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Contents about the author                                             ix acknowledgments                                             xi chapter 1: getting Started                                       1 chapter 2: crossing the agile chasm                              7 chapter 3: Business Benefits of Being agile                       15 chapter 4: importance of customer engagement                 25 chapter 5: importance of employee engagement                  33 chapter 6: foundations of agile                                  45 chapter 7: ready, implement, coach, and Hone (ricH) deployment model                                   59 chapter 8: motivations for moving to an agile culture             69 chapter 9: achieving an agile mindset                            79 chapter 10: evaluating executive Support and team Willingness    93 chapter 11: treating agile as a transformation project            105 chapter 12: adapting to agile roles and responsibilities           113 chapter 13: evaluating agile, engineering, and team capability    131 chapter 14: establishing agile measures of Success                139 chapter 15: constructing a Scalable agile framework             151 chapter 16: establishing an agile education program              161 chapter 17: creating a customer Validation Vision                167 chapter 18: Writing user Stories and grooming the Backlog       175 chapter 19: Working with Story points, Velocity, and Burndowns    187 chapter 20: constructing done criteria to promote Quality       195 chapter 21: considering agile tools within an alm framework    201 chapter 22: implementing, coaching, and Honing activities        209 chapter 23: adapting governance and performance reviews       223 chapter 24: three case Studies in adopting agile                 233 index                                                       249 C H A P T E R 1 Getting Started Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. —H. G. Wells Throughout the history of the human species, people have learned to adapt to the environment. When the weather got too cold during the ice ages, Northern Hemisphere peoples either migrated south or adapted their clothing to live in the cold. People have adapted their eating habits, tools, and resistance to cer- tain germs. Theories of physical and cultural evolution postulate that successful human populations and processes continuously adapt to their environments. As a complex process practiced by a specialized subpopulation in a rapidly changing technological and business environment, we are under constant adaptive pressure to evolve. Somewhere along the way, however, many of us in the world of software development have grown content with fixing long-term goals, and we resist adaptive pressures to make corrective course changes. This conservative inertia has definitely gotten in the way of how we do busi- ness, clogging it with unwieldy upfront requirements and inflexible planning. The good news is that companies are seeing the benefits of moving back to a more adaptive approach. Agile has secured its place within the software development community where it originated and evolved, and now Agile is spreading into many other areas of the professional workplace, where its embrace of adaptive feedback can help businesses thrive. Many are seeing that a more iterative approach allows them the flexibility to adjust to the changing needs of customers and the continuous churning of market conditions. Many others would like to apply Agile effec- tively because they are hearing it from all corners of their professional life. No matter how prevalent and popular the adoption of Agile has become, get- ting started with Agile and then continuing to apply its methods and practices remain significant challenges. This is what I call “doing Agile,” by which I mean 2 Chapter 1 | Getting Started mechanically applying Agile methods and practices—whether they are Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Test Driven Development (TDD), or any of the many other variants. More important than the selection of a particu- lar style of Agile, however, is the art of learning how to live Agile values and principles to transform Agile mechanics into Agile mindset. This is what I call “being Agile.” Purpose of This Book The purpose of this book is to help you and your organization not only apply Agile methods and practices (“do Agile”) but transform yourselves to an Agile mindset and live in an Agile culture (“be Agile”) grounded in Agile values and principles, customer value, continuous customer engagement, and employee engagement. The more you empower teams within your organization to self-organize and draw out valuable employee knowledge, the more integrally and continuously you incorporate customer feedback into your development process; the more responsively and sensitively your product team and organization adapt to cus- tomer needs and changing market conditions; the more your organization will thrive and profit from the benefits of Agile. Throughout this book, I offer guidance, lessons, and tips regarding the adop- tion of Agile. Some of these might seem obvious and derived from the principles and values, yet they often are missed, neglected, or glossed over. Commonsense considerations about adopting and implementing an Agile cul- ture change are often the elephant in the room. Individuals in any company are generally reluctant to expose themselves to embarrassment if they point out things that might seem blindingly obvious or ask questions that might reveal an embarrassing knowledge gap. A prime example is knowledge of Agile itself. Many people pretend or imply by their silence that they know what Agile is, but they really have only a vague idea. If they don’t understand what Agile is, they can’t understand its benefits. Certainly if they don’t understand how to do Agile, they can’t understand what it means to be Agile. Another example is that some folks suppose that introducing Agile is a minor change. They fail to see the elephant in the room (see Figure 1-1): adopting Agile requires signifi- cant organizational change in order to transform their culture and produce major benefits. Being Agile 3 Do you see All I see is a an elephant? mouse! Need for culture change Figure 1-1. Agile elephant in the room. Agile requires a culture change, but most only want to apply tool and process changes What You Will Learn This book is a roadmap designed to help you consider, understand, deploy, and adapt Agile methods and practices within an organization and on an Agile team. More important, it will help you understand the Agile mindset to not only “do Agile” but “be Agile” to truly achieve a transformation and the busi- ness benefits it can provide. It is intended to be a pragmatic guide, and as such is neither exhaustive nor prescriptive. The guidelines in this book apply equally to situations when a team is embarking on new product develop- ment following Agile or to