Archive for October 2009
Scale in London – Part II
What a grand conclusion for a year of Agile Success Tour events! High that my expectations of yesterday’s event in London were, the actual delivery and interaction with the participants surpassed them. As a matter of fact, I have not done as many customer 1-1’s in any of the previous events. Some of the interactions were with folks who came to the event from the continent. Remarkably, various customers stayed after the event to spontaneously dialog with other participants.
Speaking for Memex, Jim Mccumesty established the tone for the whole event. Agile to Jim is about:
- Making a real difference
- Changing patterns of individuals and teams
- Transforming ‘life styles’
Have no mistakes – Jim had a lot of hard methodical and technical data that he shared with the audience. It was clear however that for Jim the whole things is about doing good things through Agile. His passion was contagious.
Trevor Croft viewed the decision to go Agile by Misys as a matter of fitting software methods to business circumstances. Agile was chosen to due to intrinsic characteristics of their Business Intelligence projects. Specifically, Trevor highlighted the following factors:
- BI requirements would be constantly dynamic in breadth and depth
- Needed to be quick to market from vision to delivery
- Higher revenue –> emphasis on innovation
- Break out of waterfall nexus of first trapping all requirements
- Highly modularized factory production line approach for delivery
Trevor’s good points resonated with the trend highlighted by other panelists – the emphasis in Agile is moving toward:
- Delivering the right products; and,
- Delivering innovative products
Paul Lazarus of SpilGames equated Agile with growth. At the heart of it, SpilGame’s fast expansion from Holland to Poland and China was characteristic of the role Agile plays in the knowledge economy. Projects flow to the teams and to the talent, not the opposite way around.
David Hicks gave impressive highlights from the Nokia/Symbian/RADTAC work on the Symbian operating system over the past ten years:
- >50 MLOC!
- In a little over one year they are reaching the level of >1200 software engineers Agiling furiously in >120 teams
- All these folks/teams on a single software product with synchronized release trains every 8-12 weeks
It is enlightening to combine David’s data with Dean Leffingwell’s reports on his experience at Nokia. The affinity of their insights is remarkable. Dean, in collaboration with Juha-Markus Aalto from Nokia, published an excellent paper on the subject. Moreover, Dean is actually ‘binding’ together his insightful blog posts to publish a new book entitled Agile Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs and the Enterprise. The book will be published by Addison-Wesley in early 2010.
Much more could and should be written about the London event. Until I have the opportunity to do justice to the subject, I will just mention my overarching conclusion from the event. The business interest in Agile in both the UK and in EMEA is as strong as the one in the US, if not stronger.
The Case for Agile Business Service Management
BSM Review has just published my article The Case for Agile Business Service Management. Here is a key para from the article:
During turbulent times such as the past year, Agile business service management enables the business to become more competitive by speeding up the pace of delivery of new functionality and accommodating changes in business requirements as part of standard operating procedures. Like a computer chess program that extends clever tactics into the strategic realm [The New Yorker 2005], it compensates for the lack of prolonged periods of techno-economic stability through business Agility, substituting speed, flexibility and momentum for traditional long range planning. It is particularly noteworthy that Agile business service management applies equally well to companies pursuing adaptive strategies as to those betting on shaping strategies [Hagel et al 2008].
As indicated in a previous post, the article outlines the research agenda I will be pursuing. Specifically:
- How is agile BSM implemented and delivered? …measured?
- What are the benefits of agile BSM to the business objectives of development? …ops? …test?
- Who carriers responsibility for agile BSM delivery and implementation?
- Who benefits from agile BSM delivery & implementation?
- How are these benefits applied?
- When is Agile BSM expected to be understood and accepted by the business entities?
- Where is agile BSM likely to be wholeheartedly implemented first?
- What is the impact of Agile BSM on ISV’s (as distinct from IT “shops”)?
Listeners to Live Recording of Four Principles, Four Culture, One Mirror are well aware of my view of scaling downstream – it is the most tricky of the three dimensions of Agile scaling (up, out, downstream). IMHO Agile BSM is the first step toward effective scaling downstream.
Scale in London – Part I
No, this is not (yet) the report from the Rally Agile Success Tour (AST) in London. You will need to wait another week for my report from this forthcoming event. Rather, this post is to advise folks in the greater London area of a an intriguing thread we will be discussing in the Rally event there on Thursday, October 29.
