The "life" of a company is the sum of its decisions. Hasty decisions can be disastrous, late decisions could mean loss of opportunity, but these decisions have to be made. Therefore it is important to have a tool that assists in decision making. The main focus of this talk is to show the importance of support to decision making, understand the importance of risk and impediment management in agile environments and to present an approach to identify actions to mitigate risks and solve impediments based on Agile Community Knowledge. This talk includes an example of a simple tool from the company SCRAIM. You can also check the video goo.gl/SBqAW4

1. AGILE DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR UPPER MANAGEMENT
focus on Risk & Impediment Management
Pedro Castro Henriques
Strongstep

2. About Pedro Castro Henriques
CEO and Co-founder of Strongstep –
innovation in software quality
• Worked in several 9 European countries in
process, tools and organization
improvement in software development &
services
• More than 14 years of experience, including
consulting in software engineer; strategic
planning of information systems in the health
sector – Ericsson Sweden, FEUP, Altran..
• Professor at the master in engineering,
services and management (MESG @ FEUP)
• Hobbies & Activities: love to travel, rollerblade, snowboarding,
meeting new cultures & people, love new challenges!
• SPOKE AT tedxporto “Dreams – The innovators best friend”

3. Rita Cunha
Thesis on Risk
Management
Strongstep
Carla Pereira
Professor
ESTGF - IPP
INESC Porto
Pedro Castro
Henriques
CEO
Strongstep
Authors
Note: Built on top of 7 thesis from industry implemented with Academia
in the last 2.5 years

4. About Strongstep
Strongstep is a company specialized in software
engineering that contributes to the improvement of
software quality in Portugal and in the world
We want to induce a positive change in organizations.
This will represent a step with a strong, sustainable
and innovative way - a strong step
Projects portfolio:
Process improvement with CMMI DEV L2, L3, L5,
CMMI SRV, TSP/PSP, combining agile/CMMI, Six
Sigma, NP4457, Kanban, Scrum, ITIL, PMBOK,
ISTQB, RUP

5. Importance of support to decision making
Understand the importance of risk and impediment management in agile
Present an approach to identify actions to mitigate risks and solve
impediments based on Agile Community Knowledge
Expected Outcomes
1
2
3

6. WHY Should I care?

7. “It has been shown that one in six IT projects becomes a 'Black Swan',
with cost overruns of 200% on average, and schedule overruns of 70%.”
Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier, 2011 - Harvard Business Review

8. CEO of a company with multiple projects and tide availability
How and when to decide?
• What projects should I focus on?
• How are decisions taken, based on real time data?
Wild guessing?
• Am I ignoring the risks? Or mitigating risks?
• Are we reusing team and historical knowledge to
solve impediments from previous projects?

9. Which risks / impediments should I act on?
Overworking SCRUM Master having to manage Risk & Impediments
• How can I do risk management in Agile “environment” ?
• Do we really have to do that? Isn’t it just loosing time?
Will it help my projects succeed?
• What are the best decisions / actions to take
for and impediment?

10. • Are we reinventing the wheel … again and again … for the same
impediments? Or reusing past success knowledge?
• Are our risk mitigation actions based on lessons learned?
• Could we share and collaborate better on solving impediments?
Collaborating based on past actions / knowledge
Agile Team Member

11. Risks & Impediments

12. • To manage and control them brings gains for the development and success
of projects.
• Risk is inherent in all software projects, and its essential for management to
take the right decisions.
• For the most important risks, its essential to have the right mitigation
actions/strategies
• For both impediments and risk, we need to identify the right actions … based
on past/team knowledge
Risks & Impediments

13. Impediments Management
“Roadblocks that could stop a Team from meeting their goals
and commitments.”
Chris Sterling

14. “If you don’t actively attack risks, they will actively attack you”.
Tom Gilb, 1988
Risk Management

15. Risk
Dimensions
User
Requirement
Project
complexity
Planning and
control
Team
Organizational
environment
Risk Dimensions

16. Organizational Level
Project/Release Level
“Unmanaged risks cost money.”
F. Michael Dedolph, ‘The Neglected Management Activity: Software Risk Management’, Bell Labs Technical Journal, 8 (2003).
How you deal with risks?

