Agile In Practice
Benjamin Booth
Spring 2010
Programmer/Architect
Proprietary
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Author/Blogger
benjaminbooth.com
Proprietary
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Prescriptive-style History
• Restrict change to improve predictions
• Drive with the plan
• Communicate with documents
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Waterfall Is
Expensive!
Waterfall Not all Bad
• Space shuttle flight control system
• Requirements are well defined
• Unlimited resources
• Useful for < 5% of all software projects
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Typical Requirements
• The site shall have a ‘nice looking’ menu page
for an existing restaurant’s seven year old
website. (Nice looking is defined by the
customer.)
• The system shall have the ability to edit the
menu online. Current menus are stored in a
MS Word document.
• The site shall have a ‘Suggestion’ capability.
Users can use a form to submit suggestions
which get stored and also emailed to the owner.
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Agile
• People (users) are the focus
• Measure success with working software
• Expect and embrace change
• Use small, skilled, motivated teams
agilemanifesto.org
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Agile - SCRUM Style
• Japanese origin
• Whole team
• 1995 OOPSLA, by Jeff Sutherland and
Ken Schwaber
• Skeleton of practices and roles
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SCRUM Workflow
Proprietary
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SCRUM Roles
• Product Owner: Manages the backlog
• Scrum Master: Coach the process
• Team Member: Write code
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Practice Tip
• Create User Advocates
• Include User Advocates in:
• Story creation
• Priority setting
• Interaction design sessions
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SCRUM Artifacts
• Backlog
• Sprint Burn Down
• Sprint Backlog
• Past Backlogs
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Practice Tip
• Store Backlogs electronically
• Use physical Task Boards
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Artifacts
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Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Taskboard
Sprint Burn Down
Proprietary
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Artifacts
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Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Taskboard
Sprint Burn Down
Proprietary
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Artifacts
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Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Taskboard
Sprint Burn Down
Proprietary
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Artifacts
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Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Taskboard
Sprint Burn Down
Proprietary
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Practice Tip
• Keep old Sprint Backlogs & Burndowns
• Keep old tasks
• Use for velocity calculations
• Helps identify trends
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Planning Poker
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Each developer has a set of cards with estimation values
A user story is presented
Each developer picks the card representing the number of story
points the user story should take
Everyone then shows their cards
Discussion happens until agreement on a number
Repeat for each user story
Schedule a sprint with the required number of story points based
on your team’s velocity
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As a patron, I want to...
• easily navigate to the menu from the home
page so that I can make a phone order
(delivery)
• be able to make suggestions for
improvements to my overall dining
experience
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As the restaurant manager, I
want to...
• create, update and delete menu items so
that it stays interesting and keeps people
coming back
• generate a PDF of the menu so that I can
give it to the printer for creating ‘real’
menus
• get customer feedback emailed to me so I
can quickly respond to problems and also
pass on compliments to the staff
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Agile Challenges
• Access to real customers
• Large, distributed teams
• Industry misperceptions
• Command-and-control culture
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Summary
• Waterfall or nothing still predominant
• Agile is highly adaptive, people centric
• SCRUM is an effective Agile process
skeleton
• If your process isn’t working adapt it
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Practice Tip
• Introduce incrementally
• Business strategy and architecture a must
• Get everyone speaking the same language
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Practice Tip
• Allocate QA time explicitly
• Keep PM simple but do it
• Keep improving your process
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Q&A
References
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
http://www.waterfall2006.com/
http://www.agileManifesto.org/
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000588.html
http://www.drdobbsonline.net/architect/207100381
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28management%29
http://spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1685/failt1
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As a patron, I want to easily navigate to the menu from the home page so that I
can make a phone order (delivery)
As a restaurant owner, I want patrons to be able to make suggestions so that I
can improve their dining experience.
As the restaurant manager, I want to create, update and delete menu items so
that the menu stays interesting.
As the restaurant manager, I want to generate a PDF of the menu so that I can
give it to the printer for creating ‘real’ menus.
As the restaurant manager, I want to get customer feedback emailed to me so I
can quickly respond to problems and also pass on compliments to the staff.