Becoming Agile (Volume 20, Number 3) By Heather A. Smith James D. McKeen Iw, |Queens SCHOOL OF BUSINESS senna Deloitte.Introduction This session of the CIO Brief was the third of four this Agile developments... year that focus on Redefining IT. The first session | A lime-boxed, iterative approach to software . delivery that builds software incrementally explored what's important about reinventing IT and the | from the start ofthe project, instead of trying challenges and opportunities involved in doing so. The | t0 deliver it all at once near the end. It works by breaking projects down into litle bits of second examined how IT is shifting the focus of ts work | user functionalty, called stories, prioritizing from traditional systems of record to nurturing systems of | them, and then continuously delivering them in shorter cycles, ‘engagement that promote knowledge flows, context awareness, prediction, and agile action. This third session was designed to explore how two different ‘companies have and are approaching the move to agile development techniques. SMART Application Development at Canadian Tire Linda Siksna is Vice President IT Delivery for Canadian Tire's (CTC) retail organization, which includes its 490+ stores and 300+ gas bars and automotive specially stores. She is responsible for bringing rapid, advanced web technology solutions to the company to further enable marketing capabilties and grow revenue and for introducing next generation e-ail technologies to CTC. ‘The retail world is changing rapidly ... everything that can become visual or interactive content is swifly becoming so. This is not a world where we can take several years or months to deliver technology solutions’, Over the past three years, both business and IT recognized that they needed a more agile approach in order to compete. Technology project spending was high and projects took a long to complete. Determining the objectives and project requirements would take months to complete which lead to continuous scope creep. When CTO Eugene Roman joined CTC in 2012, he promplly decided that all future IT projects would be undertaken using the SMART approach; Simplified, Managed, Agile, Responsive, Technology. SMART is an innovative approach to application development and project management that utlizes best practices, tools, and methods, as well as principles that integrate people, processes and tools effectively "This is a huge shift in how we work,” said Linda, ‘Instead of delivering fixed scope projects for a fixed cost, we began to focus on how much value we could deliver in a fixedtime. This meant we had to become business-value driven and that value was delivered in each increment.” At CTC, this means producing useful deliverables every 100 days. The SMART approach to development starts with a dedicated team of user and IT staff. “There is no “business versus IT,” said Linda, ‘We are all equal stakeholders at the table" In addition, colocation of all participants is standard, Facilties to support high performance teams were constructed. Prototyping and applying the 80/20 rule were adopted. All team resources were empowered to make decisions in order to get project activities done faster and more effectively The major roles in this new approach are: + Product owner. The product owner makes decisions and trade-offs and keeps the big picture of the product in view, directing the team toward it in each sprint. Helshe is fully present with the team to participate in conversations, clarify requirements, and define acceptance criteria. In addition, the product owner protects the team from outside noise and pressure so it can focus and is accountable for the business results ofthe product, signing off on delivered functionality. + Agile manager(s). These managers guide the organization through the agile adoption process, reinforcing healthy role boundaries within the team and between the team and the larger organization. They help the team remove obstacles, manage the portfolio of projects to ensure optimal value is delivered, and support the team in reaching its highest potential * Project manager/Scrum master. The Scrum master guides the team, helping it remove obstacles and follow SMART principles, and examines both what the team produces and how it produces it in order to facilitate continuous improvement and learning. In addition, he/she holds the team accountable for delivering on commitments. + Project team. Together, the team takes ownership for the success or failure of work done. It is responsible for providing estimates, continuous improvement, working collaboratively, and being responsive to change.Sprints are based on user stories that focus on a business outcome to be achieved, These stories are estimable, testable, and valuable tothe project. Each is small enough to fit into one or two sprints, “This approach has had its challenges,” Linda stated, “but the work that has been delivered is incredible!” For example, under the old methodology a project to upgrade an application software package for CTC was estimated to take eighteen months. Applying the SMART approach, the team implemented a fully tested new version across all stores in just 100 days. ‘We have really developed high performance teams who deliver results, rapidly,” she said, ‘Adopting a new development approach takes time. “It's been two years and we're still not done.” As well, because the change impacts more than just IT, itis important to have both CEO and CTO sponsorship. This change requires all project stakeholders to participate fully in projacts and think differently about their role, Folks have quickly come to appreciate this new approach. CTC also brought in industry experts as ccoaches to introduce new skils. Implementing new development practices to become more agile does take effort to achieve anticipated