An APM webinar arranged by the Scotland Branch on 22 June 2021.
For Hamlet it was life or death. For agile evangelists it sometimes seems to be the same. How do you introduce agile safely?
I am curious about new ways of working, but also cautious of going too far. You may be wondering what new agile practices to adopt. Perhaps you are already making the same discoveries I have over the past six years.
I work in the middle of the organisation, and have moved from a civil engineering waterfall background to introducing agile in change management. I would like to share with you this story of planting many agile seeds and helping them grow:
Is it practical to choose agile for our change projects?
Can we effectively use it for design and construction projects or indeed anything we do in the business?
Should we continue to use some waterfall techniques?
Can we sprinkle some agile thinking into the waterfall domain?
You may recognise some of the challenges I experienced. Often the lessons come from where it didn’t go as planned. There are also many success stories; memorable moments when it all clicks together and spurs us on in the next step of our maturity.
Speakers
Peter Faulks
Natalie Le Saux Stoner
Alan Crilly
https://www.apm.org.uk/news/to-be-agile-or-not-to-be-that-is-not-the-question-webinar/
https://youtu.be/-okoAWd5guA
4. SW Internal
So you want
to be agile?
Daily
plan
Daily
plan
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Daily
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Review Retro
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Daily
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Planning Planning
5. SW Internal
Do you want
to be agile?
1. Not considered
2. Considering
3. Early stages
4. Ongoing maturity
5. Tried and stopped
Where are you with agile?
11. SW Internal
Manifesto &
Principles
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and
continuous delivery of valuable products.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.
Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive
advantage.
Deliver working products frequently, from a couple of weeks to a
couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily
throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the
environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job
done.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
enhances agility.
Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is
essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge
from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more
effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying
information to and within a development team is face-to-face
conversation.
Working products is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development.The sponsors,
developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace
indefinitely.
We are uncovering better ways of developing products by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working products over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
14. SW Internal
Unintentionally agile
“We have collaborated
like this before when…”
“We used to do
daily meetings…”
“We did frequent lessons learned…”
“This is just good practice
project management”
15. SW Internal
Teams focused on common goal?
Transparency of information for all
Working iteratively adapting to changes
Applying lessons learned frequently
Empowered to make changes
Using a Kanban board
Focus on outcomes, not output
Frequent customer feedback and adjust
Unintentionally agile
Work collaboratively - one single multidisciplinary team
Dedicated team work area
Create a War room – put the work on the wall
Environment of a motivated, trusted and supported team
Preference for face to face conversations
Measure progress by completed work
Team working at sustainable pace
Check quality as you go
Remove waste from the process
Allow team to manage themselves
Respond to change rather than just following the plan
Set a weekly plan
Set the team up to completely finish and then move on
17. SW Internal
But it has a name,
…and some of it is
different e.g. agile planning
High level
Built around user value
Sequence of releases
Relative estimating
Planning every sprint
Daily planning
Plan as a team
23. SW Internal
Where should you use agile?
Complex
Complicated
Chaotic
Simple
probe – sense - respond
sense – analyst - respond
sense – categorise - respond
act – sense - respond
27. 1. Desire to
promote agility
for benefit
3.Agile method
mechanism
followed
2. Moving people
into agile method
5. Broadly
perceived
achievement
9. Full benefits
realised
8. Long term
embedment
6. Intrinsically
understand
7. being agile
B2
R2
R1
4. initial
benefits
realised
System Thinking
Introducing agile
28. SW Internal
Scaling agile
System Planning
Medium to Long-
term Predictions
Confidence
&
Trust
Investment Plans and Projects
Stakeholder
Engagement
Benefits Framework
Asset & Service
Strategy
Asset Data
Cost Data
Investment
Planning
Investment
Appraisal
Operational & Capital Information