17. Flexibility
Customer
Centric
Working
Software
Collaboration
Simplicity Communication Natural Learning
Pragmatism Adaptability
Agile Values

18. How to deal with risks and impediments?
Monitor Risks
Risk & Impediments
Management
(Sprint N)
Identify Risks
Apply Contingency
and mitigation plans
Monitor
Impediments
Identify
Impediments
Apply
Actions
Risk
Analysis
(Sprint 0- instantiation)

19. Decision Support System
to help YOU take action

21. Global View of the
company Project Status
How do I know which projects to take actions on?

22. How is this project doing?
Dashboard of Project SCRAIM
with key indicators

23. Detailed view of our project
main (Top 3) Risks
Detailed view of all Risks Proposed mitigation action
to the selected risk
“Missing skills on the team”
What are this Project risks? What mitigations actions to take?

24. Proposed Solution to the
selected impediment
“Absent Product Owner”
What are this Project impediments?
Detailed view of our project
main (Top 3) Impediments
What actions to take?
Detailed view of all Impediments

25. Agile Decision Support
How to be sure to take the right decisions?

26. Searches for KEYWORDS
Example 1
Impediments
How are contigency actions proposed?
Returns ONE SOLUTION
1
2
Example 1 (Built on previous lessons learned)

27. Impediments
How are contigency actions proposed?
Example 2 (Built on organization lessons learned)
Searches for KEYWORDS1
Shows TWO SOLUTIONS2

28. Risks
How are mitigation actions proposed?
Example 3 (Built on community lessons learned!!)
Searches for KEYWORDS1
Returns MITIGATION ACTIONS2

29. How to be sure to keep the right actions with lessons learned?
Can I share with my organization? YES
Can I Share with Agile community? YES
Emergent Learning
Agile Decision Support - FOR THE COMMUNITY!
Built on agile principles, such as:
COLLABORATION COMMUNICATION FLEXIBILITY LEARNING

30. Meet SCRAIM …

31. What can you do?
You can only control what you can measure.
You need to be in control of your projects everytime, everywhere.
To make the best decisions.
Using a reliable and secure tool based on the most advanced methodologies.
EASIER, FASTER, BETTER!

32. All in ONE Place. Software as service

33. Take away bureaucracy … Focus on your added value work:
 Define a risk management strategy
• Manage probability and impact values
• Define risk level
• Periodicity for risk management
• Analyse risks (e.g. risk matrix)
 Focus on your work, while tool
helps you on:
 Manage project risks
 Manage impediments
 Manage risk actions
Risk & Impediments management in SCRAIM

34. Use SCRAIM! Make Your Life Easier!
www.scraim.com

35. Strongstep references from Portugal, USA, Mozambique

36. Member of
Thanks to the Agile Community and to our clients!

37. Contacts
pedroch@strongstep.pt
Strongstep - Innovation in software quality
Email: geral@strongstep.pt
Web: www.strongstep.pt
Telephone: + 351 22 030 15 85
Strongstep UPTEC
Rua Alfredo Allen, 455/461
4200-135 Porto
Strongstep Chiado
Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, 16
16, 1200-369 Lisboa

38. • T. Gilb, Principles of Software Engineering Management. Addison-Wesley, 1988, p. 72.
• L. Sarigiannidis, “Software Development Project Risk Management: A New Conceptual
Framework,” J. Softw. Eng. Appl., vol. 04, no. 05, pp. 293–305, 2011.
• F. M. Dedolph, “The neglected management activity: Software risk management,” Bell Labs
Tech. J., vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 91–95, Dec. 2003.
• R. Charette, “Why software fails,” IEEE Spectr., 2005.
• T. Madi, Z. Dahalin, and F. Baharom, “Content analysis on agile values: A perception from
software practitioners,” 2011 Malaysian Conf. Softw. Eng., pp. 423–428, Dec. 2011.
• T. Madi, Z. Dahalin, and F. Baharom, “Content analysis on agile values: A perception from
software practitioners,” 2011 Malaysian Conf. Softw. Eng., pp. 423–428, Dec. 2011.
• B. Boehm, “Software risk management: principles and practices,” Software, IEEE, no.
January, 1991.
• T. Arnuphaptrairong, “Top Ten Lists of Software Project Risks: Evidence from the Literature
Survey,” Proc. Int. MultiConference Eng. Comput. Sci., vol. I, 2011.
References

39. Do we eat our own
dog food?

40. YES!

41. How do we start our week?

42. Sprint Planning Meeting

43. Planning Poker

44. Everyday …

45. Daily Scrum Meeting
15 min.

46. Sprint Burndown Chart

47. Project Burndown Chart

48. At the end of the week…

49. Sprint Review Meeting

50. Sprint Retrospective
• What’s Working Well?
• What’s Not Working, or Could Work Better?
• Next sprint…

52. Join us!