Stepping Into A Distressed Project And Using Agile Tools To Get Out Of The Ditch
About Your Presenters Alan Czako, PSM, PMP Quick Solutions, Inc. Manager, Solutions Delivery; Agile Coach 20+ years IT experience & 4+ years Agile Randy Kubacki, PSM, PMP, CBAP Quick Solutions, Inc. Manager, Project Management Practice; Agile Coach 15+ years IT experience & 4 years Agile
Deliverables For Today 1. Our Agile toolbox 2. Why & how we extended the Agile tools 3. How Agile helped us succeed 4. How do we know we added value 5. Why did it work
Product Owner Self-Contained Team Co-location Daily Scrum Backlog Estimation Games Planning Games Show & Tells Retrospectives Big Visible Charts (BVC) Sprints Our Agile Toolbox
Why We Extended The Tools Development Project Crisis Response Effort Build & Run Program
Development Charter Scope Discovery, Design, Development Greenfield Schedule Fixed delivery date Team PM, BA, Developers, QA Standard roles
Opportunity Knocks Client has a problem and is looking for help Severely diminished performance during peaks Daily outages Multiple releases per week Fix one thing, break two Losing customers
Crisis Response Charter Scope Original charter work suspended Take over production support 24 x 7 web application Schedule 90 days to transition from prior vendor Team Re-directed (All hands on deck) Expanded PM, BA, Devs, QA, Infrastructure, Help Desk
How Big Is The Problem? Outage Frequency Average Outage Duration Sessions Ending in Exception Data Backup Frequency Releases Documentation Daily 4 hours (Longest = 7 days) 50 % (hundreds of unique exceptions) None > 1 per week None
Key Definitions What is a defect? Must have some documentation that the business approved which specifies how the application must perform. What is a bug? Something that we may have broken inadvertently.
Extending Agile Tools Tool Daily Scrum Pairing Big Visible Chart Backlog Self-Contained Team Extension Added Triage Non-traditional (PMs, BAs) Cross-discipline (Dev to Infra) Post-it wall Post-it wall fed the backlog Accelerate team productivity
Triage Scrum Each issue had an opportunity to speak
Pairing Non-traditional Cross Functional
BVC
Backlog Post-Its Product Backlog Releases
Team Building Events Researching production issues Nothing builds a team like an outage in the middle of the day No Person Left Alone No one was ever left to work a problem alone
Build & Run Charter Scope Now a program Production Support Stabilization Original charter work resumed Schedule Ongoing maintenance releases for production support Projects with fixed delivery dates Team Added more developers and infrastructure Formed sub-teams Original charter work (PM, BA, Dev, QA) Support & Stabilization (PM, BA, Dev, QA, Infra, Help Desk)
Extending Agile Tools Again Tool Product Owner Co-location Scrums Planning Game Retrospectives Extension Surrogate Two self-contained teams in separate rooms Developers Coordinate across two teams PMs Scrum of Scrums Requirements product backlog Leadership Team
How Agile Helped Us Adaptability Visibility Manage non-repeatable activities Open & constant communication Team ownership
How Do We Know We Added Value? Remember these Outage Frequency Average Outage Duration Sessions Ending in Exception Data Backup Frequency Releases Daily 4 hours 50 % (hundreds of unique exceptions) None > 1 per week
Signs Of Progress Takeover 6 months later Outage Frequency Daily 1 every 8.7 days Average Outage Duration 4 hours 2 hours 46 minutes Sessions Ending in Exception 50 % (hundreds of unique exceptions) Data Backup Frequency None Daily Touched Production Maintenance Window Addressed most common; Implemented database 12 times per month 97% of time within published window Releases > 1 per week 2 per month Lines of Code Touched 410,000 Post-Deployment Production Defects 1
Independent Confirmation QSM Associates evaluated our project with similar projects
Why Did It Work? What was the plan? Scrum was the plan Why Agile? Speed and Value How did this relate to the Manifesto? Individuals and Interactions Working Software Customer Collaboration Responding To Change Co-location, Real-time feedback Fix the top items and get it out Didn t have contract or SLAs Daily and Sprint prioritization
Deliverable Review 1. Our Agile toolbox 2. Why & how we extended the Agile tools 3. How Agile helped us succeed 4. How do we know we added value 5. Why did it work
What Does It Mean? Client is still in business Thousands of kids have an opportunity at an education Client is able to sell again Long-term relationship
Q & A On The Road Again Alan Czako aczako@quicksolutions.com Randy Kubacki rkubacki@quicksolutions.com