WEBINAR – When to use Agile in a Waterfall Enterprise
Many practitioners take a black and white stance regarding implementing agile.
They discuss how to start using Agile in your organization, what projects to choose and how to gain acceptance from executives, but do not address the fact that enterprise portfolios are often comprised predominantly of waterfall projects.
This webinar takes a fresh look at the benefits and challenges of implementing agile projects in a waterfall portfolio. It draws upon extensive personal experience and ongoing interviews with Agile thought leaders such as Ken Schwaber, Marry Poppendieck and others.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Learn how to know when to use Agile?
- What makes Agile valuable on a project.
- Learn about the “hybrid” project model – part Agile / part waterfall (ie. standard reporting, staffing)
- Learn about complexities of tracking & reporting Agile Projects with Waterfall Portfolios
- Get an introduction to the idea of Agile Earned Value
INTENDED AUDIENCE:
- PMO Leaders
- Frustrated Traditional Project Managers working with Agile developers
- People implementing Agile in Waterfall organizations
YOUR INSTRUCTOR: Joseph Flahiff is a project planning coach, speaker and trainer. 15 years of Project Management success make Joseph uniquely qualified to help not only address what will make your organization successful but to help you form a well thought out plans for action. Joseph draws from a wide variety of sources and industry best practices to serve his audiences. Including interviews with industry experts which are going to be made available in an upcoming podcast series “Agile Leadership”.
Joseph is not only a Certified PMP, he is also Certified in Six Sigma methods and a Certified Agile Scrum Master. Joseph has experience in a wide range of market verticals: Telecommunications, High Tech, Education, Healthcare, Biotech Research, Health Insurance, City/county and State Government, Small Business, and Startups.
PDUs: 1
COST: FREE
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(1) How often is Agile/Scrum implemented without management support? When does it work best under these circumstances?
(2) How do you report status on Agile projects in PPM tools such as CA Clarity?
(3) How do you run a project that has both a SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT component as an Agile project as well as “other” component (ie. IT infrastructure)?
(4) How can I use Agile on big package implementations (ie. ERP or CRM)?
(5) What is MESA?
(6) How involved should a Business Sponsor be?
(7) Where can we find more info on EARNED VALUE?
(8) Can you have a Waterfall model within an Agile methodology?
(9) Is there a time period needed to consider when moving to Agile, as a PM? Any specific timelines from requirement gaterhing to deployment that need to be considered before maing the decision?
(10) As a PM trying to keep costs within the project budget – how should we effectively use testing staff in an Agile project? (They are no longer just coming in at certain times for system/regression testing)
(11) In traditional Waterfall, we devleop a Design SOW where PMO tracks our project success to +/-10%. In Agile lifecycle, how does one create a Design SOW when the project consists of multiple 3-week sprints/releases with duration over 15 months? In Agile, Analysis and Design of later releases are yet to be preformed?
(12) Does Agile apply to projcts other than SW DEVELOPMENT?
Hi Joseph and Donna,
Great Webinar!
One of the questions that I had was how to use Agile in a fixed budget project and still deliver what the customer wants, without the project going over time and budget?
Thanks in advance!
Albert
(1) How often is Agile/Scrum implemented without management support? When does it work best under these circumstances?
In an enterprise agile is often implemented without complete management support. It often starts as a pocket of developers wanting to have more success in their projects, or because they are frustrated with trying to estimate months and months out.
If you are looking to implement agile the very first thing you should do is figure out WHY. What advantages are you trying to get by using agile? Then implement the practices that make sense to achieve those goals. DON’T just do agile because, it is the thing to do. Have a reason.
Get Amr Elsamadisy’s book Agile Adoption Patterns. This is what it is about.
(2) How do you report status on Agile projects in PPM tools such as CA Clarity?
(3) How do you run a project that has both a SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT component as an Agile project as well as “other” component (ie. IT infrastructure)?
(8) Can you have a Waterfall model within an Agile methodology?I use clarity. You can set it up quite easily if you are implementing sprints and releases.
There are other ways but that is what I do. Then you also can run the non-agile work in
Release 1 X————————————————-X
Non Agile . x————————x
Sprint 1. . . x———–x
Sprint 2 . . . . . . . . x———–x
Sprint 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . x———–x
Sprint 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x———–x
To do this you should align the anon agile with the sprint start/end dates. You should also get your non-agile people to attend the sprint planning and daily standup meetings (assuming you are using those models)
Do NOT include the non-agile people in the calculation of your velocity because it will just mess up the numbers.
(2) How do you report status on Agile projects in PPM tools such as CA Clarity?
(3) How do you run a project that has both a SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT component as an Agile project as well as “other” component (ie. IT infrastructure)?
(8) Can you have a Waterfall model within an Agile methodology?I use clarity. You can set it up quite easily if you are implementing sprints and releases.
There are other ways but that is what I do. Then you also can run the non-agile work in
Release 1 X————————————————-X
Non Agile x————————x
Sprint 1.. . x———–x
Sprint 2.. . . . . . . . . . .x———–x
Sprint 3.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .x———–x
Sprint 4.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .x———–x
To do this you should align the anon agile with the sprint start/end dates. You should also get your non-agile people to attend the sprint planning and daily standup meetings (assuming you are using those models)
Do NOT include the non-agile people in the calculation of your velocity because it will just mess up the numbers.
