Are you struggling to implement Agile at your company? What could be better than to learn from someone who has done it wrong over and over! We want to share our experiences pioneering Agile at a FinTech company. After multiple attempts and through sheer stubbornness, we were we able to get it right and improve our release pace by 650% annually. We will walk through where we went wrong, what we did right, and why we now understand that Agile cannot be successful without profound collaboration, Continuous Delivery, a DevOps culture and a desire to continuously improve.
24. TOOLS WE USE
Design and UX
• Camtasia
• GoToMeeting
• InVision
• Balsamiq
• UserTesting.com
• Photoshop
• Clicktale
Agile
• Atlassian suite of tools
Continuous Delivery
• Puppet
• Jenkins
• Gradle
• Nexus
• Sonar
• Contrast (evaluating)
Automated Testing
• Selenium
• JUnit
Notas del editor
Simon Storm – Senior Director of Enterprise Applications –
Mary Lynn – Senior Director of Product Management –
AgileDC Conference
Agile is Dead
5 things outside of the Scrum
Today we are going discuss 5 things outside of the scrum team that will dramatically improve your chances for a successful Agile implementation
I don’t want to diminish the importance of the team. We have an incredible group who have learned, adapted and thrived
Financial services organization
Over 3000 financial institutions
Review PRODUCTS
Unique challenges - major banks to tiny community banks
AS400 – RESISTANT TO CHANGE
Successfully adopted Agile, Continuous Delivery, Infrastructure as Code and working towards DevOps
DON’T’ WANT TO DISAPPOINT A CHILD on Birthday
Lack of Preparation – Failed to assemble gift
Better Preparation – Wrap the empty box, have gift ready to go
The early warning - of an Agile team – falling apart = Failing to prepare for PLANNING SESSION
NIGHT BEFORE
Done by one person in a vacuum
Can’t plan in a day
Team is surprised by work
NEED A STRONG PRODUCT OWNER WHO IS INVOLVED = MARY LYNN IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF A EXCEPTIONAL PRODUCT OWNER
There is nothing worse than disappointing your kid on their birthday
LACK OF PREPARATION – LACK OF UNDERSTANDING THE DESIRED OUTCOME
Children want to open a present and then immediately play with the present.
Unprepared Parent: Open present followed by hours of cursing the manufacture who decided to ship a toy in the lowest common denominator
Prepared Parent: Wraps empty boxes.
The early warning that I no longer miss is that of an Agile team who is starting to fall apart
Preparation for upcoming sprint planning is done the night before….
All the work is done by one person in a vacuum
Planning is a surprise to all of the attendees
A full day is no where near enough time to complete the planning process
EXPERTS ON WHAT NOT TO DO
EXCELLA
RAN THROUGH NUMEROUS CONSULTANTS AND TRAINING SESSIONS
BUT MADE US SMARTER WITH EACH FAILURE
STUCK WITH IT AND SUCCEEDED
QUARTERLY TO BI-WEEKLY RELEASES
ELIMINATED WEEKEND WORK – INCREASED TEAM MORALE
MAXIMIZED THE AMOUNT OF WORK NOT DONE
DELIVERED FUNCTIONALITY TO CUSTOMERS MORE QUICKLY
TOP 5 THINGS YOU CAN DO OUTSIDE OF THE SPRINT TO MAKE AGILE WORK
READ QUOTE
HITS HOME FOR ME
LAST WEEK WE DEPLOYED A MAJOR RELEASE TO THOUSANDS OF USERS
REDESIGN OF OUR WEB APPLICATION, INCLUDING TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY, AND UX
VERY IMPORTANT FOR MANY REASONS AND ALSO HAS SOME SIGNIFICANT RISK IF THE USERS DON’T LIKE IT OR CAN’T GET THEIR JOB DONE.
TALK TO YOU ABOUT HOW WE WENT ABOUT DESIGNING AND DEPLOYING THIS FUNCTIONALITY TO FOCUS ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
BEFORE WE STARTED SPRINTS, WE HAD TO DETERMINE WHAT WE WERE GOING TO RELEASE?
ALL OF IT – TO MUCH
FOR OUR FIRST RELEASE, WE WANTED TO STICK TO BASIC RULES FOR AN MVP, SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, USABLE, AND FUNCTIONAL
EXPLAIN PICTURE
SIT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS AND WATCH THEM USE YOUR PRODUCTS
TEST OUT NEW PRODUCTS IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT. WE ARE IN FINANCE SO DEAL IN VERY LARGE DOLLAR QUANTITIES…
TEST USING PROTOTYPES…
SAVES TIME AND MONEY ON BUILDING THE WRONG FEATURES. MAKE SURE YOU GET IT RIGHT.
YOU GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS BETTER
TOOLS
CAMTASIA, INVISION, BALSAMIQ, PHOTOSHOP, USERTESTING.COM
BACK AT HOME, THE SCRUM TEAM WAS ABLE TO LISTEN IN ON THE TESTING OR WATCH VIDEOS.
HELPED THEM GAIN EMPATHY FOR THE USER
UNDERSTAND THEIR STRUGGLES AND THINGS THEY LIKED ON THE SITE.
THIS IS A MOCK UP OF OUR FIRST ITERATION OF THE REDESIGNED HOME PAGE.
EXPLAIN THE PAGE.
We determined that the best slice for us was to update the header/footer, log in, home page, and navigation….and we got to work designing using tools like balsamiq, photoshop, and eventually ended up with a high-dev design we placed in InVision.
At completion of the first round of testing, here’s what we kept. The logo didn’t even quite maintain the same placement!
We ended up keeping navigation, but completely changed the way it worked. The charts were removed completely.
Ultimately, we ended up here….
