Data-Driven Agility

By Justice Conder

What if I told you there was a way to measure and optimize software delivery performance independent of any particular agile framework and to do so in a way that was empirically and mathematically based? That is the aim of this book. Using quantitative rigor combined with the principles of influence through transparency, we'll unpack an approach to software delivery that can dramatically improve the stability and predictability of your process.

 

Justice Conder is an agile practitioner and technologist relentlessly on the hunt for the next evolution of his trade. When he's not helping teams build software, he's writing about bleeding-edge technological developments.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Justice Conder
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201695316

Justice Conder

Justice Conder is a certified Blockchain expert and crypto evangelist. He enjoys building dynamic development teams that build proof-of-concept applications with bleeding edge technologies for both startups and enterprise IT organizations. He’s founded and sold multiple startups and loves reading and writing on technology. His writings have been featured on ZDNet, Daring Fireball, 2600 Quarterly, and Coinspeaker. You can learn more about him at justiceconder.com

Book preview

Preface

Even though my name is on this book it has been through a daily working relationship with my teams and coworkers that the thoughts, ideas, and execution of what's included in this book has been made possible. It is for this reason that I will often use the pronouns of we and us throughout the course of this work. Without my teams and teammates, none of what follows would have happened or been possible.

My background is in software development so that has undoubtedly shaped and influenced my interpretation of agile. It's almost impossible to work in technology for any period and time and come away feeling that one has arrived. There's always something new and better. A new library, framework, methodology, or language. It's with that same disposition that I’ve found myself pouring over existing agility books and studying the various flavors of scaled agile delivery. I do so with the constant question of why?. Why was this or that approach better and questioning how such claims could be empirically validated.

A certain tipping point was reached at the beginning of 2020. I was tasked with scaling a rapidly growing department and shortly thereafter needing to take the teams fully remote. Suddenly, more than ever, it was critical for leadership to determine the health and effectiveness of an increasing number of teams without being in the same room. It was in this context that the views of this book started to form.

I have increasingly found myself growing tired of prescribed methods seemingly backed by tradition and personality and increasingly drawn to approaches more mathematical and empirical in nature. The more I talked with other agile practitioners, the more I found my evolving ideas to be extremely relevant and yet increasingly divergent from those of my peers. All of this led me to wonder if there was something relatively novel and interesting coalescing.

This book represents the first draft of the structure of those ideas. There is an adage in software development that says If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late. It is in line with this principle that I have decided to publish this early formulation of these thoughts.

Introduction

Motivation and Primary Message

Show me the numbers! (Yelled Jerry Maguire style). My agile group had spent weeks interviewing agile candidates and one of the questions we asked them all was what makes a great team?. We received many answers. Good communication, collaboration, teamwork, etc. What was interesting to us was that not a single person said anything about how successful the team was in accomplishing their stated