Practical Implementation of Agile Methodologies

Editor's Notes

1. Official session description: “Are you familiar with Agile concepts such as Scrum, but unsure how to actually put it into practice? Have you tried to start an agile team but stalled out of the gate after a month or so? High performing agile teams don’t just happen overnight – it takes discipline and a well thought out plan of attack to slowly introduce and integrate good agile practices into your team’s daily workflow. This session will focus on not only how to start the agile transformation, but how to keep iterating and improving over time to achieve long term success.”
2. If Agile is a philosophy or a mindset, then let’s talk about the different frameworks available that help you realize that philosophy. Each methodology has its strengths and weaknesses. Scrum is most popular, so that’s what I’ll focus on
3. Agile has been shown to work at companies both large and small. It has also been known to fail at companies large and small... how do we avoid that fate?
4. I know this sounds like a funny example, but this actually happened to a team I know.
5. If you can implement every single agile practice on day 1, more power to you. But I believe that there are some practices that are more important than others, and that a phased approach to slowly adding in more process and rigor is the best way to go
6. Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development, 1965 phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results.
7. This stage is where you will be teaching the rest of your company about Agile processes. Note: I said company, not just team. It is important that you educate not just your team but the managers as well about what you’re trying to accomplish here.
8. Observe - be like Jane Goodall
9. What is daily standup? “What did you do yesterday, what did you do today, is there anything blocking your progress?” 15 minutes or less Cadence is key - Scrum is all about rhythm
10. Get them speaking the same language. Define “done”. Define key terms such as “technical debt” - tell story of LG team and how no one could understand why code was having trouble
11. This is the stage where you need to decide which tools you need to do Agile. Are you a remote team? Are you co-located? That will influence which solutions will work best for you.
12. Key team members: Coach, Scrum Master, QA, Product Owner In Forming, you should be working together to lay groundwork for rest of the team to transition
13. Some teams never get away from this stage.
14. In Storming, you will need to be a bit more dictative - you will need to push people to do things, you will need to work with their boss at times to make sure they are compliant Daily Stand Up is your best friendThis is your best opportunity to correct the team on best practices
15. You want to start collecting metrics. However, because you are still storming, those metrics will be too all over the place to have much value at first.
16. Theme: the team may challenge you, but stand fast to the processes you believe in
17. If you can’t explain why you’re doing a process, then you shouldn’t be doing it If something isn’t working for the team and is preventing you from moving forward, you need to change it This is where the retrospective is key <-- most important thing you will do (explain retrospectives briefly) There are techniques to help you with retrospectives - may feel awkward at first
18. When you are in norming, you should be able to start gleaning lots of value from your metrics. You can begin to do predictive planning here. Stories about the power of metrics
19. The power of agile is hitting the target everytime, versus having wild variations in ability to produce. -- The story of how my manager tried to set performance goals for me based on speed of delivery - You want to hit a pace that allows you to accomplish quality. Focusing just on speed can lead to defects and technical debt that kills you later on, if you’re not careful
20. Hard to get to, hard to maintain
21. At this stage, the team should understand Agile practices and will be self-directedDaily Stand Up should run itself Team should feel like they are reporting to each other, not to you
22. Small changes, not large. You are just refining your process
23. Want to stay in Performing? Acknowledge that you can always do better. Always be re-evaluating where you are as a team, especially emotionally. Sprint retrospectives are a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of the team, and to ensure you stay in the performing stage
24. Congrats, you’ve done it! Now, think about ways to spread the agile goodness. Look at ways that Agile might help other teams, or even management
25. Be agile about your OWN agile knowledge Always be looking for ways to improve your agile kung fu