Presented on September 28, 2012 at the PM Symposium in Washington DC. Presented on November 9, 2012 at the PMI Puerto Rico Simposio Anual.

1. Agile 101
What Agile Is
and
What Agile Is Not

2. Derek Huether
Enterprise Agile Coach
www.leadingagile.com
twitter.com/derekhuether
linkedin.com/in/derekhuether

3. ≠
WHAT AGILE IS NOT

4. What Agile is Not
•New ≠

5. Not New
DSDN Consortium
Hirotaka Takeuchi Dynamic System
& Ikujiro Nonaka Development Method Robert Charette
The New New Product Lean Development
Taiichi Ohno Development Game Jeff de Luca
Toyota Production System Feature Driven
Kanban Development
1943 1985 1995 1997 2000
Hardware Software
1950- 1990 1996 1998 2001
1960s
USAF & NASA
X-15 hypersonic jet
Iterative Incremental 1990 - Sutherland & Alistair Cockburn
Delivery Schwaber Crystal Methodologies
Scrum Framework 1996 - Beck,
Cunningham, Jeffries
Extreme Programming Agile Manifesto

6. Not New
Agile Methods in 2011
Source: VersionOne - State of Agile Survey 2011

7. What Agile is Not
•New
•Without planning
≠

8. Not Without Planning
Product / Project Iteration
What business objectives will
this fulfill? What specifically will we build?
Vision/Mission How will this iteration move us
toward release objectives?
Goals
Iteration Plan
Charter
Development Tasks
Release
How can we release value
incrementally? User Story
What subset of business (Backlog Item)
objectives will each release
achieve? What user or stakeholder need
will the story serve?
Which user(s) will the
release serve? How will I know if it is done?
What general capabilities Story Details
will the release offer?
Acceptance Tests
Release Roadmap
Release Plan

9. What Agile is Not
•New
•Without planning
≠
•An excuse for poor quality

10. Not an Excuse for Poor Quality
Write a Passing Test
Write code
to make it
pass
Refactor
Write code to
make it pass
Write a Failing Test

11. What Agile is Not
•New
•Without planning
≠
•An excuse for poor quality
•Undisciplined

12. Not Undisciplined
Complete Subset of Backlog
Portfolio/Project Team works on highest-value functionality until it
Or Iteration meets jointly defined Acceptance Criteria.
Planning
Elaboration, estimation and Daily Meeting (or Standup)
prioritization of highest-value 15-minute status and risk management meeting for
deliverables. Team & Business/Product Owner.
Execution
Backlog Review
Team demonstrates completed functionality to
interested stakeholders, gathering feedback.
As a [role] I want [value]
Production Release (Optional)
As a [role] I want [value] Generally occurs when a useful group of related
functionality has been completed.
As a [role] I want [value] Retrospective
Team reflects on project & process and takes action
as appropriate.

13. What Agile is Not
•New
•Without planning
≠
•Without documentation
•An excuse for poor quality
•Undisciplined
•Unproven

14. Not Unproven
Source: VersionOne - Benefits of Agile - State of Agile Survey 2011

15. What Agile is Not
•A hippie cult
•A quick fix
≠
•A silver bullet

16. =
WHAT AGILE IS

17. What Agile Is
•Upheld by values =
•Guided by principles

18. Agile Manifesto Values
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have
come to value:
Individuals & interactions over Processes & tools
Comprehensive
Working software over
documentation
Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.
Source: www.agilemanifesto.org

19. Agile Manifesto Principles
Satisfy the Welcome Deliver Collaborate
Customer Change Frequently Daily
Support & Trust Promote Promote
Deliver Working
Motivated Face-to-Face Sustainable
Software
Teams Conversations Pace
Promote Maximize Have
Reflect & Adjust
Technical Through Self-Organized
Regularly
Excellence Simplicity Teams
Source: www.agilemanifesto.org

20. What Agile is
•Upheld by values
•Guided by principles
=
•People centric

21. People Centric
Emotional Intelligence
Personal Competencies Social Competencies
SELF-AWARENESS EMPATHY
Knowing one's internal states, Awareness of others' feelings, needs,
preferences, resources, and intuitions and concerns.
MANAGING EMOTIONS SOCIAL SKILLS
Managing one's internal states, impulses, Adeptness at inducing desirable
and resources. responses in others.
MOTIVATION
Emotional tendencies that guide or
facilitate reaching goals.

22. What Agile is
•Inspired by values
•Guided by principles
=
•People centric
•Value Driven

23. Value Driven

24. What Agile is
•Upheld by values
•Guided by principles
=
•People centric
•Value Driven
•Collaborative

25. Collaborative
!
? ?
We don’t need an accurate
document, we need a
shared understanding
- Jeff Patton / Agile 2012

26. What Agile is
•Upheld by values
•Guided by principles
=
•People centric
•Value Driven
•Collaborative
•Self-Organizing

27. Self-Organizing
info info
guide guide
info
info guide
guide

28. Conclusion
Agile is an organizational approach. It is
about teams and culture. Agile methods
like Scrum are an Agile life-cycle. It is a
life-cycle based on Agile teams. They
happen to be Incremental-Iterative that
support adaptive scope. You can't do Agile
life-cycle without Agile teams but you can
do Agile teams in other life-cycles.

29. Thank You
For additional questions or
information, just contact me at
www.leadingagile.com