Agile On The BeachWinning clients’ trust
Successful Agile project management
Cameron & Wilding , 02. 09. 2016
Talk Overview
Since embracing Agile Scrum project management methodology, winning clients’
trust has become smoother across our accounts.
Along the years, I have noticed a few patterns of success across these projects,
with clients such as the Imperial War Museums, the Telegraph Media Group, Sage
Publications, and The Economist Group.
The underlying common denominator of success being happy, satisfied and
returning customers.
So, who is Laura?
● 9 years in the digital industry
● 6 years focus on open source technology
● 3 years Agile
● Italian
Cameron & Wilding● Drupal specialist since 2006
● Team of 20 people, London HQ
● Professional, passionate, friendly
● Award Winning
● Drupal 8, Web and App dev, UX design,
strategy consultancy
● Agile project management & coaching
The Agile Manifesto
Individuals & interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Cultural fit
Individuals & interactions
● Professional & friendly
● Great communication
● Open and honest (transparent)
“ Great team, great clients, great work ”
Intro- Great communication
● Instant BUT streamlined communication
● Fast feedback loop
● Encourages collaboration
● Whole team = no “middle man”
● Reduce misunderstanding(-s)
● Be assertive, confident but collaborative
Be Assertive !
● The backlog grooming meetings are a product backlog refinements
● Writing user stories and prioritisation happens ahead (!!) of the session
● It helps keeping the backlog clean and orderly
What happens during the backlog grooming sessions? We
○ Discuss the top items on the product backlog by asking questions
○ Refine user stories by translating the answers in additional Acceptance
Criteria
○ Estimate user stories
○ Look deeper into the backlog to do longer-range planning (2 sprints)
Building the environment - team realignment
Customer collaboration
● Your knowledge of the product is built here, its intricacies, its history
● You are aware why certain decisions are taken
● You pro-actively contribute to shape the product
● You ensure user stories are clear for you / your team
○ It’s not only about the devs !
When you have a good backlog session, the rest of your time is focus time,
as the majority of your Qs have been answered already
Sage publications - Professional and friendly
● Clients prepare for meetings, as it’s us (grooming)
● Be informative when sharing information (stand ups)
● Facilitate meetings
○ Cut off off-topic conversations
○ Assign owners to actions (retrospectives)
○ Review agreed actions/mitigation points, before the end of the sprint
Your clients time is precious... so it’s yours !
● Challenges
○ Understanding of the workflow
○ Team roles & responsibilities
● Attendees
○ Core project team
○ Sage UK
○ Sage India
○ Sage US
○ 3rd parties (contractors)
GoalAs all new teams, we need a
common understanding of
[1] how to best work together and
[2] roles & responsibilities of each
team member
in order to run smooth, more
integrated and collaborative
sprints
Sage Publications - case study
TO DO IN PROGRESS PEER REVIEW IN TESTING DONE
local / dev local / dev local & test / dev candwtest / QA candwtest / QA
Assigned to the dev at the start of the sprint
Dev implement peer review feedback as priority
2 devs peer review, code only
Functional testing: all ACs are met
Stories that have passed testing are ready here
Prioritised top to bottom
Dev starts working on story
Once code is approved merge to candwtest
If yes, story is closed with a comment
Stories in this column, are merged, passed testing, realise tagged
Flagged stories that didn’t pass testing are back here at the top of the queue
Quick testing: dev makes sure all ACs are met
Once merged, dev tags the user story on Jira against its release
If not, story is flagged and sent back to the dev with a comment
Dev completes dev specs
Dev completes QA instructions before assigning ticket to QA team
If ACs are met, but we realise we wanted smthing different a new story is raised in the backlog
IWM - Professional & friendly
● Keep your personal touch
○ Be genuine
○ Down to earth
○ Be fun
● It’s not always easy
○ Disagree
○ Admit mistakes
○ Encourage feedback
“The quality of the work they produced was
outstanding, and the project was run with great humour and with the spirit
of one big team.”
Jeremy Ottevanger, Technical Web Manager
Imperial War Museums (IWM)
The Telegraph Media Group- transparency
● Budget tracking
● Budget forecasting
● Reporting
○ sprint reports
○ release reports
○ timesheets
“Their excellent project management - which is an
example of how a third party company should report about the "health" of a project - their developers’ passion for high
quality code and the "openness" of their
management were key in our successful relationship”
The Golden Rule
Flexibility ● Experiment, fail, repeat !
● There’s no just ONE way to do things
● Adapt your work style
● Be receptive
● Observe
● Keep an open mind
LAURA TWITTER @LauraDlnv C&W TWITTER @cameronwilding
LAURA EMAIL [email protected]
C&W WEB www.cameronandwilding.com
Thank you !