Transcript Challenges in moving to Agile and how to deal with them

Challenges in moving to Agile and
how to deal with them
Katrin Noor
2013
Aim
• To
– understand differences between traditional,
Waterfall and Agile Development methodologies,
– understand challenges in project management
while switching from traditional approach to Agile,
– look for recommendations for handling and
overcoming these challenges.
Waterfall development
• One phase is completed before moving to the
next phase, completed phase is rarely re-visited
• Just in the end
– testing
– value release
– approval from stakeholders
• Better get whatever you’re doing right the first
time
• You are heavily reliant upon
– plan
– a project manager driving the way – the power of one
Agile development
• Work is planned, tested and released in small,
independent and valuable iterations
• People are empowered to collaborate and
make decisions together quickly and
effectively
• Risk is diversified
Traditional vs Agile Development
• Theoretical preparation and participation in a
couple of seminars is usually not enough.
• Coaching by experienced users might be
needed.
• Be prepared for drawbacks and pitfalls.
• Don’t use it for firs times on big projects.
Team
• Cohesive team instead of set of individuals “One for all, all for one”
• Privacy is less important than sharing.
• Overcoming resistance is a challange.
• Good motivation for the team is burndown
tracking.
Communication with client
• Much more intense communication between
the client and developer. The client has to be
ready for this.
• The client must work jointly with developer to
determine the priorities for each iteration and
they must provide daily direction on the needs
for the functionality being built.
• Bring the whole (or most of the) team to the
first client meeting.
Planning
• Project level
– In Agile project is divided into parts and attention
is at one part at a time. Despite that teams need
to know succession of the tasks and where they
fall in line with project completion.
• Task level
– It is useful to plan documentation preparation as a
separate task, as well as testing and bug fixing.
• As target scope often moves, less upfront
design is needed.
• Changes should be looked at as normal part of
the project.
• Often when changes are implemented, also
costs increase. It is worth of taking this into
account while planning the budget.
Summary
• Agile Development offers benefits like
flexibility but poses organizational challenges
as well.
• It is worth of becoming aware of them in
advance in order to make the switch from one
methodology to another smooth and
effective.