Kevin OsborneIT Project Manager| CISARichland, WA, United States
I picked up my first Agile project after design was completed.
I am struggling with the lack of task definition and completion information utilizing Agile.
I know that tasks not completed in the current Sprint are added to the backlog and scheduled to be included in the next one.
How do you ensure that you will still be able to accomplish all of the tasks within the period of performance with the fluidity of Agile development? Saving Changes...
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Bruce Gay Principal Consultant| Astrevo LabsPittsburgh, Pa, United States
Kevin,
It sounds like you have a fixed date and fixed scope to deliver.
If you have not already completed Release Planning for your project, your team will need to decompose the work into User Stories and size these blocks of work. As you are aware, teams historically are not very good at estimating and meeting deadlines. Thus, as part of your Release Plan, build in a Hardening Sprint prior to the release. This will help mitigate and schedule risk if work moves from one sprint to the other.
-Bruce Saving Changes...
Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
Hi Kevin,
The information should be readily available from your team if, and here's the catch, they are 'actually' undertaking an Agile development.
If they are, then artefacts such as a release burndown charts, sprint burndown charts, team capacity charts, and velocity charts should all give you an indication whether or not you will be able to release your product on the date specified.
Once a sprint is underway, then the daily scrums will offer you further clues. In these stand-ups, the team goes through what they did the previous day, what they will be undertaking that particular day, and also whether they have any blockers.
Also remember at the end of each sprint there should be some sort of demo or a release of working software. Are the features that are being developed full of defects? How quickly are the team fixing them. More evidence for you to judge whether everything will be done on time.
If you have someone performing the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles then they should become your new best friends. These are the people who ensure the team remains productive, can forecast whether the team will be able to complete the work in the remaining cycles, and prioritise the backlog when new features and enhancements start to roll in.
Agile seems scary at first, but it should never be used as an excuse not to plan. However, instead of doing the majority of planning upfront as you are probably more used to, the planning, and therefore task definition, is spread out over the course of the development.
In Agile you still know what you are going to deliver, it’s just that the route you take to get to that delivery is more flexible.
Regards,
Darren Kosa Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
It´s seems to me that you are working inside an SCRUM environment. Agile does not end there. And agile is not IT or software related only. Returning to your point, if you are following the PMBOK Guide, the same process you find inside the guide have to be implemented into your agile environement. If you are following an specific method search for method documentation and understand very well what the method stated. Saving Changes...
Kevin OsborneIT Project Manager| CISARichland, WA, United States
Thank you all for your feedback.
There is a contractor acting as a SCRUM Master. I asked about the beginning of the project and breaking a WBS down into manageable work packages. He said that he did that and asked for the Engineers buyin.
We are currently running in 3 week Sprints and everything seems fine. I just don't want to take for granted that remaining tasks will be completed by the end of the period of performance. What makes it difficult is not just the number of tasks, but not knowing the length of time needed to complete them.
I know that when connections are made to the database that will close a number of items in the backlog. I am just trying to get my head around the difference from iterative and waterfall methodology to Agile.
I am not aware of any documentation that was created in the early stages, as I was attaching predecessors and successors to tasks on the Project schedule, was being used more as a fancy word document.
The project is using Jira, which I still have lots to learn about. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
As Darren explains, your cornerstone is not control but rather planning. Saving Changes...
Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
JIRA is a pretty good tool to use on Agile projects. As a PM you’ll have ready access to real-time information - or at least information that refreshes every 15 minutes. Much easier than having to export data to Excel and then creating your own charts for status reports.
There are quite a few gadgets which you can use to create a lot of the charts I mentioned. You can even set up personalised dashboards for your execs, or tailor progress updates for a particular audience.
For someone who is used to Waterfall methodologies, going straight into a self-organising team can be a bit of a culture shock. You probably haven’t played the role of a ‘Chicken’ on a project before, but once you hit your straps I think you’ll be fine.
Good luck and enjoy the ride.
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1 reply by Stéphane Parent
Feb 25, 2016 1:40 PM
Stéphane Parent
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Hey Darren. JIRA is used on a couple of my projects. I would certainly appreciate any and all tips on how to make it work better for me. Have you considered doing an article or presentation on it?
Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Feb 25, 2016 5:46 AM
Replying to Darren Kosa
...
JIRA is a pretty good tool to use on Agile projects. As a PM you’ll have ready access to real-time information - or at least information that refreshes every 15 minutes. Much easier than having to export data to Excel and then creating your own charts for status reports.
There are quite a few gadgets which you can use to create a lot of the charts I mentioned. You can even set up personalised dashboards for your execs, or tailor progress updates for a particular audience.
For someone who is used to Waterfall methodologies, going straight into a self-organising team can be a bit of a culture shock. You probably haven’t played the role of a ‘Chicken’ on a project before, but once you hit your straps I think you’ll be fine.
Good luck and enjoy the ride.
Hey Darren. JIRA is used on a couple of my projects. I would certainly appreciate any and all tips on how to make it work better for me. Have you considered doing an article or presentation on it?
...
1 reply by Darren Kosa
Feb 28, 2016 3:07 PM
Darren Kosa
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Hi Stéphane,
Unfortunately I’ve only really started scratching the surface and the height of my powers would be creating the filters to use on the dashboards themselves.
I’m also using JIRA Cloud as opposed to JIRA Server, so I’m a bit limited in the range of gadget add-ons that are available to me.
If you can use Excel filters you can certainly create JIRA ones. Here a couple of links that I found useful. Hopefully you will too.
Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
Feb 25, 2016 1:40 PM
Replying to Stéphane Parent
...
Hey Darren. JIRA is used on a couple of my projects. I would certainly appreciate any and all tips on how to make it work better for me. Have you considered doing an article or presentation on it?
Hi Stéphane,
Unfortunately I’ve only really started scratching the surface and the height of my powers would be creating the filters to use on the dashboards themselves.
I’m also using JIRA Cloud as opposed to JIRA Server, so I’m a bit limited in the range of gadget add-ons that are available to me.
If you can use Excel filters you can certainly create JIRA ones. Here a couple of links that I found useful. Hopefully you will too.
Thanks, Darren. With a little help from a friend, I was able to set up a team dashboard with the necessary gadgets. I had no problem figuring out the filters once I mastered JIRA's filtering operators. (I was able to create filters that return all tickets linked to a single other ticket.)
I now need to learn more about the workflow features and how best to use the time capturing component.
Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Feb 28, 2016 3:07 PM
Replying to Darren Kosa
...
Hi Stéphane,
Unfortunately I’ve only really started scratching the surface and the height of my powers would be creating the filters to use on the dashboards themselves.
I’m also using JIRA Cloud as opposed to JIRA Server, so I’m a bit limited in the range of gadget add-ons that are available to me.
If you can use Excel filters you can certainly create JIRA ones. Here a couple of links that I found useful. Hopefully you will too.
Thanks, Darren. With a little help from a friend, I was able to set up a team dashboard with the necessary gadgets. I had no problem figuring out the filters once I mastered JIRA's filtering operators. (I was able to create filters that return all tickets linked to a single other ticket.)
I now need to learn more about the workflow features and how best to use the time capturing component. Saving Changes...
Lawrence CooperCreator, Lean-Agile Strategy| AdaptiveOrg Inc.Kanata, Ontario, Canada
Oh, dear - there are so many red flags in the question and the answers.
1. Design is not a stage in Agile - like delivery, some aspect of design can be adjusted, added to or refactored right up until the last Sprint. Design up front is not emergent design - a principle in the agile manifesto
2. We don't do WBS...why? Because that is focused on deliverables, not value delivery through stories. Each Sprint is supposed to deliver potentially shippable product...not deliverables like designs and docs and such - again go see the principles
3. Related to 2 is the statement that the Scrum Master was seeking buy-in for a WBS – sounds more like conflicted PMstill trying to do waterfall than a Scrum Master – Scum Master don’t seek buy-in, they facilitate, they guide, they help teams find answers to their questions…the Scrum Guide will help to clarify the roles
4. And related to 2 and 3 is the focus on task completion and schedules with predecessors and successors over stories…again Scrum guide can help with understanding how Scrum is supposed to work
5. This really sounds like a waterfall project and a waterfall process that is described for how the project is actually working, an not something that is resembling Agile approaches. Saving Changes...
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