Agile Methodologies In-Depth

Delivering Proven Agile, SCRUM and Kanban Practices for High-Quality Business Demands (English Edition)

Sudipta Malakar

• Verlag: BPB Publications
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9789389328561
• Thema: Computer Science
• Thema: Software Development

A pragmatic guide that will teach you to implement Agile, SCRUM and Kanban in your organization. Key Features

• Expert-guided techniques for successful Agile transformation in your organization.
• Solution-focused responses on interview questions of Agile SCRUM, XP, DSDM, KANBAN and SCRUMBAN.
• Reference guide to prepare for leading PMI-ACP and SAFe Certification exam.
• 
  Description
  This book is for businesses that aspire to improve agility, deliver fit-for-purpose products and services, delight customers, and provide the security of long-term survival associated with mature businesses that consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. Learn a lean approach by seeing how Kanban made a difference in four real-world situations. You'll explore how different teams used Kanban to make paradigm-changing improvements in software development. These teams were struggling with overwork, unclear priorities, and a lack of direction. As you discover what worked for them, you'll understand how to make significant changes in real-life situations. The Artefact has been developed as a resource to understand, evaluate, and use Agile and Hybrid Agile approaches. This practice guide will help you understand when, where, and how to apply Agile approaches and provides practical tools for practitioners and organizations wanting to increase agility. What you will learn
  
• Explore and learn how to build Organizational Resilience and Enterprise Maturity Model.
• Step-by-step solutions to implement Portfolio Kanban and Upstream Kanban.
• Deep dive into Agile SHIFT framework and Hybrid Agile framework.
• Exciting case studies and practical demonstrations on Agile SCRUM & KANBAN.
• Expert-ready guidance on overcoming common Agile project management misconceptions.
• 
  Who this book is for
  This book is appealing to decision makers, product owners, project team members who can make use of this guide in improvising the productivity and efficient management of business operations without much of hassle. Table of Contents
  1. Key success factors for adopting Agile SCRUM Kanban in any organization
  2. Lessons learnt and pragmatic approach – Agile Scrum Kanban
  3. Tricky real-world Agile SCRUM & KANBAN case studies, demos and tools
  4. Agile SCRUM KANBAN Maturity assessment Nuts & Bolts
  5. Useful tips & techniques for successful Agile transformation in any organization and the art of Agile development
  6. Use of Agile for students and parents
  7. Common Agile SCRUM KANBAN misconceptions
  8. Key takeaways
  9. Interview questions and answers on Agile SCRUM KANBAN
  10. Glossary
  11. Quiz session
  12. Test your knowledge About the Authors
  Sudipta Malakar is an accomplished SAP practice area head, Certified IT Sr. program manager, Agile coach – Advanced level, Harvard Business School, USA, alumnus, patent holder, and an International bestselling author & speaker with more than 17 years of experience in directing SAP DEV teams in supporting many major Global fortune 500 clients in multiple large accounts. He is a certified sr. program manager (MSP practitioner), a sr. project manager (PRINCE2 Practitioner), PMP®, CSP®, ITIL(F), a certified Agile Leader(CDL), CLMM, CMM, and an advanced certified Scrum Master (A-CSM) ®, CSPO®, CSM®, KMP2, KMP1, ICP-ACC®, TKP®, ISO 9001 Lead Auditor, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, CMMi (Expert). He worked in various IT companies like IBM, Wipro, Satyam, Tech Mahindra, Patni, and Syntel, and he played a crucial sr. management/Agile coach role for various global clients like Sterlite, Lufthansa, Nestle, PMI, Suncor, IPA, Canadian Pacific railways, Sony, Volvo, Allstate, and BOC Linde. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudipta-malakar-csp-klmm-cdl-kmm-cspo-kmp-a-csm-icp-acc-tkp-3a794213a/

CHAPTER 1

Key Success Factors for Adopting Agile SCRUM Kanban in Any Organizations

Introduction

Agile began as an iterative, collaborative, value-driven approach to developing software. It was originally conceived as a framework to help structure work on complex projects with dynamic, unpredictable characteristics. But since then, it has evolved into somewhat of a philosophy or world view with a set of well-articulated values and principles that it shares with Agile's many varieties.

Let's discuss some of the top benefits of organizational agility.

Figure 1.1: The top benefits of organizational agility
(Image Source: leankanban.com)

Based on our research findings and conversations with top executives, we discovered that Agile methodologies can help spur growth and support digital transformation in an era of high customer demand and fast-emerging market trends. The report shows Agile organizations experience:

• Faster time to market (60%)
• Faster innovation (59%)
• Improved non-financial results such as customer experience and product quality (59%)
• Improved employee morale (57%)

The essence of Agile development:

• Lean – eliminate waste
• Iterative – embrace change
• Incremental delivery – promote feedback
• Value-driven – enhanced ROI, reduced risk
• Collaborative – customer involvement
• Quality-focused – potentially shippable product
• Bring a just-in-time product management perspective to IT projects

An Agile Team!

