Agile and Extreme Programming Quiz

Agile Principles and Mindset

• Agile is a methodology for software projects, but it's also adaptable to all project types
• Agile is an umbrella term for iterative development methods, including Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban
• Scrum is the most common agile method
• Agile projects involve customer involvement throughout the entire life cycle

Characteristics of Four Life Cycles

• Predictive: Fixed requirements, performed once for the entire project, single delivery, manage cost.
• Iterative: Dynamic requirements, repeated until correct, single delivery, focus on solution correctness.
• Incremental: Dynamic requirements, frequent smaller deliveries, focus on speed.

Agile Benefits

• Customer involvement throughout the project life cycle
• Greater customer interaction with all stakeholders
• Constant feedback is essential for staying current and successful
• Greater value is delivered upfront
• Change is welcomed by all stakeholders

Agile Concurrent Development

• Fund incrementally; adjust, redirect, or cancel granularly
• Deliver and realize value consistently
• Validate designs with customers and users
• Continuously adapt to risk and change
• Integrate early and often

Agile Declaration of Interdependence (DOI)

• Agile and adaptive approaches connect people, projects, and value
• Increase return on investment by focusing on continuous value flow
• Deliver reliable results by engaging customers and fostering shared ownership
• Acknowledge and manage uncertainty through iterations, anticipation, and adaptation
• Unleash creativity and innovation via a supportive environment
• Improve performance through group accountability

Agile Mindset

• Welcoming change
• Working in small, value-driven increments
• Utilizing build and feedback loops
• Learning through discovery
• Value-driven development
• Failing fast with learning
• Continuous delivery
• Continuous improvement

Agile vs. Traditional Project Management

• Agile builds incrementally, traditional builds as a whole
• Agile plans throughout the project, traditional plans at the outset
• Agile delivers products over time, traditional delivers all at once
• Customers see value sooner in Agile than in traditional projects
• Agile welcomes change, traditional discourages it

Inverting the Triangle

• Traditional project management prioritizes fixed scope, time, and cost
• Agile projects prioritize flexibility with variables in scope, time, and cost

Agile Manifesto

• Created in 2001
• Contains 4 values and 12 guiding principles
• Available online at https://agilemanifesto.org/

The Agile Manifesto Values

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Processes and tools are necessary but the focus should remain on individuals and interactions.
• Projects are driven by people not tools
• Problems are best solved by people not processes
• Projects ultimately focus on people

Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Focus on delivering value over paperwork.
• Documents should be sufficient, not comprehensive.
• Documents should be created just in time.
• Delivering software first, then documenting.
• Administrative paperwork is simplified.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Be accommodating and flexible, instead of rigid and inflexible.
• Manage change, don't suppress it.
• Shared definition of "done"
• Trusting relationships are built

Responding to change over following a plan

• Adapt to changes promptly
• Software projects are prone to change

Agile Guiding Principles (1-3)

• Highest priority is customer satisfaction through continuous delivery of valuable software
• Embrace changing requirements, even late in the life-cycle
• Frequently deliver working software with a preference for short timeframes

Agile Guiding Principles (4-6)

• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals, providing them with the support and trust they need.
• Information is best conveyed through face to face communication

Agile Guiding Principles (7-9)

• Working software is the primary measure of progress
• Agile processes promote sustainable development
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility

Agile Guiding Principles (10-12)

• Simplicity, the art of maximizing work not done, is essential
• Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams
• Teams continuously reflect on how to become more effective and adjust accordingly

Agile Methods

• Scrum
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Kanban Development
• Lean Software Development
• Scaled Agile (SAFe)

Agile Scrum Terms

• Product Owner - Represents the customer
• Agile Project Manager/Scrum Master - Manages the agile project
• Product Backlog - Project requirements from stakeholders
• Sprint Planning Meeting - Agile team determines the work for the sprint
• Sprint Backlog - List of work selected for the sprint
• Sprint - Short iteration with a duration of 1-4 weeks
• Daily Stand Up Meeting - Quick meeting for project status, led by the Scrum Master (approx 15 minutes)
• Sprint Review - Customers inspect completed work at the end of a sprint
• Retrospective - Meeting to improve future sprints (lesson learned)
• Partial Completed Product - Products Customers Demo to provide feedback which shapes the following sprint priorities
• Release - Several Sprints worth of work directed to operations for possible rollout and testing

Scrum

• Based on three pillars: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation
• Transparency means visibility to those responsible for the outcome
• Inspection involves frequent checks to ensure progress
• Adaptation involves process adjustments based on inspection results.

