Agile 2009 Texas Tour

1. Agile 2009Texas Tour September 2009 www.synerzip.com

2. Discussion Topics • Introduction • Agile 2009 Highlights/Observations • Using Agile in Non-ideal Situations Confidential

3. Synerzip in a Nut-shell • Software development partner for small/mid-sized technology companies • Exclusive focus on small/mid-sized technology companies • Deep experience in full SDLC – design, dev, QA/testing, deployment • Technology and industry domain agnostic • For each client, we assign a dedicated team of high caliber software professionals • Seamlessly extends your local team, offering full transparency • NOT just “staff augmentation”, but provide full mgmt oversight • We actually reduce your risk of development/delivery • Experienced team - uses appropriate level of engineering discipline • Practices Agile development – responsive, yet disciplined • Offer 50%lower cost – dual-shore team (India + US) • Offer long term flexibility – allows (facilitates) taking offshore team captive Confidential

4. Our Clients Confidential

5. Discussion Topics • Introduction • Agile 2009 Highlights/Observations • Overall Observations • Reconfirmations/Reminders • New Insights • Counterintuitive Observations • Using Agile in Non-ideal Situations Confidential

6. Overall Observations • Solid participation, in spite of slow economy • 1350 attendees this year (vs. 1500 in 2008), from 38 countries • 20 Stages, over 300 sessions, 17 personas • Over 70% of organizations have now adopted Agile (IT Union Survey, July09) • Top 5 most effective Agile practices - current • Continuous integration • Daily stand-up meetings • Developer (unit) TDD • Iteration planning • Code refactoring • Top 3 Agile practices on wish list • Acceptance TDD • Developer TDD • Shippable software (every iteration) Confidential

7. Reconfirmations/Reminders • “Agile/iterative teams produce higher quality work, are quicker to deliver, are more likely to deliver right functionality, and more likely to provide greater ROI than traditional teams” – Research conclusion by Scott Ambler, Chief Methodologist/Agile, IBM. • The real benefit of Agile comes from building onlywhat the customer really needs/values. “Agile is the art of maximizing the work NOT done” • 64% of features are never/rarely used (2007 Study) • Variety of techniques (Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann) for eliciting and prioritizing requirements • Really understanding real customer/user’s context and frequently involving them for feedback (The Dawning of the Age of Experience, keynote address by Jared Spool) • Use low-fidelity tools (pen and paper) to do rapid, frequent, collaborative UI prototyping with users – e.g. the RITE method. Confidential

8. Reconfirmations/Reminders (cont’d) • Be careful in your practice of Agile to not become to “development centric”. Pay adequate attention to upstream (requirements definition and prioritization) part and overall business context. • Real value of actually writing an “MRD” document to set the overall context for the team. • This was the first year with a separate track/stage on Product Management • Recognition of product management issues. Product Managers have their priorities geared towards servicing the customers and marketing executives and top management more than developers. By and large, they are unaware and don’t care much for agile. More evolved thinking on how to sell agile to non-agile mgmt/exec. • On average, 1 Product Owner for every 5-8 person Dev+QA team • Unlike traditional methods, Agile requires a lot more cross-functional collaboration – customer, prod mgmt, dev, architect, QA, support, etc. “Software development is a cooperative game” – Alistair Cockburn Confidential

9. Reconfirmations/Reminders (cont’d) • Only team performance should be measured, NOT individual performance • There is really no clean way to measure individual contribution in a truly collaborative team. General disenchantment with performance appraisals and formal metrics to measure individual performance • Motivational Metrics don’t work, use only Informational Metrics (at team/group level only, aggregate and anonymize the data) • More resources • www.EsterDerby.com • Book by Rob Austin • Rob Myers, www.agileinstitute.com • James Shore, www.jamesshore.com • Majority (59%) of Agile teams are distributed – across continents, time-zones, bldgs, org entities. • Number of sessions on team collaboration techniques & tools • Great deal of talk on tools for bridging the gap between face-to-face and offline experience - IM, VOIP, Desktop Sharing, APLM (Agile project lifecycle management), video conferencing, virtual worlds, Web Conferencing etc. Confidential

10. Reconfirmations/Reminders (cont’d) • Further confirming data on hyper-productive team which are diverse and distributed (Jeff Sutherland) • Hyperproductive teams by using a shock treatment - no discussion on whether to implement agile practices or not, prove by doing it! Have a 3 month period where the team is forced to follow certain practices. More like a drill or dojo. Members practice agile by repetitively going through the motions. > 240% increase in productivity is achieved. • Role of design and development in agile - code is the only design document. All other design documents are to support code. Abstraction should be as late as possible. Early abstraction leads to YAGNI! • Lot of stress on visual management - index/ kanban cards, stories on the wall, planning poker, role playing, fish bowl - making requirements, planning and design discussions in a more playful yet effective environment. Confidential

11. SCOPE VALUE SCHEDULE CONSTRAINTS COST QUALITY • Cost • Schedule New Insights • Conventional Iron triangle of Scope X Cost X Schedule should be replaced by Value X Quality X Constraints • Agile Contracts - Recognition that conventional business considerations including traditional contracts get in the way of implementing agile. Contracts that get the customer to commit to agile is a win-win situation. Confidential

