Agile Development with Plone
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The document discusses adapting agile development techniques for managing Plone projects with fixed budgets and flexible scopes, especially in distributed, part-time teams. It outlines roles, planning strategies, communication tools, and tools for tracking progress, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and understanding between clients and developers. The session also highlights challenges in integrating UX/UI design into the agile process and offers solutions for effective project management.
Agile Development with Plone
- 1. Agile Development with Plone Sally Kleinfeldt Plone Symposium East 2011
- 2. The Accidental PM • I am not an expert! • No PM or Agile training • The developer with domain knowledge • But small business == many hats • So now I manage projects • Use this session to share
- 3. Our Plone Projects • Medium to large websites • Custom functionality • Custom theme • Fixed budget • Vague or changing requirements • ==> Agile!
- 4. Our Environment • Distributed • Everyone (client, each developers, me) in separate locations • Not full time • Developers typically 10 to 20 hours/week on a project • ==> Not Agile!
- 5. Challenge • How to adopt agile techniques to manage fixed price, flexible scope projects with a distributed, part time team?
- 6. Our Solution • Focus on: • Communication • Collaboration • Stories • Estimates • Work in progress!
- 7. Roles • Project owner • Developer • Designer • PM
- 8. Roles: Project Owner • Single point of contact • Domain expert • Decision maker • Available for meetings
- 9. Roles: Developer • Technical expert • Open minded • Honest
- 10. Roles: Designer • Part of development team • Needs feedback on design implications
- 11. Roles: Project Manager • Facilitate communication • Record decisions • Understand both client and developer worlds • Translate client requests into developer language • Knowledge of Plone key!
- 12. Scheduling the Project • Fixed budget, fixed number of hours • Divide between • Planning - varies with uncertainty • Deployment - varies with complexity • Development iterations
- 13. Scheduling: Development Iterations • How many depends on: • Total development hours • Size of team • Go-live date
- 14. Scheduling: Development Iterations • One or two week iterations ideal • 5-10 hours PM • 15-30 hours devlopers • Important to hold to those hours • Schedule evaluation weeks between iterations!
- 15. Planning • Discovery • Story development • Technical architecture
- 16. Planning: Discovery • Varies depending on size of project and what client has done • Minimum: 5-10 hours gathering materials and discussions with project owner • Could be many hours of meetings, analysis, and a formal report
- 17. Planning: Story Development • PM and project owner write stories • PM guides stories to fit Plone functionality • There will be content editor stories and site user stories
- 19. Planning: Planning Poker • Developers, project owner and PM • We use modified Fibbonacci - 0, .5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 • Trust developers to be independent • Time consuming, but planning poker discussions make developers understand requirements and clients understand development trade offs
- 20. Planning: Technical Architecture • A few hours of high level technical planning after planning poker • Developers and PM • How to do theming, what add-ons are necessary, approach to custom development, etc.
- 21. Development Iterations • Client chooses stories, guided by PM • Iteration planning meeting • Task breakdown and estimation • Story/task assignments • Daily standup meetings • Yesterday, today, blockers
- 22. Tools • “Real” agile relies on co-located teams, index cards, white boards • We need tools that substitute for these things
- 23. Tools: Communication • Skype • IRC • Chat • Google Calendar
- 24. Tools: Agile Development • Many contenders • Jira, Rally,VersionOne, ... • We’ve tried a few
- 25. Tools: Agile Development • Trac and plugins • Pivotal Tracker • Scrumdo • Google Docs
- 26. Trac • We use ClueMapper, with its easy Trac/ Subversion integration • Project staff access management • Project documentation, including ReST formatted Readme files in svn • Support tickets after development
- 27. Trac • There are numerous Agile plugins - Agilo, Itteco, ScrumBurndown, etc. • Mostly clunky, too many pieces • We do not use Trac for development iterations - stories and tasks
- 28. Pivotal Tracker • Commercial hosted SaaS solution • User friendly, nice feature set • BUT built for full time agile teams with back to back, same size iterations • Does not match our process
- 30. ScrumDo • Commercial hosted SaaS solution • User friendly, nice feature set • More flexible iteration scheduling and story assignments • Better task breakdown and assignment • Written in Python!
- 32. Dilemma • Clients need a tool like ScrumDo that provides overview of stories and easy drag and drop prioritization and iteration planning • But for developers it doesn’t have the flexibility and see-everything-at-once feeling of a whiteboard
- 33. Google Docs To The Rescue • We use a Google Doc for each iteration • Easily record stories, tasks, estimates, assignments, and actuals • Everyone can see it and see each other editing it during meetings • It’s the closest thing to a white board and index cards
- 35. Design • Perennial question: how to integrate UX/UI design into this process • Plone is not a blank slate, some designs are easy to implement and some not • Clients often bring designers to a project, and they don’t know Plone
- 36. Design • Try to include designers in the dev team • Have developers review preliminary wireframes and graphic designs before client sees them • Have designers work on wireframes for a story at the same time as developers
- 37. Design • Have developers mock up functionality first using available add-ons and use that as basis for wireframe • Create a sample Plone Page using all WYSIWYG editor features and make sure designer styles them all • Make sure designer will be available for theming questions for entire project!