Building Software Where the Music Died

World®
’16
Building Software Where the
Music Died
Tracy Anderson, Director of Engineering, TeamQuest Corporation
Tom O’Connor, Senior Principal - Customer Success Manager, CA Technologies
AMX43S: Building Software Where the Music Died
AGILE MANAGEMENT

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warranty. The information provided by a CA partner and/or CA customer has not been reviewed for accuracy by CA.
For Informational Purposes Only
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Abstract
In this session, you'll learn how a twenty-five-year-old IT Service Management software
company transformed its IT organization through the implementation of CA Agile Central
(formerly Rally) and a more effective agile adoption with CA Agility Services. Director of
Engineering Tracy Anderson will explain how the company moved from having ever-changing
requirements, with six-month development and testing cycles, to delivering high-quality product
features in as little as three months; Tom O’Connor, Principal Agile Consultant, will explain the
training, coaching and implementation of CA Agile Central that led to the successful agile
transformation. Learn about some of the key initiatives that the agile adoption helped drive,
such as continuous build and automated testing, and how the company overcame many
challenges to build better software where the music died.
Tracy Anderson
Tom O’Connor
TeamQuest
CA Technologies

Agenda
INTRODUCTIONS
TEAMQUEST OVERVIEW - TRACY
CLOSING
OUR CHALLENGES - TRACY
AGILE TRANSFORMATION - TOM
OUR TRANSITION TO SAFE - TRACY
1
2
3
4
5
6

Who We Are:
§ Bullet 1, Calibri regular 24 pt
– Sub-bullet, Calibri regular 20 pt
§ Sub-sub-Bullet, Calibri regular 18 pt
– Sub-sub-sub Bullet, Calibri regular 16 pt
§ Sub-sub-sub-sub Bullet, Calibri regular 14 pt
We Are Passionate About Making IT Better
§ Independent solutions provider established in 1991
§ HQ in U.S., offices in Canada, Germany, Sweden, UK, Hong Kong
§ Trusted by mission-critical IT organizations around the world
§ We help IT control costs, avoid risks, and communicate value

Who We Serve:
Organizations Driving Efficient IT For Competitive Business Advantage

How We Serve:
We Help You to Reach the Highest Level of IT Service Optimization Maturity That
Makes Sense for Your Organization
Performance Management Capacity Management Business Value Dashboards

Our Challenges Before SAFe

Software Development Challenges
§ Build Process
– One person knew the build process (Bob the Builder)
– Nightly manual builds on 7 platforms
– Broken builds were addressed the next morning
– No CI pipeline
§ Code
– No static or dynamic code analysis
– Ineffective code reviews
– Overwhelming technical debt

§ Failed agile development teams
– Teams were dispersed throughout the building
– Cube caves 5.5 feet high
– No pointing or velocity
– No retrospectives or continuous improvement
– Teams were controlled, not self-driven
– Engineering managers were product owners
– No ALM tool for tracking or reporting

§ Unit Tests
– 3% unit test coverage
– No formal strategy
§ Quality
– 6 month QC tail
– No automation
– Engineers working defects for code they
wrote 5 months ago
No
Automation
because…
Too Busy
because…

§ Scope
– Dates were adjusted, not scope (except to go up)
– Requirements changed right up to release
§ The “Bottleneck”
– Centralized decisions (big and small)
– Constant rework due to late decisions
– Hurry up and wait

§ Products
– Little architectural direction
– Disparate user experience
– One year to get features to customers
– Build it here mentality
– Lacking scalability
– Desperate need of architectural refresh

Release Management
Overlapping Releases – Each Taking a Year
2013 2015Q3 Q4
Q1
2014
Q2 Q3 Q4
Q1
2015
Feature Development
Aug 1
Feature Development
Feb 1
QC Turnover
Mar 1
GA Release
Aug 1
QC Turnover
Sep 1
GA Release
Feb 1
Aug 1 - Aug 1 2014 August Release
Feb 1 - Feb 1 2015 February Release

Release Management
§ Issues
– Too much content
– Too many dependencies
– Overlap of releases
– Seldom met release dates
– Features slow to market
– No visibility on late features
– Risks not identified up front
– Hard to test

Agile History
Two Failed Attempts
§ Adopted Agile in 2007 – FAILED
– No C-level buy-in
– Tracked features and Stories in Wiki
– Director did not believe in pointing,
tracking velocity, planning events, etc
§ Purchased Rally in 2013
– Pushed to adhere more strictly to Agile – FAILED
– Again no C-level buy-in
– Rally allowed us to track features, stories, defects, etc and allowed us
to provide detailed reports which supported the cause in the long run

