Unlocking Agile's Missed Potential: Unleash its Potential

Description

UNLOCKING AGILE???S MISSED POTENTIAL Agile has not delivered on its promises. The business side expected faster time to market, but they still experience the long delays of bloated releases. Engineers thought they would be given time to build the product right the first time, but they are rushed under pressure to deliver new features within impossible schedules. What went wrong? The culprit is feature-based waterfall release planning perpetuated in a vain attempt to achieve business predictability. Agile didn’t address the business need for multi-year financial predictability. The Agile community’s answer was the naïve response, “The business needs to be more Agile.” Waterfall release planning with fixed schedules undercuts a basic tenet of Agile development – the need to adjust content delivered within a timebox to account for evolving requirements and incorporation of feedback. Agile without flexible content is not Agile. This book introduces a novel solution that enables product teams to deliver higher value within shorter cycle times while meeting the predictability needs of the business. Organizations today want product teams that break down walls between product management and engineering to achieve schedule and financial objectives. Until now they haven’t had a way to implement product teams within the rigid constraints of traditional organizational structures. The Investment planning approach described in this book supports small development increments planned and developed by product teams aligned by common schedule and financial goals. It uses Cost of Delay principles to prioritize work with the highest value and shortest cycle times. Investments provide a vehicle for collaboration and innovation and fulfill the promise of highly motivated self-directed Agile development teams. This book is for engineers, product managers and project managers who want to finally do Agile the way it was envisioned. This book is also for leaders who want to build high-performance teams around the inherent motivational environment of Agile when done right. Foreword by Steve McConnell, author of More Effective Agile: A Roadmap for Software Leaders (Construx Press, 2019). Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Author Biography Foreword Preface Introduction Chapter 1 The Persistence of Waterfall Planning 1.1 Introduction to AccuWiz 1.1.1 The New COO 1.1.2 Product Management 1.1.3 PMO 1.1.4 Engineering 1.1.5 Customer Perspective 1.1.6 Synopsis 1.2 Summary Chapter 2 Why Agile Has Struggled 2.1 Agile Development Fundamentals 2.1.1 The Agile Revolution 2.1.2 Scrum 2.1.3 Kanban 2.2 Barriers to Real Agile 2.2.1 Schedule Pressure 2.2.1.1 Income Statement 2.2.1.2 Balance Sheet 2.2.1.3 The Business Plan 2.2.2 The “Motivation” Factor 2.2.3 The Mythical Product Owner 2.2.4 Feature Planning 2.3 Agile Scaling Frameworks 2.4 Summary References Chapter 3 Embracing Software Development Variance 3.1 The Cone of Uncertainty 3.2 Software Development Estimation Variance Explained 3.3 Making and Meeting Feature Commitments 3.4 How Other Departments Meet Commitments 3.5 Agile Development Implications 3.6 Summary References Chapter 4 Cost of Delay 4.1 Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) 4.1.1 Cost of Delay Basics 4.1.2 Example 4.1.3 WSJF Proof 4.1.4 CoD and Net Present Value (NPV) Prioritization Methods 4.2 Nonlinear Income Profiles 4.3 CoD for Nonlinear Cumulative Income Profiles 4.3.1 Payback Period CoD Method 4.3.2 Third‐Year Income Slope CoD Method 4.3.3 CoD Computation Method 4.4 WSJF and Traditional Finance 4.4.1 ROI 4.4.2 Investment Rate of Return (IRR) 4.4.3 WSJF Versus ROI Prioritization 4.5 Summary References Chapter 5 Investment Fundamentals 5.1 Investments, Initiatives, and Programs 5.1.1 Investment Hierarchy 5.2 AccuWiz Investment Examples 5.3 Portfolio Allocation 5.4 Investment Forecasts 5.4.1 Development Effort and Cost 5.4.2 Investment Income Forecasts 5.5 Investment Backlogs 5.5.1 Investment WIP 5.5.2 Investment Planning WIP Limits 5.5.3 Minimizing Investment WIP 5.6 Technical