Presentation about Agile methods and project management. 27.6.2014 Teemu Toivonen

1. If you want to be a
professional project manager
you should be proficient in
Agile!
27.06.2014

2. Who am I?
Teemu Toivonen
- Teemu.Toivonen@nitor.com, @number_9_
 Current occupation: Senior Lean Consultant / Nitor Delta
 15 years of experience with IT projects and services in different roles
- Consultant, Manager, Member of IT Executive Board, Team Leader,
Project Manager, IT Expert
 A graduate from Helsinki University of Technology
 Professional interests: Agile, Lean, continual improvement, systematic
innovation (TRIZ), IT services and service design
 Professional philosophy: “Always challenge yourself to improve”
 Personal life
- Married with three children
- Hobbies: basketball and my professional interests

3. Nitor in Brief
Nitor is a Finnish software company with two businesses
• we design, implement and develop demanding digital business solutions
• we train our customers lean & agile methods and execute agile change initiatives
Nitor customer satisfaction survey results in 2012-14 are the highest in the Finnish IT sector in Onway
history.
TiVi Company of the Year 2014 - chosen by Talentum
European Business Awards – National Champion 2014
Red Herring Europe Top 100 - 2013
More information about Nitor: http://en.nitorcreations.com
• Privately owned, Headquarters in Helsinki, established 2007
• Net revenue 2013 7,88 M€
• Employs over 60 professionals
3
2008-2013

4. A personal perspective on what it takes to be world class
After this course you will have the
knowledge to consult an average
company about projects
Professor Karlos Artto on a basic project course a long time ago
- Initially I thought it was a good way to motivate
students
- Later I realized there is much truth to it
What it take takes to be excellent is a really good
understanding and execution of the fundamentals.
While most companies should be focusing on good
fundamentals this is often not the case.

5. Agenda
• The Agile vs. Waterfall wars
• Defining Waterfall and Agile
• Scrum as an example of Agile
• Consequences of global competition
• Results with Agile
• Theories, principles and related stories
– Small batch sizes
– Effective communication
– Self organization - ”the secret sauce”
– Empirical process control
• Advanced topics in Agile
• My one piece of wisdom regarding project management

6. How many of you…
• Know what is waterfall development?
• Know what is Agile development?

7. The Agile vs waterfall wars
The Agile versus waterfall debates can be quite zealous, which makes
constructive discussion difficult. Often the discussions get stuck on
semantics and definitions. To avoid this pitfall this presentation will start
by defining what Agile and waterfall mean for todays discussion.
Image: Allitas.com

8. What is waterfall – a definition for this presentation
 Planning is mostly done
at the beginning
 Each phase is completely
finished before moving to
the next one
 Focus is on executing the
plan
 Deviations from the plan
are seen as “bad”
 Focus on lessons learned
is at the end of the project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model

9. Waterfall – the simplified version
The waterfall version of this would be:
1. Agree on targets
2. Make a detailed plan with clearly separated phases
3. Execute and control deviations
4. Success

10. What is Agile?
Scrum
Extreme
Programming
Kanban
Scaled Agile
Framework
Dynamic Systems
Feature Driven DevelopmentMethod
Development
And many more…

11. What is Agile? - The values
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive 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.
http://agilemanifesto.org/

12. What is Agile? - The 12 principles
1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and
continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile
processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple
of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the
project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment
and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and
within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers,
and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing
teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective,
then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

13. What is Agile? - Scrum as an example 1/3
Explaining Scrum in a couple of minutes is a really challenging
task.
Luckily there is…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoa5CS9JJPQ

14. What is Agile? - Scrum as an example 2/3
Scrum is the most well known and widely used Agile method and is suitable for a
large variety of project types and situation.
The roles of Scrum
The Product Owner
• User/customer needs
• Product/project vision
• Prioritized backlog of features
• Communication with stakeholders and team
The Scrum Master
• A coach and mentor for the Team
• Facilitates the scrum process
• Removes impediments
The Team
• Self organized within the Scrum process to deliver a successful product
• Cross functional
• Delivers working software
Source: The Scrum Guide

15. What is Agile? - Scrum as an example 3/3
The roles of Scrum:
The Scrum process:
Image source: http://www.agilebuddha.com/

16. 16 pages of pure wisdom
https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide

17. Consequences of global competition
It’s not enough…
– Execute well
– To be good
– Fulfill your contract
– Get the job done
– Maintain high standards
You need to…
– Execute well and adapt to change
– Be the best at what you do
– Delight your customer
– Exceed expectations
– Improve faster than the competition

