Synerzip’s Top 10 Take Aways, From Agile 2013

Key Takeaways
Agile 2013 Nashville
Conference
Presented by:
Vinayak Joglekar, CTO
@vinayakj
Hemant Elhence, CEO
@HemantElhence

www.synerzip.comConfidential
Conference Overview
• August 5-9 in Nashville, TN
• Approx 1700 participants, 17 tracks, over 200
sessions, plus inspiring keynotes
• We attended 20 sessions each, plus Exhibit
booths of about 40 vendors of tools and training
services
• 3rd year of 1-day Executive Forum, with invited
senior executives
• Like previous years, big sponsors like Google or
Microsoft were absent or kept out giving more
relevant companies a bigger share of the limelight

www.synerzip.com
Synerzip’s Top “10” Takeaways
Note: 40 sessions were attended out of 200 by Synerzip’s CEO Hemant Elhence and
CTO Vinayak Joglekar. Where possible, the presenter’s name was mentioned.
Confidential

1. DevOps Focus
Confidential
$ 3000,0000,000,0000
Three Trillion Dollars
www.synerzip.com

Gene Kim Keynote
• Builds should have static analysis of code and asserts to
flag out misconfiguration or force https. Let builds break
before production.
• Worldwide cost of IT failure is $3 trillion. Avoid large scale
failures -chaos monkey(Netflix)-small, frequent failures
• Adrian Cockcroft― do more painful things more frequently
• High performing DevOps teams deploy automatically and
infrastructure configurations are version-controlled;
resulting in 30X more frequent releases and 12X MTTR
• In value stream Req-Design-Dev-Test-Deploy-Release
fixing anything before or after the bottleneck doesn’t help
• Long release periods happen more because of time taken
in queue; not while running
• Developers tend to ignore non functional requirements.
Confidential
Gene is a multiple award winning
CTO, researcher and author. He
was founder and CTO of Tripwire
for 13 years.
www.synerzip.com

Continuous Delivery
• Visibility: Big Charts-”Ready to release” instead of “Done”
• Cross functional feature teams instead of DevOps team
• Build pipeline slows down if risk management steps kick in on
account of complex code.
• Architecting for reversibility and testability required for CD.
• Ball of mud- too many dependencies make CD difficult. It takes
months to release due to architectural dependencies
• Complex Architecture and lack of collaboration are blockers for CD
• Automation tests the application and the process that deployed it
• Feature toggles/ Branch by Abstraction decouple deployment and
release
Confidential www.synerzip.com

2. Lean Startups Everywhere
Confidential
Lean
Startup
Most popular Topic
www.synerzip.com

Alline Watkins – Lean Startup
• Empathy works better than online surveys
• Steve Blank―Startups fail not because they don’t
have product but because they don’t have
customers.
• Value proposition is why your product solves your
customers’ problem better than your competitor
• The primary customer is the decision-maker. The
payer and the user are secondary customers.
• More features don’t make your product better.
20% of them account for 80% of the utility.
• Early adopters give time, attention as they badly
want your product to succeed.
• Patterns emerge after 20 ints.- time to think of
soln
Confidential
Lean Agilista &
JAVA/GWT
Programmer
www.synerzip.com

3. Hard Data on Agile Impact
• Data from Rally’s 9,629 projects. www.rallydev.com/agilemetrics
• Using key dimensions of Software Development Performance Index
(SDPI): Responsiveness, Quality, Productivity, Predictability
• Dedicated & stable teams work much better
– When people are dedicated to ONE team, that result in 2x higher Productivity
– Stable teams result in 60% better Productivity, 40% better Predictability, and
60% better Responsiveness
• Teams using story points & task hours have 3.5x better Quality
– No Estimate (3% of teams)
– SP + Task Hours (79% of teams) << Best on Quality
– Only SP (10% of teams) << Better overall (Productivity, Predictability,
Responsiveness)
– Only Task Hours (8% of teams)
• Teams of 7 +/- 2 have the most balanced performance

