Greg Reiser Agile East 2011

1. We Can’t Do That Here!
Greg Reiser
greg@thoughtworks.com
www.thoughtworks.com

2. Workshop Guidelines
! Introduction (5 Minutes)
! Describe instances of “We Can’t Do That Here!” (15 Minutes)
• Personal experiences and learning
• Problem
• Mitigation
• Law of 2 Feet applies
! Share (15 Minutes)
! Wrap-Up (20 Minutes)

3. “We Can’t Do That Here!”
Strategies for responding to resistance to effective agile practices?

4. “We Can’t Do That Here!”
Large percentage of Agile adoption initiatives encounter
resistance to one or more effective agile practices
Results in lower than anticipated benefits, fueling
claims such as “agile doesn’t scale”, “agile isn’t
appropriate in our business domain”, etc.
We even have names for half-hearted attempts at
Agile: “Scrum-But”, “Wagile”, and “Scrumerfall”
Strategies for responding to resistance to effective agile practices?
People Process Tools

5. “We Can’t Do That Here!”
So, Let’s Get Started!
Photo credit: http://www.communitiesscotland.gov.uk

6. Share Experiences - “We Can’t Do That Here!”

7. Wrap-Up

8. ThoughtWorks Experiences: Examples

9. Process: Offshore Business Analysts
Experienced Business Analysts (BA) on offshore teams
“The subject matter expertise is local”
“Too expensive to develop that expertise offshore”

10. Process: Test-Driven Design
Developers write unit tests before writing functional code
“Double the amount of code == Reduced velocity”
Photo credit: Satir Change Model

11. People: Re-Design the Work Environment
Re-arrange to be more conducive to collaborative development
“It’s too expensive and will violate corporate standards”
“Our lease does not permit it”

12. Process: Readily Available Product Owner
Team requires frequent collaboration with Product Owner
“The Product Owner has other more urgent responsibilities”

13. Process: Manage Support Tickets
Specify lightweight Production Support process
“Context switching between production support and iterative
feature delivery is sub-optimal”
Photo credit: Jeff Patton, AgileProductDesign.com

14. “We Can’t Do That Here” - Beyond Software
value?
faster.
value?
Sequential Delivery Agile Delivery Continuous Delivery
Continuous Desig
n
Production
Production
software as
Concept
Business a product Customers
n ti n e
Co
u o u s De l i v
ry

15. How can we help?
ThoughtWorks is a global custom software solutions consultancy trusted by
many of the world’s leading businesses with their most complex and critical
systems. We deliver consulting grounded in delivery expertise, build custom
applications and help organisations across all market sectors to drive IT
efficiency – working to an exceptionally high standard.
Contact us
Greg Reiser
greg@thoughtworks.com
www.thoughtworks.com