CAI

Computer Aid, Inc. ®

Confidential

An Agile
Approach to
Application
Development
using Scrum

www.compaid.com1
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Agenda

• Introductions
• Problems With Traditional Development
Approaches
• Agile Development Overview
• Scrum

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Software Projects Continue To

Struggle
Project Success Rates as Reported in the 2009
Standish Chaos Study:

• 32%   Successful (On Time, On Budget, Fully Functional)

• 44%   Challenged (Late, Over Budget, And/Or Less than Promised

Functionality)
• 24%   Failed (Canceled or never used)

These numbers indicate a downward trend in the success 3

rates from the previous five studies.

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Traditional Development
Methods
• Based on a manufacturing model
• Result in customer frustration and lack of trust
• Often deliver bloated products

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Manufacturing-Based
Methodologies Get it right!
• Early development methodologies borrowed
heavily from manufacturing, which is repetitive
with clearly defined outputs.
• The Waterfall methodology is based on:
– Starting with a clear and accurate specification
(prevents rework by getting things right upfront)
– Perfecting a design specification before building
(no changes to requirements at this point)
– Quick testing cycle with little rework needed
• Between 25% and 35% of requirements change
on large projects (reported by Capers Jones)
• Valid change requests are often rejected in order 5
to manage costs and protect delivery dates.

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Customer Frustration and Lack

of Trust
• Delivering software late, without all required
features, and with low quality, leads to a lack of
trust from our customers
• Forces us to work in a contractual manner, rather
than a more productive collaborative manner
• Sign-offs on all requirements needed before
design work can start
– Fosters a spirit of blame avoidance
– Delay in sign-offs can significantly add to the project 6
schedule

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Software Bloat
• In many projects, the software eventually delivered ends
up bloated with unused features
• 2009 Standish Chaos Study of software projects shows:
― 45% of features were never used
― 19% of features were rarely used

Feature and Function Usage

Never
Rarely
Sometimes
7
Often
Always

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In Summary…

• Traditional approaches have been shown to be

ineffective for many software development efforts,
evidenced by:

– Resistance to changing requirements and priorities

– Unreliability (late delivery, low quality, high cost)
– Customer frustration and lack of trust
– Bloated products
8

SO WHAT CAN WE DO ???
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An Agile Approach to Projects

• Work as one team
• Work in short iterations
• Deliver working software each iteration
• Focus on business priorities
• Inspect and adapt

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Popular Agile Methods

– Scrum
• Software developed in time-boxed iterations called Sprints (e.g., 30 days)
• Daily 15 minute Scrum meetings – daily team measurement
• Working software developed in each Sprint
• Prioritized product backlog drives Sprints
• Customizable/adaptable based on project characteristics

– Rational Unified Process (RUP)

• Process developed to complement Unified Modeling Language (UML), an industry-standard
software modeling method.
• Iterative approach for object-oriented software development
• Multiple successive phases, consisting of iterations in duration from 2 weeks to several
months

– Extreme Programming (XP)

• Test driven development
• Pair programming 10
• Continuous integration of code
• Lightweight documentation
• 1-2 week iterations
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Rational Unified Process

An Iterative Incremental
Methodology
• Characteristics:
– Software is built in iterative and
incremental phases.
– Use case centric, architecture
driven.

• Pros: • Cons:
– Some flexibility to accommodate – The time to delivery of a working,
change production ready system can be
– Delivery of software more long. 11
frequent and visible to the – Iterations not time-boxed
business – Customer is not an integral part of
– Early focus on architecture the development team.
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Scrum
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Scrum

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Scrum Overview
• A lightweight approach for planning and executing iterative
development projects
• Used at product companies and IT organizations since
1990 including Microsoft, Google, Honda, and Xerox
• Wraps existing engineering practices
• Delivers working business functionality every 30 days
• Encourages “building quality in” rather than “testing defects
out”
• Extremely simple but very hard
• Scalable 14

• Scrum feels completely different!

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Scrum Terminology

• Product Backlog – prioritized list of desired

customer features
• Sprint – iterative development cycle with a
duration of 2-4 weeks
• Sprint Backlog – the list of tasks that the Scrum
team commits to complete in the current Sprint.
Items on the Sprint Backlog are drawn from the
Product Backlog
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The Scrum Process

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Scr um Principles • Customer lists known requirements (to a high level), then prioritizes them.
• Frequently deliver time-boxed increments of high-value Working software.
• The Customer can release the software any time they want.
• The Customer can add, delete or reprioritize features at any time (“embrace change”)
• We protect schedule commitments, despite change. Promised
• Stop at any time, and still use what has been built. Release
Date

Learn from the market

All

Release
features
Working software
each iteration

prioritized

17

Product
Backlog
Source: Vision Consulting, 2006 time 17
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Scrum Roles
• Product Owner
• Scrum Team
• ScrumMaster

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Role – Product Owner

• Critically important, must be trained in Scrum
• Should be a Business representative
• Develops and maintains the Product Backlog
• Prioritizes the Product Backlog
• Presents and explains Product Backlog to the
team
• Empowered to make decisions for all customers
and users 19

