S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope Agile Software Development - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

Agile Software Development Meets

Corporate Deployment Procedures: Stretching the Agile Envelope

Olly Gotel Department of Computer Science Pace University, New York

• gotel@pace.edu

David Leip ibm.com Chief Innovation Dude Agile Methods Advocate IBM Hawthorne, New York leip@us.ibm.com

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

Outline

• About the ibm.com Corporate Portal
• First Steps into Agile Development
• Retrospective
• Problem Statement
• An Agile Boundary
• End-to-End Agile
• Further Considerations
• The Agile Golden Rule

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

About the ibm.com Corporate Portal

• Advertising &

marketing for IBM

• Corporate

webmaster team (global)

• Waterfall pre-2004
• Ongoing change

requests

• Experiencing delays

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

First Steps into Agile Development

• 2004 – XP training & trial
• Partial implementation of practices
• 7-week release cycles:

– 3 iterations of 2 weeks; 1 week for deployment

• Customers submit requirements, reformulated as

stories, sized by development team, customer selects stories for iteration (based on business value & global development team velocity)

• Nov 2004 roll-out

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

Retrospective

• Pros:

– Increased communication with customer – Customer had more control – Addressing customer needs – Reduced development timescales

• Cons:

– Bottlenecks in delivering fully operational solution – Deployment (process back-loaded / knock-ons)

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

Problem Statement

• Requirements specification replaced by informal, ad

hoc, individual communications

• First formal notification – request for code review prior

to deployment into staging (sometimes late, especially where review undertaken by development team)

• No deployment stories or velocity
• Deployment team has other corporate commitments
• Development team under business pressure
• Responsibilities for down-time

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

An Agile Boundary

• Recognizing dual intermediary role of development

team

• End-to-end process (before & after):

– Appreciation of wider remit, working practices & pain of all parties – Artifacts mediating communications / touch points – Information needs, timelines, strategies – Integration oversight

• Does YAGNI apply?

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

End-to-End Agile

• Simple organizational / process changes
• Reduce cycle times in wider solution lifecycle --

“Steady Rate of Arrival / Steady Rate of Service”

• Deployment not an afterthought (pre-assigned)
• Time-boxes & velocities for deployment team
• Development team:

– Prioritize demands – Responsible for use of deployment resource

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

Further Considerations

• Scaling up
• How much slack?
• Whole team concept -- team & sub-team velocities
• Other stakeholders
• Story types (interrelating development & deployment)
• Story management via virtual story-wall

S t r e t c h i n g the Agile Envelope

XP’07

The Agile Golden Rule "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to

• thers."

— Confucius (ca.551-479 B.C.E.)