Agile Success stories in the Enterprise. Lightening Talk at Iasa North by Saffron Prior, Astra Zeneca

1. ‘Does my SCRUM look
big in this ?’
OPAL SCRUM Experience
Saffron Prior
October 2012

2. So what is SCRUM ?
In less that 100 words...
• An agile process that focuses on delivering the highest
business value in the shortest time
• A series of short iterations and therefore can cope with
changing requirements
• The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to
determine the best way to deliver.
• Every iteration demonstrates real working software and
the business decide whether to release it - or continue
to enhance it for another SPRINT.
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3. A SPRINT is a short iteration of development

4. Why did we choose to use it ?
Our previous Waterfall
process was not;
•Delivering fast enough
•Adapting to changing
requirements
•Delivering the highest value
business functionality
Big Ships are difficult to
steer and take a long time to
change direction !
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5. Small iterations are a more agile alternative to
large long running projects
We’d rather get from
A to B
in one of these !
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6. How did we get started ?
1st - we attended SCRUM
Master training
2nd - we passed on the
learning to others
3rd – we populated the
organisation
4th - we created the Product
Backlog
... then we were on our way, and we just kept going
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7. How did it go ?
•The team have self-managed
very successfully
• When they make commitments to each
other as a team they are more motivated
to deliver
•By inspect & adapt we have improved;
- Increased team velocity from 16 points in SPRINT1 to 45+ points in
SPRINT10
•One release per month for last 8 months
•Delivered on new requirements very quickly
•Zero defects found after deliver
•Our R&D customers have been very positive and
supportive of the change in process
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8. Were there any bumps in the road ?
Of course there were !
•We had an urgent change to deal with
immediately which meant abandoning
the current SPRINT
•We had some managers wanting
accurate cost / benefit analysis for
every requirement
•We had some customers who were
uncomfortable with the use of
demonstration over formal UAT
•We had wrinkles to iron out with a non-
Agile Service Introduction process
But we managed to ride these bumps and the road got smoother
with every SPRINT
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9. What would we do differently next time ?
Why not do it differently now ?
•Co-locate the whole team
• Not always possible but very
beneficial
•Not be the first project to
use Service Introduction
process from SCRUM
• Don’t do anything that is of no
benefit
•Repeat educations
sessions with our
customers
• Business participation is so
valuable
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10. Want to know more about SCRUM
Try the following web sites:
www.scrum.org
www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
Books:
Agile Project Management with SCRUM (Ken Schwaber)
Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using
SCRUM (Mike Cohn)
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