Introducing Agile

Processes into a
Waterfall Organisation
Chris Cooper-Bland, Senior
Architect @ Endava Ltd
Agenda
 What is Agile – Refresher
 What makes Organisations Waterfall?
 Introducing Change
 Change the process
 Change the Organisation
 What works
 Summary and Q&A
How many of your organisations are using agile currently?
How many are planning to?

2
 Delivering business value is
hard…
 “Of the work executed: “Many
(possibly most) organisations lose as
much as 45% of their total revenues
due to costs associated with low
quality”
 Six Sigma

 “Some 75 percent of most large-scale

J2EE projects fail by missing both time
and budget projections …”
 Mark Driver, Gartner

 “64% of features actually delivered are

either rarely or never used”
 Jim Johnson, Standish Group
3
Brief History of Development
Methodologies
AGILE e.g. XP
(Kent Beck)
Methodologies
RUP (Rational) user
Incremental,
driven, low process
RAD Object oriented,
(James Martin)iterative, time-boxed,
user driven
Prototyping, RUP
iterative, time-boxed,
SPIRAL MODEL user driven RAD
WATERFALL (Royce) (Barry Boehm)
V-MODEL (Anon)
Requirements, design Iterative Spiral Model
implementation, Aligns testing to
verification & Waterfall
maintenance development V-Model
Waterfall

1960 1970 1980 85 91 98 99

4
Agile Misconceptions?
 Agile means: “letting the programming team do whatever they need to
with no project management, and no architecture, allowing a solution to
emerge, the programmers will do all the testing necessary with Unit
Tests…”

5
What is Agile?
 http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
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.
 Management can tend to value the things on the
right over the things on the6 left
 Agile project management -
SCRUM Daily Scrum Meeting:
15 minutes
Team-Level Each teams member answers 3
questions:
Planning Every 24hrs 1) What did I do since last meeting?
2) What obstacles are in my way?
3) What will I do before next meeting?

Every Iteration
4-6 weeks
Working
Prioritised
Software
Iteration
Delivered
Scope Requirements

Requirements
Prioritised Requirements
Requirements & Features “Backlog”
Requirements
Requirements
Applying Agile: 7
Continuous integration; continuously monitored progress
Agile - XP explained (1)
The Values
 Communication
 Simplicity
 Feedback
 Courage
 Respect (added in the latest version)

8
Agile - XP explained (2)
1. Test First Programming 7. Refactoring Restructuring code
Test First without code without changing its functionality
2. The Planning Game - Mainly Simplification
- Business Stories 8. Pair Programming
- Customer decides, Prog. 9. Collective Code Ownership
Implements 10. Coding Standards
3. Small, Frequent Releases - Everyone should use the same
- Release early and release often coding styles.
4. Always use the Simplest design that 11. Continuous Integration
adds business value - At least a few times a day
5. System Metaphor - All unit tests must pass prior to
- Programmers define a handful of integration
classes and patterns that shape the - All functional tests must pass
core business problem and solution afterwards
- Like a primitive Architecture 12. Forty Hour Week !
6. On-site Customer - Tired programmers write poor code
- Customer has authority to define and make more mistakes
functionality
- encourages face-to-face dialogue
9
Water Fall Organisations
 Accounting system – annual
accounts, monthly returns
 Legal and regulatory
controls
 Shareholders – 3 year
plans, annual plans
 Interface with other
organisations
 SLAs
 Reward System, annual
event not immediate

10
Random Example

11 From Northern Constabulary

Approach to Change
 Models to introduce change into
the organisation
 Incremental approach
 Step change
 Thin threads
 Scope of change island or
wholesale
 Prerequisites for change
 Blockers & enablers - timing
 Key influencers
 Other changes
 Disasters

12
What to change – Best
Practices
Most Useful

 Collaborative working
 Iterative projects
 Visual Modelling
 Risk based prioritisation
 Requirements Management
 Change Management
 Configuration Management
 Tools
 Traceability
Least Useful
13
Factors for Success
 Choose the right project


 Size
 Importance
 visibility
 Get buy-in of senior
management
 Communicate to all
 Use experienced people
Common sense –
 Don’t trust blindly no silver bullets

(process)
effort = people * environment *size
- Walker Royce
14
Changing the process -
Integrating the method
 Advantages
 Single place to look
 Easy alignment
 People already understand parts
 Disadvantages
 May lead to confusion
 External staff don’t know it
 Overlaps and/or gaps

15
Customising the method
Standard Method
specification
Industry
Level
Industry Standards. (e.g. Industry Methods development
ISO 12207,SW-CMM) (e.g. Iterative, Agile)

Project Assurance Organisation’s Software

(monitoring adherence to Engineering group
process and feedback for
Software process improvement)
Macro-level tailoring
Organisational
Level Organisational Tailoring of Method

Micro-level tailoring

Project Project defined process documented

Level in some form

16
Changing the organisation
 People
 Team rewards
 Celebrate success
 Leadership – management must ask the right questions
 Communication, brown bags etc.
 Understand perceptions of success, what does finished mean?
 Quality/stage gates
 Senior Management control
 Estimating and budgeting
 Real options
 Portfolio planning
 Structure of the organisation

17
Estimating
 This will prove problematic
 Identify an approach early, keep reviewing it
 Ideal model is to use a model calibrated with the
actuals captured from your organisation, but ….
 Use model with someone else's metrics
 Use Industry model
 CoComo II
 Function point analysis
 Guess
 Planning game is usually too late to help

18
The Budgeting Problem
The Cone of Uncertainty

Source McConnell 1998

19
Addressing it
Convince management to make a fixed investment to establish costs

Source McConnell 1998

20
Application Project Portfolios
 Senior management
must give authority and Programme portfolio
management

control to IT
 Use a portfolio
management approach
 Define portfolio Proven proof of

segments Concepts

 Apportion available
budget Stage gate 3

 Revalidate at stage Stage gate 2

Stage gate 1
gates, for balance and
progress
21
Real Options – a way of
thinking
 Based on commodity
options – right but not an
obligation to buy at a point
in the future
 Investment is continued
only in favourable
conditions, use probability
models to predict future
likelihood of return
 Can hedge different
investments
 Allows management to be
in control
 Share holders like it

22
Structure – Skunk Works
 Lockhead Martin needed to
develop secret projects,
outside formal control
 Formed in June 1943 –
Burbank CA
 14 rules to ensure efficiency
– similar to XP principles
 Now seen as technique for
introducing change – but …

23
Structure - Radical Changes
 Change the company
structure of the XP
organisation No Change
Agility
 Create new spin-off required
company
 Joint venture
 Acquisition Waterfall
 Change the internal
structure Bureaucracy Dynamic
 New ventures Existing Structure
department
 New project teams
24
Don’t do this – if you want to
fail
 Use integrated teams
 Sort out the development environment early
 Choose tools carefully
 Enterprise architecture is important for
large/long lived systems
 One person needs to own the process vision
with support from many
 Use partners experienced in the method
25
What Works Well
 Configuration and change management,
continuous integration
 Selling the method
 Books, presentations etc.
 Immersion for the project
 Briefings for the rest of the company
 Make them want it too…

26
Summary
 The organisation will have to change too
 More you have to change the harder it is

27
Resources
 Craig Larman’s books
 http://www.bcs-spa.org/
 http://www.dsdm.org/
 http://www.real-
options.com/

28
Conclusion & Questions

Contact Details
Chris Cooper-Bland
Senior Architect
Chris.cooper-
bland@endava.com

29