Debunking four common misconceptions about Agile delivery Myths Agile... · Agile Myths Debunking...

Agile Myths

Debunking four common misconceptions about Agile delivery

David Daly MBCS CITP

@DavidDalyWL @NottAgile

blog.atos.net

Misconceptions +ve

Faster -ve

Free Changes NFRs

Predictability

Value

Estimation

Value

Value Is Complicated

Value

Value Hypothetical

“ Business value is actually a complex multi-dimensional risk problem. The reality is business value is something you cannot calculate. You can’t do it in advance and you can (with great difficulty) perhaps do it retrospectively

David J Anderson

“ The big myth here is that value is predictable, but in fact we know it is hypothetical. When we decide to build things or buy things or spend money on things there is hypothetical value. They are bets.

Jeff Patton

Estimation

Quiz

For each question, fill in the upper and lower bounds that, in your opinion, give you a 90% chance of including the correct value. Be careful not to make your ranges either too wide or too narrow. Make them wide enough so that, in your best judgement, the ranges give you a 90% chance of including the correct answer. Please do not research any of the answers – this quiz is intended to assess your estimation skills, not your research skills. You must fill in an answer for each item; an omitted item will be scored as an incorrect item. Please limit your time on this exercise to 10 minutes.

This quiz is from Software Estimation by Steve McConnell (Microsoft Press, 2006) and is © 2006 Steve McConnell. All Rights Reserved. Permission to copy this quiz is granted provided that this copyright notice is included.

Quiz 1. Surface temperature of the sun? 2. Latitude of Shanghai? 3. Area of the Asian Continent? 4. The year of Alexander the Great’s birth? 5. Total value of U.S. currency in circulation in 2004? 6. Total volume of the Great Lakes? 7. Worldwide box office receipts for the movie Titanic? 8. Total length of the coastline of the Pacific Ocean? 9. Number of book titles published in the U.S. since 1776? 10. Heaviest blue whale ever recorded?

This quiz is from Software Estimation by Steve McConnell (Microsoft Press, 2006) and is © 2006 Steve McConnell. All Rights Reserved. Permission to copy this quiz is granted provided that this copyright notice is included.

Quiz 1. Surface temperature of the sun? 10,000°F / 6,000°C 2. Latitude of Shanghai? 31 degrees North 3. Area of the Asian Continent? 17,139,000 mi2 / 44,390,000 km2 4. The year of Alexander the Great’s birth? 356 BC 5. Total value of U.S. currency in circulation in 2004? $719 billion (US) 6. Total volume of the Great Lakes? 2.3 x 1016 litres / 23,000 cubic km 7. Worldwide box office receipts for the movie Titanic? $1.835 billion (US) 8. Total length of the coastline of the Pacific Ocean? 84,300 miles / 135,663 km 9. Number of book titles published in the U.S. since 1776? 22 million 10. Heaviest blue whale ever recorded? 380,000 pounds / 190 tons / 170,000 kg

This quiz is from Software Estimation by Steve McConnell (Microsoft Press, 2006) and is © 2006 Steve McConnell. All Rights Reserved. Permission to copy this quiz is granted provided that this copyright notice is included.

“ I’ve concluded that most people’s intuitive sense of “90% confident” is actually more like “30% confident”

Steve McConnell

Accuracy vs. Precision

3

3.2416

Estimate: 98.3 days

Estimate: 3 months

± 60 days

± 5 days

Which is most accurate? Which is most precise?

What about now?

Actual: 80.7 days

Actual: 3.3 months

Estimation

Myth #1

Faster and Cheaper

“ Agile projects are 37% faster to market than industry average Agile projects experienced a 16% increase in productivity compared to industry average

The Agile Impact Report - QSMA

“ Follett used normal-sized teams and built applications fast, with half the defects, simultaneously saving millions of dollars. BMC emphasised time to market, and while still beating industry averages when it came to cost, achieved a nine-month time-to-market advantage while keeping defects low.

How Agile Projects Measure Up, and What This Means to You

Cutter Consortium

From “How Agile Projects Measure Up, and What This Means to You” – Cutter Consort ium

From “How Agile Projects Measure Up, and What This Means to You” – Cutter Consort ium

“ This basic result - demonstrating at least 10 to 1 differences in productivity - has been reproduced numerous times

Steve McConnell

“ If an agile team builds me a better dresser faster than a waterfall team builds me a not-as-nice dresser, I’m not better off if what I actually needed was a coffee table…Getting faster is nice, as long as you’re getting faster at building the right product.

