agile2016 conference top 10 presented by synerzip
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Agile2016 Top 10 Takeaways Vinayak Joglekar, CTO
@vinayakjHemant Elhence, CEO
@HemantElhence
http://synerzip.com
Agile2016 Conference Overview• July 25-29 in Atlanta• 2,500 participants from 42 countries
– 19 tracks, 270 sessions• 4 Special Tracks
– Agile Bootcamp– Stalwarts– Experience Reports– 3-5 min Lightening Talks
• Inspiring Keynotes– Jurgen Appelo: Managing for Happiness– Joshua Kerievsky: Modern Agile– Carrie Kish: Leadership for Genius Tribes
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19 Tracks • Agile Bootcamp• Audacious Salon (New)• Coaching and Mentoring• Collaboration, Culture &
Teams• Development Practices &
Craftsmanship• DevOps• Enterprise Agile• Experience Reports• Government• Leadership
• Learning• Lightening Talks• Open Jams• Project, Program and
Portfolio Management• Stalwarts• Testing & Quality• The Future of Agile
Software Development • User Experience• Working with Customers
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Top 10 Takeaways from Agile2016
But Really Our Top 14
Note: We attended 40+ sessions. Where possible, presenters name & references are
listed.
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But Really Our Top 14 1. VJ: Lean UX2. HE: Modern Agile3. VJ: Lean UX Toolkit4. HE: Agile is Mindset5. VJ: DevOps Antipatterns6. HE: Lean Startup
Subsumed7. VJ: Design Thinking8. HE: #NoEstimates
9. VJ: Roles Not Personas10. HE: Architecture/ Architect11. VJ: Visual Test Automation12. HE: Scaling Agile13. VJ: Interesting Soundbites14. HE: Interesting Soundbites
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Scrum Team+DevOps+Lean UX
Agile Sprints
Developer TesterProduct Owner
Cross Functional Team -2006
Release to Production
IT Operations
Big Design Up Front
UX Designer
Lean UX
DevOps
Developer TesterProduct
Owner
Cross Functional Team -2016
DevOps
Developer TesterProduct Owner
Cross Functional Team -2011
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1. Lean UX• UX designer is a role not a fixed designation• UX design was done as a part of the sprint• Each sprint had a distinct hypothesis to
validate
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2. Modern Agile
Keynote by Joshua Kerievsky, www.ModernAgile.org
• “Over the past decade, innovative companies, software industry thought leaders and lean/agile pioneers have discovered simpler, sturdier, more streamlined ways to be agile. Today, it makes far more sense to bypass antiquated agility in favor of modern approaches.”
• Modern agile methods are defined by four guiding principles:– Make people awesome– Make safety a prerequisite– Experiment and learn rapidly– Deliver value continuously
2001 2016
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Values/Principles, PracticesModern agile consists of four, overlapping values/principles that include a dozen overlapping practices
www.industriallogic.com/blog/modern-agile/
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McKinsey + Harvard Business• Agile is not just for software
development, but more broadly applicable for the entire organization– Steve Denning’s Stalwarts session and
book, The Leaders Guide to Radical Management (www.stevedenning.com)
– Recent McKinsey research • Agility Hackathons (http://agilityhackathon.com/)• McKinsey article http://www.mckinsey.com
/business-functions/organization/our-insights/agility-it-rhymes-with-stability
– Recent Harvard Business Review article, Embracing Agile, May 2016 (hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile)
• Agile is not a choice anymore, it is a necessity – Steve Denning
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Agility: It rhymes with stability
McKinsey Quarterly Article - December 2015
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3.Lean UX Toolkit• Various Tools used by Lean UX
practictioners
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3.Empathy Map->Affinity MapI see people looking at theirphones & not noticing my shopI see kids & eldersplay Pokemon go
I see people going to my competitor for Pokemon lures
I see youngerpeople spending more money
Outside shop
Inside shop
At home
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Empathy/Affinity Map -> A3
Outside shop
Inside shop
At homeTitle ____ Owner____Date Started____
Date Finished____
Background
Current Situation
Analysis
Hypothesis
Experiment
Measurement
Outcome
Next Steps
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PDSA in A3 MapTitle ____ Owner____Date Started____
Date Finished____
Background
Current Situation
Analysis
Hypothesis
Experiment
Measurement
Outcome
Next Steps
Plan
Do
Study
Act
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Three types of assumptions
It is technicallyfeasible to build this
Customerswillacceptthis
It willbe financiallyviable
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Feasibility Desirability
Viability
Business Model CanvasKey Partners Key Activities
Key Resources
Value Proposition
CustomerRelationships
CustomerSegments
Channels
Revenue StreamsCost Structure
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Order of assumption validation
Known Unknown
Important
Unimportant
Validate important and unknown assumptions first
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4: Agile is Mindset• Tools & processes drowning out the core Agile
mindset - “DeJirafication” needed• “It is not enough to change strategies, structures,
and systems, unless the thinking that produced those strategies, structures, and systems also changes.” Peter Senge, The Dance of Change
• Think of scrum ceremonies as the training wheels for learning Agile, evolve to Kanban flow– Don’t need to constrain to 7+2 team size. Make teams larger (even
to 30) to reduce inter team dependencies– Give each team autonomy to define their flow, their Kanban board – Do away with iteration planning, just pick up the next highest
priority story and start working on it
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5.DevOps Antipatterns● It works on my PC - give me access to prod● We built 200 microservices and forgot to
set up Jenkins● We’ve got fully automated deployment
pipeline but release twice a year● We crammed this monolith in a container
and called it a microservice● I used the latest version and it crashed● I deploy from separate images of dev, test
and prod env● Rollback is a separate process than rollfwd
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Solutions• Automate deployment from day 1• Choose well - some S/W resists portability,
resilience & automated deployment• Decoupled components with clearly defined
responsibilities & network isolation• Immutable containers/n/work isolation in dev• Don’t treat your containers like VMs• No config.yml in filesystem-> Env variables• Use one codebase for all deployments
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6. Lean Startup Subsumed• Lean Startup ideas now
completely integrated into Agile– Minimum Viable Product– Experiments– Hypothesis testing 2011
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7.Design thinking● There are 2 types of problems: mysteries or
puzzles. Or wicked or tame problems. Design thinking applies to the 1st type.
