Agile Methodologies In-Depth: Delivering Proven Agile, SCRUM and Kanban Practices for High-Quality Business Demands (English Edition)

By Sudipta Malakar

This book is for businesses that aspire to improve agility, deliver fit-for-purpose products and services, delight customers, and provide the security of long-term survival associated with mature businesses that consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. Learn a lean approach by seeing how Kanban made a difference in four real-world situations. You'll explore how different teams used Kanban to make paradigm-changing improvements in software development. These teams were struggling with overwork, unclear priorities, and a lack of direction. As you discover what worked for them, you'll understand how to make significant changes in real-life situations.
The Artefact has been developed as a resource to understand, evaluate, and use Agile and Hybrid Agile approaches. This practice guide will help you understand when, where, and how to apply Agile approaches and provides practical tools for practitioners and organizations wanting to increase agility.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9789389328578

Book preview

Introduction

Change is difficult, and changing culture is even more difficult. Adopting Agile, Scrum, XP, and KANBAN requires a change of culture and mindset. Many organizations and teams have made many Agile, KANBAN, and Scrum implementation mistakes during the transition. As you discover what worked for them, you’ll understand how to make significant changes in real situations. Change is difficult, but the US government is also going agile. Are you aware that " The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text? "

Your team is stressed, and the priorities are unclear. Too much work and too little time? You’re not sure what your teammates are working on, and management isn’t helping. You/your team are encountering overreaching, causing an aborted start, false summit plateaus, and failure to realize full benefit. The attrition rate is too high. If your team is struggling with any of these things, these four case studies will guide you to project success. You can see how Kanban was used to significantly improve time to market and to create a shared focus across marketing, IT, and operations. It will also help you in PMI-ACP and SAFe Exam preparation.

You / your team is planning for enterprise Agile adoption, but you are not aware of Agile SCRUM Kanban Metrics, roadmap, and concrete actions, which enable organizations to achieve fitness-for-purpose and exceptional business agility.

You/your team is planning to use Scrum to develop innovative products and services that delight your customers, increase employee satisfaction, win in the marketplace, enhance customer/business delight and capture new business. But you are not aware of Agile Scrum XP best practices, pitfalls and anti-patterns.

You are students or parents lost in your hectic daily schedules, due to which you missed your milestones. You lost your health in anxiety and overthinking. Tomorrow is your job interview or Agile written assessment(s), but you are anxious over how to pass it with flying colors.

"Agile Adoption Mistakes You Must Avoid" is for people familiar with Agile, KANBAN and Scrum and have a basic knowledge of Agile and Scrum. To learn about the basics of Scrum, read the free downloadable KANBAN artefact by David J. Anderson & Scrum Guide, the official Scrum body of knowledge, by Ken SCWHABER and Jeff Sutherland.

The examples given in this book are user-focused and have been updated with topics, figures, and examples. The book features real-life approaches with examples covering topics from simple to complex and addressing several core concepts and advance topics.

The book is divided into the following sections:

Pitfalls of the Traditional Waterfall model and the key success factors for adopting Agile SCRUM Kanban in any organization/projects/programs and field rules for faster performance & better results

Use of Agile for students and parents

Portfolio/ Upstream Kanban implementations lessons learnt and key takeaways

PMI-ACP and SAFe exam preparation

Interview questions and answers on Agile SCRUM, XP, DSDM, KANBAN and SCRUMBAN

Agile & Kanban Metrics

JIRA tool use in projects/programs

Hybrid Agile, Agile SHIFT Framework, and different types of Agile contracts

How Agile is mapped to traditional practices, along with critical success factors of adopting business agility

Lessons learnt and pragmatic approach – Agile Scrum Kanban

Common Agile SCRUM KANBAN misconceptions

Key takeaways

Glossary

Quiz session

CHAPTER 1

Key Success Factors for Adopting Agile SCRUM Kanban in Any Organizations

Introduction

Agile began as an iterative, collaborative, value-driven approach to developing software. It was originally conceived as a framework to help structure work on complex projects with dynamic, unpredictable characteristics. But since then, it has evolved into somewhat of a philosophy or world view with a set of well-articulated values and principles that it shares with Agile's many varieties.