Journey to an Agile Transformation
§ February 2013 – Implementing the Agile Team and Rally Tool
Training
– Cost of Context Switching Across Organization
– Strategy and Execution Alignment Challenge
– Agile Program and Portfolio Management Intro
§ December 2014 - June 2015
– Organizational Discovery (Assessment)
– Leading SAFe
– Agile Coaching – Team Tune-Ups
– PI Planning (Release) Preparation and Execution

Key Challenges Identified from Assessment
§ Deviation from Scrum
§ Release cycles too long
§ User stories too large for iteration
§ User stories not fully defined or
understood
§ Sharing of people across teams
§ Teams not predictable
§ Teams not sizing stories
§ Changing priorities in middle of
iteration
§ Not meeting commitments each
iteration
§ Quality challenges resulting in
customer issues
§ Not enough QA (8 Dev to ½ QA
example)
§ Product Owner role confusion
§ Ineffective Scrum ceremonies – going
through the motions

TeamQuest Organization
Agility Survey Chart
December 2014
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
Strategy and Alignment
Predictability
Productivity
Responsiveness
Quality
Development
Practices/Infrastructure
* Organization Agility Survey detail captured in other document

CA Agile Assessment
Implement “Get Well Plan”
SAFe Training & Coaching
1st PI Planning Event
Coaching to Productivity and Predictability

Discover & Learn Launch & Stabilize Accelerate & Align Advance & Expand
Understand your current state of
agility to determine your potential
transformation path.
Get delivery groups up and
running to a consistent state and
cadence to frequently deliver
value and quality.
Improve the effectiveness of delivery groups across each
value stream, develop communities across the organization
and align with the business through strategy and portfolio
steering.
Move toward a culture of learning, self-
organization and continuous
improvement as the future operating
model for the business.
CA Consulting Approach & Organizational Discovery
Our GOAL is to provide you with the shortest path to self-reliant agility
Organizational
Discovery
DISCOVER & LEARN
• Organizational discovery (joint process)
• Charter transformation leadership team
• Program design workshop
• Leadership team sets the vision
LAUNCH & STABILIZE
• Develop capability and expertise
• Delivery groups learn by doing:
Program Launches
• Use proven agile approach and platform to manage
the change, visualize WiP
ACCELERATE & ALIGN
• Accelerate the adoption; adding programs
• Advanced metrics and reporting
• Engrain agility into culture
• Continually identify and remove bottlenecks to
improvement
ADVANCE & EXPAND
• Kaizen and continuous improvement
• Agility in adjacent departments along value stream
• Next step in business agility ...

Organizational Discovery – Process & Goals

Leap of Faith - 2015
Why did it work this time?
§ New CEO, CTO, Director of Engineering
– C-level buy-in !!!!! (We had ammo from Rally)
§ Rally Agile Assessment (Organizational Discovery)
– Tom O’Connor – Agile Consultant (brutally honest)
– Assessment Results – Get Well Plan
– SAFe Workshop, Agile Coaching
– Agile Champions
– Release Planning Execution
§ 1st Event (Tom + 3 additional from Rally)
§ 2nd Event (Tom)
Where
We
Are
Where We
Want
To Be

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
Core Values
• Alignment
• Built-in Quality
• Transparency
• Program Execution
New Roles
• RTE
• Product Owners
• Scrum Masters
• Chief Architect
• UX/UI Lead

Agile Teams
§ Goals:
– Self-Driven, Autonomous
– Decentralize decision-making
– Teams commit to and manage work
– Limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, manage queue lengths
– Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
– Unlock intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
– Continuous improvement through retrospectives
– Keep Rally updated – source of truth
– We let the teams name themselves as a
first step towards autonomy

Modern Work Environment
Promote Collaboration and Communication (watercooler effect)
Cube Caves as far as the eye can see
Open Environment

Software Environment
Source Code
Platforms Support
Development Stack
Version Control
Code Analysis
Automated Unit Tests
Build, Package, Deploy
Automated Tests
(Functional / Integration)
Coming Soon!

