Agile, Iterative and Incremental Design, Development and Management

FRAMING

<Agile Management/ Agile Project Management

Iterative + Incremental Method>

ReSEARCH

Organisations

• Agile Leadership Network http://www.agileleadershipnetwork.org/
• Agile Aliance http://www.agilealliance.org/

Resources

• Agile Project Management with SCRUM: Training Course Materials - http://training-course-material.com/training/Agile_Project_Management_with_SCRUM

OUTLINES

Agile Management on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_management

• What is Agile Project Management?
  • Iterative and Incremental Method
  • To Manage the design and build activities for
    • engineering
    • information technology
    • new product/service development projects
  • in a highly flexible and interactive manner
  • requires capable individuals from relevant business, with supplier and customer input
  • Related ideas: lean techniques, Kanban (かんばん(看板)^?) Six Sigma
  • Best used in
    • Small-scale projects
    • On elements of wider program of work
    • On Projects too complex for customer to understand and specify before testing prototypes
  • Approach towards an end result where product/ Project
    • Best meets current customer needs
    • delivered with minimal costs, waste, time
    • Enable companies to achieve bottom line gains earlier

Iterative and Incremental Development

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_and_incremental_development

• What is it?
  • Any combination of Iterative Design or Iterative method and incremental build model

Waterfall Model on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model

• What is it?
  • A sequential Design Process
  • Used in Software development process
  • Progress is seen flowing steadily downwards
  • Move to a phase only when preceding phase is completed and perfected
  • Assumptions
    • Originates in Manufacturing and construction industry where after-the-fact changes are prohibitively costly or impossible
• Why implement it?
  • Time spent early in the software production cycle can lead to greater economy at later stages
  • Bug (Requirements specification or design) found in early stages is cheaper in money, effort and time to fix
• Issues
  • Clients
    • may not know exactly what requirements they need before reviewing a working prototype and commenting on it
    • may change requirements consistently. If a design is finalised, design must be modified which invalidates working hours and uses up project resources
  • Designers
    • 'Wicked Problem' Requirements and limitations cannot be entirely known before completion May not be aware of future implementation difficulties.
  • Project Stakeholders (non-IT/Design)
    • May not be fully aware of capabilities of the technology being implemented. What they think is possible defines expectations and requirements
    • Design does not use full potential of what new technology can deliver or replicates existing application or process with new technology
• Phases
  • Generic Phases
    • Conception
    • Initiation
    • Analysis
    • Design
    • Construction
    • Testing
    • Production/ Implementation
    • Maintenance
  • Royce's Original Model
    • Requirements specification resulting in the product requirements document
    • Design resulting in the Software architecture
    • Construction (implementation or coding) resulting in the actual software
    • Integration
    • Testing and debugging
    • Installation
    • Maintenance

Iterative Design (design methodology) on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_design

• What is it?
  • A design methodology
  • based on a product or process's cyclic process of
    • prototyping
    • testing: results of testing most recent iteration of a design, changes and refinements are made
    • analyzing
    • refining
  • Interactions are research for informing and evolving a project, as successive versions or iterations of a design are implemented
  • User testing results may warrant radical changes and be prepared to completely abandon old ideas
  • Aims to ultimately improve the quality and functionality of a design
• Applications:
  • Human Computer Interfaces
    • Complete an Initial interface design
    • Present the design to several test users
    • Note any problems by the test user
    • Refine interface to account for and to fix problems
    • Repeat steps 2-4 until problems are resolved
  • Wiki
    • natural repository for iterative design. Page history allows tracking back to prior versions and modifications are mostly incremental
  • Common Law
    • The principle of legal precedent builds on past experience. Law is a form of iterative design where there should be a clear audit trail of the development of legal thought.
  • Evolution
    • parallel to Natural Selection. A trial and error process where most suitable design advances to the next generation, while less suitable designs perish by the wayside.
    • Subsequent versions of a product should also get progressively better as its producers learn what works and what doesn't in a process of refinement and continuous improvement.
• Benefits
  • Ensures product or process is the best solution possible
  • Able to react Serious misunderstandings early in the lifecycle,
  • enables and encourages user feedback, and elicits the system's real requirements.
  • Development team forced to focus on critical issues and team members are shielded from issues that distract from the project's real risks.
  • Objective assessment of project's status via Continuous, iterative testing
  • Early detection of Inconsistencies among requirements, designs, and implementations
  • The workload is spread out more evenly throughout the lifecycle.
  • Enables the team to leverage lessons learned, and to continuously improve the process.
  • Stakeholders can be given concrete evidence of the project's status throughout the lifecycle.
• Example of Marshmallow Challenge
  • children at once stick the marshmallow on top of a simple structure, test the prototype, and continue to improve upon it.
  • business school students tend to spend time vying for power, planning, and finally producing a structure to which the marshmallow is added