Let's discuss some of the top benefits of organizational agility.

Figure 1.1: The top benefits of organizational agility

(Image Source: leankanban.com)

Based on our research findings and conversations with top executives, we discovered that Agile methodologies can help spur growth and support digital transformation in an era of high customer demand and fast-emerging market trends. The report shows Agile organizations experience:

Faster time to market (60%)

Faster innovation (59%)

Improved non-financial results such as customer experience and product quality (59%)

Improved employee morale (57%)

The essence of Agile development:

Lean – eliminate waste

Iterative – embrace change

Incremental delivery – promote feedback

Value-driven – enhanced ROI, reduced risk

Collaborative – customer involvement

Quality-focused – potentially shippable product

Bring a just-in-time product management perspective to IT projects

An Agile Team!

The Agile team is a co-located, cross-functional, self-directed group of individuals who are self-sufficient as a team and have the ability and authority to perform to deliver business values in short iteration time box.

What is Agile?

Let's see what Agile is.

Figure 1.2: What is Agile

(Image source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a simple yet incredibly powerful set of principles and practices that help teams deliver products in short cycles, enabling fast feedback, continual improvement, and rapid adaptation to change.

Scrum refers to a holistic or "rugby approach—where teams go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth—as opposed to the traditional sequential or relay race" approach for managing new product development.

What is SCRUM

Let's see what Scrum is.

Figure 1.3: What is SCRUM

(Image source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

BEIJING Olympics - Men's relay anchor Tyson Gay, part of the American team that won the relay at last year's World Championships, dropped the baton from third-leg runner Darvish Patton.

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

Agile manifesto

Agile principles

Key agile principles

Agile values

Traditional life cycle versus agile development

Agile mapped to traditional practices

Agility versus agile

The state of agility

Three steps to increase agility

Agile framework

Agile concepts

Benefits of agile

Agile contracts nuts and bolts

Backlog management in agile

Agile contracts - modeling a transformation in contracting

Role of manager (people) in an agile organization

Agile estimation and planning at program and portfolio level

Agile budget management

Managing bottlenecks with KANBAN

What is KANBAN

Kanban general practices

Why KANBAN

Benefits of KANBAN

10 things about KANBAN

Six forms of proto KANBAN

Sample KANBAN board

KANBAN card template

KANBAN and incident categorization - example

Jira ticket/user profile

Jira tool best practice – dashboard

KANBAN - critical & emergency events

5 enabling agile ways of working across the organization

The agile shift framework

The new role of the manager

KANBAN vs. scrum

Objectives

After studying this unit, you should be able to:

Understand the concept(s) of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban

Apply Agile, Scrum, and Kanban in your organization/project(s)

Understand the pitfalls of the traditional waterfall model

Understand the field rules for faster performance and better results

Understand the critical success factors of adopting Agile over the Waterfall model

1.1 Agile Manifesto

Agile Manifesto, 2001 Snowbird, Utah, is a statement of 4 values and 12 principles that summarize the thinking of the agile perspective and methodologies. Even though agile methods predated the manifesto by several years, it is considered the founding document of agile.

What is Agile Manifesto?

The agile manifesto was created during a meeting in February 2001 that brought together a number of software and methodology experts who were in the forefront of the emerging agile methods. The people in attendance are shown in the following image:

Figure 1.4: Agile Manifesto, 2001 Snowbird, Utah

(Image Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/)

The Agile Alliance provides some background on the genesis of Agile methods:

In the late 1990s, several methodologies began to gain public attention. Each had a different combination of old ideas, new ideas, and transmuted old ideas, but they all emphasized close collaboration between the programmer team and business experts; face-to-face communication (as more efficient than written documentation); frequent delivery of new deployable business value; tight, self-organizing teams; and ways to craft the code and the team such that the inevitable requirements churn was not a crisis [Agile Alliance 2001c].

