What is Agile?

Agile is not so much about one methodology over another, such as SCRUM or Extreme, it’s more of a mindset, in that you use what ever assets or methods are required to deliver a project. Don’t for one moment think that because it’s Agile it will deliver in less time than your standard waterfall approach, because it won’t. What it will do is ensure that the stakeholder(s) get the solution they need. So if you really want to be Agile then take on board the following points:

• The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Changing requirements are welcome, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
• Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

INVEST

INVEST is an acronym which encompasses the following concepts which make up a good user story:

• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Small
• Testable

Check out the very good description given by Bob Hartman for an understanding of the above terms.

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Chiropractic

If you anything like the author you spend at minimum 8 hours day glued to the screen. Forget the pain killers and achieve a natural release with the help of a certified (BCA) chiropractor such as that provided by the Wirral Chiropractic Clinic.

 

 

High Level Requirements capture

The High Level Requirements document should be no more than 5-6 pages, detailing what’s in and out of scope, together with the initial high level requirements. The document should be written at a business level; avoid technology terms. Written correctly this document will strengthen the client’s business case, and ensure there is a firm understanding and goal.

High level requirements can be captured as User Stories which facilitate the decomposition of the stakeholders requirements. The User Stories will feed into design and testing tasks, and provide a means of ensuring that stakeholder’s requirements are met when it comes to user acceptance testing. To priorities User Stories the following types of questions can be used:

• What is the single most important thing to get Online first and why?
• What is the single most important facility that would be needed to be useful and why?
• What is the absolute minimum set of facilities that would be needed to get something up and running?

The stakeholder

The stakeholder demands you respect because against all the odds he/she has managed to secure project funding. You must share the stakeholders goal, commitment and passion to succeed.

The business analyst

Stakeholder management is the glue of the project, but don’t be seduced by your position of trust, and forget that acceptance of the High Level Requirements must be accomplished before any project is started otherwise it’s a long plank of uncertainty over a chasm of pain for all involved if you don’t.

Do not assume you know what the stakeholder wants, and don’t be afraid to ask what might appear to be obvious or stupid questions. This is the point in the project when stupid questions will cost less.

Iteration and incrementing

In Agile development you can be adding new functionality incrementally, or  iterating to improve, change, or remove existing functionality. The following extracts are from Jeff Patton, who wrote a a very honest blog called “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it” to explain the differences and pitfalls.

• We iterate to find the right solution.
• Then given some good candidate solution, we might then iterate to improve a candidate solution.
• We use incrementing to gradually build up functionality so if development takes longer than we expect, we can release what we’ve incrementally built so far.
• We release incrementally so that we actually get that business value we’re chasing. Because, we don’t really get return on investment till people begin to use the software we’ve built

Agile Estimation

Classic Agile Estimation from ScrumMaster Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software at the BayXP meeting. BayXP is the lean and agile software community in the San Francisco Bay Area focusing on the software development practices that supports agile methodology like eXtremeProgramming, Crystal and SCRUM.

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