i.e. genchi genbutsu, means deeply observing actual
situation.

Develop excellence in individual work while promoting effective team work

Toyota puts tremendous time in hiring right candidates as it focusses on effective team
work where a group work does not compensate for lack of individual excellence.

In this chapter, we will look at how various HR practices like recruitment, performance
management, trainings and other HR policies impact on adoption of agile processes.

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[2]
Figure 12 Crocitto, Youssef Model of organizational agility

Recruitment

The recruitment policies of the firm are responsible for bringing right talent required for agile
adoptions.

Workplace Diversity

As Andrea Tapia [4] mentions, IT industry faced a sudden explosive growth during .com bubble. The
gold rush of hiring talent resulted in homogeneous employee population with following
characteristics.

(1) Unconventional hiring processes resulted in exclusion of women and older people.
(2) Values like heroic behaviors, internal competition, crisis-based work environments and living at
work were promoted.
(3) Non-technical staff was devalued. Technical staff (mostly men) enjoyed unconventional freedoms
while non-tech staff (mostly women) was bound into strict bureaucratic rules. This created divide.

This made IT workplaces almost impossible places to work for women. Although most IT behemoths
have agreed in recent past to transform their processes to correct this situation, most initiatives
have remained on paper maintaining ground reality unaltered to great extent.

If we look at proven principles of Lean or Agile, we find gross violations with this type of culture
predominant in Software organizations. Any work organization must be representative of the
population from which it is derived. No company survives on “template” employees. Especially agile
adoption requires multitalented and dynamic employees at workplace. The diversity of hiring in terms
of gender, race, religion, age, culture, color, physical abilities and sexual orientation is imminent for IT
organizations.

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Desired Competencies

As explained with Toyota’s principles, individual excellence and effective team work are of utmost
importance while hiring employees for agile development teams. Below table highlights what
competencies are needed from collective agile team. Every member need not or can’t have all of
them and hence diversity at workplace is needed. It also highlights competencies of manager and
minimum competencies of individual members required for effective agile adoption.

Agile Team’s Collective Competencies Agile Team Managers’ Competencies

1. Required Technical Skills 12. Innovation Management
2. Required Business Knowledge 13. Fostering Diversity*
3. Customer Focus* 14. Understanding Company Culture*
4. Dealing with Ambiguity 15. Develop and Grow People
5. Problem Solving
6. Creativity Agile Team Members’ Individual
7. Respecting Differences Competencies
8. Positive Conflict
9. Change Management 16. Communication Skills
10. Decision Making 17. Interpersonal Skills/Team Skills
11. Collective Ownership 18. Integrity and Trustworthiness
19. Accomplishment Orientation or passion
* also, Agile Leadership Qualities 20. One or more of the collective competencies

In one way, software teams differ from lean manufacturing is, lean manufacturing relies on
standardization of tasks for improving productivity of employees. This is not true for software as there
are no standardized tasks that a developer does over period of time. Developers improve productivity
through varying experiences, developing strong problem solving skills.

Staffing levels

As explained in lean principles and extreme programming principles, agile teams adjust change in one
variable by making change in other variables from time, scope, resource, quality [5]. As described in
case study on Menlo [6], overtime is strict NO for agile teams. This means, agile teams need to increase
resources in order to deliver increased scope in given time without quality compromise.

Does this mean agile firms should maintain excess workforce, a concept of “bench” in typical service
organizations? No, that is inefficiency. As evident from the case of Menlo [6], it means building a highly
mobile workforce. This means based on requirement resources should be both increased or
decreased from given agile team on weekly basis. This requires separation of functional and technical
skills. Assign workforce on skill basis to various projects. The members switch between projects based
on skill requirement for particular period and not project duration.

To find some interesting examples of hiring techniques employed to identify right
candidates for agile methodologies like XP/Pair Programming, refer to Menlo’s case in [6].

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Performance Management

Review Process

Peer Review
Agile emphasizes on team performance. Hence, individual’s performance review should comprise of
feedback from team members. Some companies follow anonymous feedback or in some feedbacks
are sent to managers alone. Effective agile teams should be more open on such feedbacks.
Transparency also improves accuracy of these feedbacks. What this means is individual should be
aware of what each of his peer thinks about him. Google [8] even conducts performance review
interviews with peers.

Review Cycles
There should be at least two (ideally 3-4) performance review cycles, as this gives ample opportunities
to employees to correct his shortcomings. Google [8] conducts two such official cycles, but also
remains open for any feedback/review sessions anytime in the year. As per continuous improvement
principle of agile, frequent review cycles are desirable.

Compensation

Salary and Performance Bonus
A competitive base salary (fixed) which translates into monthly pay, followed by performance linked
cash bonus (variable, approx. 10%) is very standard pay package that software employees receive.
Most software companies also review their base packages and provide increments based on market
conditions. Some companies provide merit increments based on performance even without
promotions. Some companies like Google [8] factor employee performance and company performance
as multiplier in determining increments.

For effective agile adoption, team work needs to be rewarded. As evident in Menlo’s example [6], the
performance bonus and increments should factor the team performance as additional component.
This creates motivating environment for individual excellence with effective team work.

Stock Options
Public listed firms reward performance of their employees by awarding stock options. Some
companies provide Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) or some provide Stock Awards. This is pay
component linked to overall performance of the firm in the market. Though individual’s work has
hardly any relation to stock performance, it helps in creating sense of collective ownership in the
employees. Companies like Microsoft [7] award stocks which mature over stipulated period, which
helps it retain employees for longer period and reduce turnover.

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Career Growth

Aspirations
Google [8] provides 20% time for Innovation. This is one great practice which provides employees
dedicated time to pursue their professional interests, which ultima tely help company. When diverse
employees are hired, companies should show sensitivity to their own aspirations at workplace.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu [9] provides easy rotations and transfers across its global member firm
network. This helps address employees’ aspirations for breadth of experience. It also contributes to
create global mobile workforce for required organizational agility.

Promotions
Accomplishment oriented people require increasing career growth graph [10]. Company should
identify right talent and promote them on regular basis, linked to performance and the experience. An
employee should see his career path, have clarity on requirements of next stage, plan on acquiring
those skills and experiences and then deliver on those goals in order to reach to the next level.

Special Awards

Team Success must be rewarded but individual contributions should not be forgotten. Extraordinary
individual commitment and excellence result in overall team success. Organizations should recognize
and publicly reward individuals and teams both separately for their contributions. This becomes
motivating factor for accomplishment oriented individuals working on agile development teams [10].

Training

Holistic Development

As wide range of competencies are expected from agile team employees, companies should provide
trainings on required technical, business, organizational and interpersonal skills to all their employees.

Dissemination of Know-How

Agile teams learn valuable know-how on job. The process evolves based on experience of team
members. These experiences must be shared with others. Companies should encourage teams to
write white papers on each project experiences or present in forums like internal conferences or
events.

Mentorship Program

For career guidance, companies provide mentorship programs where employee and mentors have
freedom to choose their respective mentors and mentees of choice based on topics of discussion.
This helps employees to build networks and trusted relationships outside their work organizati ons.

Page 43

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