results. Some of the challenges CTC has had to deal with include: + Package implementation. Not all software packages lend themselves to a pure agile approach. CTC adapted and is taking a different approach to segmentation such as, implementing packages in smaller locations first, using a cloudiprototype version to start, and implementing components and building upon them, + Business participation. It can be dificult to get all stakeholders to participate in sprints. ‘We worked with our teams about how to get cooperation and put whole teams in separate rooms. Once the results began to come in, geting participation became much easier,” she said. + Re-engineering large legacy systems, These can be very hard to break up and are typically data intensive, The key is to develop componentized functionality at the front end that integrates with the back end legacy system,+ Facilities. Having separate, dedicated facilities for an agile team is essential, otherwise people won't co-locate, Team rooms are quite different than personal cubicles. I's important to have flexibility (.e., ability for virtual work where it makes sense). + The 80/20 rule. Even though this is a guideline for agile development, every sprint deliverable must pass criteria for successful production turnover. + Operations team members. It is important to have fullime operations people on the team because of the importance of ensuring the new functionality will operate propery. "It's essential that infrastructure/operations understand the big picture of what the overall project is about, not just a particular sprint” said Linda, "They need to be empowered to make the necessary decisions.” Part-time operations team members don't work because they can't be pulled away for other operational work. “Our funding is for the entire project and we therefore buy the fulltime resources we need," she said. Hybrid Methodology at CIBC David Gillespie is Vice President of Distribution Technology and Channel Strategy at CIBC. CIBC has 11 million cients and 43,000 employees worldwide. It is considered an industry leader in mobile and online banking. Dave joined CIBC Technology in 2006 and is currently responsible for the CIBC Retail Bank's Branch, Mobile, Web and Contact Center technology. David's team delivered the Mobile Remote Deposit Capture for cheques program - a first for the large Canadian banks. “We have been exploring where and how to use agile development atthe bank for several years,” Dave said, “Our online and mobile program has been largely developed in agile but we are cautious, Particularly with legacy and large release projects. We've continued to win awards for work we've done using a waterfall method, so it’s not that bad an approach. And we have something to lose if we change to agile and don't get it right” The benefits of agile development are: much greater visibility to stakeholders and executives during the process; more predictable, faster delivery; the opportunity to get feedback along the way; the abilty to surface issues early, which improves IT's responsiveness to change; and a reduction of risk through constant testing, feedback and design iterations,Nevertheless, CIBC is rigid in its approach to the integration of controls, such as those for security, service continuity, finance, change management and operations. Therefore, for those projects that have a high client-change component coupled with a high number of integration points, CIBC has created a hybrid agile-waterfall delivery framework which has these controls embedded in it. “This hybrid delivery model allows us to realize most of agile development’s benefits, while sill adhering to our controls framework," said Dave. “We use mostly agile if a project uses newer technology with minimal integration Points” In contrast, projects on legacy platforms andior which have a high number of integration points are best served by a waterfall approach. And a hybrid approach works well on projects that are a mix of these two types of projects, “Our mix ofthese types of projects is changing towards agile,” he said, “And the demographics will force this as well, since it’s difficult to hire people who understand the waterfall approach He contrasted the waterfall and hybrid approaches (see Table 1) Phase Waterfall Hybrid Defining Business BAS work on ALL BAs write sections of requirements Requirements requirements for several weeks or _ and provide them to Technical SMEs months and QA for feedback. Each section lasts a fow weeks Planning for The development eam designs the | Developers update designs, BAS and Construction application, BAs and QA design test | QA provide feedback and organize strategy over several weeks or testing fr the next set of months requirements, one week at a time. Construction The development team writes the | Technology constructs the applicafon. application, BAs and QA create test | QA uses high-level design to create cases over several weeks or better test cases and BAS provide months feedback during construction over a ‘two-week period, Testing ‘OK cerifies with development Business and technology OA test providing fixes and then the together. Testing is continuous and business tests asthe final phase. BAs are involved with demos of what has been built “Now using a hybrid approach, we iterate through everything,” Dave said, “And the business actually sees something useful being tested in each sprint.” Using this approach with shared objectives helps a team develop faster, with better alignment to needs, and a higher quality output.There have been some objections to this approach. Dave identified four that have been addressed or mitigated: 1. Teams are not familiar with an agile/hybrid approach, This has been addressed by training and augmenting teams with resources who are experts in agile 2, Agile wil derail us from proper documentation. Management reinforces that documentation is a must regardless of methodology. 