Be or not to be Agile

Naureen Sheikh

www.agile.org.pk | contact@agile.org.pk | #AgilePK

Overview
 Project life cycles: From Predictive to Agile
 Features and usage of Hybrid life cycle
 Project elements to consider while adapting Agile

Learning Objective
 What is Hybrid model and how to bring it in use
 How to bring Agile in use with traditional project management
 Transition to Agile

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www.agile.org.pk | contact@agile.org.pk | #AgilePK
 Project life cycles
● Four types of life cycles

○ Predictive life cycle

○ Iterative life cycle

○ Incremental life cycle

○ Agile life cycle

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Predictive life cycle/Plan driven/Waterfall/Traditional
● A more traditional approach, with the bulk of planning occurring upfront,
then executing in a single pass.
● Take advantage of known and proven things.
● Clear project objectives, Stable project requirements, Progress of system
is measurable, Strict sign-off requirements.
● Time consuming, Never backward, Little room for iteration, Difficulty
responding to changes.

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Iterative life cycle
● It doesn't start with full specification of requirements but, allows feedback
for unfinished work to improve and modify that work.
● Used when complexity is high, changes are frequent and project is big.
● May take longer because optimized for learning rather then delivery.
● Costly because not all requirements are gathered up front for the entire
lifecycle.

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Incremental life cycle
● Frequent delivery of smaller deliverables is called an incremental life cycle
● An approach that provides finished deliverables that the customer may be
able to use immediately.
● Projects optimized for speed of delivery.
● Businesses that couldn’t wait for every thing to be completed.
● Needs a clear and complete definition of the whole system before it can
be broken down and built incrementally.

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Agile life cycle/Change driven/Adaptive
● An approach that is
○ both iterative and incremental to refine work items ,
○ deliver frequently and
○ get feedback to better plan the next part of the project.
● Customer satisfaction increases with early and continues delivery of
valuable product.
● In agile, teams works in iteration to deliver completed features.
● For large projects, some time its difficult to assess the required efforts
and project get off the track if customer is not clear what final outcome
they want.

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Characteristics of project life cycles
Life Cycle Requirements Activities Delivery Goal
Predictive Fixed Each activity Single delivery Manage goal and
performed one time cost
for entire project

Iterative Changing Activities repeated Single delivery Correctness of

until things get solution
correct
Incremental Changing Each activity Frequent smaller Frequency/speed
performed one time deliveries
for a given increment

Agile Changing Activities repeated Frequent smaller Customer value via

until things get deliveries frequent deliverables
correct and their feedback

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 Hybrid life cycle
● A combination of predictive, iterative, incremental and/or agile
approaches is a hybrid approach.

● The point is to select a life cycle or a combination of life cycles that work
for the project, the risk/team and the culture.

● Doing agile technique should not be the goal but to achieve project goals
so Its not necessary to use single approach for entire project.

● For example, a detailed requirements effort, followed by sprints of

incremental delivery would be a “Hybrid Approach”.
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High Incremental Agile

Frequency of delivery

Predictive Iterative
Low
Low Degree of change High

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 Agile development followed by a predictive rollout

Project

Agile Agile Agile Predictive Predictive Predictive

Combined Agile and predictive approach simultaneously

Agile Agile Agile

Project

Predictive Predictive Predictive

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Hybrid as fit for purpose
● Its combining life cycles in form of phases..

● Project teams may design a hybrid life cycle based on project risks.

● Goal is to produce business value in best possible way.

● For example – A web application project is in progress and customer want

to have it in new programming language. You need to deliver next module
plus need to do the transition of existing code base as well.

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Hybrid as transition to Agile
● Use when you need to move companies or organization towards Agile.
● Transformation to Agile cannot be done overnight.
● If you’ve lived in a Plan-Driven world for several years, then Agile methods
will look and feel very different.
● Try this technique with medium to low risk projects with low degree of
uncertainty.
● When organization get successful with a hybrid approach then gradually
move to next step.

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Project elements that influence tailoring
Elements Tailoring options

Demand and priorities - Fixed or irregular - A regular, time boxed approach to review and retrospect to
decide on new work can be used.
- Teams can use flow based Agile/Kanban with a tempo to
get best results

More then one team is needed to build a product. Scale from one to several Agile teams and consider formal
scaling framework.

Project team inexperience in use of agile approach Consider training team members in fundamentals of agile
mindset and principles

Teams working in their functional silos - Start by doing review meetings, build confidence with
functional managers
- Some teams need flexibility in their acceptance for a
different team structure

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Project elements that influence tailoring
Elements
Process improvement required
Some safety critical projects demands some
additional documentation and conformance check
beyond what agile process suggest
Stable requirements and execution process
Transparency is causing fear
Tailoring options
Retrospective more often and select improvements
Make it a part of project deliverable or consider using some
hybrid approach
If uncertainty in requirements is low, low rate of change and
minimal execution risks. Full suite of Agile may not be needed.
If build/feedback cycle do not routinely uncover or refine
requirements then consider extending their durations to
minimize cost of impact of review time.
Lead by example and demonstrate transparency in decision
making processes
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Not to forget – Agile manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software 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.
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Precautions
● Tailoring is an advanced topic that should be undertaken by experienced
practitioners.
● Gain experience and be successful in one approach before attempting to
tailor the approach.

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 Thank you
naureensh@hotmail.com

Your turn now 

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