Agile, Agile, Agile!

A review of Scrum and Kanban.

Transcript

1. Agile, Agile, Agile!
   Kevin Lawver :: http://kevinlawver.com
   

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2. What’s Agile?
   

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3. Agile Values
   • Individuals and interactions over processes
   and tools
   
   • Working software over comprehensive
   documentation
   
   • Customer collaboration over contract
   negotiation
   
   • Responding to change over following a plan
   

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4. Agile Principles
   • Frequent releases
   
   • Welcome changing
   requirements
   
   • All disciplines work
   together in shorter
   cycles
   
   • Build projects around
   motivated individuals
   
   • Face to face
   conversation
   
   • Sustainable pace and
   practices
   
   • Maximize the amount of
   work not done.
   
   • Regular retrospectives
   and process changes to
   improve efficiency
   

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5. Agile Benefits
   • Turns product development into a sustainable
   repeatable process.
   
   • Achieve constant incremental improvement
   that’s actually measurable!
   
   • Lots of metrics about development progress
   and lots of participation from stakeholders
   

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6. But how do I do it?
   

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7. Pick a Process: Scrum
   

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8. Scrum Pieces
   • The Backlog
   
   • The Sprint
   
   • The Standup Meeting
   
   • The Retrospective
   
   • The Scrum Master
   
   • Business “Owner”
   

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9. How It Fits Together
   

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12. Let’s go through a
    project...
    

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13. Roles
    • Whenever I say Scrum Master, think Project
    Manager.
    • Whenever I say Business Owner, think,
    ummm... Business Owner. They could also be
    the Product Manager.
    

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14. The Backlog
    

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15. The Backlog is owned
    by the Business Owner
    & contains the building
    block...
    

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16. User Stories!
    

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17. User Stories
    A single requirement, documented
    thoroughly enough that an “average”
    person would understand it and be able
    to implement it in a single sprint.
    

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18. An Example
    So that users can more easily buy songs, we need
    to have a buy button on all songs that adds the
    song to their shopping cart.
    

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19. User Stories Should:
    • Be simple
    
    • Be focused on a single feature
    
    • Have a single benefit and action
    

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20. Once a story’s been
    created:
    • It’s put in the backlog in priority order
    (priority is determined by the Business
    Owner).
    
    • Someone goes in and adds tasks to the story
    and then estimates how long those tasks will
    take, preferably the person who will be doing
    those tasks.
    

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21. Related user stories can
    be bundled into “epics”.
    

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22. Sprint Planning
    

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23. You need...
    • A prioritized backlog with tasked-out and
    estimated user stories.
    
    • Everyone from the team available for the
    meeting.
    
    • Everyone needs to know how many hours
    they have available for that sprint.
    

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24. The Meeting
    • Go through prioritized and estimated user
    stories and add them to the sprint.
    
    • When everyone’s sprint is full, you’re done!
    

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25. The Standup Meeting
    

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26. The Standup
    • Takes place at the same time every day.
    
    • Everyone on the team goes around and
    answers three questions:
    
    • What did I do yesterday?
    
    • What will I do today?
    
    • Where am I stuck and need help?
    

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27. Classic Rules
    • Should take no more than 15-20 minutes
    
    • Any discussions take place “offline” after the
    meeting
    
    • Everyone stands (keeps the chit-chat down)
    

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28. Standup Benefits
    • No one’s stuck for very long.
    
    • No need for status reports, you get one
    every day.
    
    • Everyone is informed about what’s going.
    
    • Projects are usually never late or “in crisis”
    because problems are caught early.
    

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29. When things go wrong...
    

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30. There’s a process for
    that!
    • A user story of equal or greater size gets
    removed from the sprint and the new “fire
    drill” gets added.
    
    • If the change is too big, the Sprint is “called”
    and you go through Sprint Planning again.
    

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31. Stakeholder Review
    

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32. At the end of the sprint,
    sit down with
    stakeholders and review
    progress.
    

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33. It’s the final “go/no go”
    decision for the work in
    that sprint.
    

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34. Retrospective
    

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35. This is my favorite part!
    

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36. Answer the following:
    • What went well?
    
    • What didn’t go well?
    
    • What can we do better next time?
    

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37. Practicalities
    • We create a document that everyone can fill
    out beforehand. Works really well for
    introverts.
    
    • Set a time limit (1 hour)
    
    • Don’t let it become a bitch session - it should
    be constructive (responsibility vs. blame).
    

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38. Rinse & Repeat
    

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39. Favorite Things About
    • Team history
    
    • Constant incremental improvement
    
    • Sustainable development
    
    • Built-in process for handing fire drills
    
    • Business owners have frequent check-ins and
    everyone feels involved and sees progress.
    

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40. Review
    

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42. Questions before we
    jump into Kanban?
    

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43. Kanban
    

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44. It’s basically Scrum
    without Sprint Planning
    

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45. It was invented by
    Toyota for their
    assembly lines...
    

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46. And is Japanese for “just
    in time”
    

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47. Kanban Basics
    • The backlog still exists and is still prioritized.
    
    • Everything happens on “the board”
    
    • When a resource is available, they take the
    next task from the backlog that they can
    perform.
    

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49. Kanban Benefits
    • Less work for the Scrum Master
    
    • More fluid and easier to see where
    everything is on the board.
    

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50. Kanban Downsides
    • No beginning or end, just endless tasks.
    
    • Fewer artifacts and metrics than Scrum in my
    experience.
    

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51. Wrapping Up
    

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52. Ideas
    • Processes are made to be adapted
    
    • The most valuable pieces to me are the Daily
    Standup and Retrospectives
    
    • Agile is basically Project Management evolved
    and can be applied to almost any kind of
    project!
    

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53. Questions?
    

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54. My Details
    • kevin@lawver.net
    
    • @kplawver
    
    • http://lawver.net
    
    • http://railsmachine.com
    

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55. Thank You!
    

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56. Credits
    • Kanban Board photo from Mark Derricutt:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/talios/
    3726484920/in/photostream/
    

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