Create Your Successful Agile Project: Principles Over Practices (PMILOC)

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Create Your Successful Agile Project: Principles Over Practices Johanna Rothman @johannarothman www.jrothman.com

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman 4 Principles 1. Create a project rhythm 2. Visualize work and the bottlenecks 3. Develop and use measures that reinforce the team’s delivery and improvement 4. Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments 2 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Iterations Work Well When… • Everyone understands when the iteration starts and fi nishes: • Enough hours of overlap • The entire team works together on one product • You can right-size features to fi t into an iteration • You don’t need to accommodate too much interrupting work 4

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Which Project Rhythms Might You Need? • Finish a story—every day or two. • Kaizen to address a small improvement. • Assess team satisfaction—daily. • Demo—weekly or biweekly. • Re fi ne more stories to prepare for more work—once or twice a week. • Weekly or biweekly retrospective. • Weekly or biweekly planning. • Standups—do you need them?? 5

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Flow With a Cadence Also Works • One team always re fi nes stories on Mondays and Thursdays for 20-30 minutes. • They demo every Wednesday at the PO’s 10 am (and record the demo) • They conduct a kaizen when they want to • A more formal retro on Fridays at noon Eastern 6

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 2: Visualize Work and Bottlenecks • If we can see the work, we can choose how to manage it • If we can see where the bottlenecks are, we can choose to experiment or change 7

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Map Your Current Work States • What states does your team need to fi nish work? Example: code review. • Use those states to de fi ne your board. • This is a value stream map. The work time is the cycle time. 10

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Possible (Virtuous) Measures • Team-visible measures • Cycle time (and/or lead time) (Want to reduce cycle time) • Cumulative fl ow (Want to reduce/manage WIP in various states) • Share the team’s progress outside the team: • Demos • Features chart • Product backlog burnup chart • Done and not yet released 12

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Little’s Law • WIP (Work in Progress) • Throughput (work items per unit time) • Cycle or lead time (time to release value as a trend) • Aging (how long a piece of work has been in progress) • (Notice: you can count all of these, except for the cycle time series) 14 Work in Progress = (WIP) Cycle Time * Throughput

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Relative Size Estimates Don’t Include Delays • One team: • Estimated this item would be a day or so (1 story point) • People only spent a day or so on it • But, the team took many days or weeks to deliver it • Where did the time go? (Value stream map and Cycle time explain) 16

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Notes About the Value Stream Images • Most of the teams I work with have much longer cycle times • Work times of one day or so. Wait times of 4-7 days, for a total of 8 days of cycle time • Count weekends. Your customers don’t stop wanting work just because it’s a weekend 20

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Add 50%, 80%, 90% Con fi dence Lines 23 See https:// www.jrothman.com/mpd/ 2024/04/how-to-move- from-story-points-and- magical-thinking-to- cycle-time-for-decisions/ for more information

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Measure Completed Features • Completed features (running, tested features) only. • Your customers use them • You can release them • They are valuable • Include total and remaining features so we have a sense of where we are • Depends on deliverables, not epics or themes • Never measure story points or velocity 24

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman What Do You Want Less of? • Work In Progress (across entire project or program) • How often can you release internally and externally? • Defects: when they occur and when you detect them? • Other “Less of”: • Multitasking • ? 27

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 4: Continuous Improvement with Experiments • Retrospectives • Kaizen • Choose one thing to experiment with every week or two • This is more important than any other meeting you have 28

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Entire Team Re fl ects • All the people who create the product re fl ect together • Kaizen: 20-60 minutes to discuss issue, select alternative, create action plan • Retrospective: 60-120 minutes on a regular basis to gather data and decide what to do. (Highly recommend Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great) 29 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman How Can You Use These 4 Principles Now? 1. Create a project rhythm 2. Visualize work and the bottlenecks 3. Develop and use measures that reinforce the team’s delivery and improvement 4. Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments 30 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Flow Ef fi ciency Thinking: A Helpful Frame • Focus on the work item, not the person doing the work • Resource ef fi ciency focuses on the person • Flow ef fi ciency focuses on the work • Make this the one standup question: “What do we, as a team, need to do move this work to done?” 31 Resource E ffi ciency Flow E ffi ciency

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Many Links for Your Reading Pleasure • See the value stream maps in Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity: https://www.jrothman.com/ mpd/2019/09/measure-cycle-time-not-velocity/ • Hudson Bay Start: https://www.jrothman.com/ mpd/2025/01/how-to-conduct-an-agile-hudson- bay-start-to-test-how-your-team-works/ • Flow metrics newsletter: https:// www.jrothman.com/newsletter/2024/01/ fl ow- metrics-and-why-they-matter-to-teams-and- managers/ • https://linktr.ee/johannarothman 32

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© 2025 Johanna Rothman Let’s Stay in Touch • Pragmatic Manager: • www.jrothman.com/ pragmaticmanager • Please link with me on LinkedIn • Create Your Successful Agile Project: https://www.jrothman.com/cysap • Project Lifecycles: https:// www.jrothman.com/lifecyclebook 34