The Agile Edge

Brian Vanderjack

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781631571879
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion de projet

This concise book is an effective source for understanding Agile Scrum development; why we use it and how it works. It will explain how work gets done in manageable iterations (sprints) and the team meetings that keep work on track (ceremonies). Also, since risk is a constant threat to any team-based project, managing risk in an Agile Scrum environment is specii cally discussed. This book is for: • New Agile Scrum team members. • Team leaders - this book describes the foundation of Agile Scrum, which can save time getting team members on the same page. • Trainer/Educator of Agile Scrum - this book clearly defines Agile Scrum in a structured way so that students can learn how to effectively serve on an Agile team to improve their marketability. If you need to know Agile Scrum, this book will show you how to own it.

CHAPTER 1

A Fast Look at an Agile Scrum Project

Success “come(s) only from continuous effort … “

Napoleon Hill

Chapter Purpose

As an Agile Coach, Agile practitioner, and Agile evangelist

I want to provide a high-level explanation of Agile Scrum methodology

So that readers have a basic understanding of this methodology, and this can lay a foundation for the rest of this book.

Comment: The above is in the format of a User Story. User Stories are very similar to a sentence in a requirements document. They will be discussed in detail later in this book.

Why Agile Scrum is Valuable

Agile Scrum is a process that is used by many companies you would have heard of to guide the creation and delivery of working software to the client community. It is also utilized in many other areas; for example, in creating online training. To me, the top reasons as to why Agile Scrum is well-liked by end users, clients, customers, and organizational leadership are:

• That every 2 to 4 weeks a Retrospective takes place, so the team can continually improve on its ability to perform.

• Requirements (called User Stories) are prioritized, so important features can be delivered to production; fast and first.

• In Agile, a midstream project change request is no harder to process than an initial requirement. This is a key reason why the DevelopmentTeam and TestTeam have no issues with midstream alterations in scope.

• Learning and growth are expected, meaning people have no fear of trying out new or different methods and potentially failing. In fact, agile teams prefer to “fail fast” so that they get to know what they need to confront as soon in the project’s life as possible.

• Agile teams work closely with the ProductOwner as requirements are created. Then, ProductOwner inspects the work-product regularly to confirm what they really want.

• Agile has become the methodology of choice for getting work completed in a number of large, well-respected companies.

• It is my experience that ScrumMasters, at this moment in time, are more marketable than those with only classical project management skillsets detailed on their resumes.

As for the reason why Agile is valuable to me, once I learned enough about Agile Scrum to realize that it was a superior method of having project outputs better match customer expectations, I was hooked.

Formulating an Example Agile Scrum Project

On November 18, 2014, just before Thanksgiving, a fire started in my family’s laundry room. The laundry room was destroyed by the fire, and the rest of the house and its contents were ruined by smoke damage. Below, please find a picture of the fire damage to this room:

As we had practiced fire drills for years when the kids were young, the entire family was outside within moments of my wife, luckily, noticing the fire. The most stressful call I have ever made in my life was the first of dozens of calls to our insurance company. This first call was simply: are we insured? You see, insurance is easy to overlook, until a risk manifests itself as an event. They responded, “Yes, you are insured.” A sense of relief overtook me.

The insurance adjuster arrived at our home the next day, and she confirmed again that we were covered; however, it would be close as to what was insured versus what we would have to pay. She then asked her best cleanup crew and contractor for fixed bids.

The house was vacant for a few weeks while the fixed bids were created. When the estimates came in, the bottom line was that everything was covered except for the family room.

As I have had many years of experience in project management, including a real-estate build-out project (I usually lead IT projects, but, the skills of doing projects is portable between industries), and have a lifetime of experience doing DIY (do it yourself) projects in my home, I took on the role of General Contractor. Now the real story begins; how the project would run in an Agile Scrum environment.

IT Industry Background

About 15 years ago, Waterfall was the mainstay development methodology that companies used for many years to manage projects. That is, when a project was first started, the team would know (in their unique way) when the entire effort was due and almost exactly what they were creating; from the beginning. If a change was needed after a project team was launched, any change required a miniature project to run concurrent with the main effort called a change request. When I worked during this period, all team members had to reapprove everything! That took forever! Then fortunately, many well-known people in the IT industry met face-to-face in 2002 and created the AgileManifesto.org. They created a blending of the best of breed techniques from various methodologies known at the turn of the century. However, the idea of bringing all this great stuff under one umbrella is huge. And when you consider that key members in the IT space actually agreed on anything, this is truly amazing.

To see the stunningly excellent and simple foundation of Agile, just look below:

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Kent Beck	James Grenning	Robert C. Martin
Mike Beedle	Jim Highsmith	Steve Mellor
Arie van Bennekum	Andrew Hunt	Ken Schwaber
Alistair Cockburn	Ron Jeffries	Jeff Sutherland
Ward Cunningham	Jon Kern	Dave Thomas
Martin Fowler	Brian Marick
	© 2001, the above authors this declaration may be freely copied in any form, but only in its entirety through this notice

(The Agile Alliance, 2001)

Example of Using Agile Scrum

So, let us begin with the working example of me redoing a family room which was ruined by the smoke from the fire, and the necessary efforts of the firefighters (800 gallons of water plus one entire...