A Guide to Assurance of Agile Delivery

Association for Project Management (APM)

• Publisher: Association for Project Management (APM)
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781903494707
• eBook ISBN:
  9781903494714
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Projektmanagement

Successful agile projects are characterised by rapid, value-driven, iterative change cycles – and good project assurance, the latest guide from APM explains.A Guide to Assurance of Agile Delivery shows how undertaking traditional assurance reviews can be adapted and adopted to ensure assurance activity of agile projects is both effective and valuable.Written by the APM Assurance Specific Interest Group (SIG), the guide supports experienced assurance professionals who may be undertaking assurance of their first agile project.The authors say: "This guide has been compiled in order to support those professionals in gaining an understanding of the 'high level' basics of agile, the differences in approach required to undertake effective assurance activity along with pointers to specific areas to look out for when conducting assurance reviews."

1

Introduction

1.1 Executive summary

APM’s Body of Knowledge 6^th edition defines assurance as ‘the process of providing confidence to stakeholders that projects, programmes and portfolios will achieve their scope, time, cost and quality objectives, and realise their benefits’.

Previous best practice and guidance for effective assurance approaches have focused on traditional waterfall-type project delivery. The increasing use of agile development methods have introduced rapid, value-driven, iterative change cycles along with the introduction of new working practices and cultures within organisations to support this new way of working. The role of assurance also needs to adapt as it assumes heightened importance in this fast-moving environment; not only evaluating individual agile projects but also looking at whether the wider organisational landscape supports the agile approach.

Any project can be managed in an agile way, regardless of whether it contains any agile development. Assurers should keep this in mind when approaching a new assurance review. Understanding the context is all important as there is no single prescribed definition of agile project management. Therefore it is essential that the assurer understands the methodology and principles specific to the organisation and the project being assured.

This guide has been produced to provide you, as an established assurance reviewer, with key background information and tools. This will support you in understanding the interplay of agile principles, processes, practices, responsibilities and behaviours to allow you to provide a considered opinion on the governance of a project and the likelihood of achieving the stated outcomes.

The guide reflects the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto (see web link in References and further reading). Whilst the Manifesto was created for agile software development, its principles are adaptable to the agile management of any project or programme. As the most current common usage of agile is for software development, most examples used within this guide reflect this.

It is not the intention of this guide to go into specifics in relation to agile development methods, e.g. Scrum and extreme programming, or more holistic methods such as DSDM or SAFe which aim to provide agile project frameworks (further information is provided in the References and further reading section). Simply using a method to deliver a product or to organise a single project does not indicate an organisation is adopting an agile project management culture.

1.2 Overview

The objective of this guide is to provide an easy to follow reference guide to the key fundamentals of agile (including workflows, jargon and culture). This will provide a basic level of knowledge to enable the reader to plan and undertake the successful assurance of agile projects in addition to helping the reader conduct their review in an agile way. This is supported by appropriate hints, tips and checklists to help identify areas of good and bad practice in agile delivery that may be encountered during assurance reviews. To accelerate upskilling of the assurance team it would be of significant benefit to have an experienced agile practitioner within the team.

This guide has been developed by APM using the knowledge and experience of project management and assurance reviewers from across UK industry, the public sector and also draws on wider academic research. The guide recognises that organisations are likely to be at different maturity levels in their adoption of agile and therefore the key content communicates at a high level and is generic in content.

This guide is aimed primarily at assurance reviewers, but could provide some level of support towards project audits. Those responsible for projects, programmes and portfolios, including project sponsors where agile development and organisational structures are being (or have been) introduced, should also find the content useful.

The guide is consistent with and based on descriptions of agile assurance practices contained in the UK government’s Cabinet Office Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s guide to agile assurance and Scrum methodology. To support the reader’s understanding of agile, this document references other sources of guidance and information to provide deeper insight into agile project management and agile development approaches.

1.3 Assumptions

We have assumed:

▪ the reader already has a sound working knowledge of key assurance activities and has previous experience of undertaking assurance reviews, but not necessarily of agile projects. We recommend that, where this is not the case, reference is made beforehand to key APM assurance literature (e.g. APM’s A Guide to Integrated Assurance);

▪ the reader already has knowledge of typical organisational structures, so that any changes required to accommodate agile is understood against a traditional baseline;

▪ that the guide is applicable to all, hence our reference to the ‘organisation’ rather than ‘the company’;

▪ the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Approaching Reviews
• 3 Environments
• 4 Governance
• 5 Overview of Agile Risk
• References and Further Reading
• Appendix
• Copyright