Debt Investments 5.7 Summary Reference Chapter 6 Maximizing Investment Value 6.1 Great Products 6.2 Business Model Value Considerations 6.3 Stakeholder Value Analysis 6.3.1 Gilb Stakeholder Definition 6.3.2 Ford's Big Mistake 6.3.3 Trucking Fleet Management Example 6.3.4 Five Whys 6.4 User Scenarios 6.5 Summary References Chapter 7 Planning High‐Value Investment Features 7.1 Avoiding the Feature Pit 7.2 Feature ROI 7.3 Summary Reference Chapter 8 Releasing Investments 8.1 Release Opportunity Cost 8.2 Investment Release Bundling 8.2.1 Investment Pricing 8.2.2 Lack of Customer Acceptance 8.2.3 Release Overhead Costs 8.3 Overcoming Modular Release Challenges 8.3.1 Architecture for Modular Deployment 8.3.2 Configuration Management 8.4 Release Investment Prioritization 8.5 Reducing Software Inventory Costs 8.6 Summary Reference Chapter 9 Meeting Investment Targets 9.1 Meeting Commitments 9.2 Investment Teams 9.3 Managing Investment Scope 9.4 Managing Sales Requests 9.5 Summary Chapter 10 Investment Planning Template 10.1 Investment Description 10.2 Proxy Business Case 10.3 Product Stakeholder Analysis 10.3.1 Customer Product Stakeholders 10.3.2 Internal Product Stakeholders 10.3.3 Constraints 10.3.4 Competition 10.4 Acceptance Criteria 10.5 Go‐to‐Market Plan 10.5.1 Pricing Model 10.5.2 Deployment Model 10.5.3 Sales Channels 10.6 Investment Targets 10.6.1 Development Cost 10.6.2 Cycle Time 10.6.3 Income Projections 10.6.3.1 Revenue Target 10.6.3.2 Number of Sales 10.6.4 WSJF 10.7 Assumption Validation 10.8 Summary References Chapter 11 Managing the Agile Roadmap 11.1 The Agile Roadmap Management Database 11.2 The Agile Technology Roadmap 11.2.1 Stages of Technology Acquisition 11.2.1.1 Awareness 11.2.1.2 Proof of Concept 11.2.1.3 Pilot 11.2.1.4 Rollout 11.2.2 Investment Technology Roadmaps 11.3 Summary Chapter 12 Maximizing Investment Development Productivity 12.1 Measuring Software Productivity 12.1.1 Cost of Quality (CoQ) 12.1.2 Cost of Quality and Software Productivity 12.1.3 Sources of Software Rework 12.2 Agile Cost of Quality 12.2.1 Reducing Agile User Story Rework 12.2.2 Reducing Agile Defect Rework 12.2.3 Agile Cost of Quality Example 12.3 Summary References Chapter 13 Motivating Agile Teams 13.1 Background 13.2 Why You're the Only Smart One in Your Organization 13.3 Consequences and Behavior 13.3.1 Performance and Organizational Culture 13.3.2 Behavior and Software Quality 13.3.3 Intrinsic Motivation 13.4 Agile and Motivation 13.5 Measuring Motivation 13.6 Motivation Advice? 13.7 Summary References Chapter 14 Innovating with Investments 14.1 Innovation – A Working Definition 14.2 Investments as an Innovation Vehicle 14.3 Why Your Organization Can't Innovate 14.4 An Organizational Behavior Model of Innovation 14.4.1 An Innovation Tale of Two Companies 14.4.2 Creating a Culture of Innovation 14.4.2.1 Learning about Opportunities for Innovation 14.4.2.2 Generating Ideas 14.4.2.3 Innovation Proposals and Demonstrations 14.5 Summary References Chapter 15 AccuWiz Gets It Together 15.1 The Founder Meeting 15.2 The Announcement 15.3 Product Stakeholder Analysis 15.4 Creating the Investment Backlog 15.5 Customer Management 15.6 Investment Development 15.6.1 Project Management 15.6.2 Managers 15.6.3 Executive Team 15.7 Innovation Is Revived 15.8 Synopsis Reference Chapter 16 Getting It Together in Your Company: A Practical Guide 16.1 Step 1: Organizational Support 16.1.1 Influence Strategy 16.2 Step 2: Stakeholder Value Analysis 16.3 Step 3: Stakeholder Research 16.4 Step 4: Stakeholder Interviews 16.5 Step 5: Investments 16.5.1 User Scenarios 16.5.2 Feature Definition 16.5.3 WSJF Screening 16.6 Step 6: Initial Roadmap 16.6.1 Resource Allocation 16.7 Step 7: Investment Planning 16.7.1 Agile Roadmap Alignment Meeting 16.7.2 Program Review 16.8 Step 8: Consequence Alignment 16.9 Summary Appendix A General Cost of Delay Formula A.1 Reinertsen WSJF A.2 Income Curve Approximation A.3 Summary Appendix B Investment Income Profile Forecasts Appendix C Release Cycle Productivity Formula Appendix D Rework and Productivity Appendix E Innovation Behavior Survey Glossary Index EULA