Agile process

or... what does actually matter in an agile process?


The holly grail of any software outfit is: deliver high value, high quality results; consistently and predictably. Talk about a loaded sentence ! but those are the requirements to make a software team  valuable to the business (or is the business). Breaking it down::
  • Team - A single developer doesn't need process.... And finding a unified process that works a huge conglamorate corp is not likely. A process then is meant for a TEAM of some reasonable size.
  • High value - if you deliver the wrong thing at the right time.... well, I've been at too many (now deceased) startups to recognize that value is key. 
  • High quality - need I say more? If you want to deliver 2.0, but your stuck bug-fixing 1.0 into existence you will have 2 customers - the one that is unhappy with 1.0 and the one waiting for the features in 2.0. Neither would keep the revenue coming in.
  • Results - activities by themselves, with no results, provides little value.
  • Consistently - It's hard to build a successful software product with just super-heros. A 1.0 release that leaves the team burnt out is not very useful over the long run... 
  • Predictably - To be able to plan ahead for the next set of features, to hit the market at a relevant time, the team must be predictable in delivering against its estimates.
While the details above could be nitpicked, in broad strokes every good programmer and software manager aspires to be in a team that achieves them - it's fun to be on such a team. But how do you achieve these goals?

Many manages and development teams I've worked with frequently make the similar process choice - first define the process, then figure out what you're actually trying to achieve by it. This is not done just because of  pointy-hair-boss whims. It's the reality in many, especially large, organization that a process is required. It could be a business requirement - ISO 9000 certification, SAS70 or any other industry norm demanded by customers as a result of legal requirements. It could be just because of the shear size of the organization and the many moving parts required to achieve business goals, where informal communications are just not sufficient.

What makes agile processes more adept at getting there is Closed Loop feedback system built into it. The general idea is that everything can be improved on, and should. The team continuously adjust the way it works, in a strive to achieve the holly grail.

Like any other closed loop system, the adjustment to the activities are determined by the metric being measured. If you're using a thermostat that measures temperature, you can make adjustments to the temperature... but not to the humidity, because you're not measuring that. The idea is simple - you choose what you want to optimize/control, and measure the relevant metrics to achieve that control.

Some of the key entities in agile development are:

  • user stories - or end user meaningful features delivered
  • tasks - the activities (leading to work products) required to fulfill a user story
  • story points - estimated amount of effort to deliver a user story
  • velocity - how many story points the team completes in a sprint or a given unit of time
  • release burn down - measure of velocity over the lifetime of  a release
The question is - what do you measure and optimize on?  how much overhead are you willing to accept as a price for getting accurate information?

Some more pondering required here... but the editor has been open for many days now...
















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