While the concept behind Agile is laudable, there are pitfalls which can be worth planning for. After eight years operating daily with Agile, I can confidently say these pitfalls are common, yet preventable. Free downloadable guide to plan your Agile transition strategy included.

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Agile for
Healthcare
5 Pitfalls to Avoid
Free Healthcare Agile Transition
Strategy Guide included at end of
deck.

2. When decisionmakers take on a
project, they want to know the
project's scope. Yet, Agile means
signing the contract before clearly
determining the scope.
This is the source of two common
problems:
(1) Since a clear scope is traditionally
a prerequisite for obtaining a
budget, it may be difficult to
obtain buy-in.
(2) Since the scope is a moving
target, it may be at odds with you
(internal) clients’ expectations.
Pitfall #1
The Moving Target

3. Committing to a sprint requires a
reasonable understanding of the
workload and the team’s capacity.
In Agile, estimates are imprecise,
because they do not account for
the programmer’s level of seniority.
This can easily lead to mis-
calibrated sprints and delays on the
critical path.
Pitfall #2
The Mis-
Estimated Sprint

4. In order to successfully close a sprint, all stories within the
spring must be completed.
In Agile, timely delivering a solution that works well in the
short-term (with intention for rework) can be considered
preferable to engineering a longer-term solution that would
fail the sprint.
This built-in incentive can sometimes create what is dubbed
“technical debt” – that is, sprint delivery with known re-
work required in the future.
Pitfall #3
The Technical Debt

5. The mis-estimation pitfall previously mentioned also creates an
added, implicit cost. For every over-estimated sprint, your (internal)
client will be paying for people to be “on the bench” – that is, idle.
While adding stories mid-sprint is the most common method to
tackle this mis-estimation, the quality of the last-minute features can
suffer.
It can also impact the quality of the specifications for the upcoming
sprint, as the analyst shifts his attention away from the next sprint’s
requirements gathering.
Pitfall #4
The Cost of Benching

6. Tests and Sprint Acceptance are built on a
common understanding of scope. In Agile, the
product owner has discretion over how lean to
make the documentation.
Driven to an extreme, lean documentation can
create over-dependency on the product owner. It
may make bug tracking and test execution longer.
It may also lead to unnecessary reworks as the
client visualizes a feature for the first time only
after development.
Pitfall #5
The Cost of Under-Documenting

7. Reflecting on your healthcare
organization’s readiness and current
practices can help put in place measures
that will ensure your shift to Agile is
successful.
Download Your Free Agile Transition Strategy Guide
HealthcareFocus.com

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