3. Business might not be able to make decisions quickly. With education, and as the business discovered the benefits of the hybrid approach, decision-making has gradually improved 4, Technology is slow because it must follow all controls and processes. With experience, small adjustments on how and when to use controls have been made without diminishing effectiveness. Large-scale projects may actually have more than one dedicated development team working in parallel, under the direction of a Technology Work Package Leader. Each delivers in two-week increments and the base design is augmented as the project is developed. With these types of projects, bundles of functionality are integrated and tested every three weeks, with the entire project undergoing final user and performance testing when all functionality has been developed. Using this approach helps the team be more responsive fo changes while stil meeting time frame estimates, and risks are caught much sooner inthe process, "Quality is up and the business sees deliverables sooner, while al controls are met,” said Dave. “There's also better cooperation between all groups and the solution can be validated early by business partners and tested with customer groups." Initially, some groups and team members found it dificult to adapt to the new approach but this has gradually improved with education and experience. “Agile is the way the new workforce thinks,” Dave concluded Discussion Members had many questions about implementing agile development, including + Do you ever use partial resources in these teams? Neither Dave nor Linda recommends doing this, “Fortunately, at CIBC our projects are a big enough scale that we can have dedicated resources,” he said, “At first, people wanted to pay only for part-time resources but the CIO 6decided against this approach.” Linda added that a project's costs include all staff time. “We've found it worthwhile to have stable fultime operations and contract people to ensure accountability, We have an operations lead on every team who represents all aspects of operations and makes sure the projects direction is validated by all operations’ stakeholders, What happens if you can’t get these resources? At CIBC, the project managers work together to do project planning and resource forecasting. ‘We stil do annual planning,” said Dave. "We just adjust these as we go along,” There are no conficts for resources at Canadian Tire because project funding includes the ability to buy resources. “Our project managers do collaborate in swapping resources to ensure that the right people are on the right projects in terms of their business knowledge,” she added. What new skills and capabilities are needed to make the change to agile? Agile pulls people into a pressure cooker and people don't always lke it. Daly attendance is required and everything is visible. At both CIBC and CTC, people have been uncomfortable with this arrangement, "Many of our staff work in IT because they don't want to work with people,” said Dave. “We need to find ways to bring everyone together and make them feel comfortable. The most dangerous people on a team are the ones who've never been through a release cycle,” he added. “They can break things or miss steps. Therefore, | think a base capability for any team member is to have been on an agile team for one cycle." At CTC, people don't have to be together in the team room at all times. ‘We allow some remote work from home and our walkthroughs and demos have evolved to incorporate video,” said Linda, “The key is finding good leadership skills - to find the technical person who wants to talk to people.” In addition, people need to have skill sets that can morph into different roles depending on the needs of the project, although SMEs are still needed. ‘We've changed our recruiting pattems to look for people who have good technical and personal skills," she said. How does this new skill set affect HR job profiles? Both companies have created wider job bands for IT work, At CIBC, the business analyst job description was rewriten to pay them more, even though they have no management responsibilities, Other Brief members have done the same or added more technical bands to their technical job profiles. In addition, Dave and Linda agreed that everyone now has to understand business goals and what creates business value.These have become ‘table stakes’, they stated. As well, offshore resources must be agile and pushed to work differently, “We also need better tools, such as video, to work more effectively with our outsourced staff” said Linda, Finally, even though people are expected to exercise situational leadership, they still need a home base for evaluation, as well. How can you get full engagement from business? At CIBC, having dedicated business people is part ofthe business case for the project. At CTC, team leads have the abiliy to stop projects at the end of a sprintf they are not getting the support they need, Conclusion Both Dave and Linda were asked if their business partners would agree that using agile has made a significant diference in how IT delivers is projects. “Two years ago | would have said no,” said Linda, “put now welve gained credibility and had some wins, our business believes we're delivering value." Dave agreed. “Our business partners love this approach!"Concept ‘The purpose is to bring together C1Os from leading edge organizations to exchange best practices conceming IT management strategy. The name "brie? reflects the focused and direct nature of the sessions. See www.ciobrief.ca. 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Please rect inquires to James McKeen at jmckeen@business queensusca, Deloitte. <@| Queens SCHOO! OF RIISINESS