There are many pitfalls when teams transition to agile. Here are three common pitfalls I have seen.

1. OvercomingThree Pitfalls of
Transitioning to Agile
Johanna Rothman
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2. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
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Three Common Pitfalls to Agile
Transition
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1.Stories too big for the iteration
2.“We need an expert!”
3.Implementation across the architecture, not through it

3. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
“The Iteration isToo Short” aka
The Stories areToo Big
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We can’t get anything done in 2 weeks
We can’t get anything done in 3 weeks
We can’t get anything done in 4 weeks
...
Stories are humungous
What do you do?

4. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Strategies for “Stories are too Big”
Swarm around stories
What’s the first thing you can do
that adds business value?
Shorten the iterations
Use kanban so you can see the
flow of features through the
teams and see bottlenecks
(visualize where things are)
Stop estimating; Start delivering
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5. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Experts are Rampant
“I’ll take this story. John will take that story. Dan takes this
story.”
“We need an expert for that story.”
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6. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Strategies for “We Need Experts”
Never let the expert work alone
Pair the expert with another person
Pair other people together
Banish the expert and let the team
manage the problem
Stagger the projects to use the expert
Hire more experts
Understand why you have this problem
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7. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
ImplementationThrough the
Architecture
An artifact of component-based organization
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8. © 2013 Johanna Rothman8
WhatYouWant to Implement

9. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
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