Scrum Roles & Responsibilities

• Product Owner: Owns the product vision, defines features, manages priorities.
• Scrum Master: Facilitates the Scrum process, supports the team, removes impediments.
• Development Team: Self-organizing group of professionals who perform the work.

Scrum Activities

• Sprint Planning Meeting: Defines the sprint goal and backlog.
• Sprints: Short development cycles (1-4 weeks).
• Daily Stand-Up Meeting: 15-minute daily meetings to synchronize activities.
• Sprint Review Meeting: Customer feedback on completed work at the end of a sprint.
• Sprint Retrospective: Team reflects on how to improve.

Sprint Planning Meeting

• Used to determine what work will be done and how it will be achieved in the next sprint.
• Predictions are made based on capacity, past performance, and projected capacity
• The development team defines how the work will be done and organized in the next sprint

Sprints

• Timeboxed iterations (1-4 weeks) to create a deployable product increment
• Sprint planning, daily scrum, actual work, review, retrospective are all part of each sprint

Daily Scrum (or Stand-up)

• 15-minute timeboxed meeting.
• Team synchronizes daily.
• Team members answer 3 questions: yesterday's work, today's plan, obstacles.

Sprint Review

• Takes place at the end of a sprint.
• Stakeholders provide feedback about the completed work.
• Discussion happens on how to improve the product.

Sprint Retrospective

• Inspection and improvement planning.
• Team discusses what went well, what can be done better
• Team discusses what to do more or less of in the future

Scrum Artifacts

• Product Increment: Completed work of a sprint.
• Product Backlog: Prioritized items of value to be delivered, which is ever-changing
• Sprint Backlog: Set of items from the Product Backlog committed to an individual Sprint
• List of committed items: To be addressed within the Sprint

Product Backlog

• A prioritized list of all work needed to complete a product.
• Dynamically evolves as work is added and prioritized.
• Prioritization by the product owner; value-based

Product Increment

• Part of the product that's completed at the end of each sprint.
• Provides an opportunity for feedback.
• Definition of Done (DoD) established before the team starts working on the increment.

Sprint Backlog

• Set of items from the product backlog for a specific sprint
• Serves as a roadmap to achieve the sprint goal
• Highly visible work view
• Updated only by the development team

Definition of Done (DoD)

• Shared understanding of what "done" means in a project or sprint.
• Defined at the project's outset.
• Applies globally.
• Includes unit and functional tests, documentation, writing code.

Extreme Programming (XP)

• Software development centered agile method
• Focuses on good software development practices.
• Scrum at the project management level prioritizing work and receiving feedback

XP Core Values

• Simplicity: Find the simplest solution that could possibly work.
• Communication: Team members keep each other informed.
• Feedback: Early feedback is used for quick improvements

XP Core Values (Courage, Respect)

• Courage: Allow work to be visible to everyone. Accept constructive criticism.
• Respect: Work as a team, respecting the unique skills of each team member. Recognize their individuality.

XP Roles

• Coach: Guides the team for effective functioning on projects
• Customer: A representative from the business. Provides the direction for the project.
• Programmers: Build and code the product
• Testers: Write acceptance tests, and help the customers define acceptance tests

XP Practices

• Planning Activities (Games): Release and iteration planning facilitate better planning and estimations
• Small Releases: Frequent releases to test and gain feedback
• Customer Tests: Customers define tests
• Collective Code Ownership: Everyone on the team has access and is responsible for the code
• Code Standards: Consistent code guidelines are maintained
• Sustainable Pace: Maintaining a sustainable pace of work
• Metaphor: Using metaphor to help people understand the project
• Continuous Integration: Brings all code together

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

• Tests are written before code development
• Coding occurs to pass tests
• Ensures quality

Pair Programming

• Production code is written by two developers working simultaneously.
• Real-time review occurs
• Enhances knowledge sharing, and promotes quality.
• Saves team time and resources

