Key Takeaways Agile 2013 Nashville Conference Presented by

Key Takeaways Agile 2013 Nashville Conference Presented by: Hemant Elhence, CEO @Hemant. Elhence Vinayak Joglekar, CTO @vinayakj

Conference Overview • August 5 -9 in Nashville, TN • Approx 1700 participants, 17 tracks, over 200 sessions, plus inspiring keynotes • We attended 20 sessions each, plus Exhibit booths of about 40 vendors of tools and training services • 3 rd year of 1 -day Executive Forum, with invited senior executives • Like previous years, big sponsors like Google or Microsoft were absent or kept out giving more relevant companies a bigger share of the limelight Confidential www. synerzip. com

Synerzip’s Top “ 10” Takeaways Note: 40 sessions were attended out of 200 by Synerzip’s CEO Hemant Elhence and CTO Vinayak Joglekar. Where possible, the presenter’s name was mentioned. Confidential www. synerzip. com

1. Dev. Ops Focus $ 3000, 0000 Three Trillion Dollars Confidential www. synerzip. com

Gene Kim Keynote • • Builds should have static analysis of code and asserts to flag out misconfiguration or force https. Let builds break before production. Worldwide cost of IT failure is $3 trillion. Avoid large scale failures -chaos monkey(Netflix)-small, frequent failures Adrian Cockcroft― do more painful things more frequently High performing Dev. Ops teams deploy automatically and infrastructure configurations are version-controlled; resulting in 30 X more frequent releases and 12 X MTTR In value stream Req-Design-Dev-Test-Deploy-Release fixing anything before or after the bottleneck doesn’t help Long release periods happen more because of time taken in queue; not while running Developers tend to ignore non functional requirements. Confidential Gene is a multiple award winning CTO, researcher and author. He was founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. www. synerzip. com

Continuous Delivery • Visibility: Big Charts-”Ready to release” instead of “Done” • Cross functional feature teams instead of Dev. Ops team • Build pipeline slows down if risk management steps kick in on account of complex code. • Architecting for reversibility and testability required for CD. • Ball of mud- too many dependencies make CD difficult. It takes months to release due to architectural dependencies • Complex Architecture and lack of collaboration are blockers for CD • Automation tests the application and the process that deployed it • Feature toggles/ Branch by Abstraction decouple deployment and release Confidential www. synerzip. com

2. Lean Startups Everywhere Lean Startup Most popular Topic Confidential www. synerzip. com

Alline Watkins – Lean Startup • • • Lean Agilista & JAVA/GWT Programmer • • Confidential Empathy works better than online surveys Steve Blank―Startups fail not because they don’t have product but because they don’t have customers. Value proposition is why your product solves your customers’ problem better than your competitor The primary customer is the decision-maker. The payer and the user are secondary customers. More features don’t make your product better. 20% of them account for 80% of the utility. Early adopters give time, attention as they badly want your product to succeed. Patterns emerge after 20 ints. - time to think of soln www. synerzip. com

3. Hard Data on Agile Impact • Data from Rally’s 9, 629 projects. www. rallydev. com/agilemetrics • Using key dimensions of Software Development Performance Index (SDPI): Responsiveness, Quality, Productivity, Predictability • Dedicated & stable teams work much better – When people are dedicated to ONE team, that result in 2 x higher Productivity – Stable teams result in 60% better Productivity, 40% better Predictability, and 60% better Responsiveness • Teams using story points & task hours have 3. 5 x better Quality – No Estimate (3% of teams) – SP + Task Hours (79% of teams) << Best on Quality – Only SP (10% of teams) << Better overall (Productivity, Predictability, Responsiveness) – Only Task Hours (8% of teams) • Teams of 7 +/- 2 have the most balanced performance Confidential www. synerzip. com

4. Agile Mindset/ People Focus • • • A lot of discussion on the soft skills side of Agile “Focus on the people side, and forget about process and tools” Intra-team communication Trust & transparency as fundamental building blocks Servant leadership model Conflict Resolution Developing coaching skills Negotiation and persuasion skills Follow-up sessions by Linda Rising (2011 Keynote speaker) Confidential www. synerzip. com

