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Agile, Agile, Agile!

Kevin Lawver
September 08, 2014

Agile, Agile, Agile!

A review of Scrum and Kanban.

Kevin Lawver

September 08, 2014
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  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
    [email protected]

    • @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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