Scott Sehlhorst

Better Dresser Not-As-Nice Dresser

Coffee Table

“ If an agile team builds me a better dresser faster than a waterfall team builds me a not-as-nice dresser, I’m not better off if what I actually needed was a coffee table…Getting faster is nice, as long as you’re getting faster at building the right product.

Scott Sehlhorst

Select Requirements

Build Deliver

Collect Feedback

Tub of

Celebrations

“ You won’t get a whole year’s worth of pre-agile production of code in only three months post-agile. And you wouldn’t want to, would you? What you might get – with learning, practice, and experience – is a traditional year’s delivery of value in half or a third or even a quarter of the time.

Luke Walter

Myth #2

Change Without Cost

From “Software Engineer ing Economics” by Barry Boehm (1981)

“ When you incorporate techniques like Continuous Delivery and Test Driven Development you are diminishing the basic assumptions that were valid back in the 1970s. We can fix a defect in production within minutes.

Uri Nativ

CHANGE

Select Requirements

Build Deliver

Collect Feedback

Better Dresser Not-As-Nice Dresser

Coffee Table

Tub of

Celebrations

CHANGE IMPACT =

“ Few organisations are in industries that change so rapidly that they cannot set priorities at the start of a two week sprint and then leave them alone. Many organisations may think they exist in that environment; they don’t. It is usually a matter of becoming more accustomed to thinking ahead.

Mike Cohn

“ I want to help those outside the team learn that there is a cost to redirecting the team. Of course, sometimes redirecting a team mid-sprint is necessary. But, all too often teams are redirected because it’s easy to do and because someone didn’t plan .

Mike Cohn

CHANGE

CHANGE IMPACT =

Myth #3

NFRs Not Supported

“ Requirements are requirements, full stop. They all need to be handled in the same way. Any requirement needs to be realised, developed and accepted. Non-functional requirements are no different.

Dave Cunningham

Backlog Dev Test Release

“ You need to think about a problem for about a week (my maximum) and on the second week, and every week thereafter, you should be trying to change something to make something better; to deliver a little bit more quality to real people. And in doing so not only will the value be delivered, but you will learn from trying to deliver value what it takes to deliver value.

Tom Gilb

“ You need to think about a problem for about a week (my maximum) and on the second week, and every week thereafter, you should be trying to change something to make something better; to deliver a little bit more quality to real people. And in doing so not only will the value be delivered, but you will learn from trying to deliver value what it takes to deliver value.

Tom Gilb

Myth #4

Predictability Lost

“ True agility – which means adopting a posture that allows you to respond rapidly to changing market conditions and customer demands – conflicts with predictability.

Steve McConnell

Let’s plan the work!

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

3 months

3 months

10 months

3 months 19 months

Complete on 20th August 2017

Let’s plan the work!

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

3 months

3 months

10 months

3 months 19 months

Complete on 20th August 2017

should be 12 – 29 months!

“ With a serial lifecycle you don’t have any real knowledge about the system until integration and test. You have no meaningful data until integration and test. All the data you have is surrogate data. So you have the least amount of predictability until the end of the project.

Johanna Rothman

“ This is the principle that says you'll get as much done today as you got done yesterday. In iterative projects it says that you should plan to do as much this iteration as you did last iteration.

Martin Fowler

Let’s plan the work!

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

3 months

3 months

10 months

3 months 19 months

Complete on 21st April 2017

Myth #1

Faster and Cheaper

From “How Agile Projects Measure Up, and What This Means to You” – Cutter Consort ium

Better Dresser Not-As-Nice Dresser

Coffee Table

Myth #2

Change Without Cost

CHANGE

CHANGE IMPACT =

Myth #3

NFRs Not Supported

Backlog Dev Test Release

Myth #4

Predictability Lost

Let’s plan the work!

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

3 months

3 months

10 months

3 months 19 months

Complete on 21st April 2017

Why does it matter?

Misconceptions +ve

Faster -ve

Free Changes NFRs

Predictability

Disillusioned Reluctant

Agile: the best chance we have

Thanks

For more information please contact: David Daly M: 07956 611345 david.daly@worldline.com