Beyond the Scrum - I

Beyond the Scrum
Implementing Lean Software Practices in Your Organization

Adam Monago, ThoughtWorks
amonago@thoughtworks.com

Better Software Conference
June 11, 2009, Las Vegas, Nevada

Saturday, June 13, 2009 1

Agenda
• About ThoughtWorks

• Why IT Projects Fail

• Failures with Agile; Why Scrum is not sufficient on its own

• Elements of Successful Approaches

• What is Lean and How do I do it?

• What are the real benefits and how to ThoughtWorks Studios tools support
these objectives?


We literally write the books on Agile
About and technology innovation

• Founded in 1993 • World Leaders in use of Agile
• Global Delivery from US, UK, Software Development techniques
Canada, Australia, India and China • Expertise: Java, .NET, SOA, Ruby,
• 1000+ employees Open Source
• $132M+ in revenue (2008)
• High End IT Consulting. Ideation to
Production
• Application Development, Support &
Evolution
• Build and Deploy: Enterprise Class,
Business Critical Software
• ThoughtWorks Studios: Focused
on creating Products for Agile
practitioners


What we want you to walk away with
The right combination of practices can help you...

...maximize your team’s throughput by monitoring your team’s limits and focusing
on bottlenecks.

...reduce cycle time in your release management process through parallelization
and immediate notifications of build and deployment failures.

...improve product quality and reduce churn by implementing acceptance test
driven development practices


Top 10 Reasons IT Projects Fail
Hard-Working, Focused Staff

Clear Vision & Objectives

User Involvement Ownership

Competent Staff

Executive Smaller Project Milestones

Management
Support

Realistic Expectations

Proper Planning
Clear Statement
of Requirements
Source: Standish Group

reduced value
time-to-market limited purview
higher testing costs

requirements reduced test
expired PMO coverage
lack of tool
challenges & resources
long delivery cycles
in QA
lack of
estimation pain communication

scope dysfunction
issues internal disconnect

scope bloat silo-integration
pain
roles & responsibilities
lost know-how
confusion
higher
increased project risk
time-slicing
must reinvest in
intellectual capital
reactive tasking


Agile: Flipping the Axes


Many flavors of Agile
• None offer a complete solution

• XP, Scrum, DSDM, Crystal, and Lean (among others) all offered valuable
methods that contribute to a more effective way of running projects

• In the market, Scrum has clearly been the most successful in terms of adoption


Why has Scrum been adopted by so many?
• Easy to learn
• Many parallels to existing
organizational concepts*
• Does not address the technology
issues

* Bowley, Rob “Lean is the new Scrum, and it will fail for the same reasons “
http://blog.robbowley.net/2008/11/15/lean-scrum/


Agile Failures: What’s going wrong?
"Agile is hard, and you can't master it by sitting through a two-day course.

... if you don't use agile engineering practices,
if you don't have high-bandwidth communication,
and if you don't include a strong customer voice,
you're not going to succeed...

Scrum is popular because it's easy--and that's part of the problem.

James Shore, “The Decline and Fall of Agile”, 14, Nov, 2008


What are the essential Agile Engineering Practices?
• Continuous Integration
• Test Driven Development
• Refactoring
• Pair Programming

When they are not applied, you run the risk of
undermining all of your other process and
management efforts!


Components of a successful agile implementation

Disciplined
Engineering
Practices (XP)

Adaptive Lean
Management Principles
Philosophy
(SCRUM)


So....what exactly is Lean all about?
• In a nutshell...
• Managing how much you are doing at all times to make sure your team is working
optimally as a whole system
• Making sure every single item you are working on is uniquely valuable; If it is not
completed, it is money down the drain


Philosophical parallels between “Lean” and “Agile”


Elimination of Waste is Key


This is getting attention!

Companies can reduce application development and maintenance costs by up to 40%

McKinsey “Applying Lean to Application Development and Maintenance”, 2007


Why ThoughtWorks Studios?
Metrics and Visibility

!!Real time status of Programs, Project, and Initiatives
!!Adhere to Approval and Governance Requirements
!!Requirement to Code Traceability

Collaboration

!!Next Floor or Bangalore
!!Frequent Business & IT Stakeholder Interaction
!!Leverage Right People, Right Place, Right Time

Business Agility

!!Adapt to Local Conditions
!!Support Various Implementation Approaches
!!Reduce Feedback Cycles to Shorten -> Time to Live


Why ThoughtWorks Studios?

Mingle, Cruise and Twist have all been designed to provide visibility to teams
so that they can resolve impediments in their process and improve flow and
communication.

They support whatever process decisions you make, and ENCOURAGE you to
adapt.


Pull systems and Kanban

“The ideal work planning process should always provide the development
team with best thing to work on next, no more and no less.”
-Corey Ladas, “Scrum-ban”


Use metrics to measure flow and to detect where bottlenecks occur


Parallelize what you can


Tests should be easily maintained by the entire team as they adapt


Reinforce good practices and people with the right tools

•! One source of project data
across teams

•! Reducing cycle time and
getting fast feedback should
be the number one priority

•! Tools should be used by
everyone on the team to be
effective

•! Management driven metrics


Thank You!


Beyond the Scrum - I

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