AGILE IN IT SERVICES Srinath Chandrasekharan, CSM Senior Manager - Consulting HCL Technologies
Jun 27, 2015
AGILE IN IT SERVICES
Srinath Chandrasekharan, CSMSenior Manager - Consulting HCL Technologies
AGENDA The IT Landscape The Challenges Our Approach Learning's
THE IT LANDSCAPE
HCL $ 6.2 Billion Spread Across 31 countries Multiple Domains Service mix includes
BPOEngineering services and R & DEnterprise Applications Infrastructure ServicesCustom Applications
1 Lakh + employees
1000 + active
projects
OTHER LARGE IT COMPANIES IN INDIA….. Other large IT players
InfosysTCSWiproCTS + many medium and small companies…
Most projects won through competitive bidding.. Margin’s play a major role….
ABOUT A DECADE BACK… CMMI was a USP
as customers looked for predictable, repeatable process.
Spread across domains and technologies, this was a task huge task…
All companies aspired for various levels… …. 5 was great, lower ones were acceptable…
Heavy documentation needed lot of checks… Documentation became the focus and evidence
was largely document based… compliance to processes became the focus instead of innovation
ORGANIZATION STRUCTURES… Were more ‘Command and Control’….
following the rule was common … deviations needed to be ‘approved’…..QA
group was the gatekeeper specialization was considered good in processes, technologies, domains… creating smaller , specialized groups within
the large organizations…..led to creation of silos
RESULTING IN THIS
WHEREAS THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE HELPFUL
THE CHALLENGES
WHAT AGILE MEANT….
WITH UNDERSTANDING AGILE For many client’s going agile means…..
Not giving the requirement in full, yet expecting a functionally working feature….
Changing the requirements within sprints.. Not having to commit to the teams in terms
of time…..Getting changes implemented was inbuilt
into Agile framework and thus avoided heavy and bureaucratic
WITH FIXED PRICE CONTRACTS…
WITH FIXED PRICE CONTRACTS… Estimation became a problem..
How do you estimate when you don’t know what to develop…. Yet you need this for winning the bid…..
No industry published data to fall back on… SP are relative and many people don’t understand it…
WITH EXECUTING AGILE PROJECTS What’s the best methodology…
People used to spoon feeding…Every step and outcome listed in CMMI…but
Agile prescribes an open culture ……What’s Scrum ? DSM ? Reviews? Sprints ?Should I have a standard Agile process
across all projects ? If yes, is it Agile ? If not, how do I compare?
METRICS Some clients don’t care about them…
So do we ask the teams not to waste time on them and use it more productively ?
Even if we collected for the other projects nothing can be analyzed for a comparison
No baseline report… Can’t get data for RFP’sCan’t compare which methodology will
provide better results…..
OUR APPROACH
HOW WE GOT ESTABLISHED Formed CoE
All got trained on CSMCreated some process material around Agile
(predominantly Scrum)Created training material similar to CSMAssessed / worked with projects
implementing scrumStudied other Agile methods and created
processes, so as to increase our basket of offerings….
Forums for addressing questions..CoP
ADDRESSING CLIENT EXPECTATIONS Started getting involved right from the
RFP stage… so as to understand clients maturity and expectations from Agile.. And if needed correct them…
Assessed projects for applicability of Agile
Training for client business / IT teams Session for sales team….very
important.. Sessions for Senior Management…. Self learning modules on the Learning
Management System….
ADDRESSING ESTIMATION Gathered experiences from different
projects on FPP Evolved a guideline on fixed price
contracts for Agile Educated Senior Management
HOWEVER ……. This is still something we
are grappling with…
ADDRESSING EXECUTION.. THROUGH FRAMEWORK Created a structured process around
Scrum and some XP practices Structured training program Leveraged existing QA group to
continuously check projects for consistent implementation and regular feedback
Getting involved with teams for 2-3 sprints
Focused sessions with teams on estimation, story writing etc.
ADDRESSING METRICS Made a set of metrics as core, ensured
that these are gathered by all teams for every sprint…
Published a report which said how are projects doing.. Without comparing them
Used CSAT as a common measure, across Agile and Non-Agile projects as well.
Collected qualitative data (team stress, weekend working, client pressure, etc.) to support the other data.
WE LEARNT MANY THINGS THE HARD
WAY….. SOME LEARNING'S…
WHAT WOULD WE HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY…. KEY LEARNING'S Proactively take Senior Management
along at all times. Agile should be well thought out instead of being knee- jerk CoE was focused a lot on projects and
delivery teams, left senior management interaction to project teams.
Sales teams / senior management involvement was as and when needed, so there was no single approach to Agile.
Cultural change needed was slow to take off.
WHAT WOULD WE HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY…. KEY LEARNING'S Top-down and bottom-up working
togetherWhile teams were becoming Agile,
management was not.Metrics from traditional methodologies were
still expected from teams, resulting in pressure on teams.
Support for teams was problematic, in many areas.
WHAT WOULD WE HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY…. KEY LEARNING'S Get a delivery sponsor who can speak
for you at various forums Important to spread awareness and
intricacies of Agile.Get buy in from delivery teams for activities
done by CoE and not be seen as an ‘outsider’.
WHAT WOULD WE HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY…. KEY LEARNING'S Focus on tooling and skills ….along with
processesWhile Scrum was becoming popular, XP
practices were largely ignored.Some practices were questioned for cost
effectiveness (Pair Programing, TDD).Leveraging projects experience was not well
established.