(7) Where can we find more info on EARNED VALUE?
http://danube.com/system/files/WP_Earned_Business_Value.pdf
http://alistair.cockburn.us/Earned-value+and+burn+charts
http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/rp2_cabri_griffiths_agile_and_earned_value_reporting.pdf
http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-evm
http://www.agilekiwi.com/EarnedValueForAgileProjects.pdf
(5) What is MESA?
Mesa was the internal project code name for the actual project that the slide was from. It was a mixed agile and waterfall project
(12) Does Agile apply to projects other than SW DEVELOPMENT?
Yes!
I have used it in coaching entrepreneurs starting businesses. I wrote a series of three articles for StartupNation.com about this you can find them here: http://bit.ly/6f7NG
Agile is useful in any project where you want to see feedback, quick delivery and low defects, where the product can be released in increments. You can even adapt it to work for big release projects but you loos a lot of the value.
Extrapolated out further you will find that Agile is a specific application of several principles of Lean. They hold many common values and principles.
(6) How involved should a Business Sponsor be?
Very involved. I expect daily involvement form the business sponsor.
Q: One of the questions that I had was how to use Agile in a fixed budget project and still deliver what the customer wants, without the project going over time and budget?
A: This really isn’t a problem. The issue is your perspective on the idea of “What the customer wants”. In your “traditional project” What would you do? You would specify up front the requirements then you would set the budget. Then you would get into coding you are 75% done and find some piece of the work is taking WAY longer than you originally though it would. suddenly you are at the 80% mark but you are still only 75% done. So, what do you do? You go tell the sponsor/Budget owner, “Hey, we aren’t going to make it, this thing we ran into has us stumped.” Then you tell them the budget and scope alternatives (cut scope or add budget). Then you finally get to the end of the project and find that (by some estimates) 45% of the features in the product are not really what the customer wanted (see Ken Schwaber http://www.controlchaos.com)
How is this different in agile? In Agile you are delivering fully functional products TO THE CUSTOMER (hardware or soft) every iteration. This allows you to get feedback from them about what they REALLY want. you will find that what they want is not what you thought it was, (that is the sound 45% of the feature waste being removed). So, you still get to the same point you were on the traditional project 75% though with the planned delivery and find that the next feature is a real bear and you can’t deliver in the sprint. You go to your sponsor and say, “Hey, we aren’t going to make it this sprint, this thing we ran into has us stumped.” They say, “Ok, Stop, We are done.” We have delivered valuable software the the customer is pleased with, we can stop now.” Or maybe they don’t maybe they tell you to drop that feature or maybe they say to keep working. You see they do not have the pressure on them of the need to deliver. You have been delivering the whole time. The customers aren’t banging on the door, they could wait a month for the next feature.
Whew. That was long. but I hope you get the idea.
11) In traditional Waterfall, we develop a Design SOW where PMO tracks our project success to +/-10%. In Agile life-cycle, how does one create a Design SOW when the project consists of multiple 3-week sprints/releases with duration over 15 months? In Agile, Analysis and Design of later releases are yet to be preformed?
Two answers: You have to ask. “WHY are we doing agile?” What benefit are we getting from it? You can do a mixed approach that will allow you to achieve the Speed to market benefits of Agile, without the adapting to change parts (See “Agile PM with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber Appendix D) You just add a requirements definition phase before the agile development.
Answer 2: The problem you are seeing is that the PMO is too far removed from the real customers to track actual customer VALUE so they track to a metric. This metric might be as much as 50% off from real customer value but the project has to track to it. This is a foolish approach. Mary Poppendieck calls “Cost Center Disease” she did a case study about this with IBM. The IBM VPs were required to commit to the release months and months ahead. After implementing a lean/agile approach they still had to commit but they only had to commit to something like 70% of the feature set leaving 30% available for change.
Peace
Joseph
(10) As a PM trying to keep costs within the project budget – how should we effectively use testing staff in an Agile project? (They are no longer just coming in at certain times for system/regression testing)
In Agile you test all the way a long. The developers do their integration testing, then an independent tester does a round of integration testing. this independent tester could be another developer but I tend to have an embedded tester on my team, sometimes two, depending on the size of the team. The thing is the testers will pay for themselves in the quality of your code.
(4) How can I use Agile on big package implementations (ie. ERP or CRM)?
You can apply the principles of Agile/Lean to any project. The real question is what value do you want to get out of the implementation. What you want to get out of it will dictate what you use on it.
Listen to this podcast with Amr Elsamadisy about Agile Adoption Patterns.
http://gallery.josephflahiff.com/podcast/Amr_Samadisy.mp3
Q:You really have to use SOMETHING to manage your project – even if it’s an Agile project, don’t you?