A group of software industry practitioners and consultants, who came to be known as the Agile Alliance, developed and published key tenets known as the Agile Manifesto for Software Development [Agile Alliance 2001]:

Figure 1.5: Agile Manifesto

(Image Source: AgileAlliance.org)

The four values of the Agile Manifesto are written in the format A over B to address intention, focus, and effort.

Illustration of Agile Manifesto

The four values of the Agile Manifesto aren't saying "Do A instead of B". Instead, they acknowledge that both A and B will be components of our projects but say that we should apply more of our focus, emphasis, and intention to A than to B:

Figure 1.6: Agile Manifesto illustration

(Image Source: AgileAlliance.org)

It is important to note that none of the elements on the right-hand side of the list are absent; rather, they support and add value to the elements on the left-hand side of the list:

Tools and processes facilitate interactions between team members, as opposed to shoehorning these interactions into molds and patterns for the sake of process compliance.

Documentation is developed to add value to development and sustenance of the code rather than as evidence to prove compliance or completion.

Contract negotiations must establish a collaborative work environment that enables effective decision making and flexible response, rather than high overhead change control processes. (This can also include early termination points to limit government risk for poor performance.)

High-level plans must be flexible to allow for the necessary evolution of system requirements; plans become more granular at the development level.

1.2 Agile Principles

In addition to the four agile values, the authors of the Manifesto created twelve guiding principles for agile methods. This part of the Manifesto reads as follows:

Begin with clarity about WHY, HOW, and WHAT over WHAT, HOW, and WHY. Start with outcome, not output, and follow it all across the journey.

Inspect, adapt, improve, and sustain the business outcome.

Encourage self-direction for teams to uncover innovation, instead of concentrating leadership in the hands of a select few.

In other words:

Focus on customer and business value

Iterative and fast

Flexible, adaptive, and continuously improving

Collaboration and teamwork

Empowered and self-directed teams

Let's take a closer look at each of the Agile Manifestos twelve principles. Again, although the principles may use software development terms, as you read about them, think about how these concepts apply to other types of knowledge work projects.

Interpretation of Agile Principles

Highest priority is customer satisfaction, achieved by the early and consistent delivery of valuable software OR "Satisfy customer with great systems".

Welcome the changing requirements, even those that arise late in development OR Welcome change.

Continuous focus on delivering shippable customer priority deliverables in an iterative and incremental way. Working software is frequently delivered, from a couple of weeks or months; shorter timescale is more preferred to use OR Deliver frequently.

The business folk and developers must work together throughout the project OR Work with business.

Projects are built around motivated individuals - support and trust them to successfully accomplish the job OR Motivate people.

Face-to-face conversation is the most effective way of conveying information OR Face-to-face communications.

The working software is the principal measure of progress OR Measure systems done.

Agile processes promote sustainable development, the ability to maintain a constant pace OR Maintain sustainable pace.

Good design and continuous attention to techno-functional excellence enhances agility OR Maintain design.

Simplicity and continuous focus on % of work done rather than % of effort spent by team OR Keep it simple.

Requirements, best architecture, and design emerge from all self-organizing teams OR Team creates architecture.

Frequently reflect on how to improve efficiency OR Reflect and adjust.

Your description may vary, depending on what part of the principle stands out most for you, but the following are the possible abbreviations.

1.3 Key Agile Principles

Focus on the customer and business value

Iterative and fast development

Flexible, adaptive, and continuously improving

Collaboration and team work

Empowered and self-directed teams

1.4 Agile Values

Trust: Trust among the various stakeholders (team, scrum master, product owner, project manager) plays a vital role in making Agile successful.

Respect: Individuals have to respect and consider the opinion of all the stakeholders, even if a team member is a fresher to the team.

Openness: Team/scrum master should be open to the management and the product owner while providing the status updates, highlighting risks (both internal and external risks).

Courage: Team should have the courage to say NO to the management if we cannot commit to the delivery with appropriate reasons.

