A Success Story – Mixing Scrum and Waterfall

Hear about a real life Very Large, Complex, Multi-year and Distributed project at a leading corporation where using Agile practices were introduced in a very Waterfall traditional environment.

A seasoned PM Consultant, Donnla Nic Gearailt, shares her experience as the Project Manager of a team with responsibilities for the development of NEW software for businesses globally, ranging from tactical bug fixes, to complete system rewrites and re-engineering, to adding new modules to existing systems.

She shares with us in a 30 minute interview:

  • How Waterfall and Scrum fit into her project lifecycle
  • What happened before Scrum Sprints started
  • How Estimating was done with the team and ultimately got management approval
  • What the Team looked like and roles on the team (ie. Project Manager, Product Owner, Stakeholders Business Users, Development, Testing and Release)
  • How her mixed project was integrated with the other waterfall-only projects
  • How dependencies between projects were handled
  • How the Backlog was managed and what was in the backlog
  • What the Scrum Sprints looked like – duration – activities – stand-ups
  • What documentation was used ?
  • How Collaboration was encouraged and achieved with such a distributed team.
  • LOOKING BACK – Donnla also shares what made the project a great success, and key factors any company should consider in mixing Agile & Waterfall when starting to use Agile in their Waterfall world.

SPEAKER: Donnala Nic Gearailt is a Project Management Consultant with CROM Consulting Ltd.  She has been leading and participating in Agile teams for over 4 years and over 8 years in Financial Projects.  She has also played the role of Portfolio Manager, Business Analyst and Developer — and now is the Project Manager of teams.  She has extensive experience in managing projects with many dependencies on other teams and in dealing with the associated issues, such as getting her projects on to the relevant prioritization lists and executed.

To listen to the recording, just fill out the small form below.  You will then be taken to the recording immediately to listen to at your leisure!

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NEW VIDEO – David Anderson talks Kanban, Agile and Lean

David Anderson discusses using the Kanban concept to make software development more efficient, the use of Kanban in both a large enterprise organization and as a consultant, how Kanban (in association with related systems such as CONWIP and Drum-Buffer-Rope) is catching on in the industry and helping developers improve predictability of their software, and the Lean Software and Systems Consortium.

SPEAKER: David Anderson is the author of “Kanban”  and “Agile Management for Software Engineering”.  He is a signatory of the PM Declaration of Interdependence and a founder of the APLN, an original member of the “Singapore Project” where Feature Driven Development emerged, and vice president of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium.

To listen to the recording, just fill out the small form below.  You will then be taken to the recording immediately to listen to at your leisure!

As an added benefit we will also add you to the 1000′s of subscribers that receive our Agilista PM Newsletter email that goes out every few weeks. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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NEW VIDEO – Product Discovery using Lean Thinking (with Jeff Patton)

Think of a product you love, one you’d recommend to a friend. What makes the product valuable? While I’m not a mind reader, I’m confident you weren’t thinking: “lack of bugs” or “time to market.” The most difficult part isn’t delivery, but the discovery of products that are truly valuable to the people that use them. Jeff Patton explores applying Lean thinking to product discovery.

Find out how “Discovery finds problems to solve and the shape of solutions”

SPEAKER: Jeff Patton has focused on Agile approaches since working on an early XP team in 2000. In particular Jeff has specialized in the application of user centered design techniques to improve Agile requirements, planning, and products. Jeff is a winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award.

To listen to the recording, just fill out the small form below.  You will then be taken to the recording immediately to listen to at your leisure!

As an added benefit we will also add you to the 1000′s of subscribers that receive our Agilista PM Newsletter email that goes out every few weeks. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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NEW VIDEO – Mary and Tom Poppendieck on Lean Software

Mary and Tom discuss the history of Lean, and what they feel are the most important things for software teams and organizations to thrive.Results are not the point, the point is growing your people, converting them into effective problem solvers who are relentlessly improving. If everybody in the organization is a problem solver, you’ll get steadily better and better.

SPEAKERS: Mary and Tom Poppendieck, teach and consult worldwide on Lean principles for software. Their practical, customer-focused approach to software development identifies real business value and enables product teams to realize that value. Mary has managed solutions for both operations and new product development. Tom is an enterprise analyst, architect, and agile mentor.

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Differences between Waterfall, Iterative Waterfall, Scrum and Lean Software Development (In Pictures!)

This simple overview of the different Agile-Lean methods found was too great to not share.  Sometimes it is best to keep it simple to build a foundational understanding….then build on that.   Pictures speak a thousand words.

  • Waterfall Development,
  • Iterative Waterfall Development
  • Scrum/Agile Development
  • Lean

Thanks goes out to author Tara Lee Whitaker, a digital program director of a leading consumer magazine publisher in the UK.  She has over 10 years of experience in the areas of product, project and program management. – The Agilista PM

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