The Agile team is a co-located, cross-functional, self-directed group of individuals who are self-sufficient as a team and have the ability and authority to perform to deliver business values in short iteration time box.

What is Agile?

Let's see what Agile is.

Figure 1.2: What is Agile
(Image source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a simple yet incredibly powerful set of principles and practices that help teams deliver products in short cycles, enabling fast feedback, continual improvement, and rapid adaptation to change.

Scrum refers to a holistic or "rugby" approach—where teams go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth—as opposed to the traditional sequential or "relay race" approach for managing new product development.

What is SCRUM

Let's see what Scrum is.

Figure 1.3: What is SCRUM
(Image source: https://www.scrumalliance.org)

BEIJING Olympics - Men's relay anchor Tyson Gay, part of the American team that won the relay at last year's World Championships, dropped the baton from third-leg runner Darvish Patton.

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

• Agile manifesto
• Agile principles
• Key agile principles
• Agile values
• Traditional life cycle versus agile development
• Agile mapped to traditional practices
• Agility versus agile
• The state of agility
• Three steps to increase agility
• Agile framework
• Agile concepts
• Benefits of agile
• Agile contracts nuts and bolts
• Backlog management in agile
• Agile contracts - modeling a transformation in contracting
• Role of manager (people) in an agile organization
• Agile estimation and planning at program and portfolio level
• Agile budget management
• Managing bottlenecks with KANBAN
• What is KANBAN
• Kanban general practices
• Why KANBAN
• Benefits of KANBAN
• 10 things about KANBAN
• Six forms of proto KANBAN
• Sample KANBAN board
• KANBAN card template
• KANBAN and incident categorization - example
• Jira ticket/user profile
• Jira tool best practice – dashboard
• KANBAN - critical & emergency events
• 5 enabling agile ways of working across the organization
• The agile shift framework
• The new role of the manager
• KANBAN vs. scrum

Objectives

After studying this unit, you should be able to:

• Understand the concept(s) of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban
• Apply Agile, Scrum, and Kanban in your organization/project(s)
• Understand the pitfalls of the traditional waterfall model
• Understand the field rules for faster performance and better results
• Understand the critical success factors of adopting Agile over the Waterfall model

1.1 Agile Manifesto

Agile Manifesto, 2001 Snowbird, Utah, is a statement of 4 values and 12 principles that summarize the thinking of the agile perspective and methodologies. Even though agile methods predated the manifesto by several years, it is considered the founding document of agile.

What is Agile Manifesto?

The agile manifesto was created during a meeting in February 2001 that brought together a number of software and methodology experts who were in the forefront of the emerging agile methods. The people in attendance are shown in the following image:

Figure 1.4: Agile Manifesto, 2001 Snowbird, Utah
(Image Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/)

The Agile Alliance provides some background on the genesis of Agile methods:

In the late 1990s, several methodologies began to gain public attention. Each had a different combination of old ideas, new ideas, and transmuted old ideas, but they all emphasized close collaboration between the programmer team and business experts; face-to-face communication (as more efficient than written documentation); frequent delivery of new deployable business value; tight, self-organizing teams; and ways to craft the code and the team such that the inevitable requirements churn was not a crisis [Agile Alliance 2001c].

A group of software industry practitioners and consultants, who came to be known as the Agile Alliance, developed and published key tenets known as the Agile Manifesto for Software Development [Agile Alliance 2001]:

Figure 1.5: Agile Manifesto
(Image Source: AgileAlliance.org)

The four values of the Agile Manifesto are written in the format "A over B" to address intention, focus, and effort.

Illustration of Agile Manifesto

The four values of the Agile Manifesto aren't saying "Do A instead of B". Instead, they acknowledge that both A and B will be components of our projects but say that we should apply more of our focus, emphasis, and intention to A than to B:

Figure 1.6: Agile Manifesto illustration
(Image Source: AgileAlliance.org)

It is important to note that none of the elements on the right-hand side of the list are absent; rather, they support and add value to the elements on the left-hand side of the list:

• Tools and processes facilitate interactions between team members, as opposed to shoehorning these interactions into molds and patterns for the sake of process compliance.
• Documentation is developed to add value to development and sustenance of the code rather than as evidence to prove compliance or completion.

Contract negotiations must establish a collaborative work environment that enables effective decision making and flexible response, rather than high overhead change control processes. (This can also include early termination points to limit government risk for poor performance.)

High-level plans must be flexible to allow for the necessary evolution of system requirements; plans become more granular at the development level.

1.2 Agile Principles

In addition to the four agile values, the authors of the Manifesto created twelve guiding principles for agile methods...