18. Consequences of global competition
It’s not enough…
– Execute well
– To be good
– Fulfill your contract
– Get the job done
– Maintain high standards
Doing a project is selling the next one, which is
why you need to make an impression.
You need to…
– Execute well and adapt to change
– Be the best at what you do
– Delight your customer
– Exceed expectations
– Improve faster than the competition

19. Waterfall and Agile success rates
These numbers include
a lot of ”bad Agile”!

20. Scaled Agile Framework – benefits for large software programs
 Time to market
- 30 – 50 % faster time to market
 Quality
- 50 % + defect reduction
 Productivity
- 20 – 50 increase in productivity
 Employee engagement
- Significant increase in employee engagement
http://scaledagileframework.com/

21. Nitor – Agile
• Nitor is very successful Finnish software company
• Good results against global competition
– Including offshoring
• Agile working methods is one of the cornerstones of this success

22. Theories, principles and related stories
Some of the most important aspects to understand for project
performance:
 Small batch sizes
 Effective communication
 Self organization - ”the secret sauce”
 Adapting to change - empirical process control

23. Small batch sizes
Small batch sizes make process cycle times faster, improve efficiency, enable better
risk management ja adjusting to changes.
To put it simply: small batch sizes are good in most circumstances.
This is universally true in projects, manufacturing, product development and services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little's_law

24. Agile and waterfall batch sizes
In waterfall projects the batch size equals the theoretical maximum
Agile tries to minimize batch sizes

25. Agile and waterfall batch size effects
• 18 month software project
• Agile minimum viable product time = 4 months
• Agile teams release once per month after mvp
• Kano effect (features lose value over time = 1 % month)
• Based on mathematical simulation
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ITCG5HG9SzWgYRPKqoCAyGFaRuKCwCVHiQ9jyUZXN6U/edit?usp=sharing

26. Agile and waterfall batch size effects
Questions
• Which one is the more attractive
investment?
• What are the differences in
risks?
• Which one is more likely to be
canceled on the way?
• 18 month software project
• Agile minimum viable product time = 4 months
• Agile teams release once per month after mvp
• Kano effect (features lose value over time = 1 % month)
• Based on mathematical simulation
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ITCG5HG9SzWgYRPKqoCAyGFaRuKCwCVHiQ9jyUZXN6U/edit?usp=sharing

27. Creating small batch sizes
In most circumstances it is possible to use small
batch sizes, although it often seems difficult at firs. It
will get easier with practice. The Lean startup
movement has take this to the extreme and is worth
studying.
Examples from my experience:
• Software development
• IT infrastructure projects
• “Off the shelf” IT projects
• IT migration projects
• Process development/design projects
• Organizational change projects

28. An example of small batch sizes in IT infrastructure
projects
An email and calendar system (Exchange) for 30 000 users
 Initially I thought this would be difficult to divide into small batchers, but it
turned out to be relatively easy and a good choice
 Splitting was partially done based three factors
 Features
 Scalability
 Robustness

29. Effective communication
Assumed
telepathy
Working
telepathy
Shared artifact
+
F2F discussion
Face to face
discussion
Written
communication
Telephone
discussion

30. Effective communication
Assumed
telepathy
Working
telepathy
In my experience of a wide variety of different projects (IT, business
development, process development) the customer can rarely
communicate the right requirements in the beginning of the project. A
good project manager can help the customer discover the Shared right
artifact
requirements with iterative face to face communication during +
the
project.
F2F discussion
Face to face
discussion
Written
communication
Telephone
discussion
Agile
• Frequent face to face communications
• Co-creation of requirements
• Iteration of requirements for the whole duration of the project
Waterfall
• Focus on written requirements
• Requirements phase in the early part of the project
• Changes to requirements seen as failure/source of problems

31. Adapting to change - empirical process control
How do you boil potatoes?

32. Adapting to change - empirical process control
Starting
point
How we think challenging goals are achieved
A good plan and successful execution
How challenging goals are really achieved
Starting
point
A good plan and
successful execution
Threshold of
knowledge
Learning and experimentation

33. Self organization - ”the secret sauce”
Waterfall management philosophy
• Command and control
• Effective execution is enough
• Deviations from plan are bad
• Carrot and stick
Agile management philosophy
• Autonomy and freedom
• Self organization
• Vision directed
• Freedom to experiment and innovate
The ability to solve complex problems creatively under harsh time and cost
constraints if often the critical success factor for modern projects
Which management philosophy do you think will allow you to get the best
solutions from your team?
Additional material – Jeff Sutherland (creator of Scrum) one hour presentation
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1q6b9JI2Wc

34. Advanced topics in Agile
Scaled Agile Framework
- For large scale software
development
End to end Kanban
- For optimizing entire delivery
chains instead of local optimization

35. My one piece of wisdom about complex projects
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.“
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) 1835 – 1910)