● Four stages: empathize, ideate, prototype and learning launch.
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8. #NoEstimates• For schedule or cost predictability, there is no
information value in story points (or detailed bottom up estimates)– Just count stories completed per sprint (thruput), and use
burn-up chart to forecast schedule/cost completion– Error range is more predictable, than the effort value
• Use statistical techniques to forecast date/cost– Use historical data (stories done/time)– P90/P10 = approx 4
• There may be learning value for team to go thru bottom-up estimation exercise
Todd Little’s Open Space session, http://toddlittleweb.com/Estimation.html
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Predicting Completion DateP10=10% confidenceP90=90% confidence
ExampleP10 = 6 monthsP90 =12 monthsP90/P10 = 2
toddlittleweb.com/Estimation.html
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Estimate for Budget?• For capital budgeting (Go/NoGo) decision,
use the same fidelity of “cost estimate” as the fidelity of “value estimate”
• “#NoEstimates is a hashtag for the topic of exploring alternatives to estimates [of time, effort, cost] for making decisions in software development. That is, ways to make decisions with ‘No Estimates’.” - Woody Zuill
http://zuill.us/WoodyZuill/links-to-simple-noestimates-examples/
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9.Roles not Personas
• Limiting the number of personas benefits the product owner not the customer.
• Role cards work better with story-mapping as the customer journey is role driven.
• Personas suffer confirmation bias. Data=Noise• Use active voice while writing user stories e.g. As a
guest when I am checked in.
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10: Architecture/ Architect Role• What is architecture?
• Irreversibility is a core driver of complexity– Poorly architected software becomes more difficult to
change over time– Architects find ways to make hard-to-change things
easier to change – To help scale, architects should only worry about the
important stuff
Tom Nedwek’s session on Architects in an Agile World Michael Vincent’s session on Emergent Architecture
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Emergent Architecture
• Some architecture decisions will need to be made before you write your first line of code
• “Don’t over design, but don’t under architect” - do one-day architecture session, invite everyone who has something to contribute
• No “Architecture Sprint” or “Sprint #0”
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Architect Role – Spotify Guilds• Secret sauce: architects are hands-on developers,
core part of the (dev) team, not a separate team• Architect’s job
1. Serve the business, i.e. “economics over craftsmanship”2. Help IT serve the business3. Educate, inspire, teach others, i.e. create more
architects, “Teach your team to fish”• Modes of architectural leadership: Observer, Scout,
Coach, Team-member• “Stop moving information to those with authority,
start moving authority to those with information”
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11.Visual Test Automation● Not just pixel to pixel comparison as image
scaling resizes images resulting in false positives.
● Applitools claims to be a better tool than Imagemagik or Sikuli
● Applitools maintains version control of images. Large binary image files can’t be checked into Github or SVN
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12. Scaling Agile – Update• New scaling framework, Nexus, by Scrum.org• SAFe most common, v4.0• General consensus – pick & choose components
from each scaling framework and tailor for your own organization– Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum at Scale/Scrum of Scrum– Craig Larman’s Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)– Scott Ambler’s Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)– Dean Leffingwell’s SAFe– Spotify model– Scrum.org’s Nexus
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Scaling Agile w/ Nexus
• Nexus is a framework that drives to the heart of scaling: cross-team dependencies and integration issues
• It is an exoskeleton that rests on top of multiple Scrum Teams
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13. Interesting Soundbites - VJ● Triads focus on building other’s relationship ● Accountability structures to value driven culture –
Carrie Kish● If you can’t build a well structured monolith what
makes you think you can build well structured microservices? – Mike Gehard
● If you have a culture of fear, none of the fancy tools or practices can help you – J Kerievsky
● Xamarin TC can test on 90 devices having 17 OS vers in 19 mins; Android fragmentation from 11k to 25 K in 2012-15 – Dan Waters
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14. Interesting Soundbites - HE• Zero tolerance - have no bug tracking system! Just
keep fixing bugs as they surface• A-TDD works – use it• TDD is like dual-entry accounting system – robust.• “Stop moving information to those with authority,
start moving authority to those with information”• Organization’s objective is to deliver most value to
customers NOT to extract most value for the shareholders
• DevOps will be gone in 3yrs
