Agile Business

Introduction Pattern theory is one of the most significant and potent knowledge tools available, and yet hugely under-utilised, too few people have been introduced to this subject area. It is the codification of successful experience. Each pattern describes a problem context, and then articulates how it has been solved in the real-world on multiple occasions. And by putting multiple patterns together and identifying their inter-relationships, we are able to create pattern languages that enable the improvement of entire systems / entities. Pattern theory was first introduced by Christopher Alexander in the 1960's for town architecture, and has since then been successfully used in other domains such as  software design . Jim Coplien 's book " Organisational Patterns of Agile Software Development " adapted pattern theory for organisational patterns and was one of my first Agile reads back in 2005. Introduced to the concept by Ian Shimmings , the two of us went to...

The Agile industry or Agile community has collectively / organically solved many of the early problems of ‘doing Agile’. For example, in 2003, scaleable elastic infrastructure was a dream, DevOps as a term did not exist, neither did Gherkin, JIRA, Rally, or many other tools now readily available in the marketplace. We now know that Scrum works and has been proven to work, we know that XP design, code and test practices are essential for high quality code and its longevity. We know that BDD  combines both the definition of the system and the testing of the system into a single activity. We can create dynamic, containerised CI development pipelines that measure code quality, vulnerabilities, build quality, build times, and we can integrate our automated tests into multiple suites to optimise our development pipelines. We’ve learned how to become far more objective about product development, we have tools for automating the Product Backlog and providing fu...

Agile is a double-edged sword! On the one hand, following a period of intense change, budget spend and organisational upheaval... your department will have quicker cycle times to market , be more predictable operationally, produce higher quality software, have better working relationships with its customers and will be more adaptive to changes of business objectives and requirements. On the other hand, all the department's problems that you know currently exist will become very visible and transparent very quickly . All those skeletons in closets you've been dampening down, or battles you've been fighting to secure funding will rise to the top of agendas. If you're looking for an easy ride or at least some calm seas, don't start agile. Agile methodologies expose the weaknesses in your value stream of delivering software , it exposes poor infrastructure, asset management, governance, processes, delivery, and most fundamentally, it will expose weak people... Agile no...

Increasingly, I am becoming concerned with how Scrum is being perceived, adopted and implemented. I've read a number of blogs bemoaning the fact that the fundamentals of scrum are not being followed, and then when the process is followed the mindsets are not shifting. Scrum is just the beginning of the transformation of software development for a company. Implementing the Scrum process correctly is the critical foundation. Don't leave retrospectives out, or do scrum every other day, just follow the whole process as defined. Once you've established and are following the scrum process other less tangible changes will take place. Individual team members will experience a change and shift in their mindset and perspective, teams will change their culture, velocity will increase and then you'll hit the next brick wall... Product quality and the ability to adapt it. This is where Scrum needs Extreme Programming practices, a company can run Scrum well and still have poorly arch...

I've recently joined T-Mobile as Agile & Online Programme Manager, and although there is an appetite in localised areas for agile adoption, there are some more fundamental areas of change required before real progress can be quantified. Corporate IT strategy, budget governance, resource models, enterprise architecture and software development all need to change and require long-term commitment. Shifting towards agile concepts, mindsets, methods and practices is a significant undertaking and clearly, Toyota's statement of 12 years to "lean" is not only true, but probably an understatement. Over the last few years software developers have often proselyted the use of software patterns, and having read around Alexander's original architectural patterns , I've become a user of organisational patterns. The core, unique benefit of pattern theory is that it is the codifying of experience. This isn't some individual's idea of how to do something; patterns ...

So you know what Scrum, XP & Agile are all about, got the T-shirt etc. You're fine tuning scrum practices in your company. You're running multiple scrum teams, you've adopted most of the XP practices, (test driven development taking a while?). Agile approaches are spreading across your company's project portfolio. You've even achieved the holy grail and have board level support! What's next? Where do you focus your long-term thoughts? How do you get the entire company behind you? How do you create an Agile Business? What does your next learning curve look like? How do you achieve more? Answer: Lean Thinking & Financial Understanding Too boring? Who'd have thought that there are a simple set of principles, that when correctly applied, rapidly improve any business in any sector of industry. And, when applied to other departments and functions within your business, will enhance and improve your own project team's output. Have a good look at your pre...

Hello, What a difference a year makes! I've moved from Head of Development with CPM, to Head of Technology & E-commerce at TV Network, the UKs biggest Direct Response Television Company. There are lots of projects going on at the moment, but the most pertinent for this blog is Chrysalis 7. Chrysalis 7 is a Lean Thinking Programme to introduce lean practices, culture and organisational change http://www.leanuk.org/ . Having implemented lean initiatives within the software industry, I am now leading a programme to use lean thinking across the entire supply chain. i.e Manufacture, Logistics, Warehousing, Call Centre and Customer Service. We kicked off late last year and are currently mapping the Value Chain in teams across 4 different companies which represents most of the value chain. We've adopted Scrum as the project management methodology for the programme (a first for DRTV I think!), and with distributed teams, complex processes, and in-built, multiple "company cultu...