What is Agile values?

Let's take a closer look at the Agile values together:

Figure 1.7: Agile values

(Image Source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

Your description may vary, depending on what part of the value stands out most for you/your customer/business, but these are the possible abbreviations.

What are your values?

Your values are not just the values you practice, but the values you walk past

~Australian General

1.5 Traditional Lifecycle Versus Agile Development

Agile process is the universal remedy for software development project failure. Software applications developed through the Agile process have three times the success rate of the traditional Waterfall method and a much lower percentage of time and cost overruns.

- CHAOS Report, 2011 - Standish Group

Agile vs. Waterfall

Figure 1.8: Waterfall vs. Agile

(Image Source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

According to the 2011 CHAOS report from the Standish Group, Agile projects are often more successful than non-Agile projects. The building blocks in the success of Agile process are:

Capturing requirements through user stories

Use of Agile Personas and wireframes

Creating product roadmaps

Story mapping

Predictive (Waterfall) Project Management

The waterfall or predictive method is the traditional way to manage projects for lead parts several decades. The waterfall method is very straightforward in its concept, as the project tasks are carried out in strict sequential order.

As part of planning, the project timeframe is split into a series of stages or phrases, with each one having a gate review at the end. This review is to check the progress and agree the plan for the next stage. Once approved, there is no going back! Just like a waterfall flowing down the hill.

These distinct endpoints or goals are set for each phase of development and cannot be revisited after completion. In this basic system, a team must complete one step before starting the next. Managers find this system very straightforward and easy-to-implement. The waterfall model emphasizes a logical progression of steps.

Just make a list of the task steps you need to accomplish a deliverable item and get to work! Team members can quickly understand waterfall processes, saving project managers valuable communication time.

The waterfall method is commonly used for projects of an industrial nature. Here, the task work is visible and stable. Once the plan has been approved, the project manager will use a "command and control" management approach and issue packages of work to the specialist team creating the products.

The construction industry is a good example of using the waterfall method. An architect's plan is created and agreed, and the project manager is there to oversee the construction. More managers use the Waterfall system than any other, and the process sequence usually follows the following stages or phases:

Specification of consumer requirements

Concept, design, and planning

Creation of a physical product (construction, coding, etc.)

Integration into current systems

Validation (testing, debugging, etc.)

Product installation

Ongoing maintenance.

The Waterfall method best suits teams in manufacturing and construction that create physical products and follow precise assembly orders, and these plans from previous projects can be used as a template and applied to their current work with little or no adjustment.

The waterfall model is a linear, sequential approach to the software development life cycle that has been popular in software engineering and product development. Before moving to the next stage or phase, there is usually a review and sign off process to ensure that all the defined goals (products/deliverables) have been met.

The waterfall approach is ideal for projects that have specific documentation, fixed requirements, ample resources, an established timeline, and well-understood technology. The waterfall method is composed of seven non-overlapping stages:

Requirements: Potential requirements, deadlines, and guidelines for the project are analyzed and placed into a functional specification. This stage handles the defining and planning of the project without mentioning specific processes.

Analysis: The system specifications are analyzed to generate product models and business logic that will guide production. This is also when financial and technical resources are audited for feasibility.

Design: A design specification document is created to outline technical design requirements like programming language, hardware, data sources, architecture, and services.

Coding/Implementation: The source code is developed using the models, logic, and requirements designated in the prior stages. Typically, the system is designed in smaller components or units before being implemented together.

Testing: This is when quality assurance, unit, system, and beta tests take place to report issues that may need to be resolved. This may cause a forced repeat of the coding stage for debugging. If the system passes the tests, the waterfall continues forward.

Operation/deployment: The product or application is deemed fully functional and is deployed to a live environment.

Maintenance/support: Corrective, adaptive, and perfective maintenance is carried out indefinitely to improve, update, and enhance the final product. This could include releasing patch updates or new versions.

However, there is a move toward using the Agile method (see later) for the development of software. Alternatives to the waterfall model include Joint