Why the "A" in A-Game Stands for Agile

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Chuck Walker and Bill Shoemaker

Why the “A” in A-Game Stands for Agile

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Service providers are seeing: 30% growth in projects completed with a

distributed agile delivery model

75% of their development projects are now completed in a distributed agile model

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Agile Adoption Challenges

Organization

Pricing & Contracting

Governance

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Big challenges remain in agile adoption.

How to integrate: 1. The best attributes of a

geographically distributed delivery model

2. Agile development methods

3. A robust contract that fosters collaboration, feedback, quality and frequent delivery.

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Delivery Team Structure

Agile Organization

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Agile Development Pods

Pods are small, dedicated teams responsible for completing stories, new features and functionalities.

They consist of: • An embedded scrum

master• Proxy product owner(s)• A development team • Quality assurance team.

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Small Agile Development Pods

Shared ProxyProduct Owner

Scrum Master& Developer

Developer Developer Tester Tester

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Medium Agile Development Pods

Shared ProxyProduct Owner

Scrum Master Developer DeveloperOffshore Scrum& Developer

Developer

Developer Tester Tester Tester

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Large Agile Development Pods

Proxy ProductOwner

Scrum Master

DeveloperOffshore Scrum & Developer

Developer Developer

TesterDeveloper or Tester

TesterTester

Offshore Scrum & Developer

Developer Developer Developer

Developer or Tester

Tester Tester

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Agile Governance

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Governance, the Agile Challenge

Cost

QualityDelivery

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Agile Governance Best Practices

1. Adopt pragmatic governance2. Promote self-organizing teams3. Build a business-driven project

pipeline4. Ensure continuous improvement

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Agile Pricing

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Pricing Agile Development

Scope

Schedule Budget

Traditional

Schedule Budget

Scope

Agile

Versatile

Fixed

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Pod-Based PricingPOD Type Throughput Onsite Offshore Integrate

d

Small 20-25 Story Point/Month $$ $ $ ½

Medium 30-40 Story Points/Month $$$ $ ½ $$

Large 60-80 Story Point per Month $$$$ $$ $$$

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Agile Contracting

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Contracting Agile Development

Fix duration and cost. Estimate scope. Focus on collaboration,

feedback and quality.

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Agile Delivery Cycle and Acceptance

Base acceptance on: 1. Conformance to a prior agreed-on acceptance-test set

—or in the case of a scrum—the “definition of done.” 2. The “definition of done” as defined by users of the new

system.

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Agile Service LevelsMetric Parameter Measurement MethodologyRatio of successful sprints

Degree to which the team is able to meet their commitment.

Measured as the ratio of successful sprints as a percentage by dividing the number of successful sprints by the total number of sprints.

Reliability The ability of teams to meet the story points they committed to for a sprint.

Measured as a percentage by dividing the amount of committed story points by the amount of earned story points.

Velocity The velocity is a relative measure of the amount of work delivered during a sprint.

Measure the velocity in story points.

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Agile Best Practices

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Best Practices1. Establish product owners and proxy product owners for each Pod2. Establish onshore and offshore scrum masters; make agile

coaches available in offshore locations3. Create strong governance to monitor, report and manage

processes and stakeholder impacts.4. Deploy automated environments and agile collaboration tools

like Jira, Confluence and Rally; deploy continuous integration tools like Maven, Jenkins, Chef and Perforce.

5. Construct teams of 10 or less; and ensure at least two working hours of time zone overlap between onshore and offshore locations.

6. Virtualize the application test environments and test data management.

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And finally…the biggest agile success factor

A culture of openness and transparency on the team and organization level.

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