Agile with a small ‘a’ A bit about what we’ve done and what we’ve learnt as BA’s in LBG Digital Banking

Steve Thomson Head of Business Analysis for Digital Banking at LBG

Agile; what’s the point?

When is Agile not Agile?

It wouldn’t work here

OK.. What did work?

Q&A

Agile – What’s the point?

Some reasons why projects fail

1. The world outside moving on, which forces a project to be

redefined during its course so it never really ends, but just runs

out of steam

2. The administrative burden imposed on the IT team eats more

resource than technical development work.

3. Business sponsorship and participation start off strong and then

tail off, leaving the IT project drifting;

4. Red herring stakeholders frustrating a project by raising numerous

side issues and minor concerns;

5. Lack of robust business requirements at the outset, leading to

unrealistic IT project budgets and timescales;

1

2

3

4

5

Lean Startup

“Like an agile peacock”

When is Agile not Agile?

…what are the different flavours of iterative and what can we learn from them?

Agile

RUP

DSDM

Service

Design

Scrum

Feature

Driven

Development

Kanban

Lean

Extreme

programming

1. Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

3. Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)

4. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers

5. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted

6. Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)

7. Working software is the principal measure of progress

8. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design

10. Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential

11. Self-organizing teams

12. Regular adaptation to changing circumstance

The Agile Manifesto is based on 12 principles:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Agile-ish

concepts

It wouldn’t work here

…the practicalities in a bank; how can we work round constraints to get some advantages

Agile-ish

concepts

It wouldn’t work here

Agile-ish

concepts

Ask - “How do we get more certainty around what we need to build to deliver value?”

Agile-ish

concepts

We either break the project down into smaller ones (MVP+uplift) or we pretend to

Agile-ish

concepts

OK – What did Work?

What are the key take aways from the years of iteration?

Co-locate

cross

functional

teams

Know

when to

stop

analysing

Daily

standups

Stop

writing so

much

down

Act like

it’s your

business

Small is

beautiful