Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary

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1 Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary February 2010 Overview Adaptra s first roundtable for 2010 was held on Tuesday 16th February at the Adaptra Group offices in Sydney. The roundtable commences Adaptra s 2010 series of roundtables, following on from the inaugural and highly successful roundtables conducted in The topic for this roundtable was Implementing Agile, with discussion points aiming to include: How to get your organisation ready for Agile Big bang versus incremental methods of implementing Agile or using an approach that takes a little of both How to scale up incrementally whilst continuously undertaking Agile pilots Ensuring all your Agile pilots fit together This document provides an overview of the key focus areas around the topic of implementing Agile ; the challenges faced by attendees, a presentation by Ian Gibson, General Manager Consulting & Application Services at Adaptra; and key questions related to Agile implementation. The event was hosted by Adaptra s CEO, David Phillips, who introduced himself and welcomed everyone to the roundtable. 1] Challenges The attendees firstly outlined the major challenges faced in relation to implementing Agile. These included: Attendees noted that Agile means different things to different people The difficulty of cultural change The question of how to implement Agile was also raised. Focus on requirements The constant pressure to deliver quicker Difficulty when trying to use vendors that don t have an Agile approach Growing expectations from the business

2 David then introduced the topic and summarised the notes from the previous Agile roundtables. He noted that the first roundtable touched on the merits of Agile, whilst the second one touched on how to combine Agile and the PMO. David then explained the focus of this roundtable: a lot of organisations that are now running Agile pilots, but after they ve taken the decision to run pilots, what is the next step? He then introduced Ian Gibson, General Manager Consulting & Application Services, who shared some of his experiences as a previous CIO who has introduced Agile. Ian presented some statistics to the group, which are provided below. 2] Agile Presentation Ian Gibson Slide 1: The take-up of Agile is still concentrated at the Pilot phase while organisations struggle to overcome the challenges of ramping up A lot of organisations are stuck at the pilot stage and struggling to scale up from that. Most organisations are not geared for a corporate roll out. Businesses are looking for quicker time to market and cost reduction and or greater business engagement. Most projects tend to adopt a hybrid model. Attendees wondered what Suncorp actually looks like? One attendee commented on the fact that they have had pilot attempts in the past but that their business maturity just isn t there at the moment. They are looking to conduct more pilots, where they re able to present the benefits to the business. Another attendee commented that the idea comes from IT, but if the business is not ready to operate that way it becomes very difficult to progress. They went on to say that their changes were implemented from the top down, where they had a new CEO that put tools in place to help change things faster. Change management along with cultural changes were both identified as issues that organisations were struggling to overcome, and having appropriate testing was a common roadblock. Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary 2

3 Ian then introduced the second slide. Slide 2: Organisational culture and inexperience are still the two main causes of failure with undertaking Agile projects It is not hard to protect a pilot ; a governance and operating structure protects them from the traditional culture and mitigates for shortfalls in the technical environment and infrastructure. However, as soon as you scale out you find yourself hitting barriers. For example, you can insulate one pilot but the overhead becomes prohibitive for several. Attendee comments included: Realise the journey. One attendee described how they ve gone back to the business case and have started to break it down into per feature and function creating a business case for each one. This helps stop the costly process of reestimating and helps to get clarity on what they re really asking for. Management systems are not geared up for flexible scrums. IT trying to drive change from the bottom up is not working you need a good sponsor. The business wants you to be agile with changes. Fit for purpose methodology is the term one organisation uses for how they determine which methodology to use. Ian noted to the group that extensive research indicates that for most applications 64% of the functionality never gets used. Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary 3

4 3] Key Roundtable Discussions Following discussion of Ian s presentation, the group discussed several key questions related to Agile implementation. Having run successful Agile Pilots, are you seeing any improvements? There are improvements, but you still get surprises. The main difference has been shortening the time frame (requirements gathering). Delivering those things that people are certain about and delivering them early. Requirements are always changing, but change is inevitable. How do you leverage off pilots and move to program approval? One attendee noted that they come from a smaller organisation where they need to have the team take ownership and learn for themselves. They also identified the fact that they need a strong team leader. The business needs to understand that they get a better outcome by giving IT the resources needed. By being able to show results. Very difficult when your organisation is not mature enough and therefore not ready. Good change management is needed. Some additional points of discussion included: One attendee commented that they don t really have a PMO. Their PMO function was to only look at financials. They have developers that go out to the projects. IT managers are hesitant because they lose resources. Arranged to meet the business frequently for 10 minute stand up reviews. Doing a lot more co-location with developers on projects. Some organisations still have problems with deciding what projects are appropriate to use Agile versus traditional Waterfall. Most organisations still don t have a clear roadmap for rolling out Agile once they get beyond the initial pilot/s. David then posed the question to one attendee: how did you initially start using Agile? Started a pilot as a concept and that grew from there, and now have multiple Agile pilots. If starting another project, the default would be Agile, but tend to get stuck when trying to use vendors that don t do Agile and only use Waterfall. Availability of business resources is an issue i.e business resources typically still need to do their day job as well as work on the project, so getting enough time off the right people is hard! Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary 4

5 Ian brought to the group s attention that there are often questions around testing and co-location, as well as cultural change, and invited discussion around these issues. Integrated teams help. Having teams of different skill sets, ensuring that testing capability is in the team. Having the infrastructure in place to do automated testing/integration. One attendee stated that they re struggling to see the value of automated testing and find people are better at testing. Another attendee noted that they are seeing the value of automated testing as their cost is lower and the testing is faster. How did the culture change? Positive attitude from both the business and IT. One attendee noted that they had a project that was in trouble and they therefore looked at it differently and used a number of small releases to get it back on track. This ensured that the BA s and SME s no longer felt like victims. By demonstrating success and then pulling rather than pushing. Conclusion David then brought the roundtable to its conclusion by asking attendees to put forward their suggestions for future discussions. Suggested topics included: How to manage and prioritise work in the real world, portfolio of projects, supply and demand management? How to deal with Agile projects from a PMO point of view? How do you make Agile work? How to market Agile? How to show value get the story across? Portfolio prioritisation, but you don t have a PMO? How can you use Agile? How do you demonstrate Value with Agile? If you would like more information on Adaptra s services please contact our Solutions team at adaptra@adaptra.com.au. We would be delighted to provide you more information on our project management solutions. Implementing Agile: how to introduce Agile into your organisation Roundtable Summary 5