Simple Design

• Code should be testable, readable, and easily understandable.
• The simplest workable solutions are best
• Remove redundancy and waste.
• Refactoring should be conducted throughout the entire life cycle to maintain high quality

Lean Software Development

• Derived from Toyota's manufacturing methods
• Principles: Visual management tools, identification of customer-defined value, learning and continuous improvement, building quality in, deferring decisions
• Principles: Reduce waste, amplify learning, defer decisions, empower the team, deliver fast, build quality in, optimize the whole

Seven Wastes of Lean

• Partially done work
• Extra processes
• Extra features
• Task switching
• Waiting
• Motion
• Defects

Kanban Development

• Derived from Lean production system at Toyota
• Visualization on signboards (or Kanban boards)
• Principles: Visualize workflow, limit work in progress (WIP), manage flow, make process policies explicit, improve collaboration

Kanban Five Core Principles

• Visualize the workflow
• Limit work in progress
• Manage flow through the system
• Make process policies explicit
• Improve collaboration

Other Agile Methods

• Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
• Crystal methodology (Different types for specific use cases)
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

Servant Leadership

• Leader: Providing what the team needs, shielding from interruptions, removing impediments, re-communicating the project vision
• Supporting: Equipping team with required materials, and assisting with daily tasks

Twelve Principles for Leading Agile Projects

• Learn team member needs
• Learn project requirements
• Act for the simultaneous welfare of teams and the project
• Create an environment for functional accountability
• Have a vision of the completed project
• Use the vision to drive your own behavior
• Be the central figure in successful project development
• Recognize issues as a step in the right direction
• Manage with an eye towards ethics
• Remember that ethics is not an afterthought.
• Take time to reflect on the project
• Develop the trick to thinking backwards

Leadership Tools and Techniques

• Model desired behavior (Honesty, forward-looking, competent, inspiring)
• Communicate the project vision
• Enable others to act by providing inclusive tools, being flexible, and willing to change

Leadership Tasks

• Practice transparency through visualization.
• Create a safe experiment environment.
• Experiment with new techniques and processes
• Share knowledge through collaboration.

Value-Driven Delivery

• Prioritizing based on value
• Prioritization methods include simple scheme, MOSCOW, dot voting, KANO analysis

Prioritization Techniques

• Simple Scheme, MOSCOW Prioritization
• 100 point method,Dot Voting/Multi-voting, KANO analysis

Delivering Value Incrementally

• Deploying working parts of a product
• Focus on delivering to a testing environment first, then production.

Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

• Small, useful version of a product
• Useful enough to get feedback
• Typically a module inside of a product

Tools for Agile Projects

• Low-tech, high-touch tools (e.g. whiteboards, index cards, sticky notes) used to improve communication over computer-based models
• These models may need visual tools for accuracy

Low-Tech, High-Touch Tools

• Cards, charts, whiteboards, and walls used to enhance communication.
• Computer Gantt charts replaced by physical Kanban boards.

Kanban/Task Board

• A visual display of work progress
• Facilitates information flow and visibility.

Educating People about Agile

• Communicate benefits of agile to stakeholders
• Address concerns about risk, loss of control.

Engaging Stakeholders

• Short iterations maintain stakeholder engagement.
• Identify risk and problems early on, and equip PMs with interpersonal skills to resolve stakeholders' issues.

Methods of Stakeholder Engagement

• Stakeholders should be engaged efficiently, proactively managing interest and concerns, and frequently discussing project updates

Set a Shared Vision

• Project teams and customers share the same vision.
• Methods like Agile Charter, Definition of Done (DoD), Agile Modeling (Use case diagrams, Data models, Wireframes, Personas), are used

Definition of "Done"

• Clear shared vision of what constitutes a "done" project phase.
• Important for user stories.
• Crucial for releases.

Agile Modeling

• Use Case Diagrams: Visually depict how users interact with a system.
• Data Models: Show data structure and relationships in tables.
• Screen Designs: Basic representations of screens and user interface.
• Wireframes: Abstract representation showing how the screens function.
• Personas: Representations of key users, clarifying user needs, desires, and expectations.