The choice of companies for the event enabled us to offer participants the full spectrum of Agile scaling experiences, all the way to some 1,200 Scrummers on a single product in one case study. As a result, the richness of the forthcoming panel presentations is unprecedented. Time permitting, we will discuss the following subjects, and then some:
- Three-layer enterprise Agile model
- How to maintain integrity of a vertical feature when it has to be delivered by many Scrum ‘component’ teams?
- Bringing multiple teams and multiple SDLCs together on one workflow
- Cultural differences vis-a-vis Agile between Belgium, England, Finland, Holland, India, Israel, Poland and China.
- How do you accomplish Fully Distributed Scrum under the cultural diversity indicated in the previous bullet?
- The use of deep immersion techniques in Agile
- The Agile with the Masters paradigm
- How to maintain the push/pull balance?
- What limit should be placed on the Daily Commit?
- Emphasis on innovation – not “just” faster, better, etc.
- Advantages of Software as a Service (SaaS) in the Agile context
- How to tie the Agile initiative to strategic investment considerations?
- What was the ‘secret sauce’ of BMC’s Agile implementation? How can you apply it in your company/organization?
- What is likely to be the hottest frontier in Agile during the 2010-2012 period?
One other “ingredient” makes the London event very special. All previous events, gratifying and successful that they were, have been held in the US. The event in London will certainly be different from its US predecessors. In experiences, in interpretations, in points of view, in challenges, in business designs and so on and so forth.
I Look forward to meeting you in London!
Cloud Computing Meet the Iterative Requirements of Agile
It so happened that a key sentence fell between my editing fingers while publishing Annie Shum‘s splendid post Cloud Computing: Agile Deployment for Agile QA Testing. Here is the corrected paragraph with the missing sentence highlighted:
By providing virtually unlimited computing resources on-demand and without up-front CapEx or long-term commitment, QA/load stress and scalability testing in the Cloud is a good starting point. Especially, the flexibility and on-demand elasticity of the Cloud Computing meet the iterative requirements of Agile on an on-going basis. More than likely it will turn out to be one of the least risky but quick ROI pilot Cloud projects for enterprise IT. Case in point, Franz Inc, opted for the Cloud solution when confronted with the dilemma of either abandoning their critical software product testing plan across dozens of machines and databases or procuring new hardware and software that would have been cost-prohibitive. Staging the stress testing study in Amazon’s S3, Franz completed its mission within a few days. Instead of the $100K capital expense for new hardware as well as additional soft costs (such as IT staff and other maintenance costs), the cost of the Amazon’s Cloud services was under $200 and without the penalty of delays in acquisition and configuration.
Reading the whole post with this sentence in mind makes a big difference… And, it is is a little different from my partner Cote‘s perspective on the subject…
My apology for the inconvenience.
Israel
Cloud Computing: Agile Deployment for Agile QA Testing
Annie Shum‘s original thinking has often been quoted in this blog. Her insights are always characterized by seeing the world through the prism of fractals principles. And, she always relentlessly pursues the connecting of the dots. In this guest post, she examines in an intriguing manner both the tactical and the strategic aspects of large scale testing in the cloud.
Here is Annie:
Invariably, the underlying questions at the heart of every technology or business initiative are less about technology but, as Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine observed, more about the people (generally referred to as the users and consumers in the IT industry). For example, “How does this technology/initiative impact the lives and productivity of people?” or “What happens to the uses/consumers when they are offered new power or a new vehicle of empowerment?” Remarkably, very often the answers to these questions will directly as well as indirectly influence whether the technology/initiative will succeed or fail; whether its impact will be lasting or fleeting ; and whether it will be a strategic game-changer (and transform society) or a tactical short-term opportunity.
One can approach some of the Cloud-friendly applications, e.g. large scale QA and load stress testing in the Cloud, either from a tactical or from a strategic perspective. As aforementioned, the answer to the question “What happens to the uses/consumers when they are offered new power or a new vehicle of empowerment?” can influence whether a new technology initiative will be a strategic or tactical. In other words, think about the bacon-and-eggs analogy where the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. Look for new business models and innovation opportunities by leveraging Cloud Computing that go beyond addressing tactical issues (in particular, trading CapEx for OpEx). One example would be to explore transformative business possibilities stemming from Cloud Computing’s flexible, service-based delivery and deployment options.