5. Empathy In Mobile Apps Design Confidential www. synerzip. com

David Peter Simon―Mobile strategies based on empathy • People focus to evolve mobile projects • MFP for human rights activists in Africa • Thinkaloud walkthrough and observing people to validate their stated belief • What can help people instead of what can be built • 3 learnings― context centered design, augment existing answers, create-destroy. • One eyeball‒one hand. Actions like shaking the phone to lodge a complaint by Google Maps. • Focus on people instead of hardware features like speed, screen size, durability, signal strength etc. Confidential Thoughtworker At the heart of my work is a deeply held belief in technology's liberating capacity for society, attacking the most pressing problems of our time: social and economic inequality, energy, health care, participatory democracy and human rights abuse. www. synerzip. com

6. Agile Adoption 85% Troubled Agile Adoptions Confidential www. synerzip. com

Open space― Dan Mezick • • Dan coaches executives and teams in Agile &Scrum • • Confidential Imposing against Agile principle of selfdetermination & “people over process” Open space― 5 principles &1 law (2 ft). Whenever, wherever, whoever, whatever. People design agenda. Rows=time, columns=place Purpose of open space is to generate stories to understand people & culture Agile adoption is a game. Games generate happiness. Open spaces tell you care. Leadership evolves― passionate and having sense of responsibility speak up. Success succeeds. www. synerzip. com

7. Enterprise Agile • Large-scale Agile is still a big topic of discussion • Major theme in Executive Forum • Leffingwell’s SAFe framework seems widely accepted and practiced, but some skeptics • Scrum of scrum “sort of works” • Other enterprise agile frameworks: – Scott Ambler’s Disciplined Agile Delivery (www. disciplinedagiledelivery. com) – Eliassen/Damon Poole’s Enterprise Agility Model Confidential www. synerzip. com

8. Technical Debt • Israel Gat’s session • More mature and well developed in theory and in practice • Vicious cycle of TD: biz pressure >> TD >> reduced velocity >> missed time-line >> more biz pressure • TD is not the problem, it is just a symptom of the problem • When Business Demand > Team Capacity, you end up incurring technical debt • 3 main components of TD, with different impact – Principal – one time refactoring cost – Recurring Interest – increase in on-going support/maint. costs – Compound Interest – created by practices like copy & paste, has exponential effect • Useful metaphors: Financial Debt, Rusty Car, Toxic Code: software where technical debt to value ratio is >100% Confidential www. synerzip. com

9. Scaling Agile Hierarchies Biggest impediment for scaling Agile Confidential www. synerzip. com

Dan Le. Febvre – Circles & Links • • • Precondition-self organizing teams– 1) Equivalent elements – 2) External source of energy – 3) Happiness due to perceived control/ progress, connectedness and being a part of something big. Multiple scrum teams result in lack of equivalence, visibility and no sense of belonging Disconnected teams>broken system― Conway’s law Requirements: bottom-top-bottom―Chinese whispers. Red status turns amber/green as it reaches the top. Decisions are best made at team level as freshest info is available there Confidential Executive Coach and Agile Coach at Free. Standing Agility www. synerzip. com

Dan Le. Febvre – Circles & Links • Scrum of scrums- sharing of status- no action • Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE) – difficult to implement. • Self organizing delivery circles create and deliver. elect members to join co ordinating circles that provide infrastructure, requirements, architecture • Equivalence, visibility , external source of energy. • Consensus vs consent to live with a decision. • Community circles where functionally similar members improve skills, coach others. Confidential www. synerzip. com

