Agile On The BeachWinning clients’ trust

Successful Agile project management

Cameron & Wilding , 02. 09. 2016

@LauraDlnv

@cameronwilding

Talk Overview

Since embracing Agile Scrum project management methodology, winning clients’

trust has become smoother across our accounts.

Along the years, I have noticed a few patterns of success across these projects,

with clients such as the Imperial War Museums, the Telegraph Media Group, Sage

Publications, and The Economist Group.

The underlying common denominator of success being happy, satisfied and

returning customers.

A bit about me and C&W

So, who is Laura?

● 9 years in the digital industry

● 6 years focus on open source technology

● 3 years Agile

● Italian

Cameron & Wilding● Drupal specialist since 2006

● Team of 20 people, London HQ

● Professional, passionate, friendly

● Award Winning

● Drupal 8, Web and App dev, UX design,

strategy consultancy

● Agile project management & coaching

What is Agile (outside a dev team)

Practices & Case studies

The Agile Manifesto

Individuals & interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Cultural fit

Individuals & interactions

● Professional & friendly

● Great communication

● Open and honest (transparent)

“ Great team, great clients, great work ”

Intro- Great communication

● Instant BUT streamlined communication

● Fast feedback loop

● Encourages collaboration

● Whole team = no “middle man”

● Reduce misunderstanding(-s)

● Be assertive, confident but collaborative

Be Assertive !

● The backlog grooming meetings are a product backlog refinements

● Writing user stories and prioritisation happens ahead (!!) of the session

● It helps keeping the backlog clean and orderly

What happens during the backlog grooming sessions? We

○ Discuss the top items on the product backlog by asking questions

○ Refine user stories by translating the answers in additional Acceptance

Criteria

○ Estimate user stories

○ Look deeper into the backlog to do longer-range planning (2 sprints)

Building the environment - great communication

●

Building the environment - team realignment

Customer collaboration

● Your knowledge of the product is built here, its intricacies, its history

● You are aware why certain decisions are taken

● You pro-actively contribute to shape the product

● You ensure user stories are clear for you / your team

○ It’s not only about the devs !

When you have a good backlog session, the rest of your time is focus time,

as the majority of your Qs have been answered already

Sage publications - Professional and friendly

● Clients prepare for meetings, as it’s us (grooming)

● Be informative when sharing information (stand ups)

● Facilitate meetings

○ Cut off off-topic conversations

○ Assign owners to actions (retrospectives)

○ Review agreed actions/mitigation points, before the end of the sprint

Your clients time is precious... so it’s yours !

● Challenges

○ Understanding of the workflow

○ Team roles & responsibilities

● Attendees

○ Core project team

○ Sage UK

○ Sage India

○ Sage US

○ 3rd parties (contractors)

GoalAs all new teams, we need a

common understanding of

[1] how to best work together and

[2] roles & responsibilities of each

team member

in order to run smooth, more

integrated and collaborative

sprints

Sage Publications - case study

TO DO IN PROGRESS PEER REVIEW IN TESTING DONE

local / dev local / dev local & test / dev candwtest / QA candwtest / QA

Assigned to the dev at the start of the sprint

Dev implement peer review feedback as priority

2 devs peer review, code only

Functional testing: all ACs are met

Stories that have passed testing are ready here

Prioritised top to bottom

Dev starts working on story

Once code is approved merge to candwtest

If yes, story is closed with a comment

Stories in this column, are merged, passed testing, realise tagged

Flagged stories that didn’t pass testing are back here at the top of the queue

Quick testing: dev makes sure all ACs are met

Once merged, dev tags the user story on Jira against its release

If not, story is flagged and sent back to the dev with a comment

Dev completes dev specs

Dev completes QA instructions before assigning ticket to QA team

If ACs are met, but we realise we wanted smthing different a new story is raised in the backlog

IWM - Professional & friendly

● Keep your personal touch

○ Be genuine

○ Down to earth

○ Be fun

● It’s not always easy

○ Disagree

○ Admit mistakes

○ Encourage feedback

“The quality of the work they produced was

outstanding, and the project was run with great humour and with the spirit

of one big team.”

Jeremy Ottevanger, Technical Web Manager

Imperial War Museums (IWM)

The Telegraph Media Group- transparency

● Budget tracking

● Budget forecasting

● Reporting

○ sprint reports

○ release reports

○ timesheets

“Their excellent project management - which is an

example of how a third party company should report about the "health" of a project - their developers’ passion for high

quality code and the "openness" of their

management were key in our successful relationship”

Budget tracking

Budget forecasting

The Golden Rule

Flexibility ● Experiment, fail, repeat !

● There’s no just ONE way to do things

● Adapt your work style

● Be receptive

● Observe

● Keep an open mind

LAURA TWITTER @LauraDlnv C&W TWITTER @cameronwilding

LAURA EMAIL laura.delnevo@cameronandwilding.com

C&W WEB www.cameronandwilding.com

Thank you !