Approaching Large-scale QA and Load Stress Testing in the Cloud from a Tactical Perspective
Nowadays, an enterprise organization is constantly under pressure to demonstrate ROI of IT projects. Moreover, they must be able to do this quickly and repeatedly. So as they plan for the transition to the Cloud, it is only prudent that they start small and focus on a target area that can readily showcase the Cloud potential. One of the oft-touted low hanging fruit of Cloud Computing is large scale QA (usability and functionality) testing and application load stress testing in the Cloud. Traditionally, one of the top barriers and major obstacles to conducting comprehensive, iterative and massively parallel QA test cases is the lack of adequate computing resources. Not only is the shortfall due to budget constraint but also staff scheduling conflicts and the long lead time to procure new hardware/software. This can cause significant product release delays, particularly problematic with new application development under Scrum. An iterative incremental development/management framework commonly used with Agile software development, Scrum requires rapid successive releases in chunks, commonly referred to as splints. Advanced Agile users leverage this chunking technique as an affordable experimentation vehicle that can lead to innovation. However, the downside is the rapid accumulation of new testing needs.
By providing virtually unlimited computing resources on-demand and without up-front CapEx or long-term commitment, QA/load stress and scalability testing in the Cloud is a good starting point. Especially, the flexibility and on-demand elasticity of the Cloud Computing meet the iterative requirements of Agile on an on-going basis. More than likely it will turn out to be one of the least risky but quick ROI pilot Cloud projects for enterprise IT. Case in point, Franz Inc, opted for the Cloud solution when confronted with the dilemma of either abandoning their critical software product testing plan across dozens of machines and databases or procuring new hardware and software that would have been cost-prohibitive. Staging the stress testing study in Amazon’s S3, Franz completed its mission within a few days. Instead of the $100K capital expense for new hardware as well as additional soft costs (such as IT staff and other maintenance costs), the cost of the Amazon’s Cloud services was under $200 and without the penalty of delays in acquisition and configuration.
Approaching Large-scale QA and Load Stress Testing in the Cloud from a Strategic Perspective
While Franz Inc. leverages the granular utility payment model, the avoidance of upfront CapEx and long-term commitment for a one-off project, other entrepreneurs have decided to harness the power of on-demand QA testing in the Cloud as a new business model. Several companies, e.g. SOASTA, LoadStorm and Browsermob are now offering “Testing as a Service” also known as “Reliability as a Service” to enable businesses to test the real-world performance of their Web applications based on a utility-based, on-demand Cloud deployment model. Compared to traditional on-premises enterprise testing tool such as LoadRunner, the Cloud offerings promise to reduce complexity without any software download and up-front licensing cost. In addition, unlike conventional outsourcing models, enterprise IT can retain control of their testing scenarios. This is important because comprehensive QA testing typically requires an iterative process of test-analyze-fix-test cycle that spans weeks if not months.
Notably, all three organizations built their service offerings on Amazon EC2 infrastructure. LoadStorm launched in January 2009 and Browsermob (open source) currently in beta, each enable users to run iterative and parallel load tests directly from its Website. SOASTA, more established than the aforementioned two startups, recently showcases the viability of “Testing as a Service” business model by spawning 650 EC2 Servers to simulate load from two different availability zones to stress test a music-sharing website QTRAX. As reported by Amazon, after a 3-month iterative process of test-analyze-fix-test cycle, QTRAX can now serve 10M hits/hour and handle 500K concurrent users.
The bottom line is there are effectively two different perspectives: tactical (“involved”) versus the strategic (“committed”) and both can be successful. Moreover, the consideration of tactical versus strategic is not a discrete binary choice but a granularity spectrum that accommodates amalgamations of short term and long-term thinking. Every business must decide the best course to meet its goals.
P.S. A shout out to Israel Gat for not only allowing me to post my piece today but for his always insightful comments in our daily email exchanges.
I Should have Asked for Equity, Not for Cash
In 2004 I was asked by the London Office of Apax Partners to conduct due diligence on a start-up name of Tideway. Flying all the way from Seattle to London was not something I was looking to. However, a promise to put me in The Hotel at the Chelsea Football Club proved irresistable. I packed my bags and went to London.