4. Agile Mindset/ People Focus
• A lot of discussion on the soft skills side of Agile
• “Focus on the people side, and forget about process and tools”
• Intra-team communication
• Trust & transparency as fundamental building blocks
• Servant leadership model
• Conflict Resolution
• Developing coaching skills
• Negotiation and persuasion skills
• Follow-up sessions by Linda Rising (2011 Keynote speaker)

5. Empathy
Confidential
Empathy
In Mobile Apps Design
www.synerzip.com

David Peter Simon―Mobile strategies
based on empathy
• People focus to evolve mobile projects
• MFP for human rights activists in Africa
• Thinkaloud walkthrough and observing
people to validate their stated belief
• What can help people instead of what can be
built
• 3 learnings― context centered design,
augment existing answers, create-destroy.
• One eyeball‒one hand. Actions like shaking
the phone to lodge a complaint by Google
Maps.
• Focus on people instead of hardware
features like speed, screen size, durability,
signal strength etc.
Confidential
Thoughtworker
At the heart of my work is a
deeply held belief in
technology's liberating capacity
for society, attacking the most
pressing problems of our time:
social and economic inequality,
energy, health care,
participatory democracy and
human rights abuse.
www.synerzip.com

6. Agile Adoption
Confidential
85%
Troubled Agile Adoptions
www.synerzip.com

Open space― Dan Mezick
• Imposing against Agile principle of self-
determination & “people over process”
• Open space― 5 principles &1 law (2ft).
Whenever, wherever, whoever,
whatever.
• People design agenda. Rows=time,
columns=place
• Purpose of open space is to generate
stories to understand people & culture
• Agile adoption is a game. Games
generate happiness. Open spaces tell
you care.
• Leadership evolves― passionate and
having sense of responsibility speak up.
Success succeeds.
Confidential
Dan coaches executives and
teams in Agile &Scrum
www.synerzip.com

7. Enterprise Agile
• Large-scale Agile is still a big topic of discussion
• Major theme in Executive Forum
• Leffingwell’s SAFe framework seems widely accepted and practiced,
but some skeptics
• Scrum of scrum “sort of works”
• Other enterprise agile frameworks:
– Scott Ambler’s Disciplined Agile Delivery
(www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com)
– Eliassen/Damon Poole’s Enterprise Agility Model

8. Technical Debt
• Israel Gat’s session
• More mature and well developed in theory and in practice
• Vicious cycle of TD: biz pressure >> TD >> reduced velocity >> missed
time-line >> more biz pressure
• TD is not the problem, it is just a symptom of the problem
• When Business Demand > Team Capacity, you end up incurring
technical debt
• 3 main components of TD, with different impact
– Principal – one time refactoring cost
– Recurring Interest – increase in on-going support/maint. costs
– Compound Interest – created by practices like copy & paste, has
exponential effect
• Useful metaphors: Financial Debt, Rusty Car, Toxic Code: software
where technical debt to value ratio is >100%

9. Scaling Agile
Confidential
Hierarchies
Biggest impediment for scaling Agile
www.synerzip.com

Dan LeFebvre – Circles & Links
• Precondition-self organizing teams-
– 1) Equivalent elements
– 2) External source of energy
– 3) Happiness due to perceived control/
progress, connectedness and being a
part of something big.
• Multiple scrum teams result in lack of
equivalence, visibility and no sense of
belonging
• Disconnected teams>broken system―
Conway’s law
• Requirements: bottom-top-bottom―Chinese
whispers.
• Red status turns amber/green as it reaches
the top.
• Decisions are best made at team level as
freshest info is available there
Confidential
Executive Coach and
Agile Coach at
FreeStanding Agility
www.synerzip.com

Dan LeFebvre – Circles & Links
• Scrum of scrums- sharing of status- no action
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE) – difficult to implement.
• Self organizing delivery circles create and deliver. elect
members to join co ordinating circles that provide
infrastructure, requirements, architecture
• Equivalence, visibility , external source of energy.
• Consensus vs consent to live with a decision.
• Community circles where functionally similar members
improve skills, coach others.