Continuous Integration
Static Code Analysis
Version Control Source Code
Agile Teams
Automated Unit Tests
Code Coverage
Analysis
3rd Party License
Governance
Publish Reports
Run Automated
Functional Tests
Provision/Deploy
Test Environment
Build Artifacts
Compile/Build

Test Automation
§ Mission:
– To implement and actively adopt industry best practices for
automated unit testing to achieve higher quality and faster
deliveries and to enable release on demand of all ongoing products.
§ Unit Tests
– PHP, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript
– Started with < 5% coverage
– Goal – 80% coverage new products, 60% legacy products in one year
– Improve efficiency, Increase quality, Enhance maintainability,
Control WIP, Reduce risk for intricate changes
§ UI/Functional Tests
– Selenium drivers written for all new products
– Agile teams automating manual regression tests

Runways
§ Architectural Runway
– Intentional vs Emergent architecture
– Enablers one PI in advance
§ Exploration
§ Architecture
§ Infrastructure
– Epics two PIs in advance
Architectural Runway
Enabler
Feature
Implemented now…
…to support future features
Feature
Intentional Architecture
Provides Guidance
Consistent Technology
Emergent Design
Evolves Incrementally
Preserve Options
Less Specific Farther Out
Architectural Runway
Low
High
Now
Level of Abstraction

Runways
§ UX/UI Runway
– Centralized UX governance
– Distributed UI experts on each team
– Just in time mockups

Flow
Product
Owner
Scrum
Master
Enterprise
Architect
Product
Management
Roadmap
Vision
Program Backlog
Stakeholders
UX/UI
Team
Mockups
Early
Adopters
Ideas
Solution
Architect
Product
Owner
Scrum
Master
Solution
Architect
Product
Owner
Scrum
Master
Product
Owner
Scrum
Master
Solution
Architect
Chief
Product Owner
Agile Team Agile Team Agile Team Agile Team
Epics
Features
Enablers
Team Backlog
Team Backlog
Team Backlog
Team Backlog
Solution
Architect

Success Stories
§ 7 successful planning events
§ 10 on-time releases in a row
§ Implemented early adopter program
§ Implemented hands-on lab training
§ Architectural and UX runway
§ Modern work environment with co-location
§ Employee engagement through empowerment
§ Continuous Integration
– Builds performed automatically on 6 platforms with every commit
§ Features delivered to customer in 3 months or less (Release on Demand)
§ Delivered a brand new product to market in 9 months
§ We can identify at-risk features months in advance and adapt

Success Stories
Happier, more
motivated
employees
20 – 50%
increase in
productivity
30 – 75%
faster time
to market
50%+
defect
reduction

Release Management
10 consecutive on-time releases including 3 release on demand
2015 2017
2016
3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q
3rd Party Data
Jun 29
Restful API
Scale to 10K
Cost
Optimization
Dashboard
Azure Support
PureShare Rebrand
Platform Support
OpenStack Validation
Vityl Advisor 2.1
Vityl Advisor
Early Adopter
Vityl Advisor 2.0
BMC BCO
Support
Efficiency
Scoring
Analyzer
Web Start

CA Agile Central
§ ALM tool for being successful with SAFe and Agile
– Solid data gathering
– Exceptional reporting
– Restful API
– Highly extensible with SDK
§ MDO – RallyApps - Github
– Suite of Rally Apps build for MDO group within Intel
– Configured for SAFe
– https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

PI-3 Results

Capacity Planning

Release Tracking

Iteration Tracking

Train Performance https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

Data Integrity https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

ART Commit Matrix https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

Team Report https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

Cumulative Flow Diagrams https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

Epic Cumulative Flow Diagrams https://github.com/arring/MDO-RallyApps/wiki

Stewardship
“the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving”
Farmers are Stewards of the Land
Land - Development Practices, Tools, SAFe – foundation everything depends on
Nature - High Performing Agile Teams – turn the seeds to crop
Seeds - Features / Stories – what grows into a release
Crop - Release / Program Increment – what we produce
Irrigation - Product Roadmap / Backlog Refinement – protects against drought of features
Insecticide - ReviewBoard, Test Automation, Continuous Integration – protect against defects
Herbicide - Control Technical Debt – choking our productivity
Tile - WIP, Batch Sizes, Queue Lengths, Co-location – create the right environment
Fertilizer - Continuous Improvement, Innovation, Training – increase teams yield
Harvest - Release Management / Deployment – release and replant

TeamQuest – Surf Ballroom – Buddy Holly Memorial

Questions?

Stay connected at communities.ca.com
Thank you.

Agile Management
For more information on Agile Management, please visit:
http://cainc.to/9Zed5W

Building Software Where the Music Died

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