Confidential Lessons Learned in Agile Development Jim Smith PDX, Inc.

Confidential Disclaimer: I am not a consultant! (not that there’s anything wrong with that) I am: – Developer, by trade. – Been in management for the past eleven years. – Oversee development of four complex product lines. – Approximately 250 programmers, QA testers, Software architects and DBA’s.

Confidential Context PDX... The original PDX Agile project...

Confidential Lesson #1 Everybody thinks they’re already Agile.

Confidential Lesson #2 Enabling developers to commit has spectacularly good effects: – They own it! – They manage their own overtime! – They drive teammates! – They escalate!

Confidential Lesson #3 Managers get to do good things: – Coach/mentor – Strategic organizational and infrastructure enhancement and fixes (e.g. – switch from proprietary bug tracking system to Jira) – Audit – Get and stay plugged into business – Keep foot soldiers educated – Give morale maintenance the care and feeding it deserves – Talk to each other

Confidential Lesson #4 Write good user stories. – Good user stories are beautiful. – Apply the “no system” litmus test.

Confidential Lesson #5 The industry feels that pre-planning is necessary.

Confidential Lesson #6 TDD: a way of life

Confidential Lesson #7 At all levels, currents push us back toward waterfall: – More docs – More time up front – More time for regression testing – , IM and bug record correspondence

Confidential Lesson #8 Even the best and brightest have trouble with collaboration. – It’s a required skill in today’s software development shop.

Confidential Lesson #9 The team will gladly turn in slackers.

Confidential Lesson #10 [Lean] documentation is still good.

Confidential Lesson #11 “Nothing is over! Nothing!” –John Rambo

Confidential Lesson #12 The team must understand: You can’t do everything that falls out of retrospectives.

Confidential Lesson #13 Although not ideal, team members can be scrum masters.

Confidential Lesson #14 You can get executive, managerial and customer buy-in with your first demo and through training on user stories

Confidential Lesson #15 Customers and other stakeholders at demos = bueno!

Confidential Lesson #16 Let the scrum team stay focused; retain a production support team.

Confidential Lesson #17 Get your DBA team to agree to an SLA.

Confidential Lesson #18 Break down those user stories!

Confidential Lesson #19 Keep noisy managers and executives out of kick offs.

Confidential Lesson #20 The stand up is for all.

Confidential Lesson #21 The PO must appreciate the value of paying technical debt. – 20%

Confidential Lesson #22 The PO is not the team owner.

Confidential Lesson #23 People won’t talk? Slamming doors? Putting up walls? = dysfunctional Agile team.

Confidential Lesson #24 Parties and other rewards after demos == bueno!

Confidential Lesson #25 Don’t let a sprint go longer than five weeks.

Confidential Lesson #26 Train your developers to sign off on user stories early.

Confidential Lesson #27 The PO position is a fulltime job, for a member of the business, who can appreciate technical debt.

Confidential Lesson #28 Co-location of sprint team members is good! At a minimum, members of a given sprint team should live on the same continent (except business analysts and architects)

Confidential Lesson #29 Your development and test environments are production environments. – Enormous waste when they’re down. – Many grumpy people when they’re down; they’re missing deadlines to which they committed!

Confidential Lesson #30 Don’t treat your India folks like warm bodies...or they’ll act like warm bodies.

Confidential Lesson #31 Sashimi is a great idea, but not always 100% possible.

Confidential Lesson #32 Velocity steadily increases when your team rosters are constant, and working on the same product(s). – If you frequently change team rosters, then abandon hope that velocity will increase.

Confidential Lesson #33 The product ought to be ready for production after every sprint. – Although not always practical, strive for it with every sprint!

Confidential Lesson #34 The Scrum Master is a strong servant leader.

Confidential Lesson #35 Plaster that product backlog EVERYWHERE! – The whole team needs to know it! – The company brass needs to know it! – Customers need to know it!

Confidential Lesson #36 Developers are professionals – not privates in the army. Treat them as such.

Confidential Lesson #37 “Scrum” is not an acronym.

Confidential Q&A

Confidential Hemant Elhence

Confidential Synerzip in a Nutshell 1.Software product development partner for small/mid-sized technology companies Exclusive focus on small/mid-sized technology companies, typically venture-backed companies in growth phase By definition, all Synerzip work is the IP of its respective clients Deep experience in full SDLC – design, dev, QA/testing, deployment 2.Dedicated team of high caliber software professionals for each client Seamlessly extends client’s local team, offering full transparency Stable teams with very low turn-over NOT just “staff augmentation”, but provide full mgmt support 3.Actually reduces risk of development/delivery Experienced team - uses appropriate level of engineering discipline Practices Agile development – responsive, yet disciplined 4.Reduces cost – dual-shore team, 50% cost advantage 5.Offers long term flexibility – allows (facilitates) taking offshore team captive – aka “BOT” option

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