AgilePracticeLibrary
Agile Practices for Everybody - Not Just Developers
Notes from Tim Ottinger’s Agile 2016 Presentation
Demonstration Exercises:
- hashtag and 9 digits with increasing # of rules
- 7-minute sprint with couple hundred tasks for 80-100 ppts
- crossword-building challenge
Idea #1: The work is in the thinking, not the typing.
- We are professional thinkers. More rules make more complexity.
- More complexity means more effort, but also more risk (chance for side effects) and more uncertainty (can it even be done?)
Idea #2: Agile is about *delivering* value.
Idea #3: We don’t “do more.” We don’t “go faster.” We deliver *sooner.*
- 100% of work 80% done vs. 80% of the work 100% done.) Thin slices, short iterations.
Idea #4: Capacity (velocity) is a consequence, not a choice.
- Stories: Defer/Accept?/Reject?/Explore?/Split?, Brains per task > Tasks per Brain implies pairs and mobs)
- Shrink XL stories to fit
- Defer alternative paths, edge cases, or error cases
- Defer supporting fields
- Defer side effects
- Stub dependencies
- Split operationally (for example, CRUD)
- Defer nonfunctional aspects
- Verify against audit trail
- Defer variant data cases
- Inject dummy data
- Ask the customer
Idea #5: A feature is “done” when it’s not the most important thing anymore.
- To increase speed: You must increase effort, cut corners, take chances, abandon early.
- To increase capability: You must develop skills, increase knowledge, improve tools, share work efficiently, reduce waste
- Transparency > Inspection > Adaptation
Idea #6: Agile methods are empirical.
Idea #7: Agile is an alternative, advantageous ruleset (AKA: “cheating”)
Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.
Idea #8: If something is hard, we do it more often and automate it do death.
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