Skype goes agile

Skype goes agile: don’t repeat our mistakes

Alexey Ilyichev, [email protected]

• 29 years old

• In software development since 2004

• Engineer, PM, ScrumMaster, Agile Coach, Life Coach

Qik: Share your life as it happens.

Work Group

Product Owner

Team Leads Developers

Who’s going to work on that

feature?

Advantages

• Short time to market

• No bureaucracy

• Ownership and responsibility

• Close to the user

THE SKYPE PROCESS

Disclaimer

I was only responsible foradopting Agile in Moscow site.So my understanding of theprocess in Skype is probablyincomplete.

Release Vehicles (RV)

• Part of a system, that can be released independently

• Team

• Product Manager (PM) and Product Engineering Manager (PEM)

• Backlog

• Scrum

RV = Service

Configuration Mac Client

RV reports

• Was iteration successful?

• Was the release successful?

• What were the reasons?

• RV review meetings

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

But there’s a dependency!

We can take it into the sprint that

starts next week.

6 weeksDefect!

10 weeks

RV diagram

ABE

AMS

Web

iOS

QLIB

Android

Wait Time

Value Added Time

CycleEfficiency = ValueAddedTime / TotalTime

30%

Working on a typical feature

OVERCOMING THE CRISIS

Little’s Law

• Average wait time = queue size / service rate

• Lead Time = WIP / Average Completion Rate

200 ppl / 20 ppl an hour = 10 hours

Queueing theory

• Little’s Law

• What does it mean?

– With the same capacity you can shorten cycle time if you reduce the amount of things that you work on simultaneously

ABE

AMS

Web

iOS

QLIB

Android

Bottle Neck Rework

Summary

• Local efficiency vs. value flow efficiency

• Visualize feature delivery

• Control WIP

• Reduce rework by restructuring teams

• Fix date, reduce scope

Thank you!

• Alexey Ilyichev

• Agile Coach, ScrumTrek

• [email protected]

• Skype: alexey.ilyichev

• +7 (909) 687-63-75