Much less content on the page, just give them what they want.
Focus on their daily activities
We used our customers to ensure that the customer experience was a good one.
15 Minutes daily
Each person takes a row on the board and moves user stories across it.
Prefer the low-tech sticky notes and painters tape so…..
They are not considered ready to be moved into a sprint until:
UX review
Acceptance Criteria Written
Text Reviewed
Designs done
And….
WHO USES 3 AMIGOS?
STORIES CAN’T BE ACCEPTED WITHOUT 3 AMIGO
The three amigo consists of a developer, business analyst, and QA reviewing a story. The BA, representing the product owner, presents the story, and the three of them work together to refine it and identify any missing requirements or edge cases.
PRE AMIGO, RE-AMIGO…
LEAN CONCEPT –MEASURE AND LEARN
Measure the success of each feature you deploy so that you can learn and adjust the feature, if necessary.
Despite your best prototype testing, you may learn that the majority of users are not using something in the way it was intended. While not great, at least you know and can adjust.
EXPLAIN HEAT MAP
GOOGLE ANALYTICS, CLICKTAIL
WE BUILT HIGHLY CONFIGURABLE APPLICATION – When we knew the least
Configurable parts never changed
3 developers to make a change
Simple changes were difficult
ANYONE can implement a full feature.
RINSE – Removed SOAP (Web Services Tier)
SIMPLY THE ENVIRONMENT – Co-location, get rid of multiple hats,
AGILE DIDN’T WORK FOR US – AGILE was not set up to succeed
SPRINT 0
One of my favorite catch phrases is “At the beginning of the project is when you know the least”
One of the most prevalent comments I hear is “Agile didn’t work for us”. Mary Lynn ran through several team and process points that are critical to success. But there is a technical component as well that needs to be considered.
The main issue with infrequent releases is the need to get the feature in now which results in gold plating.
A second symptom that becomes apparent is the need to create a very dynamic and highly configurable system
While this sounds like a good idea, it is detrimental when done “when you know the least”. We fell into the trap of creating dynamic listings so we could add fields as needed. The issue we ran into was adding dynamic fields was very difficult, creating logical layouts was difficult and making changes to text on the pure website was difficult
We had a situation where we needed the database guy to do update a stored procedure, a the services guy to update the web service, and then the developer could implement the functionality, but before it was complete it would go to the UI guy to clean up the screen. You cannot be agile if this is the only way to add a feature.
EVERYONE WANTS 2 WEEKS
2 WEEKS 8 WEEKS 2 HOURS
We deploy code every other week – Amazon Deploys 11.6 seconds
Small changes are easier to digest
Small changes reduce the risk of introducing issues
We made migrating a development task and a non-event
It was well planned to do this slide last. I can speak for hours on this topic.
The main challenge that we faced was the two week syndrome
BAs wanted 2 weeks to define requirements
Developers wanted 2 weeks to code
QA wanted 2 weeks to test
Operations wanted 2 weeks to ensure production readiness
I wanted the team to perform 2 week sprints
Mary Lynn already explained the importance of backlog grooming which really means that all the BA work should be done prior to the start of the sprint. She also mentioned the importance of small stories. This cuts the 8 weeks back to about 4. Still too long.
The solution is Continuous Delivery. First, by automating deployments, building confidence and making the deployment process a routine non-event
Confidence comes from consistent deployments, but Infrastructure as Code is really the key to creating consistency
Slow Delivery
IT cannot keep up with business demands
Resistance to changing requirements
Manual Testing
QA tests the same functionality over and over
Developers move on to new tasks and then have to switch gears to fix bugs
Manual Deployments
Long detailed ECS documents
Inconsistent environments
Scheduled releases for off hours
10 deploys per day
Dev & Ops Cooperation at Flickr
John Allspaw & Paul Hammond
Velocity Culture
Jon Jenkins
Amazon Deployments from May 2011
11.6 seconds – Mean Time Between Deployments
1079 – Max number of deployments in an hour
1000 – Mean number of hosts receiving a deployment
30,000 – Max number of hosts receiving a deployment
EVERYONE WANTS 2 WEEKS
2 WEEKS 8 WEEKS 2 HOURS
We had a major release where we put in months of work. EVERYONE wants to get back to two week releases
We had issues migrating through environments
We had one problem that we couldn’t nail down the cause easily because so much changed in one release
BUT we made a silly mistake and fixed in HOURS….ROLLED FORWARD
It was well planned to do this slide last. I can speak for hours on this topic.
The main challenge that we faced was the two week syndrome
BAs wanted 2 weeks to define requirements
Developers wanted 2 weeks to code
QA wanted 2 weeks to test
Operations wanted 2 weeks to ensure production readiness
I wanted the team to perform 2 week sprints
Mary Lynn already explained the importance of backlog grooming which really means that all the BA work should be done prior to the start of the sprint. She also mentioned the importance of small stories. This cuts the 8 weeks back to about 4. Still too long.
The solution is Continuous Delivery. First, by automating deployments, building confidence and making the deployment process a routine non-event
Confidence comes from consistent deployments, but Infrastructure as Code is really the key to creating consistency
Slow Delivery
IT cannot keep up with business demands
Resistance to changing requirements
Manual Testing
QA tests the same functionality over and over
Developers move on to new tasks and then have to switch gears to fix bugs
Manual Deployments
Long detailed ECS documents
Inconsistent environments
Scheduled releases for off hours
In the end, it’s up to you to give your kid the birthday they deserve and to give your customers high value products they love.
Agile can help you get there. Don’t give up if you screw up. Just try again and you’ll get there. It’s definitely worth it.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share some of our failures and successes with you today.
Simon and I love talking about this so please feel free to grab us later if you have any questions.
