BECOMING AGILE: FROM CLASSROOM TO BUSINESS IMPACT Rachel Alt-Simmons - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Project Management in Practice Annual Conference http://www.projectmanagementinpractice.com BECOMING AGILE: FROM CLASSROOM TO BUSINESS IMPACT Rachel Alt-Simmons , MS, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, Lean MBB Agile Project Management Professor at Boston University, Metropolitan College

THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT JOURNEY 1962 1957 208 BC 1969 2570 BC 1930s 1987 1917

GLOBAL IT SPENDING IT’S A TECHNOLOGY WORLD OUT THERE… Gartner forecasts that worldwide dollar- valued IT spending will grow 3.2% in 2014 or 3.7% when measured in constant currency, reaching $3.8 trillion as the world economy gradually recovers. Are we doing any better at delivering technology projects?

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 Processes and tools Working software Comprehensive documentation OVER Customer collaboration Contract negotiation Responding to change Following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ 4

Then all this craziness happens… 5

CS634 AGILE SOFTWARE STUDENT PERSONA THE APPROACH XP DEVELOPMENT Scrum BU MS-  Technical CIS Lean discipline students  Scalable who want structure and to learn  Customer focus routine more about agile  Value-added  Defined roles frameworks so that processes and they can become  Right-sized for responsibilities excellent agile the organization development team members and Empowered, self-organizing teams evangelist-coaches in their organizations In the wild, there is no such thing as a “perfectly” applied methodology implementation.

CS 634 AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Our journey…

CS 634 AGILE GROUP PROJECT RETROSPECTIVE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Attributes Overview The Good Needs Improvement  Three full sprint cycles and a  Team gelled!  Communication Empowered team  Settled into routine release  Team members shared roles / responsibilities  Instructor as agile coach  Product vision  Understood the significance  Estimation process Customer-centric  User personas  Slipped into old habits of user-centric design and  User stories  Learning curve with agile PM development  Sprint themes and goals tool  Dedicated product owner (instructor / facilitator)  Technical practices / testing  Definition of Done  Identification and ownership Inspect-and-adapt  Retrospectives approach of action items  Retrospectives

CS 634 AGILE SPRINTS: A LITTLE BUMPY… SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT  Team updates Sprint 1 : “definition of done” Conservative Sprint 2 : Progress, estimate of velocity; but process hiccups; utilization of spikes  Google hangout problems with and knowledge improves communication consistency and gathering  Ambitious user stories communication are pushed into later  Team not prepared for sprint releases review / retrospective – allowed to Sprint 3 : defer to sprint 2 Finding the  Web domain crashes and nobody groove escalates

CS 634 AGILE IT’S A REAL WORLD AFTER ALL! SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT  Students were more likely to have baseline experience or knowledge of agile  The real world is complex and messy – organizational scenarios defy out-of- the-box fit with a single project delivery methodology  Delivery approaches need to be right-sized to fit the project and organizational culture – make it yours!  Don’t underestimate the some of the cultural challenges within your organization that will impact core aspects of agile (empowerment, customer- focus, velocity)  Agile is not a silver bullet! Keep your line of sight on continuous and incremental improvement

CS634 AGILE SOFTWARE RELEASE (AND BIRTHDAY) PARTY! DEVELOPMENT Brian Aditya (new dad) (graduating!) Agile is Michael Radhika about (always (helper people cheerful) extraordinaire) Rachel Isha (birthday) (quietly curious)

JOIN ME FOR CS634 IN SUMMER II!! raltsimmons@gmail.com LinkedIn: Rachel Alt-Simmons