Agile Adoption: Making it Successful

Agile Adoption: Making it Successful

For a successful adoption, it is important to be clear about “Why" the move to agile? “What” are the benefits that adopting agile will bring? “Which” practices of agile make sense for the

organization to adopt? “Who” all will be affected? “How” should we adopt agile and bring about the

“change”?

This presentation aims to highlight some of the key considerations for a successful agile adoption.

Introduction

Ambreesh Bangur Development / Project Manager / Agile Enthusiast 11 years of s/w industry experience as developer and

manager Involved with adopting agile in 3 teams over the last 4

years ranging from a services firm to a startup, where a more traditional, “waterfallish” model was in place. 

Intended Audience People planning to adopt agile – Can consider the ideas

presented to help define a strategy for trying agile People who are/have adopted agile – May be some of the

issues discussed here are applicable to them

Agenda

Introduction The “Why” The “What” The “Who” The “How” Questions

The “Why”

Be clear about "why" the move to agile? What are the key pain points today? What are the improvements that agile

can bring?▪ Is this the latest “trend”?

Share the “why” Acceptance vs Imposition

The “What”

Which practices of agile make sense for the organization/team to adopt?

What customizations to the practices should be done to adapt them to our context? Large Team, Distributed team across

time zones

The “Who”

This is the most important piece “Individuals and interactions over

processes and tools” It is important that people are

“trained” in agile “principles” & “values” not just “practices” “We have lots of bits of paper on the walls, and we

ask the 3 Scrum questions at stand-up every day, and we don’t do any planning, design, or documentation, but software still isn’t coming out!”

The “Who”

Who all will be affected? And “how” Dev, QA, Documentation,

Localization, Product Management, Steering Team etc..

Business and stakeholder buy-in is important and the right expectations need to be set.  

The “Who”

Agile Teams need specific behaviors Adaptable Self organizing & self-disciplined Collaborative and collective ownership Interaction Simplicity, “Do what makes sense”

attitude

The “How”

Just following superficial practices will not help Doing a daily stand up, iterative

development is “easy” but not enough Cross functional involvement, customer

or customer representation, feedback is important

The “How”

Like any change in an organization, this needs to be planned, managed and dealt with

There will be resistance Agile “Coach” / “Mentor” can help

teams

Summary

Adoption itself could be "agile" Done in an iterative way with regular

feedback▪ Begin a “Pilot”?

Guiding principles are more important than practices

Collaborative and evolutionary rather than prescriptive

Questions

Resources http://alistair.cockburn.us/Is+the+failure+in+agile+adop

tion+due+to+cargo+cult,+shu+actions,+or+just+laziness

http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileOffshore.html http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html

Agile Adoption Case Study “Why”

Developing a new product, needed something for adaptable and quick in terms of delivering a working system

I had experience with Agile and SCRUM and thought it would work

“Who” Discussed with all involved about the “change”,

got buy-in Checked the impact with each team – Dev, QA,

Documentation, Product Management and Business.

Agile Adoption Case Study “What”

Dev and QA team in different sites, co-located them Product Manager, Business in the US Daily Scrum, reduced frequency later System Metaphor, Minimal Design documents Wiki User centric design, frequent showcases, prototyping No Burndown, Weekly feature based milestones Regular review of Product Backlog and Feedback No Test Driven Development, No Automation of System Tests for v1. No Pair Programming, Peer Review

“How” Date and people were “fixed”, Scope was managed Introduced people to the key concepts of “Agile” Checked for feedback every 3-4 weeks