10. User Research
Confidential
Lies
What most users tell when asked
www.synerzip.com

Aviva Rosenstein-Rapid Research
• Rapid research helps UX designers to keep up with Agile iterations.
Customers don’t share knowledge , values, assumptions and interest.
Need to elicit truth.
• Before-Interviewing/shadowing.During- card sorts, tree sorts.After- pdt
experience feedback
• Personas-user roles, characteristics, situations
• Empathize with user’s pains and frustrations.
• Users interest -cash, sneak peak, being heard
• Observe-don’t ask. Don’t interrupt. Open ended q’s.
• User research-too important to be left to user researcher

Rapid Product Design
• Michele Ide-Smith’s team built an MVP in a 3-day exhibition event.
(Source Control for D/b schema)
• Red Gate (.Net+D/B). Customer interaction difficult
• No visibility into user environment and context.
• Predefined w/flow 20 ints before. Interviewing at conference booth.
Three days- 9 mini sprints.
• Bootstrap prototype- 25 User feedback sessions in 2.5 days. Paper
prototyping extensively used.
• Empathy map for customer needs. Affinity map to avoid repetitive/
similar feedback. Sketching env.
• 600 beta users signed up .

Summary
1. DevOps Focus
2. Lean Startup Everywhere
3. Hard data on Agile Impact
4. Importance of Agile Mindset & Soft Skills
5. Mobile Strategy Driven by Customer Empathy
6. Open Spaces to Facilitate Agile Adoption
7. SAFe Framework for Enterprise Agile
8. Pushing Understanding of Technical Debt
9. Org Hierarchy is the Main Impediment to Scaling Agile
10. User Research is Too Important to be Left to Researchers

Confidential
Contact Information
• Hemant Elhence (Dallas based)
– hemant@synerzip.com
– @HemantElhence
– Cell Phone: 214.762.4873
• Vinayak Joglekar (India based)
– vinayak@synerzip.com
– @vinayakj
– Blog: http://vinayakjoglekar.wordpress.com/
• HQ and US office in Dallas, TX
– 14228 Midway Rd, #130, Dallas, TX 75244
– Office Tel: 469.322.0349
• Development center in Pune, India.
www.synerzip.com

Beyond The “Top 10”

11. Agile Contracts
• A number of sessions on Agile contracts
– Gabriella Benefield & Ryan Shriver
– Simon Bennett
– Consensus that traditional contracts don’t work for
software development
– More developed topic, with real contract templates
http://flexiblecontracts.com
– Value or Outcome based payments
– A combination of Business Terms agreement, along
with multiple Statement of Target Outcomes

12. Architecture & Architect Role
• Scott Ambler session on Continuous
Architecture and Emergent Design
– “Architecture is so important in Agile, that we
do it throughout, not just in the beginning”
– There needs to a role of Architecture Owner,
similar to Product Owner

13. Feature Based Release Teams
• Mehernosh Patel’s lightening talk
– Organize each scrum team around a feature
– Have one production trunk, and let each team work on the branch
– Who ever finishes first, gets to integrate to trunk. But has to also
deliver automated tests for their feature.
– All others, need to now pull that trunk and integrate
– The process repeats
– Creates healthy race towards delivering the feature fast!

14. Stable Teams vs. ROI
• From Executive Forum
– Stable (and dedicated) teams are significantly
more productive
– Senior mgmt should fund development capacity
(and prioritize project), rather than look project-
by-project ROI

15. Agile Metrics
• Many guidelines, but no single prescription
• Vanity metrics vs real metrics - velocity alone is not a good
metric
• Monitor balanced metrics, e.g. Velocity, Quality, Hours,
and Team Joy
• Be aware of Hawthorne effect and gaming
• Where possible, try to measure UP, i.e.
– Measure the team, not the individual
– Measure the business, not the team
– Measure UP, start with the customer – Net Promoter
Score

Other Soundbites
• Retrospectives are NOT optional in Agile
• TDD is like teenage sex – more people talking
about it than actually doing it!
• Capex vs. Opex classification can be handled at
story level, e.g. new feature (capex) vs.
maintenance story (opex)

Synerzip’s Top 10 Take Aways, From Agile 2013

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Synerzip’s Top 10 Take Aways, From Agile 2013