Apax paid me nicely for the due diligence – no complaints whatsoever. However, I woke up today to read the following news in The Register:
Systems management software maker BMC Software continues to snap up other software players as it bulks up to do battle with the likes of IBM, CA, Hewlett-Packard, and now EMC in its chosen market. Today, the company paid an undisclosed amount to acquire British software company and BMC-partner Tideway Systems.
I wonder whether I should have asked to be given equity instead of cash….
Agile Business Service Management
Over the weekend we activated the BSM Review. It is a thought leadership website dedicated to next practices in Business Service Management (BSM) in a way that is appropriate for our era. To quote my colleague and friend Bill Keyworth:
This website is dedicated to the BSM dialogue by whoever wishes to participate. There is no fee to join …no content that requires a subscription …and no censorship of reasonable ideas and questions.
My area of focus in this site is Agile Business Service Management. The term is defined as follows:
Agile Business Service Management (Agile BSM) is the fusion of modern software development methods with the prevailing preference to run IT from the perspective of the business customer. Instead of dividing the “world” to development on the one hand and operations on the other hand, Agile Business Service Management unifies the two to manage them as part of one continuum that improves the delivery and usage of the application to the targeted business end-user. By so doing, it crosses the metaphorical chasm between the R&D lab and the customer door (or laptop, or iPhone, or…)
My research agenda in the context of the BSM Review will be outlined in a forthcoming post. For now, suffice it to say it will primarily be driven by two themes:
- Business alignment: At the heart of it, BSM is a discipline to better align business with IT; at its core, Agile is about “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.” The two are conceptually similar: they express the strong desire in both development and operations to carry out meaningful tasks that have business impact.
- Continuous manufacturing: I view IT as a form of continuous manufacturing. If you accept this premise, the application of Agile concepts, principles and techniques to IT management makes perfect sense. Just as Agile has been influenced by Lean techniques from manufacturing, it has the potential now to influences (continuous) manufacturing in its IT incarnation.
If software development is your primary interest, you might find my forthcoming posts in BSM Review go a little beyond the traditional scope of software methods. If, however, you are interested in software delivery in entirety, you are likely to find good synergy between the topics I will address in BSM Review and those I will continue to bring up in The Agile Executive. Either way, I trust my posts and Cote’s will be of on-going interest to you.
An Omen in Chicago
Amazing how things come together. A gentleman introduces himself at the conclusion of my breakout session (Socializing Agile with your Executives) in yesterday’s Rally Agile Success Tour (AST) event in Chicago. I am pleasantly surprised to learn he is Cutter Consortium colleague Scott Stribrny. Within a few sentences I discover he was actually the Cutter consultant to Follett Software. As readers of this blog are well aware of, Follett Software was prominently featured in the landmark study of Agile quality, productivity and time-to market by Michael Mah. To put the icing on the cake (so to speak), Rachel Weston – Rally’s Director of Professional Services – uses this very study by Michael Mah in her keynote presentation at the end of the event…
Symphono’s Robert Schmitt started the day with a quote from one of his developers:
I don’t want to deliver just twice a year; I love to deliver!
The power of this kind of craftsman’s pride in his/her software was nicely illustrated by hard numbers Robert cited. For example, on one of their projects, Symphono observed a cost of $12K instead of the $72K they would have expected under traditional software methods.
Playboy’s Mark Row highlighted the intricacies of project managing contents alongside project managing software. In Mark’s experience, contents developers tend to be visually oriented. Writing requirements does not quite cut it for folks of such orientation. As Mark needs to manage software development priorities across all contents initiatives (and many owners), the balance to be struck between the two is quite tricky. The non-formalistic nature of Agile has proven quite effective in bringing things together. As a matter of fact, Mark indicated Playboy’s marketing teams are now doing daily Scrum-like stand-up meeting. The bottom line from the perspective of his executive management is crystal clear:
Night and day since going Agile
Pariveda’s Jim West kept all of us honest with respect to how bad the starting point for Agile often is. According to Jim, they did not start Agile from square zero – they actually started from minus two (-2)…. In spite of this far from optimal starting conditions, Pariveda been successful on two noteworthy accounts:
- Productivity improved by 15-20%
- The managed to satisfy the needs of other processes by incorporating them in their Agile process. For example, SOX work items are represented as story cards in their backlog
Last but not least, ShopLocal’s Brendan Flynn highlighted the progress they made with Agile contracts. They incorporate both user stories and acceptance criteria in the contract. Furthermore, they pay special attention to specifying what is not included in the contract. To paraphrase the French proverb, Shop Local’s experience is that “good accounts make good (customer) relationships.” Remarkably, they achieve good customer relationships through Agile contracts at the scale of 5+ Billion page views annually through just one of their products!
