agile adoption tales from the coalface

Agile Adoption

Tales from the Coalface

By Nish Mahanty

Agenda

• The 5 preconditions for success

• Understand the problem you are solving

• Use Agile as a risk mitigation approach for projects

• An Agile Adoption Parable

There are certain preconditions that you need in place in order to succeed

You’re more likely to fail if you don’t have them

A BIG Sponsor

Strong, committed, present,

Show me the money!

A Critical Event

When it gets painful, you want to remind them of when it was even more painful

Remove Myths

“We’re agile, we don’t have any documentation”

Start your Communications early.

And often, and to everyone

Target the “Frozen Middle”

Get them on board by addressing their concerns

loss of control, loss of work, disruption of SLAs

Agile Readiness Assessment http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/ChangeReadinessAssessment.pdf http://agileassessments.thoughtworks.com/Agile-Onsite-Assessment-ThoughtWorks.pdf http://jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/assess_your_agility.html

2. Understand the problem you are solving

Define it, agree on it, measure it

Agreeing on the problem is not easy

because the people who caused the problem still work here…

“My bit is okay, its those guys who need to change”

But you need to agree, so that you can measure progress…

And keep renewing the funding

What is the biggest problem?

Fix that first.

Repeat.

This works better than trying to fix all the problems in one go.

To help identify the problems use

Lean Value Stream Maps, Alignment to Business Strategy,

Current State assessments Interviews

Ask the team (They always know)

Project Risk Risk Mitigation

Over Time

Over Budget

Wrong Quality

Deliver the wrong thing

Project Risk Risk Mitigation

Over Time

Work in Iterations Continuous Feedback Big Visible Charts (Burn Down, Burn Up, Risks, Issues) Story Walls Prioritised (Force ranked) Product Backlogs Continuous Integration Tools (Resharper, xUnit, Hudson, Cucumber, Ruby, etc) Good hardware (Lots of RAM) Automated Build/Package/Deployment Build Pipelining

Over Budget

Wrong Quality

Test Driven Design Automation Testing Pair Programming Quality Metrics (Static code analysis, etc)

Deliver the wrong thing

High Bandwidth Communications Co-Located Teams Business part of the team Daily Standups, Showcases, Retrospectives Clear requirements process (Stories, and BDD)

Agile transformations involve combinations of:

Technical Practices adoption Governance /Structural changes Cultural / Behavioural changes

Each organisation finds its own equilibrium

point

Three Levels of Agility Commitment

Strategic

Portfolio

Operational

CEO

CIO

CAO CTO ...

Learn by doing, with a player-coach

The best way to learn is through embedded coaches

Be wary of “process” coaches

A parable

This is Brad

Stolen Reused with permission from Steve Hayes www.CogentConsulting.com.au

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Brad is an Agile coach and consultant

Brad is offered a gig at

Ponderous Software Development

Ponderous want to become agile

Brad gives Ponderous his “Agile 101” presentation, and they love it

They ask Brad to coach their adoption

However, Ponderous can see that agile as Brad described it, clearly won’t

work for them…

Because they are different!

Brad can do whatever he wants, except…

He can’t change anything about operations or the production

environment

(different department)

He can’t have access to the business people

(they’re too busy)

Every project needs a business case accurate to +/- 10% before Execution

(CFO requirement)

Projects must have fixed costs, fixed scope, and fixed delivery date before

development starts

(business requirement)

All the requirements need to be documented to ISO-666 before

development starts

(audit requirement)

The process needs to be identical across all teams

(QA requirement)

The tools needs to be identical across all teams

(We got a great deal on licensing)

Developers can’t access

(or download from) the internet

(security requirement)

He can’t post information on the walls

(facilities requirement)

He can’t spend any money on hardware or software

(budget constraint)

Development must be in a new language, with no developers

experienced in that language, and no training budget

(architectural requirement)

70% of the workforce must be contractors/ delivery partners

(onshore and offshore)

(Division requirement)

You must use all of the PMO Project Lifecycle templates

(PMO Requirement)

You actually need to be willing to change!

I’ve been there…

Be careful that you don’t give on too many of the constraints

This is insidious, because the constraints may sound reasonable to their owners

Focus on addressing the intent of the constraint

Change the mindset

Value Chain not Siloed Services

Use your Consultants

Good Cop – Bad Cop

What about my Governance?

Governance is hard! But it is critical that you get it right.

In Summary

Understand your readiness to change Agree on the problem

Adopt the necessary techniques Challenge the constraints

Tips

At some point you will have a conversation

“Are we really up for this?”

• Be prepared

You will get staff turnover

• Be prepared

What about Scrum?

• Scrum for common naming

• XP for technical techniques

• Lean for reducing waste

Align KRAs to match the goals

• Reduce Sev 1s in production

• Improve Customer satisfaction score

What about Offshore Agile

• Increase comms (video etc)

• Visit often – put a face to the voice

• Rotate people onshore-offshore

• Shared information radiators (Mingle)

• Adjust your expectations

Focus your efforts on converting the 80% “undecided” into “on-board”

Sabotage Workshop

• How would I make this fail?

Insist on Heavy Documentation Don’t Empower the teams Demand tight predictability Don’t make your resources available Lip service, but no real support Promote the blame culture Punish Failure

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nish@mahanty.com