Agile Project Management in a Waterfall World

Kevin Thompson & cPrime Guest Presentation by John Carter

February 11, 2014

JOHN CARTERTCGEN [email protected]

Agile Project Management in a Waterfall World Managing Sprints with Predictive Metrics

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• John Carter is Principal of TCGen Inc. and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Cirrus Logic (CRUS).

• He co-authored “Innovate Products Faster” with Jeanne Bradford, a visual handbook on tools for teams

• Prior to TCGen, he consulted to leading Silicon Valley technology companies. John was the architect of Apple’s product development process (ANPP) in use by all divisions.

• Before starting PDC, John was Chief Engineer of BOSE Corporation where he was the co-inventor of Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones. He earned his MS in electrical engineering from MIT.

BIOGRAPHY JOHN CARTER

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• Shortening of internationalization of software from 11 months down to 1 month

• Reducing time to release from every 8 months down to every 2 months

• Having a savings of 40-50% of product development cycle time

But all of these successes were in SW… how can we apply to Physical Products/Systems?

Conducted research of case studies where Agile methods were applied to Products/Systems with over a dozen participants

AGILITY CASE STUDIES - SUCCESS STORIES

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• Kevin Thompson and John Carter plan a study Agile/Scrum can be applied outside software

• We are also exploring the best practices found in coordinating multiple Agile projects

• We will use this Webinar TODAY to recruit qualified study participants

• If you have had experience in these areas we would like to talk to you!

• There is no charge for participation and you will receive an in depth participant report

• Participation will require 1-2 hours of time • We will follow up at the end of this talk and ask for participants

cPrime & TCGen 2014 Agility Study

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Are you interested?

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The challenge is how do we apply Agile Software Methods to programs that…• Have components with long lead times?• Development partners that do things their own way?• Long supply chains with components, sub-assemblies, and

final assemblies that need integration around the world?• Medical products that require FDA compliance?• Large software platforms that are developed using Waterfall

Methods?• …by adopting a couple of changes – easy to say, hard to do

HOW DO WE APPLY BEST PRACTICES TO HARDWARE?

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1. AGILE TEAM SOFT SKILLS2. SHORT INTERVALS WITH FEEDBACK

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ETRICSHOW IS AGILE DIFFERENT FROM WATERFALL?

Freeze the Specs and Don’t Look Back Develop Fast, Learn, Improve

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ETRICSKEY AGILE & DEVELOPMENT TERMS

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1. Business people and developers work together daily

2. Projects require motivated individuals, support & trust

3. Face-to-face conversation is most efficient

4. Agile processes promote sustainable development

5. Continuous attention to technical excellence

6. Simplicity---is essential

7. The best designs emerge from self-organizing teams

8. At regular intervals, the team reflects

9. Welcome changing requirements

10. Continuous delivery of valuable software

11. Deliver working software frequently

12. Working software is the measure of progress

AGILE MANIFESTO – HARD TO DO IN SYSTEMS?

http://agilemanifesto.org/

Software Specific

75% of the Agile Manifesto CAN apply to development of any type

http://agilemanifesto.org/

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The most common implementation of the Agile Manifesto is Scrum

SCRUM METHODOLOGY – BEST PRACTICES

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ETRICSAGILE METHODOLOGY – BEST PRACTICES

Question: What are the most impactful elements of Agile/Scrum applied to SW?

The top Four Scrum practices can be applied to Systems too!

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ETRICSAGILE METHODOLOGY –APPLIED TO HW/SYSTEMS

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Three of the top “Agile” practices in Systems have little to do with Scrum

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Question: What are the most impactful elements of Agile/Scrum applied to Products/Systems?

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So why is applying Agile/Scrum to HW/Systems so hard?

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Because Agile/Scrum is hard

It requires higher process literacyAnd greater cross functional teamwork skills

For more sophisticated teams; not for the faint of heart

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The rest of the presentation takes you through the findings from our study and provides you with some practical ideas for

implementation… …starting with the soft side and culture

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ETRICSFIRST, APPLY THE FOLLOWING CULTURAL ASPECTS

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Adopt the concept of 1. High performance teams 2. Self organized teams3. Trust and empowerment4. Customer owner & team interacting daily5. Daily standup meetings

AND…• Accept the fact that requirements may change

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You might just say that this is just common sense!

