what is agile methodology

Waterfall was built for monolithic applications. It takes very long time to develop software.

Stages in waterfall model

• Requirements collection.
• Develop.
• Test.
• Deploy.

Agile methodology

• Agile is good for microservices.
• Can adapt to constantly changing requirements.
• Agile is a set of values mentioned in agile manifesto.

Agile menifesto

• Individuals and interaction and not process and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• customer collaboration over Contract negotiation.
• responding to change over following a plan.

Agile principles

• highest priority is customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• welcome changing requirements even at later stage to give customer competitive edge.
• deliver working software frequently. Ie every two weeks.
• business people and developers must work daily through out the project.
• build project around motivated individuals. Give them the environment.
• give importance to face to face conversation.
• working software is primary measure of progress.
• agile process maintain a sustainable development the pace is maintained indefinitely.
• self organising teams.
• reflect at regular intervals.

Agile frameworks

• Scrum
• Lean
• Kanban

Scrum metrics and kpi

• velocity: average story per sprint.
• commitment reliability: stories commited Vs completed.
• capacity utilisation: availabile Vs commited capacity in hours in a sprint.
• estimation variance: commited effort vs actual effort in a sprint.
• scope change: stories added deleted after sprint start
• defect leakage: defect after delivery
• backlog health: backlog size Vs velocity.

Kanban Trello jira

• visual
• Kanban boards. Fill it with
• Kanban cards and set up,
• WIP limit
• Kanban is work management methodology.

Sample columns in Kanban board

• Backlog

• Today

• Doing

• Blocked

• Done

• Design

• Develop

• Test

• Done

Workflow

One Kanban card per user story/work item.

Leadership at all levels, not just manager creating cards and moving them in a workflow.

Pull from right to left when there is bandwidth.

Create a board with stages and fill with cards at each stage.

Kanban card Title Description Owner Due date Label

When column bunchup they reveal a bottle neck in the workflow.

Flow

Lead time: time for card from start to done.

WIP limit: max no of cards in any column at a time.

Commitment point

Delivery point.

Kanban for IT: JIRA service desk Ticket raised becomes cards.

Kanban for sw development: Cards made in planning meetings based on what customer wants.

Could be combination of above two.

Card should take a day or two.

A day is 6-8 hours.

WIP limits: could be base of saying no to new projects. Obeying WIP limits increases efficiency.

WIP limit of column= no of people contributing to board @ × 1.5

Goals for Kanban Decrease lead time. Map wip limit to team’s specific skills. Reduce idleness. Protect healthy culture.

scrum

Process Ceremonies Artifacts

Scrum is agile project management framework team use to develop, deliver and sustain products.

Framework for continuously shipping value to customers. Framework to get the work done.

Handles changes in requirements market conditions etc. As not everything is known in advance.

Breakdown project into sprints.

Sprints: short iterative release cycles.

Product backlog: a running Todo list of features, user stories, bugs etc.

Every few weeks the teams selects items from backlog to work in next sprint.

Throughout a sprint team participate in number of events on regular basis called ceremonies.

Sprint duration: about two weeks.

User story: As a type of user, I want goal so that I receive benefit.

Ceremonies

Sprint planning: at the start of sprint.

Daily scrum or standup.: 15 minutes in the morning.

Sprint reviews: at the end of sprint to see what was accomplished. In a demo to product owner who approves.

Sprint retrospective.: At the end of each sprint to document what worked and what didn’t.

Scrum roles

Product owners: prioritize work, aware of business and market.

Scrum masters: scrum experts within the team. They coach po, dev team and business on the scrum process. Look ways to fine tune the practices. They are servant leaders.

Development team: team of Dev and designers who work towards sprint goals and tell po about the forecast of the sprint completion.

Scrum artifacts in each ceremony:

• Product backlog: master backlog of features enhancement, fixes and user stories, po maintains it and use it to plan sprint backlog.

• Sprint backlog: items in a sprint on which dev team will work. Shown in sprint demo. Aka sprint milestone.

• Increment(goal) with your definition of done. Usable end product of the sprint.

sprint planning

• duration 1 hour per week of the sprint.

• all roles gather together to plan what can be delivered(gaol) in a sprint and how to achieve it.

three steps in sprint planning. Backlog grooming, sprint planning meeting and creating action items.

• backlog grooming meeting: between po and scrum master. Priortize items.

Sprint planning session Leads to focus on executive, prevent surprises and ensures higher quality code.

• action items from retrospective recap done by scrum master.
• then po gives product and market updates.
• planning conversation: po does with Dev team, to set sprint goals and determine their velocity and priortization.

Average velocity: amount of work completed in a sprint.

First decide sprint goal and velocity after that pick user stories from the backlog for the sprint.

Take verbal confirmation from the team and who is starting in which item.

standups

• each member answers three question, what he was working on yesterday, what he will work on today and what is blocking him.

sprint review

• what’s done and not done.
• demo the work.
• review key metrics.
• review and revise the product backlog.

sprint retrospective

• final step of a sprint.
• reflect on the sprint and how we can improve.
• duration is 30 minutes per week of the sprint.
• prepare, set the stage, what went well, what needs improvement, next steps.