Communicating with Stakeholders

• Face to face: Two-way effective
• Knowledge Sharing: Promote collaboration
• Information Radiators: Visual displays for info flow
• Social Media: Modern tools for fast communication

Conflict Resolution

• Conflicts are inevitable.
• Recognizing different conflict levels aid escalation control and successful problem solving
• Levels: from simple problem solving to a full-blown world war.

Participatory Decision Models

• Simple voting - "For" or "Against."
• Thumps up/down/sideways: To decide support or opposition toward a viewpoint or idea
• Fist of Five: To measure support based on finger gestures for agreement or dissent

Team Performance

• Development/Delivery Team manages the product incrementally.
• Group builds, tests the project incrementally.
• The product is developed in increments, following daily/weekly updates in meetings and continuous improvement processes.

Product Owner/Customer

• Prioritizes the product features.
• Manages the product backlog.
• Ensures the team understands the backlog items.
• Defines the acceptance criteria.
• Provides delivery dates for releases.
• Attends planning sessions.

Agile Project Manager (Scrum Master/Coach)

• Acts as a servant leader
• Helps the team self-organize and direct themselves
• Facilitates meetings and ensures their effectiveness
• Monitors the team progress and resolves road blocks.

Building Teams

• Self-organizing and directing
• Small, agile teams
• Traditional teams compare to agile teams in terms of leadership and team dynamics

Generalizing Specialists

• Team members can perform multiple tasks.
• Skilled in various project areas.
• Reduces bottlenecks (slowdowns).
• Promotes effective work distribution

High-Performance Agile Teams

• Shared vision
• Realist goals
• Fewer than 12 members
• Sense of team identity
• Strong leadership

Experiments (Have a safe place)

• Establish a safe environment for disagreement and experimentation.
• Encourage experimentation and collaboration.
• This leads to stronger commitment to decisions

Welcome Constructive Disagreement

• Disagreement within a project should be welcomed as a positive step for more effective decision-making
• Encouraging disagreement and conflict leads to better insight and decisions

Models of Team Development

• Shu-Ha-Ri: Three stages of skill mastery (obey → move away → find own path)
• Dreyfus Model: Stages of skill acquisition (novice to expert)

Tuckman's Five Stages of Team Development

• Forming: Team members get to know each other.
• Storming: Conflicts and differences emerge.
• Norming: Team establishes norms and methods.
• Performing: Team works effectively and collaboratively.
• Adjourning: Project is completed.

Team Spaces

• Co-located Teams: Teams working in the same physical space
• Global and Cultural Diversity: Teams with members from different cultures and time zones
• Distributed Teams: Teams with team members working in different geographic locations

Co-Located Teams

• Teams working in the same space
• Interactions and communication are face-to-face
• Physical barriers are removed to aid communication.

Team Space

• Contains low-tech, high-touch resources
• Whiteboards, sticky notes, flip charts and round tables facilitate communication and collaboration
• “Caves” or individual space for team members to take breaks or have a quick moment of thinking.
• “Common” space provides opportunities to discuss, create and brainstorm project improvements.
• “Osmotic Communication” – spontaneous, informal idea sharing through normal team interactions

Global and Cultural Diversity

• Teams with members from different cultures and time zones.
• Effective communication styles are essential to aid effective team collaboration

Distributed Teams

• Teams with members working in different locations
• Implementing appropriate tools to maximize communication.

Adaptive Planning

• Plans continuously adjusted to accommodate emerging issues and changing circumstances
• Focus on ongoing value delivery

Agile Plans

• Agile plans encompass planning at various levels, and frequently
• Agile planning differs from traditional methodologies as more adjustments occur while completing a project
• Changes are frequently accommodated and adjusted as part of the project

Principles of Agile Planning

• Planning occurs at multiple levels
• Customer and team input is valued from the beginning of the project
• Expecting ongoing changes and adjustments and making sure they are implemented in an effective manner
• Plan on the levels

Value-Based Analysis and Decomposition Method

• Business value of deliverables is assessed and prioritized.
• Value decomposition breaks down requirements
• Helps to create a product box

Timeboxing

• Short, fixed-duration periods
• Activities or work is completed within a timeframe.
• Helps to prevent tasks from extending beyond the set period.