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ETRICSTHEN, TRANSLATE SCRUM TO WATERFALL

1. User Stories into Boundary Conditions2. Burn-down charts into Deliverable Hit Rate3. Sprint into HW intervals4. Manage the project with Out of Bounds Process5. Sprint Retrospectives into Event Timeline Retrospectives

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ETRICSHOW TO SYNCHRONIZE AGILE SW TO PRODUCTS/SYSTEMS

Target HW integrations to Sprint End Points

• If HW schedules move, target Sprint n+1 or Sprint n+2

Place SW engineers close to metal on HW team to shield SW

Use emulation/simulation extensively to buffer the HW/SW interface

• PC’s to simulate mobile devices

• Custom Sprints to develop emulators

And when all else fails…use a very good Project Manager

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Side note

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ETRICS1. CREATING BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

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• A program consists of product attributes and program attributes

• Boundary conditions typically have both• Create User Stories – Product Attributes• Create budget and schedule – Program Attributes• Select the top 3-7, define limits, and seek agreement with the

management team

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/user-stories

As a <type of user> I want <some goal> so that <some reason>

THIS BECOMES YOUR BOUNDARY CONDITIONS… STAY INSIDE THEM AND THE TEAM CAN KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/user-stories

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1. EXAMPLE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

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1. EXAMPLE BOUNDARY BREAK

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• Deliverable Hit Rate too Slow!

• Key Engineer pulled!• Three week delay!

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ETRICS2. TRANSLATE BURNDOWNS INTO DELIVERABLE HIT RATE

Identify the key requirements that should be satisfied during an interval

• Can be features implemented

• Can be tests validated

• Can be tasks performed

• Can be a customized metric of progress

This list of requirements can vary from interval to interval

• Front end is more definition loaded

• Middle is more task loaded

• Back end is more validation loaded

Create a target curve over the sprint interval

• Don’t get too stressed out over perfection

• Assume that the events can be distributed evenly, unless you have clear knowledge otherwise

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ETRICS2. TRANSLATE BURNDOWNS INTO DELIVERABLE HITRATE

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ETRICS2. EXAMPLE OF PCB LAYOUT PROGRESS

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1-Aug 2-Aug 3-Aug 4-Aug 5-Aug 6-Aug 7-Aug 8-Aug 9-Aug 10-Aug

Number of Unrouted Nets

• Aug 1 started tracking PCB routing progress to get an idea of project velocity

• Aug 3 worried about progress, rate too slow• Aug 4 increased # of engineers assigned to this task

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Example how a Burn Down Chart can be applied to see the progress in turning a schematic into a layout

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ETRICS3. TRANSLATE SPRINT INTO HW INTERVALS

Divide the project into the smallest increment possible that represents TRUE INTEGRATION POINTS or CLEARLY

DEFINABLE MILESTONES.

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ETRICS3. TRANSLATE SPRINT INTO HW INTERVALS

The secret to getting the benefits of Agile development is to shed features and not slip the interval

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Continuous learning, short intervals, measurable progress, autonomy

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4. BOUNDARY CONDITION PROCESS

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ETRICS5. EVENT TIMELINES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Don’t use Post Mortem

Case Study

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RETROSPECTIVES

• Retrospectives should be carried out on all programs• The retrospectives should follow a common process which has

the following attributes• Fact based, and data driven• Involve Cross-functional team members

• The retrospective process should be owned by the team• The retrospective process should be used during every Interval• The process consists of the following steps

1. Event time lines & Prioritization of the biggest events2. Root Cause Analysis3. Affinity Diagram to summarize results

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ETRICSAGILE – BEST PRACTICES FOR HW/SYSTEMS

1. If you have had experience with the application of Agile/Scrum/Iterative development out of software environments… OR

2. If you have had experience with governance of multiple Agile/Scrum programs we would like to talk to you!

Please respond positively to our poll…

“Are you interested in participating in an Agile Best Practices Study?”

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Study Participation

After the webinar…

• We will send directions to collect the PDU you will earn from attending this webinar

• We will also send a links to the recorded webinar and presentation slides once they are posted online

For more information, visit www.cprime.com

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Thank You!

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Appendix

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ETRICSANOTHER APPROACH: WATER-SCRUM-FALL

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ETRICS3. THE FIVE KEY ELEMENTS OF AGILITY

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• What is the Tool? Used to realign teams when a project has gone out of bounds help course correct and realign to a new plan

• Which Business Problems Does the Tool Solve? Is an effective recovery vehicle when projects run into trouble Creates mechanism to quickly align project and management

teams Eliminates creating an exception-handling process each time a

deviation occurs

• Benefits Helps you realign projects within hours/days, not days/weeks Empowers the team to move forward with minimal guidance Minimizes team confusion by establishing a single agreed-

upon limits Engages the team because of the greater trust by

management

4. BOUNDARY CONDITION PROCESS

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1. User Stories needed to make the best tradeoffs

2. Plan to have multiple DVTs that involve the customer

3. Build multiple variants in DVTs (buttons, PCB layouts, Firmware)

4. If lead time is 6 months and you need to go to market in 4, ask for their buffer stock

5. Use reference designs & allocate BOM choices to supplier

6. The entire team must be 'Agile' for it to work

7. Rely on Postponement

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Side note

Technology

Agile Project Management in a Waterfall World