1. Influences on
Agile Practice Tailoring in
Enterprise Software Development
Dr Julian M. Bass
Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
19th February 2012

2. Introduction
 Introduction
 Case Study
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgements

3. Introduction
 Enterprise Software Development
 Global – Outsourcing and Off-shoring
 Large scale
 Complex commercial and technical infrastructure
 Unpromising context
• 2004 Study,
– on site customer, special room layout
 Agile Methods
 Improve software quality and team productivity

4. Contents
 Introduction
 Case Study
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgements

5. Case Study
 Motivation
 What can we learn about agile adoption in large
enterprises?
 Research questions
 What (if any) agile methods are used in the
selected enterprises?
 Are the agile methods being tailored?
 If so, in what ways are they being tailored?
 Why are the agile methods being tailored?

6. Case Study
 7 International Companies
 Bengaluru (Bangalore) and London, UK
 Participants (19 over 15 month period)
– Team members (developers, testers)
– Scrum Masters, architects
– Project managers, programme managers
– Clients, product owners, customer
representatives

7. Case Study
Sector Interviewee Job Titles
Company A IT Service Provider Program Manager
Senior Project Manager
Team Member
Company B Internet Delivery Manager
Product Manager (interviewed
twice,Jan 2010 and April 2011)
Company C Software Service Provider Development Manager
Company D Software Service Provider Project Manager
(Offshore Provider to Product Owner
Company E) Scrum Master (3)
QA Lead
Team Member
Company E Enterprise CRM Program Manager
Project Manager
Director of Engineering
Company F Industrial Products Scrum Master
Company G IT Service Provider Engagement Manager

8. Contents
 Introduction
 Case Study
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgements

9. Results
14
12
10
Number of Projects
8
6
4
2
0
Scrum Master User Stories Stand-Up Meetings Retrospective
Product Owner Product Backlog Sprint Planning Increment Demo

10. Results
14
12
10
Number of Projects
8
6
4
2
0
Pl Gam Sm Rel Metaphor Sim Des TDD Ref Pair Prog Col Own Cont Int Cod Stan On-Site Cust

11. Results - Agile Tailoring
 Coding Standards (XP)
 Mandatory in Enterprise setting
 Collective code ownership (XP)
 Mandatory in Enterprise setting
 Sprint Demo (scrum)
 Demo to Enterprise customers not appropriate
 Company B, Internet domain, B2C
 Company E
 Calendar 6 month release cycle
 Frequent integration of updates unattractive

12. Results - Agile Tailoring
 Continuous integration
 Daily builds not feasible on complex enterprise
projects
 Company E, 3 days needed to conduct automated
regression tests
 Company D, Release process
 Code Freeze (no code check-ins)
 Integration complete (Integration testing complete)
 Release Candidate
 Release

13. Results - Agile Tailoring
 Pair Programming
 Under utilised techniques
 Only during spikes (Company D)
 Test Driven Development
 Independent user acceptance test teams
 Client UAT teams
 Integrating testing into sprints requires
organisational change processes
 Testing budget assigned to separate team

14. Contents
 Introduction
 Case Study
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgements

15. Discussion

Distributed agile development

Client onshore; development offshore typical

Extended knowledge transfer visits

Preference for co-located feature teams

Distributed feature teams complicated

Follow-the-sun approaches very difficult

Daily scrum (Standup meetings)

Video or audio conferencing used

Product owner or technical specialist dial-in

16. Discussion
 Sprint and Sprint Duration
 Company B
 Migrated from 9 month to 1 month sprint durations
 Organisational change processing taking 1 year
 Agile Enterprise
 Enables new product opportunities

17. Contents
 Introduction
 Case Study
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusions
 Acknowledgements

18. Conclusions
 SCRUM presents management view of Agile
 Easily understood, deceptively simple
 XP
 Only explicitly adopted in one company
 Some practices conventional in large
enterprises
 Coding standards
 Collective code ownership

19. Conclusions
 Adoption process in large enterprises
 Can start within institutional boundaries
 Clandestine adoption
 Increments used internally within development teams
 Successes used to garner institutional support
 Enterprise adoption needs high-level support
 De-construct institutional boundaries
 Respondents report “Agile Enterprise” benefits
 Scope for greater use of
 Pair programming, test-driven development

20. Acknowledgements
 The study companies and participants
 IIM-B Students who kindly helped access target
companies
 The research benefited from travel funding from
the UK Deputy High Commission Bangalore,
Science and Innovation Network