Southbank Centre 22 January 2015: What is the oral of a project board in agile? How is risk management handled? How to combine long-term planning and predictability with Scrum?

1. Karoliina Luoto, Codento · Southbank Centre · 22 January 2015
Agile and Project Board Work
Benefits of Agile, Learning
Path

2. Karoliina Luoto + Codento
Consultant for
Agile coaching and co-work
Digital services, collaboration
Before: product owner, collaboration
strategist, information society specialist
Specializes in client/supplier
methodology facilitation
And works in actual software development
too

3. What are your biggest worrie
About agile right now?
Photo: W10002, Flickr

4. What defines
a good project?
Suggestions?
Photo: karla_k., FlickrPhoto: Karoliina Luoto
Some of mine:
1. Clear vision
2. Transparency
3. Predictability
4. Learning

5. Agile helps in
Focusing on value
Photo: Karoliina Luoto

6. How agile is your agile?
One possible set of agility criteria:
1. End users are a constant part of the development process
Criteria credits: Allaboutagile.com
2. The development team has power to make decisions
3. Requirements strech, the schedule/budget doesn't
4. The requirements are described on top level, lightly and visually
5. The development work is done in small increments that can be
developed further
6. Focus on regular delivery of working product parts
7. Finishing each requirement before moving to next one
8. 80/20 rule: focus on search of 20 % solutions that can fulfill 80 % of the need
9. Testing throughout the project – test early, test often
10. Collaborative approach from _all_ players in the project

7. Agile Principles (for Scrum,
Kanban...)
 Early and continuous
delivery of valuable
software
 Welcome changing
requirements, even late
 Deliver working software
every couple of weeks
 Business people and
developers work together
daily
 Build projects around
motivated individuals and
support and trust them
 Face-to-face communication
 Primary measure of progress
working software
 Sustainable pace
 Attention to technical excellence
and good design
 Simplicity - the art of maximizing
the amount of work not done
 Self-organizing teams
 Team reflects on how to become
more effective and adjusts its
behaviour

8. What is Scrum?

9. Daily
plan
Sprint
goal
Product
roadmap
Product strategy
Service strategy
Vision for initiative
Product vision,
plan for 1-5 years
Release plan,
plan for 1-12 months
Where does the board
stand?
Job for
the project board

10. What else does
Agile bring in?
Photo: ronnykolau, Flickr

11. Culture of testing
Helps optimizing value
1. Chance to focus on solutions that fill 80 % of user need with 20
% effort
2. Chance to betas – practice the hard part before launch - new
processes and activities
3. Chance to piloting - proof-of-concepts

12. Versatile expertise involved
Increases quality
1. Key focus for leadership: get the best available talent
3. Once you get them, empower them to make the daily decisions
4. Open up protos and betas for user comments – or even use
5. Sprint reviews: a possibility for the stakeholders to stay
attached to project outcomes and communicate with
development team

13. Transparency
Minimizes risks
1. Bad news always exists – make sure you hear it soon
2. So, lower the threshold for telling bad news
4. Get concrete hold of results at end of every sprint – code to
Github, documenting to wikis
Key success factors:
3. Make sure required information is available for everyone –
also budgetary
• This keeps the project assets safe for the case of
actualising risks

14. The mindset of trust
Helps focusing on success
2. Move from preparing for disasters towards enabling success
3. People over-accomplish when trusted – so why not trust them
1. Trust helps people tell bad news

15. What does it take
From the project leaders?
Photo: karla_k, Flickr

16. Visionship
”What is this service for?”
1. Willingness to prioritize requirements
2. Learning from feedback and yet keeping the unity of the
product – product owner is your tool
3. Balancing between stakeholders

17. Letting go
The old risk management mindset
1. Focus on getting the best possible talent and empowering it
2. When purchasing resources, it’s typically about buying time
allocation, not outcomes
3. Positive incentives – personal and touching

18. Predictability + Agile = Impossible?
Sugggestion: NO.
Predictability on project and release level can be combined
with agility.
Projecting and budgeting sets the
limits, and learning on the way helps
optimizing the value
Decision-makers involved in vision
and release planning. What are the
main objectives? What should the
development focus on next X
months?

19. Possible tool: Value
Burnup Chart
Requires:
• Steering group playing value poker
on epics/ features
• Product Owner monitoring
progress in relation to value points
Photo., FlickrKuva: Alan, Flickr
Picture credits: James Shore

20. It takes 2-4 years to learn agile
Agile Fluency Model
© 2012 James Shore and Diana Larsen, Agilefluency.com
Start:
Building
code
1 Focus
on
business
value
culture
shift
Team
2 Deliver
business
valueSkills shift
Team
3 Optimize
business
value
4 Optimize
for systemsculture shift
Organization
0

21. Success
Is not a methodology choice
Photo: massdistraction, Flickr

22. Thank you!
www.codento.com
karoliina.luoto@codento.com · @totoroki · +358 40 765 8504