12. New Insights (cont’d) • (Unit)TDD is now a widely adopted practice • 70%+ of organizations practicing Agile, use TDD • Great deal of discussion on how to make TDD more meaningful as a mode of requirements capture • Requires a very different developer mindset, akin to moving from procedural to object-oriented • TDD cycle: write_failing_test, write minimal_code_needed_to_pass, refactor - results in better, cleaner designs • Unit test is the logical design – “What” • Code is the physical design – ‘How” • Acceptance TDD now being adopted • 40% of organizations practicing Agile, use ATDD • FITness less popular – too much work required to write fixtures • Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) practices gaining ground – tools like JDave, EasyB • Interesting new tools • Crucible - code review tool - replaces pair programming with code review as an asynchronous mode of close collaboration. • BuildBot – CI tool - cloud computing could be used to run long running build processes in distributed teams. Confidential

13. Counterintuitive Observations • Contrary to conventional wisdom, most Agile teams DO upfront requirements planning and architecture planning before starting development iterations • On average teams take 3.9 weeks to “warm-up” – doing reqmts modeling, arch planning, env setup, etc. - before starting to code • Agile is not just for greenfield development, 78% of Agile projects involve “Legacy Code” in some way. • Majority (89%) of Agile teams have to provide upfront cost estimate (Scott Ambler survey) • Agilists do write some “interim” and supporting documents. Confidential

14. Discussion Topics • Introduction • Agile 2009 Highlights/Observations • Using Agile in Non-ideal Situations Confidential

15. Impact of non ideal conditions Inside the iteration Outside the iteration Start up, co-located team Long project – enough time for requirements discussion. More flexible requirements Requirements Analysis Porting/rewrite project Distributed team Short project – no time For requirements discussion Requirements sign off required. On going relationship- trust Prioritized requirements Evolution of estimates through dialogue Long project Prioritization and estimation New customer- no trust All req. “must haves” Iteration zero for POC Or requirements are well documented Short project Flexible scope Product owner available And involved Good rapport with the customer Colocated team Long project Iteration and release planning Fixed scope – product owner not available Rapport with customer team Yet to be established Distributed team Short project Confidential 15

16. What Doesn’t Change • Requirements Analyses, Estimation, and Planning can be inside the iteration or outside the iteration. • However, always have short iterations. • Scrum, TDD, CI , Retrospectives stay unchanged. They are some of the best practices that facilitate Agile delivery and short iterations. Confidential 16

17. Selecting the Right Approach How tight is time duration? How well elaborated are the business reqmts? Access/availability of customer/end-user? Scope X Resource flexibility? Is the product manager with business or development team? Is QA located with development team or with the customer? Small: < 2 months Medium: 2 to 6 months Ongoing, > 6 months White-board, no real docs Numbered list of reqmts Use Cases w/ Wireframes Not available, use doc only Available at start and end of iteration Fully available, any time No flex – fixed resource, scope Limited flex Highly flexible PM with development team Part time on both sides Full time with business users QA entirely with customer QA on both sides All QA with development team Confidential 17

18. Case #1:Short, Fixed-Budget Project(s) How tight is time duration? How well elaborated are the business reqmts? Access/availability of customer/end-user? Scope X Resource flexibility? Is the product manager with business or development team? Are QA resources located with development team or with the customer ? Small: < 2 months Medium: 2 to 6 months Ongoing, > 6 months White-board, no real docs Numbered list of reqmts Use Cases w/ Wireframes Not available, use doc only Available at start and end of iteration Fully available, any time No flex – fixed resource, scope Limited flex Highly flexible PM with development team Part time on both sides Full time with business users QA entirely with customer QA on both sides All QA with development team Confidential 18

19. Case #1:Short, Fixed-Budget Project(s) • Series of fixed budget projects • Requirements, estimation and planning done only in iteration zero • Short iterations with TDD, CI • ROI improves with every project Confidential 19

20. Case #2:Well Defined, Long Project How tight is time duration? How well elaborated are the business reqmts? Access/availability of customer/end-user? Scope X Resource flexibility? Is the product manager with business or development team? Are QA resources located with development team or with the customer? Small: < 2 months Medium: 2 to 6 months Ongoing, > 6 months White-board, no real docs Numbered list of reqmts Use Cases w/ Wireframes Not available, use doc only Available at start and end of iteration Fully available, any time No flex – fixed resource, scope Limited flex Highly flexible PM with development team Part time on both sides Full time with business users QA entirely with customer QA on both sides All QA with development team Confidential 20

21. Case #2:Well Defined, Long Project • Requirements are fixed as this is a porting/rewrite project. • However we continue to re-plan and re-estimate as changing priorities result in requirements being shifted between iterations. Confidential 21

22. Contact Information • Hemant Elhence (Dallas based) • hemant@synerzip.com • Cell Phone: 214.762.4873 • www.synerzip.com (HQ in Dallas, TX) • 14228 Midway Rd, #130, Dallas, TX 75244 • Office Tel: 469.322.0349 • Office Fax: 469.322.0490 Confidential