existing legacy products that are introducing Agile. With new product teams, the material in this book can help the team prepare for activities to achieve an Agile transformation. With legacy product teams, aspects of this book may be used to help examine current thinking and then adapt current mindsets and processes. These guidelines are also meant to apply to the whole organization, because “being Agile” requires buy-in across the enterprise. This book will help you embrace Agile values and principles, adopt the meth- ods and practices of Agile and, more important, enable you to cross the chasm between “doing Agile” to “being Agile.” In particular, Being Agile: • Presents a methodical yet adaptable approach toward Agile transformation, encapsulated in a ready–implement– coach–hone (RICH) model that can be easily understood and followed. • Advocates a framework in which values, customer engagement, employee engagement, and an Agile process can lead to an increase in sales and productivity, incorpo- rated in the Agile Value to Incentive Differentiator (AVID) framework. 4 Chapter 1 | Getting Started • Provides a mechanism for evaluating your level of align- ment to the Agile values and principles, encapsulated in the Agile Mindset, Values, and Principles (Agile MVP) Advisor. • Promotes a special focus on value-added work (VAW) that features customer work as valuable and an accom- panying value capture metric. • Models how to implement Agile at both the product team level and the organizational level. This book maps the path for adopting and adapting Agile in such a way as to gain the full benefits that you desire from the Agile transformation. The topics that this book focuses on include: • Business benefits • Mindset, values, and principles • An adaptable approach for deploying Agile • Suitability for applying Agile • Stakeholder buy-in and support • Team willingness and capability • Overview of Scrum, XP, Lean, DSDM, and Kanban • Roles and responsibilities • Frameworks and practices • Scalability such as Scrum-of-Scrums • Education • Agile community • Success measures • Writing user stories • Backlog and grooming • Story point sizing techniques • Velocity and burn-downs • Sprint 0 and Agile Release Planning • Done criteria • Customer validation vision • Agile tools and infrastructure Being Agile 5 • Agile assessments • Grooming in-house talent • Performance reviews in Agile world • Agile organizational governance • Agile adoption case studies Who This Book Is For The primary readers for this book are: • executives and senior management • Agile Coaches and consultants • Scrum Masters and Agile project managers • Product Owners, product managers, business analysts • cross-functional engineering/scrum teams including developers, quality assurance (QA) analysts and testers, technical writers, user experience (UX) engineers, configuration management (CM) engineers, and more Others who will benefit from using this book include: • development, functional, and QA management • sponsors and customers How to Navigate This Book You can read this book in various ways depending on your purpose and prior knowledge. Of course you are welcome to read the book consecutively from beginning to end. However, you can also customize your path through the book to suit your knowledge level or the specific challenge you are trying to solve. For those that are more experienced in Agile but seeing challenges in “being Agile,” I encourage you to pay particular attention to the discussions on cross- ing the Agile chasm, achieving the Agile mindset, business benefits, and the importance of customer engagement and employee. You may find the RICH deployment model, the AVID framework, and Agile MVP Advisor particularly useful. When you have not seen the Agile transformation you have been hop- ing for, trawl the RICH readiness activities suggested throughout this book for insight into your particular question or challenge. 6 Chapter 1 | Getting Started ■ Agile Pit Stop Pay particular attention to the Agile Pit Stops throughout the book. They illuminate ideas with examples or highlight important points, cautions, or tips. Following is a list of chapters or chapter clusters to consult for particular topics and needs. • Reasons to move to Agile: Chapter 3 (“Business Benefits of Being Agile”) and Chapter 8 (“Motivations for Moving to an Agile Culture”). • What it really takes to gain the Agile mindset: Chapter 2 (“Crossing the Agile Chasm”), Chapter 4 (“Importance of Customer Engagement”), Chapter 5 (“Importance of Employee Engagement”), and Chapter 9 (“Achieving an Agile Mindset”). • Review of Agile processes and methodologies: Chapter 6 (“Foundations of Agile”) and Chapter 15 (“Constructing a Scalable Agile Framework”). • Deployment and planning for an Agile transformation: Chapter 7 (“RICH Deployment Framework”), Chapter 10 (“Evaluating Executive Support and Team Willingness ”), Chapter 14 (“Establishing Measures of Success”), and Chapter 11 (“Treating Agile as a Transformation Project”). • Key deployment activities: Chapter 12 (“Adapting to Agile Roles and Responsibilities”) to Chapter 21 (“Considering Agile Tools within an ALM Framework”). • How to establish a strong Agile community: Chapter 16 (“Establishing an Agile Education Program”) and Chapter 22 (“Implementing, Coaching, and Honing Activities”). • How to adapt organization level processes: Chapter 23 (“Adapting Governance and Performance Reviews”). • Case studies: Chapter 24 (“Three Case Studies in Adopting Agile”). C H A P T E R 2 Crossing the Agile Chasm Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. —David Lloyd George Adopting a new concept often proves harder than it seems at first. Adopting Agile is definitely a case in point. Although Agile is still relatively new, hav- ing been formally defined by a meeting of seventeen signatories in February 2001 in their “Manifesto for Agile Software Development,” it has gained sig- nificant adoption over the past decade.1 At first glance, it appears that many software development–related companies have adopted Agile at some level. However, on further investigation, it appears that only some parts of Agile are being adopted and often in a spotty manner. A few data points that help us understand Agile’s current adoption levels include the following. A 2012 study on product team performance done by Actuation Consulting indicates that 71percent of surveyed organizations self-reported using Agile to some degree.2 This sounds significant, right? However, that study showed that only 13 percent reported that they are using “pure” Agile in the sense that Agile values and principles were being followed and iterative incremental techniques were not being mixed with other methodologies. A 2009 study indicated that 1See Kent Beck, et al. "Manifesto for Agile Software Development," (2001), http://agilemanifesto.org. 2Actuation Consulting and Enterprise Agility, "The Study of Product Team Performance, 2012," http://www.actuationconsultingllc.com/whitepaper_request.php.