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).
By:
Robert Webber
Imprint: Wiley-Blackwell
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 10mm,
Width: 10mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781119849087
ISBN 10: 111984908X
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 14 July 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Foreword 11 Preface 13 Introduction 16 The Lost Potential of Agile Development 16 Missed Business Expectations 18 A New Approach to Agile Planning 19 Addressing Traditional Software Development Challenges 21 Motivation and Innovation 22 Your Organization 22 Chapter 1: The Persistence of Waterfall Planning 23 Introduction to AccuWiz 23 The New COO 24 Product Management 24 PMO 25 Engineering 25 Customer Perspective 26 Synopsis 26 Summary 27 Chapter 2 – Why Agile has Struggled 29 Agile Development Fundamentals 30 The Agile Revolution 30 Scrum 31 Kanban 34 Barriers to Real Agile 35 Schedule Pressure 35 The “Motivation” Factor 37 The Mythical Product Owner 39 Feature Planning 40 Agile Scaling Frameworks 41 Summary 42 Chapter 3: Embracing Software Development Variance 43 The Cone of Uncertainty 43 Software Development Estimation Variance Explained 44 Making and Meeting Feature Commitments 45 How Other Departments Meet Commitments 47 Agile Development Implications 48 Summary 48 Chapter 4: Cost of Delay 49 Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) 50 Cost of Delay Basics 50 Example 52 WSJF Proof 54 CoD and Net Present Value (NPV) Prioritization Methods 56 Non-linear Income Profiles 57 CoD for Non-Linear Cumulative Income Profiles 58 Payback Period CoD Method 58 Third-year Income Slope CoD Method 58 CoD NPV Method 63 CoD Computation Method 64 WSJF and Traditional Finance 66 ROI 66 Investment Rate of Return (IRR) 67 WSJF versus ROI Prioritization 67 Summary 69 Chapter 5: Investment Fundamentals 70 Investments, Initiatives and Programs 70 Investment Hierarchy 71 AccuWiz Investment Examples 74 Portfolio Allocation 75 Investment Forecasts 76 Development Effort and Cost 76 Investment Income Forecasts 78 Investment Backlogs 81 Investment WIP 82 Investment Backlog WIP 82 Investment WIP 83 Technical Debt Investments 84 Summary 86 Chapter 6: Maximizing Investment Value 87 Great Products 87 Business Model Value Considerations 89 Stakeholder Value Analysis 90 Gilb Stakeholder Definition 90 Ford’s Big Mistake 92 Trucking Fleet Management Example 93 Five Whys 95 User Scenarios 96 Summary 97 Chapter 7: Planning High-Value Investment Features 99 Avoiding the Feature Pit 99 Feature ROI 100 Summary 104 Chapter 8: Releasing Investments 105 Release Opportunity Cost 105 Investment Release Bundling 108 Investment Pricing 108 Lack of Customer Acceptance 110 Release Overhead Costs 111 Overcoming Modular Release Challenges 113 Architecture for Modular Deployment 113 Configuration Management 113 Release Investment Prioritization 114 Reducing Software Inventory Costs 115 Summary 118 Chapter 9: Meeting Investment Targets 120 Meeting Commitments 120 Investment Teams 120 Managing Investment Scope 123 Managing Sales Requests 127 Summary 129 Chapter 10: Investment Planning Template 130 Investment Description 130 Proxy Business Case 130 Product Stakeholder Analysis 132 Customer Product Stakeholders 132 Internal Product Stakeholders 132 Constraints 132 Competition 133 Acceptance Criteria 133 Go-to-Market Plan 134 Pricing Model 134 Deployment Model 134 Sales Channels 134 Investment Targets 134 Development Cost 134 Cycle Time 134 Income Projections 134 WSJF 136 Assumption Validation 136 Summary 138 Chapter 11: Managing the Agile Roadmap 139 The Agile Roadmap Management Database 139 The Agile Technology Roadmap 141 Stages of Technology Acquisition 142 Investment Technology Roadmaps 143 Summary 143 Chapter 12: Maximizing Investment Development Productivity 145 Measuring Software Productivity 145 Cost of Quality (CoQ) 146 Cost of Quality and Software Productivity 147 Sources of Software Rework 149 Agile Cost of Quality 150 Reducing Agile User Story Rework 152 Reducing Agile Defect Rework 153 Agile Cost of Quality Example 154 Summary 155 Chapter 13: Motivating Agile Teams 156 Background 156 Why You’re the Only Smart One in Your Organization 157 Consequences and Behavior 158 Performance and Organizational Culture 159 Behavior and Software Quality 163 Intrinsic Motivation 164 Agile and Motivation 165 Measuring Motivation 167 Motivation Advice 169 Summary 171 Chapter 14: Innovating with Investments 173 Innovation – A Working Definition 174 Investments as an Innovation Vehicle 175 Why Your Organization Can’t Innovate 176 An Organizational Behavior Model of Innovation 178 An Innovation Tale of Two Companies 181 Creating a Culture of Innovation 184 Summary 188 Chapter 15: AccuWiz Gets it Together 189 The Founder Meeting 189 The Announcement 190 Product Stakeholder Analysis 191 Creating the Investment Backlog 192 Customer Management 195 Investment Development 195 Project Management 196 Managers 197 Executive Team 198 Innovation is Revived 199 Synopsis 199 Chapter 16: Getting it Together in your Company: A Practical Guide 200 Step 1: Organizational Support 200 Influence Strategy 204 Step 2: Stakeholder Value Analysis 205 Step 3: Stakeholder Research 206 Step 4: Stakeholder Interviews 207 Step 5: Investments 207 User Scenarios 208 Feature Definition 209 WSJF Screening 209 Step 6: Initial Roadmap 210 Resource Allocation 211 Step 7: Investment Planning 214 Agile Roadmap Alignment Meeting 215 Program Review 216 Step 8: Consequence Alignment 217 Summary 220 Appendix 1: General Cost of Delay Formula 221 Reinertsen WSJF 222 Income Curve Approximation 223 Summary 225 Appendix 2: Investment Income Profile Forecasts 226 Appendix 3: Release Cycle Productivity Formula 228 Appendix 4: Rework and Productivity 232 Appendix 5: Innovation Behavior Survey 233 Glossary 238 Index 246
ROBERT WEBBER'S executive experience as VPs of engineering and product management and as a CEO, combined with years of consulting with Fortune 500 companies, provide the broad perspective to create a win-win solution for business and product development that finally achieves the promises of Agile development. Organizations can increase R&D ROI by over 25% using existing Agile development capabilities. Break the chains of waterfall planning!
