Running Agile on a non-agile Environment

Nuno Caneco - 2017/01/12

Bio

Nuno Caneco

● Software Engineer for 13+ years● Scrum Practitioner since 2008● Scrum Master since 2009● Leading Software Projects since 2006

Motivation

Share the experience from executing a project using Agile under a Waterfall contract

How it started

● Fixed scope

● Fixed delivery date(based on high level estimations)

● Waterfall-based Project Management

Project Management Foundations

Schedule

Scope Budget

Quality

ResourcesRisk

Contract

Managed by Contractor (PM)

Agile & Contracts

Schedule

Scope Budget

Quality

ResourcesRisk

Fixed Contract:

● Fixed Budget ● Fixed Scope● Fixed Schedule

Waterfall Project Management

The Agile way:

● Flexible Scope● Flexible Schedule

Flexible Budget

Internal Agile - The Opportunity

Using Agile would hopefully:

● Improve the flexibility within the

Team

● Improve resource and time

management

● Steady and frequent checkpoints

● Small and frequent victories

Façades

SupplierCustomer

Sponsor

PM

Sponsor

PM / PO ScrumMaster

TTTeam

Waterfall AgileWaterfall & Agile

Combining Waterfall with Agile

Requirements

Design

Implementation

Verification

Waterfall Façade Agile Façade Activities

● Close high level specs with Customer● Epic Backlog● Initial Product Backlog

● Refine Product Backlog● Initial Mockups● Sprint 0 - project structure and first lines of code

● Sprints● Backlog Grooming● Internal QA & Demos

● Acceptance tests with customer● Bug fixes

RequirementsPhase

Preparing the Backlogs

Functional Specification● Modules

○ Features

User Acceptance Tests● High level UAT

(not that much detailed at this point)

Waterfall Façade Agile Façade

Epic Backlog

Product Backlog

Modules mapped to Epics

Features mapped to User Stories

UAT mapped to Acceptance Criteria

Epic Backlog Prioritizing

Prioritize on Epics based on the following criteria:

1. Dependency to other Epics/Stories○ Foundational epics go first○ Epics that are dependencies to other epics go first

2. Risk & Impact○ High risk + High Impact Epics are likely to go first○ "Bread and butter" epics are likely to go last

At the End of Requirements Phase

The Team had:

● A Functional Specification approved by the customer● A high level UAT document approved by the customer

and

● A detailed and prioritized Epic Backlog ○ T-Shirt size estimation

● A Product Backlog with:○ Detailed functional description ○ High level Acceptance Criteria○ No User Story estimation

Implementation Phase

Invariants

● Setup the Team

○ Front-end Engineers ; Back-end Engineers ; Lead Architect

● 2-week Sprints

○ Starting on Monday ; Ending on Friday (by agreement with the Team)

● Recurring appointments on the agenda:

○ Sprint Planning

○ Daily meetings

○ Sprint Demo

○ Sprint Retrospective

Sprint Loop

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10

Sprint Planning[Team + SM]

Backlog Grooming (Mid/long term)[SM + PO ; Team(optional)]

Mock-ups & User Store detail grooming [PO + SM]

Backlog Grooming (Sprint n+1)[Team + SM + PO]

Sprint Demo[Team + SM + PO + PM]

Sprint Retrospective[Team + SM]

Sprint n

Sprint Planning

Product Backlog Sprint Backlog

● Stories are split into Tasks

● Each Task:○ Gets estimated in hours

(Estimation > 12h → Split the task)○ Is pre-assigned to a Team Member

● Tax Tasks:○ Backlog Grooming○ Daily meetings○ Sprint Demos○ (...)● Story ID

● Description● Estimation [Story Points]● Mock ups

● Task ID● Story ID● Task Type● Description● Assignee● Estimation [h]● Time tracking

Definition of Done

Examples:

● Code on Source Control must compile and run by hitting F5

● Tests must be implemented and passing

● Database project must be updated

And, then by Sprint #4...

We need a working BETA version in 1 month!

Time to Adapt!

● Identify the user stories that become critical for the BETA

● Enter Kanban mode for 2 sprints to:a. Finish the featuresb. Install the system @ PROD

Sprint #1 Sprint #2 Sprint #3 Sprint #4 Sprint #5 Sprint #6 Sprint #7 Sprint #8 (...)

Scrum Scrum Scrum Scrum Scrum Kanban Kanban Scrum (...)

BETA went well

QA & Testing

Adding a QA to the Team

At some point, we decided to bring in a QA into the team:

● Iterate towards the final UAT document

● Test the outcome of Previous Sprint according to UAT document

● Report bugs

QA loop

Sprint n

QA: Test fixed bugs

QA: Run UAT tests on new storiesTeam: Fix issues reported by QA (within saved capacity)

QA: Iterate on UAT document

The QA Loop was integrated with the Team Loop

It was nice

The bugs were found and fixed sooner!

Show me some numbers!

Some numbers

● 17x 2-week Sprints

● 5 software engineers (backend and frontend)

● 1 QA (non-permanent)

● ~210.000 lines of code

○ From which 37.000 are tests (~12%)

● 4 software applications + 1 common library

Velocity, capacity and time

Lessons learned

Pros

● Guided and steady workflow

● Regular sense of completion at the end of each Sprint

● Quickly respond to change

● Pre-align epics to Sprints

● Waterfall Status Reports became really easy○ Just use the data from Sprint Demos

● Deallocations and inefficiencies become visible

● Improved the Team buy-in on the Project

Cons

● A bit of Management overhead ○ Map Scrum <--> Waterfall

● Higher allocation of QA Team Members○ Early allocation to the Project

Lessons Learned

● It's easier to run Internal Scrum if the Management buys the strategy○ And our Management did support this strategy

● Using Kanban for stability Sprints○ Improved the flexibility to fix issues and implement quick-but-needed features

● If properly aligned, the Waterfall artifacts can be mapped to/from Agile

artifacts with minimal effort○ Technical Specification → Epic Backlog and Product Backlog

○ Sprint Demos & Sprint Backlog → Status Reports

○ Acceptance Criteria → User Acceptance Test

But most important

Always remember that the customer did NOT buy Agile

Keep

the

FaçadeKeep the fixed scope and time to the customer

Allow some internal

flexibility

Thank you