6 Levels of Agile Planning

One of the misconception is that agile process doesn't do enough planning. In reality, Agile does lot more planning and risk mitigation than traditional processes. Agile focuses on planning very often instead of doing comprehensive and assumption based planning once. Agile Planning (a.k.a. planning onion) has 6 levels - Strategy, Portfolio, Release, Iteration, Daily, and Continuous.
The following video blog peels off each layer of planning onion to provide details of planning at each level.

Agile Strategy Manifesto Video

The following animated video presents Agile Strategy Manifesto. Here are the key learning objectives:

• What is Agile Strategy Manifesto?
• What are the four phases of Agile Strategy?
• What are value spirals and strategy curves?
• A case study of Agile Strategy

10 Rules of Cleaning Applied to Agile

You keep your house clean - right? If you don't then rest of the article is waste of your time. If you do then you can learn Agile in no time. Have a look!

1. Repetition makes smoother moves. Implement your product backlog in small iterations.
2. Work from top to bottom. Dirt follows the laws of gravity just like anything else. When you start at the top and work to the bottom, you won't be constantly re-cleaning surfaces with dirt from above. Some people may debate but if your top doesn't commit to Agile then you will end up doing Agile "But..t". In any case, cleaning bottom may motivate top, hence, keep cleaning.

When not to use Agile?

Agile pills do not cure all diseases. These are most effective if applied to the RIGHT projects, teams, and organizations. Review the following Agile Helpline Rule Of Thumb . Enjoy reading and don't forget to share your feedback. Is Agile meant for you?


RULE OF THUMB : AGILE is NOT appropriate for a(an):

• PROJECT without significant urgency, complexity and novelty (uniqueness).
• TEAM , which is not self-organizing and does not believe in inspecting and adapting.
• ORGANIZATION , which improperly invest in good engineering practices (e.g. TDD, CI etc.) and cross-functional teams.

Agile Rules of Thumb

This article contains an exclusive series of Agile Helpline " Rules of Thumb " to provide guiding principals to help you initiate meaningful conversations within your team. Rules will create synergy when these are applied with your knowledge and understanding of the real issues. These rules are grouped in four phases of Agile journey - understand, adopt, transform, and scale. List will keep growing, hence, visit these rules regularly. BTW, these rules do not give you ready-made answers but allow you to get deeper understanding of the topic with do's and dont's.

UNDERSTAND

• 10 rules of cleaning applied to the Agile [ rule ]
• 10 Rules of Scrum [ rule ]
• There is an excellent student study material available from the creators of Agile and Scrum . You can get a list of references from Agile Helpline Resources .
  

ADOPT

1. When NOT to use Agile? [ rule ]
2. Is Agility for me? [ rule ]
3. What are the phases for for Agile Adoption? [ rule ]
4. How do I embrace change? [ rule ]

TRANSFORM

1. Do I need a sprint zero? [ rule ]
2. What is the ideal length of a sprint? [ rule ]
3. How do I define user stories? [ rule ]
4. Is there any prerequisite (READY) for starting a sprint? [ rule ]
5. Does a sprint end when sprint length is over or is there any better way of articulating end (DONE) of the sprint? [ rule ]
6. How long should the retrospective last? [ rule ]

SCALE

1. How can Agile Governance help in scaling Agile? [ rule ]

Enjoy these agile pills with no side effects to cure your issues. If you find these healthy then please leave your comments and recommend more rules that you normally apply in your Agile journey. More to come...

Impact of Agile on Project Managers

If you are a project manager then you must be wondering how Agile changes your life as a project manager. Business is not changing, pressure to deliver is not changing, and projects are still called project. So, what is really changing for project managers in Agile?

To findout more you may visit my presentation [ download ] which focuses on helping you understand key differences in Agile methodology for a project manager. It also provides insights into how Agile helps better in managing various aspect of project management. Have fun and please share feedback!

Reference

• Impact of Agile on Project Managers [ download ]

Scrum - An Agile Framework

Scrum is an Agile approach to software development. Rather than a full process or methodology, it is a framework. So instead of providing complete, detailed descriptions of how everything is to be done on the project, much is left up to the software development team. This is done because the team will know best how to solve the problem they are presented. This is why, for example, a sprint planning meeting is described in terms of the desired outcome (a commitment to set of features to be developed in the next sprint) instead of a set of Entry criteria, Task definitions, Validation criteria, and Exit criteria as would be provided in most methodologies.

Lot of people contributed to the community by sharing their work. Each person has their area of strength. Here is a list of best resources on Scrum. Have fun and let me know if you see anything good missing. You can also take free online Scrum course .

Agile Self-Learning Guide

Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing & cross-functional teams, close customer collaboration, and the ability to respond quickly to change.

Top Reasons for Agile Failure

Here are my top reasons for agile failure:

1. Poor engineering practices (e.g. no TDD, CI etc.) [ learn more ]
2. Improper or no use of "done" [ learn more ]
3. Poor backlog management [ learn more ]
4. Missing Agile Attitude [ learn more ]
5. Silos in (no cross-functional) teams
6. Improper or no retrospectives i.e. no inspect and adapt [ learn more ]
7. Desire to use Agile but without doing proper commitments (investments) [ learn more ]