Yes. but what you use can vary. Some use a Scrum Board, or Kanban Board to visually manage the project work. However this doesn’t work well for mixed agile/waterfall projects. Some people use software like Version One, Rally, Xplanner or the like. And still others, like myself, use a combination of those tools and MS Project or Clarity OpenWorkbench.
When using a Gantt based planning tool you have a couple of options for showing the agile work.
1) show the sprints as tasks
2) Show the story cards as tasks
3) Show the Epic Story Cards as tasks
4) Show the releases as Summaries ,and stories as tasks.
1 – Doesn’t really give you much information but makes time tracking easy. If your management relies on burn down/burn up then you can and should use this approach.
2 – works IF your stories are larger than a sprint. if they are smaller than a sprint then I wouldn’t bother with this approach, you are getting WAY too into the weeds
3 – If your stories are smaller than a sprint but your epics are larger then you MIGHT consider this approach. BUT, if the stories are not handled sequentially then I wouldn’t recommend this. What you will see is great progress for a bit. then a long time of no movement, then progress, then no movement. If your sponsors aren’t using burn down they will keep asking you questions about this. If your scope is fixed (for example a compliance with a Federal Mandate) and you are using agile to gain the Quality and reliable releases, then you could use this approach
4 – This is good if you have regular releases, say, every quarter. then this approach will allow you to see progress toward the release. through delivery of the stories.
Anyway you slice it the Gantt approach only makes sense when used in conjunction with burn down / burn up charts for Agile projects.
Q: This knowledge loss issue can be eased by implementing documentation protocols
Yes I totally agree with this. The agile manifesto does NOT say that there is no value in documentation, just that there is a preference for working software OVER comprehensive documentation. “that is while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
Q: How can you have a full time team when some of the people i.e. dba do not have 3 weeks of work
A: That is one of the fundamental problems with the way agile approaches resources, when it is used in an enterprise. The concept is that on an agile team anyone can pickup the ball and do anything, they are crossfunctional, anyone can do UI, anyone can do the DBA work. The problem is this isn’t true in an enterprise where specialized knowledge is the norm.
What I do is have a core of people who do the development work and, YES, they do anything, within the core of the development work. these are the folks for whom I calculate velocity. However, the others are the external, non agile work (see above response to using PPM tools). We do try to define thier work as much as possible in relationship to a sprint. but not calculated within the burn down.
Q: How much formal training is required for a PM who has little exposure to agile to then take on a new agile-based project?
A: that is a tough question. It will all depend on the person. It is not difficult to understand the practices of agile. however making the mental shift to the values and principles of agile takes some time. If you can I would recommend shadowing someone who is already doing an agile project. Or even better get yourself an agile coach to help you through the first one. I took the Scrum Master class as my first and only formal training in agile. but I read voraciously and speak with other agile thought leaders all the time. You can get a lot of what you need from seminars like those on Donna’s website here.
Q: infrastructure can’t do agile, but has to work with. To clarify – I am an IT infrastructure mgr who has to follow waterfall, and integrate in with a large # of programming teams using agile methods for their stuff. Deploying h/w requires upfront reqts and in a large company will take 60-90 days to deploy (adding in purchasing, rack/stack, build, firewall, etc.)
A: Yes and no. If you choose to you can implement agile values and principles (see the manifesto, the 12 principles are on page 2). Really. I have for years before I was doing Agile projects, preferred individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Additionally you can use methodologies like Kanban for your infrastructure projects. it works great for work that doesn’t nicely break up into iterations.
Needing up front requirements does not preclude agile. responding to changing requirements is only one of the benefits of agile. I am using agile on a federally mandated project right now that has very well defined up front requirements but we want the quality and regular releases.
Q: Can you talk about Stage-Gate and Agile?
Stage gates are a very formalized approach to the waterfall methodology.
Typical Stage Gates:
Discovery
Scoping
Business Case
Development
Testing/Validation
Launch
When using agile with this approach, Discovery and scoping are lighter weight and if at all possible you will want to have the whole development team involved with the process so they have tacit knowledge of the business values and reasoning for the project. this helps in the long run with the team understanding of what is meant by a given requirement. Scoping and Business Cases would be where I would develop story cards to document the scope and business case.
Development is where your iterations happen. and the vast majority of your testing.
Testing/Validation becomes mostly Validation because you have been doing daily builds and testing all along the way. you may have even been doing TDD where you develop the software with the sole purpose of addressing the tests
Launch is launch.
You could use this in an iterative approach where you go through the dev/test/launch every iteration, though that is not common with Stage Gate approaches. More typically in this kind of environment you would do your iterations within the Development stage gate. doing integration testing within the development stage alone then, again, the test/validation stage is more validation than testing.
Q: I would suspect that companies resist because of risks…they can manage risks easier if they use waterfall. How does Agile/SCRUM address risk management? I’m guessing daily…
A: I love this question. There are different kinds of risk. One risk is a risk of life and limb, another is the risk of producing the wrong product. For the first kind of risk I lean toward more checks and balances approach more waterfallish. For the second kind of risk, delivering the wrong product agile is the better answer.
For a good discussion of this check out the book “Balancing Agility and Discipline: a guide for the perplexed”.