Decomposing Requirements

• Breaking down requirements into smaller, manageable units (Epics, Features, Stories, Tasks)
• Each requirement is further broken down into smaller categories that are easy to manage

User Stories

• Capture user requests.
• 1-3 days of work.
• Agreements between customers and development team
• Common structure as: "As a (User Type), I want (or need), so that"

User Story Example

• Scenarios that represent users' needs.

Three C's of Stories

• Card: Physical reminder
• Conversation: Communicate ideas freely
• Confirmation: Confirm understanding

User Stories - INVEST

• Independent: Self-contained stories
• Negotiable: Open to trade-offs.
• Valuable: Relevant to the user and business needs.
• Estimatable: Tasks can be estimated.
• Small: Small and manageable tasks.
• Testable: Can be easily validated

User Story Backlog (Product Backlog)

• Maintaining a ranked list of requirements for prioritization and refining.
• Re-prioritization of tasks can occur.

Relative Sizing and Story Points

• Use relative values instead of absolute estimates for story sizes
• Assign points based on the level of work

Fibonacci Sequence

• Relative measurement for story points

Guidelines for Using Story Points

• Team defines the point values.
• Values should be relative.
• Include complexity, effort, and risk in estimations.

Affinity Estimating and T-Shirt Sizing

• Affinity Estimating: Group story estimates into categories.
• T-Shirt Sizing: Assign story sizes to different t-shirt sizes.

Wideband Delphi

• Anonymously estimates from a panel of experts
• To prevent issues like the bandwagon effect or HIPPO

Planning Poker

• Estimating method that uses cards with Fibonacci numbers to estimate story points
• Fast and collaborative approach

Product Roadmap

• Displays when features will be released and what is included.
• Translates story map into a coherent view.

Types of Iterations

• Iteration 0: Sets the stage for development efforts.
• Development Iteration: Builds the product increment.
• Iteration H: Hardening sprint.

Spikes

• Periods of time dedicated to proof of concept of an architectural component or risk assessment
• Time dedicated and used to assess risk before committing to a design solution

Tracking Team Performance

• Burn Charts: Visualization of completed work over time.
• Velocity Charts: Team’s average performance for estimated work. Shows team performance across iterations

Continuous Improvement

• Constantly improving is a core principle of agile. Use the PDCA cycle for improvements.

PDCA Cycle

• Plan: Define goals
• Do: Execute plan
• Check: Evaluate results
• Act: Adjust plan based on evaluation

Agile Circle

• A cyclical plan that emphasizes learning and improvement

Process Analysis

• Review and diagnose existing processes.
• Tailoring is important for improvement.

Process Tailoring

• Adapting methodology to better fit a project environment.
• Changes are implemented for good reason.
• The process may include a hybrid approach.

Value Stream Map

• Mapping the flow of materials and data needed to complete a product/service process.
• Identify and remove unnecessary waste.
• Map out the workflow more effectively to see where wait times and inefficencies occur.

Retrospectives

• Special meetings to inspect and improve methods and team work.
• Should last no more than 2 hours.
• Opportunities to examine how team work was done in the past and what can be improved in the following efforts.

Retrospectives Stages

• Set stage (introduction)
• Gather data (from team members)
• Generate insights (from the data gathered)
• Decide what to do (actions for change)
• Close the retrospective

1. Set the Stage

• Start the retrospective with short activities.
• Encourage and empower everyone in the team to start talking to encourage participation.

2. Gather Data

• Activities like Timelines, Triple Nickels (team into subgroups).
• Data is used to generate insights later in the process.

3. Generate Insights

• Analyze data gathered in the second stage
• Brainstorming, Five Whys, Fishbone Analysis, Dot voting are some of the activities used at this stage

4. Decide What to Do

• Decide on how to improve following the gained insights
• Create lists for things that should be done, stopped, or adjusted
• SMART goals are used to summarize the project improvement.

5. Close the Retrospective

• Confirmation of the improvements to be done in the next project.

Test your knowledge on Agile methodologies, Continuous Integration, Test-Driven Development (TDD), and Extreme Programming (XP) practices. This quiz covers key concepts and benefits of stakeholder engagement in Agile project management, as well as the principles of Simple Design and the Definition of Done (DoD).