Alm Agile In Large Projects V2

© Copyright 2009 Hitachi Consulting

www.hitachiconsulting.com

Making Agile Work For Large ProjectsMark Drysdale


Agenda

Traditional Delivery

What is Agile

Scrum

Case Study – Company X

History

Pilot

Rollout

2


The Risks of Software Development

Delivering too little, too late

Discovering functional needs late in the project

Building the right things wrong

Building more than you needAdding complexity which leads to non-maintainability

Poor quality softwareSoftware buggySoftware not maintainable


Industry Statistics

44%

32%

24%

2009 Standish Group CHAOS Report

Challenged(late, over budget)

Succeeded (on-time, on budget)

Failed (cancelled or abandoned)74%

16%

10%

Oxford University IT Project Success 2003

Challenged(late, over budget)

Succeeded (on-time, on budget)

Failed (cancelled or abandoned)

Dynamic Markets Limited 2007 Study

IT projects that failed to meet their schedules 62%

Budget overruns 49%

Higher-than-expected maintenance costs 47%

Failed to deliver expected business value and ROI 41%

Software and services projects are cancelled before completion 25%


Agile is … the Methods

DSDM (1995)Scrum (2001)

Kanban (2008 ish)

Lean Software Development (2003)

Crystal (mid 1990s)Feature Driven

Development (1997)

eXtreme Programming

(1996)

AUP/OpenUP

Lean ThinkingQueuing Theory

Theory of Constraints


Contrasting Waterfall with Agile

Time

Wat

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Agile

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Des

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Cod

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Test

Dep

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An

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Rel

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Rel

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Rel

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Dep

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Analysis

Design

Code

Test

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

Analysis

Design

Code

Test

Analysis

Design

Code

Test


The Scrum Process

SprintBacklog

Sprint

24hours

Sprint Planning

Product BacklogAnyone can contribute itemsPrioritized by Product Owner

Backlog tasksexpandedby team

Potentially ShippableProduct Increment

Daily ScrumMeeting

Spr

int

revi

ew

© Copyright 2009 Hitachi ConsultingCommercial in Confidence 8

Company X

Company X spent £100 million on tech refresh and consolidation80 legacy system consolidated to 1All other major projects suspended for 4 years

Was it a Success?It has enabled Company X to take the next step...But...

2 years late 500+ defects in Live Backlog of over 200 Change Requests Business has had to accept over 150 manual work arounds

New CTOPreviously experience with Scrum at …

Dictated that 4 Project would be run as Scrum in first year

Why Change?

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Company X – Pilot

Ideal Agile Project Candidate Checklist

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Attribute Criteria CommentScrum Team Co-locatedProject Importance

High This would give incentive to the team to work well with the process to ensure the success of the project. A low-importance, low risk project usually becomes just a learning project.

Duration 3 - 6 months Big enough so the Delivery Phase has a couple of releases containing 2-3 iterations

Team Size 4 – 6 Developers The project should be small enough to be done by one team. This removes the multi team and cross communication challenges

Testers Experience

High Knowledgeable testers with product and domain knowledge

Product Owner Knowledgeable and committed

A Product Owner with clear vision and clear authority whose first commitment is the project and can answer questions quickly and definitely

Scrum Master Experienced Previous Agile project experience

Business Sponsor

Engaged An engaged business sponsor can help the team if it needs to push against entrenched business processes, departments, or individuals.


Company X Pilot – Providers Online

First major web initiativeJava based CMSJava Struts portlets.Net webservices.Net backendOracle Database

12 Month projects

£2.2 million budget

Team of 22Java and .Net teams had never worked togetherTesters from 3 suppliersProject in total had 6 different suppliersOnly 3 Company X permanent members

Disengaged Product Owner

What????

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Co-located everyone!Moved out to another building

Created our own build serversOwn code branchImplemented CI for JavaManual daily builds for .Net

Created our own System Test Environments

2 Scrum teamsCross functional

Scrum Master 3 Java 2 .Net 1 Html 1 Business Analyst 2 Manual testers 1 Automation Tester

First Steps

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Complete UAT 2 weeks early

Order of magnitude less defects discovered in UAT

Delivered on time and under budget£1.9 million

What a Success!


Scrum of Scrums

ScrumMasterScrumMaster

ScrumTeam

ScrumTeam

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

TechnicalCoordinator

TechnicalCoordinator

Business Focus

Solution Focus

Management Focus

Company X Rollout – Scaling Scrum

ScrumMasterScrumMaster

ScrumTeam

ScrumTeam

ProductOwner

ProductOwner ScrumMasterScrumMaster

ScrumTeam

ScrumTeam

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

Team Rep.Team Rep.

Team Rep.Team Rep.

Team Rep.Team Rep.

ProjectManager

ProjectManager

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

ProductOwner

Product Owner Group

•Resolves conflicts•Identifies cross-team dependencies•Escalate dependencies•Coordinate technical issues•Aids integration

•Focus on business aspects•Resolves backlog dependencies and conflicts•Enables prioritisation across teams•Shields teams from conflicting change•Ensures single vision


Company X Rollout

Migrated from MKS to Microsoft TFSCut build time from hours to 10 min

Continuous Integration10-15 builds a dayTDD

MsTestRhino Mocks

Automation of BuildNightly Builds and Deployments

Automation of Regression testsQTP Pack takes 7 hours to run

Multiple servers

Technical Enablers


Scaling Challenges

Moving from optimal single team poses challengesDistributed/dispersed teams

face-2-face communication compromisedplanning, retrospectives and other meetings difficulttimezone differences can introduce delays

Multiple teamsteam structure: feature/component/hybrid?communication and coordination between teamspotential for wasteful activity – hand-offs, delays etc.dependencies across teamsare distributed by default, even if only within the same buildingSprint synchronisationsoftware/system integration across teamsusually requires extra coordination and planning activity and roles


Distributed Scrum - How to ramping up

Cell based replication

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Distribute first team















Distribute second team















Seed third team from members of first teams
























Distributed Scrum - Enablers

Video conferencingFor daily stand upsPlanning Retrospectives

Digital Scrum boardsWiki and online velocity charts

Scrum teams in offices/grouped desks

Offshore/Onshore ExchangeContinually moving team members between locations


How will you succeed?

Prioritise accurately Provide appropriate responses to impediments

Focus on key practices

Have the right team

A SCRUM Master who can drive the project

A committed development team

Knowledgeable testers

Have the right attitude

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Pitfalls – What will prevent success?

Lack of commitmentFrom IT – looking for the benefits of agile without the cost of changeFrom the business – paying lip-service to the change with an inappropriate Product Owner

Driving from the wrong directionThe agile transition is a change in the relationship between IT and the business

Lack of understandingRigidly applying all aspects of a methodology, even when they prove to be detrimentalAdapting agile practices to suit existing processes, teams, documents and standards

Having unrealistic expectationsTransitioning to agile is not an overnight processIn SCRUM, the first Sprint for a new, blended team should be expected to fail

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Technology

Alm Agile In Large Projects V2