10. User Research Lies What most users tell when asked Confidential www. synerzip. com

Aviva Rosenstein-Rapid Research • Rapid research helps UX designers to keep up with Agile iterations. Customers don’t share knowledge , values, assumptions and interest. Need to elicit truth. • Before-Interviewing/shadowing. During- card sorts, tree sorts. After- pdt experience feedback • Personas-user roles, characteristics, situations • Empathize with user’s pains and frustrations. • Users interest -cash, sneak peak, being heard • Observe-don’t ask. Don’t interrupt. Open ended q’s. • User research-too important to be left to user researcher Confidential www. synerzip. com

Rapid Product Design • Michele Ide-Smith’s team built an MVP in a 3 -day exhibition event. (Source Control for D/b schema) • Red Gate (. Net+D/B). Customer interaction difficult • No visibility into user environment and context. • Predefined w/flow 20 ints before. Interviewing at conference booth. Three days- 9 mini sprints. • Bootstrap prototype- 25 User feedback sessions in 2. 5 days. Paper prototyping extensively used. • Empathy map for customer needs. Affinity map to avoid repetitive/ similar feedback. Sketching env. • 600 beta users signed up. Confidential www. synerzip. com

Summary 1. Dev. Ops Focus 2. Lean Startup Everywhere 3. Hard data on Agile Impact 4. Importance of Agile Mindset & Soft Skills 5. Mobile Strategy Driven by Customer Empathy 6. Open Spaces to Facilitate Agile Adoption 7. SAFe Framework for Enterprise Agile 8. Pushing Understanding of Technical Debt 9. Org Hierarchy is the Main Impediment to Scaling Agile 10. User Research is Too Important to be Left to Researchers Confidential www. synerzip. com

Contact Information • Hemant Elhence (Dallas based) – – – • Vinayak Joglekar (India based) – – – • hemant@synerzip. com @Hemant. Elhence Cell Phone: 214. 762. 4873 vinayak@synerzip. com @vinayakj Blog: http: //vinayakjoglekar. wordpress. com/ HQ and US office in Dallas, TX – – 14228 Midway Rd, #130, Dallas, TX 75244 Office Tel: 469. 322. 0349 • Development center in Pune, India. Confidential www. synerzip. com

Beyond The “Top 10” Confidential www. synerzip. com

11. Agile Contracts • A number of sessions on Agile contracts – Gabriella Benefield & Ryan Shriver – Simon Bennett – Consensus that traditional contracts don’t work for software development – More developed topic, with real contract templates http: //flexiblecontracts. com – Value or Outcome based payments – A combination of Business Terms agreement, along with multiple Statement of Target Outcomes Confidential www. synerzip. com

12. Architecture & Architect Role • Scott Ambler session on Continuous Architecture and Emergent Design – “Architecture is so important in Agile, that we do it throughout, not just in the beginning” – There needs to a role of Architecture Owner, similar to Product Owner Confidential www. synerzip. com

13. Feature Based Release Teams • Mehernosh Patel’s lightening talk – Organize each scrum team around a feature – Have one production trunk, and let each team work on the branch – Who ever finishes first, gets to integrate to trunk. But has to also deliver automated tests for their feature. – All others, need to now pull that trunk and integrate – The process repeats – Creates healthy race towards delivering the feature fast! Confidential www. synerzip. com

14. Stable Teams vs. ROI • From Executive Forum – Stable (and dedicated) teams are significantly more productive – Senior mgmt should fund development capacity (and prioritize project), rather than look projectby-project ROI Confidential www. synerzip. com

15. Agile Metrics • Many guidelines, but no single prescription • Vanity metrics vs real metrics - velocity alone is not a good metric • Monitor balanced metrics, e. g. Velocity, Quality, Hours, and Team Joy • Be aware of Hawthorne effect and gaming • Where possible, try to measure UP, i. e. – Measure the team, not the individual – Measure the business, not the team – Measure UP, start with the customer – Net Promoter Score Confidential www. synerzip. com

Other Soundbites • Retrospectives are NOT optional in Agile • TDD is like teenage sex – more people talking about it than actually doing it! • Capex vs. Opex classification can be handled at story level, e. g. new feature (capex) vs. maintenance story (opex) Confidential www. synerzip. com