program selection system

Abstract

Over the last few years we have had the good fortune to aggressively apply the agile practices on a number of projects with great success. These successes, however, have not been achieved without challenges and lessons learnt along the way. This experience report specifically highlights examples from three different software development projects of varying sizes within this period and within the same organization. This is the story of three little pigs, where in all cases the pigs were well and truly committed.

The Pitch

Over the last few years, we have aggressively applied agile practices on a number of projects with success including:

• a project made of straw – an example of a medium-sized project using Scrum processes in theory but needed strengthening before it blew over
• a project made of sticks – an example of a small agile project that was part of a larger waterfall program of work that delivered major benefits early, despite the people, processes and technology not being as strong as it could have been
• a project made of bricks – an example of a successful project using XP techniques to the extreme with the entire team committed to the process, but with the wider community still maturing to the agile process, the strength of the team and practices meant it could not be blown over

Some of the key challenges that will be discussed include:

• applying agile practices to a large development team and a large project team
• applying agile practices to a team that is new to agile but has a mix of experienced technical people, junior developers and external vendors and partners
• applying agile practices to a very small team
• dealing with a corporate culture that questioned some of the agile practices despite being supportive of the agile methodology.
• handing integration with other parts of the organization that continue to use the waterfall methodology and procedures that are not suited to an agile deployment
• dealing with accommodation issues in an environment that is very cubicle centric and space constrained and dealing with projects in multiple locations
• agreeing of development methodology with project stakeholders upfront and questioning of practices such as pair programming throughout the project

Some of the lessons learnt that will be discussed are:

• approaches to estimation
• pair programming approaches
• use of flexible project management tools
• corporate buy-in to the methodology is important
• test driven development is an important part of the project boosting confidence both within and outside the team.
• refactoring is important, but sometimes need to be pragmatically approached.
• managing communication in a large team
• upfront design is sometimes an necessary evil
• storycards and getting them right is not easy
• stakeholder transparency brings its own challenges
• good development tools improve success
• good project tracking is essential and should never be neglected

Some of the key successes from the example projects will also be discussed.