Agile, Agile, Agile!
Kevin Lawver :: http://kevinlawver.com
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What’s Agile?
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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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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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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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But how do I do it?
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Pick a Process: Scrum
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Scrum Pieces
• The Backlog
• The Sprint
• The Standup Meeting
• The Retrospective
• The Scrum Master
• Business “Owner”
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How It Fits Together
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Let’s go through a
project...
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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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The Backlog
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The Backlog is owned
by the Business Owner
& contains the building
block...
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User Stories!
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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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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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User Stories Should:
• Be simple
• Be focused on a single feature
• Have a single benefit and action
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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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Related user stories can
be bundled into “epics”.
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Sprint Planning
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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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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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The Standup Meeting
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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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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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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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When things go wrong...
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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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Stakeholder Review
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At the end of the sprint,
sit down with
stakeholders and review
progress.
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It’s the final “go/no go”
decision for the work in
that sprint.
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Retrospective
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This is my favorite part!
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Answer the following:
• What went well?
• What didn’t go well?
• What can we do better next time?
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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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Rinse & Repeat
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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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Review
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Questions before we
jump into Kanban?
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Kanban
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It’s basically Scrum
without Sprint Planning
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It was invented by
Toyota for their
assembly lines...
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And is Japanese for “just
in time”
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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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Kanban Benefits
• Less work for the Scrum Master
• More fluid and easier to see where
everything is on the board.
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Kanban Downsides
• No beginning or end, just endless tasks.
• Fewer artifacts and metrics than Scrum in my
experience.
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Wrapping Up
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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!