• Attends Sprint planning meeting and Sprint

review meeting 19
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Product Backlog
• List of functionality, technology, issues
• Emergent, prioritized, estimated
• Product Owner responsible for priority
• More detail on higher priority backlog
• Derived from Business Plan or Vision Statement, which
sometimes have to be created with customer
• Each Product Backlog Item must include a definition of
“Done”
– Test conditions identified
– Code complete 20

– Unit and Integration Tested

– Accepted by Product Owner
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Example Product Backlog

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Role – Scrum Team

• Self-organizing, highly collaborative
• Cross-functional
• Ideal Team Size = Seven plus or minus two
• Converts selected Product Backlog items into tasks on
the Sprint Backlog
• Responsible for committing to work defined on Sprint 
Backlog
• Authorized to do whatever is needed to meet
commitment 22
• Synchronizes at the Daily Scrum Meeting

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Sprint Backlog
• Tasks to turn product backlog into working product
functionality
• Tasks are estimated in hours, usually 1-16
• Tasks with more than 16 hours are broken down later
• Team members sign up for tasks, they aren’t assigned
• Estimated work remaining is updated daily
• Any team member can add, delete, or change the Sprint
Backlog
• Work for the Sprint emerges
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• Update work remaining as more is known, as items are
worked
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Example Sprint Backlog

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Role – Scrum Master

• Coach and Advocate
• Responsible for managing the process
• Sets up and conducts meetings
• Representative to management
• Representative to team

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Scrum Meetings
• Sprint Planning

• Daily Scrum

• Sprint Review

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Sprint Planning Meeting

• A full-day meeting that precedes each Sprint
• 1st 4 hours - team selects Product Backlog Items
and sets goal with Product Owner
• 2nd 4 hours - team defines Sprint Backlog to
build functionality
• Anyone can attend, but primary conversation
and work is between team and Product Owner
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Daily Scrum
• Daily 15 minute status meeting
• Same place and time every day
• Three questions
– What have you done since last meeting?
– What will you do before next meeting?
– What is in your way?
• Impediments discussed
28
• Decisions made
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Sprint Review Meeting

• Duration = 4 hours
• Maximum 1 hour preparation
• Demo conducted on equipment where software
was developed and tested
• Presented by team to Product Owner and
customers/users
• Basis for planning next Sprint
• Must represent potentially shippable increment 29

of product functionality (features are “done”)

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Scrum Metrics
• Sprint Burndown Chart
• Product Burndown Chart
• Velocity Measure
• Sprint Results

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The Burndown Chart

• Displays number of task units (typically hours)
remaining
• Overall trend is important to monitor
• Daily fluctuations are acceptable and expected
• Actual Line should eventually reach 0 hours and
should roughly follow Expected Line
• Across Iterations, a less granular measure is used
that is tied to the deliverables, e.g., Story Points
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Progress During An Iteration

Sprint Burndown Chart
Iteration n Burndown Chart

1400

1200

1000

800
Hours

Expected
Actual
600

400

200

0
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1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
Days

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Progress Across Iterations

Product Burndown Chart
Burndown Chart

160

140

120
Story Points

100
Expected
80
Actual
60

40

20

0 33
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Iterations

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Velocity Measure
Velocity (8 iterations)

16
Velocity (last 3 iterations)
14

12 Velocity (last 8 iterations)

10
Velocity

8 Velocity

2
34
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Iterations

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Sprint Results

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Scrum Is No Silver Bullet

• Extremely simple but very hard
• Many organizations are not used to releasing
software so frequently
• Each iteration involves planning, requirements
analysis, design, coding, and testing
• Highlights existing disfunctionality and
bottlenecks within the organization that were
previously hidden
36
• Scaling Scrum beyond an initial pilot project
requires significant change management skill
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Impediments To Using Agile

• Ability to change organizational thinking and culture
• Hard to break command and control management style
– Management changes from telling people what to do to leading
and helping everyone do their best to achieve goals
– People aren’t resources, and managers aren’t bosses
• Requires dedicated participation from customers and end
users
• Agile puts pressure on the product development
organization to improve its engineering skills
• The phrase “That can’t be done here” really means it will 37

be very difficult to do so

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Critical Success Factors For

Agile Adoption
• Complete commitment to Agile from the top-down
• Qualifying and selecting an appropriate pilot project
– Non-disruptive
– Relatively short in duration
• Staffing a team with enthusiastic, talented, self-
managing people
• Identifying and training a dedicated Product Owner
from the business
38
• Specifying a clear definition of “done” for Product
Backlog Items
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Benefits of Agile Development

• Accelerated time to market
• Ability to accommodate changing
requirements and priorities
• Productivity is increased
• Staff morale is improved
• Product quality is improved
• Product features meet customer needs
• Value is generated early 39

• High probability of meeting fixed-date

commitments 39
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Contact CAI for more information

PETER_DEYOE@COMPAID.COM
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WWW.COMPAID.COM
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Additional Information
Links
• http://www.scrumalliance.org
• http://www.controlchaos.com
• http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
• http://www.xprogramming.com

Books
• Agile Project Management with Scrum
by Ken Schwaber
• Agile Estimating and Planning
by Mike Cohn 41
• Agile Software Development with Scrum
by Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle
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