Enterprise Scrum - Tactics for Implementing Agile Practices If you are implementing agile practices, methodologies and organisational changes within the company without full executive support, you are probably facing an uphill struggle. I was watching a TV documentary on the space race the other day, and one of the interviewees stated that in today's world nobody takes any real risk... This is fundamentally the problem you face, agile is perceived as high risk and difficult to manage. From a traditional management perspective, it is! Agile is about recognising there is a limit to control, that all things are not predictable, and that although we have clear objectives and a general direction, the detail of functionality and architecture is unknown at the beginning of a project. Managers need to learn an empirical approach to work and ensure that feedback loops and frequent communication are embedded within the fabric of the organisation. So with so much risk... cost, direction, cont...

One of the most enlightening and practical books I have read recently is Organisational Patterns of Agile Software Development by Coplien ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131467409/002-3524002-2666431?v=glance ) Alexander's original pattern theory applied to architecture of towns and buildings. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195019199/qid=1130880069/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-3524002-2666431?v=glance&s=books Design Patterns for Reusable Object-Oriented Software introduced the IT industry to pattern theory. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201633612/qid=1130880169/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-3524002-2666431?v=glance&s=books Coplien's book is the result of 10 years of research into successful software development companies. I'd argue that the use of the Agile word in the title is related to profit rather than a tre depiction of agile patterns. Coplien's book uses pattern theory to describe organisational architectures that can be...

If you are considering implementing agile approaches in a company or large department one of the first considerations is whether to adopt a top-down or bottom-up approach. Agile practices are about self-organisation, self-learning and shared responsibility across a team. Using scrum and XP practices, teams are given the freedom to innovate within a highly disciplined development environment. Freedom and discipline seem like opposing forces... they're not. A top-down approach is incongruous to agile philosophy, it implies a directive authority setting the approach. This approach is in line with Transactional Leadership ( http://businessagile.blogspot.com/2005/02/agile-transformational-leadership.html ) The advantages of this approach are that as a manager you can move through a change programme in a relatively structured, reportable manner. However, it is my belief that to truly gain the benefits of agile practices then a bottom-up (transformational) approach is required. Bottom-up ...

I left Conchango and started in my new role at the beginning of March this year. I'd been working as Scrum Master ( www.controlchaos.com ) with the likes of Howard van Rooijen ( http://blogs.conchango.com/howardvanrooijen/default.aspx ) and Ian Shimmings ( http://blogs.conchango.com/ianshimmings/default.aspx ), and fundamentally wanted to take agile practices to an organisational level. Moving a development team of 25 from traditional methods to agile practices is an exercise in change management. But even the word change management implies a clear direction, manipulation or cohersion and "management" of the process. I knew straight away that in order to encourage adoption of agile practices I would need to capture hearts and minds rather than direct a change programme. My previous blogs discuss transformational leadership and emotional intelligence, and I recognised that this is how I want to lead development. Even writing (I want to lead development) seems to go against...

Best Wishes to you all in 2005... Maturity and growth... Have you ever considered how we develop and which of our attributes are the most difficult to cultivate. We all grow physically without effort (providing we eat well), we all mature economically because without economic maturity we remain dependent on others and cannot achieve our goals, our intelligence quotient develops as we mature through our experiences, skillsets and knowledge. For the more pedantic readers I will cede the point that a certain percentage of these elements are based on our genetic make-up and environmental influences, but hopefully you will understand the point I'm making. These growth attributes are either forced on us or are natural. The one growth attribute we do not necessarily need to develop is our Emotional Intelligence. Higgs & Dulewicz (1999), define Emotional Intelligence as " Achieving one's goals through the ability to manage one's own feelings and emotions, to be sensitive t...

Being a Scrum practitioner and an “evangelist” of agile practices, I cannot help but notice the parallels between Agile approaches and recent leadership theory. Key themes that exist within Scrum when you’re living it, are the self-organisation of the team, the role of Scrum master as a facilitator or service provider, and the product owner establishing and driving the vision of the solution. These themes provide a fundamentally different environment for teams to exist in compared to more traditionally structured projects. Transformational leadership as defined by Bass & Avolio is concerned with three distinct leadership traits: Charismatic/Inspirational - inspiring and aligning others by providing a common purpose allied with optimism about the ‘mission’ and its attainability Intellectual Stimulation – encouraging individuals to challenge the status quo, to consider problems from new or unique perspectives and to be innovative and creative Individualised Consideration – a ge...