Expressive quips were brought up in the lively Q&A sessions that followed the presentations. Here are a few gems:
Make Agile your flavor [tailoring Agile to the needs of the organization]
Make database decisions [data-driven decisions in Agile]
A cube empire [working environments in the 80’s and 90’s]
Exchange requests, not change requests [Agile contract policy]
In two week the Agile Success Tour “train” will cross the channel to London. (Please, do not enquire now how the train will make its way from Boulder, CO to Paris, France – we are delaying the decision on that leg of the trip to the last responsible minute). I suspect some of the Agile topics to be discussed in London might give a mild heart-burn to UK-based ITIL aficionados. But, how appropriate it is to conclude a year of great Agile success tours with an event in the grand city London!
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise
Readers of this blog are well aware of my keen interest in enterprise level Agile. I am now offering a specialized workshop for executives on this topic.
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise
This one day workshop and free follow-on coaching service prepares executives for their roles in large-scale Agile implementation.
This workshop is ideal for building a shared understanding of your company’s Agile goals and practices amongst members of the leadership team. It illustrates how executives could/should engage in the Agile process in a meaningful manner, and includes strategies for addressing common challenges. Your team will see how to govern Agile effectively, and most importantly, you’ll learn proven practices for attaining the operational, financial and business benefits of a successful enterprise-level Agile implementation.
Objectives
Agile is shown to cut the cost, improve the flexibility and shorten time-to-market of software-driven projects. Upon completion of this service, executive teams will be able to:
- Scale Agile to the enterprise level
- Minimize risks associated with large-scale Agile rollout
- Apply Agile practices in development and beyond
- Galvanize the team around a shared, cross-functional Agile vision
Approach
The Executive’s Workshop for Scaling Agile to The Enterprise service is divided into three parts, each designed to help company leaders accelerate their adoption of Agile.
Part I: Preparation via phone interviews and web-based coaching. The workshop leader works with your executive team to gather context, discuss logistics and focus the on-site workshop on your needs.
Part II: One day on-site workshop is delivered through combination of presentation, examples, exercises and participant discussion.
Part III: Free telephone coaching and mentoring with the Workshop Leader for six months after the workshop. The objective is to help executives respond effectively to the challenges they encounter in the course of implementing Agile.
On-Site Workshop Details
Leading an enterprise adoption of Agile requires that you understand the key concepts, principles and practices of Agile without getting bogged down in technical details. You must learn techniques for handling the expected “noise” associated with organizational change while identifying the critical tasks needing your attention and leadership to succeed. The workshop is designed to address these challenges with a minimal investment of time.
Here is an overview of the key topics you will add to your experience set:
Explaining the Rationale for Agile to Your Company
- Why now?
- What is the state of the art in Agile and what is our goal
- Expected return on our Agile investment
How The Agile Process Fits into Your Company:
- Understanding Agile as an example of other common, iterative, quality-oriented processes
- How Agile works with other software development life cycle processes
- How to run a heterogeneous software development environment that mixes Waterfall, Agile and other methods
- Connecting Agile to your budgeting process
- How to perform governance and portfolio management with Agile
How to Implement Agile:
- Choosing suitable projects for Agile methods
- Rollout strategies that mitigate risks
- Keeping departments aligned during the Agile rollout
- Defining the social contract for Agile
- How to make Agile sustainable in your particular culture
- How Agile impacts your partner eco-system
- Succeeding with off-shoring and outsourcing
Setting Up The Agile Enterprise:
- Determining your performance metrics for Agile
- How to negotiate Agile contracts
- Achieving breakthrough innovation through Agile
- Business designs that utilize the power of Agile
Price and Availability
- Limited to 12 people per workshop
- Please contact me at isrgat@gmail.com
The Agile Executive 