Logo of your organization Protect Organisation from typical agile failures Grace Salve & Test Lead Nisha G.Kotwani Fiserv India Pvt. Ltd Logo of your organization

Abstract Agile is widely and successfully used pole to pole for all types of projects but still there are projects where Agile can fail. As per report published in “Forrester’s Research”, projects are facing challenges in adopting agile successfully. Our paper aims to explore these failures and provide guidelines to overcome and turn them into success stories.

Introduction of Agile Agile methods promotes systematic management process that promotes teamwork, accountability and best practices which helps in speedy delivery. “Agile Development” is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. The most popular agile methodologies include Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum and Kanban.

Comparative study of different agile methodology

Market Survey

Success Rate:

Process pain point Unwillingness of Team to Follow Agile Absence of process discipline Teams are at variance

Solutions Unwillingness of Team to Follow Agile Interactive Agile training (Boot camp) Arrange events Start implementing Agile practices Highlight positive effect of implementing Agile Dedicated Agile coach Ownership

Solutions Continues… Absence of process discipline Dedicated, certified scrum master All the team members should be on the same page Every team mate should be trained Process should be streamlined Risk and issue should be conveyed at proper time Project should have technology expert

Solutions Continues… Teams are at variance Geographical condition Understand the importance of meeting and ceremonies Minimum dependency on counterpart Reduces dependency on other team members

Agile decision making framework Gartner report and Mckinsey report where Agile fail Decisions have to be made quickly and decisively using the best available information

Success and Failure Report

Conclusion Agile is a fail safe environment. A failure can occur only due to wrong or partial adoption of agile. Following the wrong framework also lead to failure.  

Questionnaire Questions Response General Is team co-located   Is team co-located Does expert Scrum master available in the team Does team has subject matter expert Is task can be divided into small chunks Are there any features depends on long running batches Does Project has Agile Coach Team awareness of Agile methodology Are Agile trainings/ Boot camps planned for the team Is project Plan in place and future road map is ready Is project stable and maintenance patch is expected Does your organisation follows strict hierarchy Scrum Software development projects or programs that have changing requirements Are you facing changing markets and challenging competition within development of products or software Do you need to make a more intense or dramatic change in their culture or structure to be successful Is working software be developed in two-four weeks’ time frame Kanban Does project desire small, regular and incremental changes to their structure or processes Does your project complex system or processes that require long lead times in weeks and months Hardware product or software that needs to be improved through longer periods of time Is your software model time boxed XP Do you team have long running projects Do your product require deep domain knowledge Team consist of Senior Developers with excellent communication skill Is continues integration involved Does project has pair programming practice Is organisation follow culture (e.g. shift time)

Appendix: None References Reports from Version1, Gartner, Mckinsey, Foresters https://googleweblight.com https://techbean.com https://thoughtworks.com https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997578(v=vs.120).aspx https://www.slideshare.net/anishcheriyan/unknown-terrain-use-lean-startup  

Author Biography Grace Salve : Grace has 9 years of IT experience working as Test Lead with FIserv. She has 2 years of Agile experience. Nisha Kotwani Nisha has total 5.5 years of experience working as Test professional with Fiserv. She has total 3 years of experience.

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