Iterative Method (computational mathematics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_method

Incremental Build Model (Software Development)

Waterfall Model + Prototyping

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_build_model

• What is it?
  • Method of Software Development
  • Model is designed, implemented and tested incrementally until product is finished
  • Involves development and maintenance
  • Product is finished when requirements are satisfied
  • Product is broken into number of components (Builds), each designed and built separately
  • Each series of releases provide more functionality to the customers
  • Core product is delivered after the first increment and can be used
  • Based on customer feedback, subsequent plans and modifications are made until complete product is delivered
• Strengths
  • Each Build is delivered to client when it is complete.
  • Allows for partial utilization of product and avoids long developmental time.
  • Avoids large initial capital outlay and subsequent long waiting period
  • Ease effect of introducing completely new system all at once
  • After each iteration, regression testing is conducted and reveals faulty elements of software
  • Easier to test and debug because few changes are made each time. Allows for more targeted and rigorous testing of each element of the overall product
  • Customer can respond to features and review the product for needful changes
  • Initial product deliver is faster and costs lower
• Disadvantages
  • Resulting cost may exceed cost of organisation
  • Added functionality is added to product, and problems may arise related to system architecture which were no evident in earlier prototypes
• Tasks involved
  • Communication: Helps to understand objective
  • Planning: Required as many people and teams work on the same project but different function at the same time
  • Modelling: Involves business modelling, data modelling and process modelling
  • Construction: Involves the reuse software components and automatic code
  • Deployment: Integration of all the increments

Extreme Project Management (XPM)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_project_management

• What is it?
  • A Method of managing very complex and uncertain projects
  • Features: Open, elastic and undeterministic approach
  • Main Focus: Human side of project management: Managing project stakeholders rather than intricate scheduling and heavy formalism

Agile Software Development on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

The Agile Manifesto reads, in its entirety, as follows:

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.[1]

• Concept
  • Individuals and interactions – in agile development, self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions like co-location and pair programming.
  • Working software – working software will be more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings.
  • Customer collaboration – requirements cannot be fully collected at the beginning of the software development cycle, therefore continuous customer or stakeholder involvement is very important.
  • Responding to change – agile development is focused on quick responses to change and continuous development.[7]
• Principles
  • Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software
  • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
  • Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
  • Working software is the principal measure of progress
  • Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
  • Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
  • Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
  • Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
  • Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential
  • Self-organizing teams
  • Regular adaptation to changing circumstances
• Methods
  • Iterative, Incremental and Evolutionary
    • break tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term planning.
    • Iterations are short one to four weeks time frames (timeboxes)
    • Each iteration involves a cross-functional team working in all functions
      • planning
      • requirements analysis
      • design
      • coding
      • unit testing
      • acceptance testing.
    • At the end of each iteration a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders.
      • Minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly.
      • Not enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration.[10]
    • Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features.
  • Efficient and Face to Face Communication
    • Each Agile Team to contain Customer Representative
      • Appointed by Stakeholders to act on their behalf
      • Makes personal commitment to be available to answer mid-iteration questions
      • At end of Iteration, review and reevaluate priorities with view to
      • optimize ROI and ensure alignment with customer needs and company goals
    • Information Radiator: Up to date summary of the status of a project or product (e.g. build light indicator, BSC, Dashboard)
  • Very Short Feedback Loop and Adaptation Cycle
    • Daily status meetings: Brief session where team members report to each other what they did previous day, what they intend to do today and what their roadblocks are
  • Quality Focus
    • Specific Tools and Techniques to improve quality and enhance Project Agility
    • Continuous Integration, Automated Unit Testing, pair programming, test-driven development, design patterns, domain-driven design, code refactoring