Speculating: Guiding the Agile Project

Collecting requirements

Agile projects expect and are designed to accommodate change being able to identify and document requirements throughout an agile project based on current business need is a ingredient to many agile project during the speculate phase we discussed the use of index cards to document features now will discuss approaches and techniques to document the features and requirements of the technique is to have a business analyst work ahead of the agile development team by one or two spreads as a sprinter is being worked by the court team the business and was should be looking ahead to ensure the set of features for the next spring have been clearly defined with the business in addition if business needs have changed the business sales can work to define new features the desire or identify existing features in the background there are no longer necessary there are several techniques to identify requirements: technique is to utilise use cases use cases capture a diagram or fixture show the relationship between an actor in the system other process to achieve a specific goal and actor might be a person accompany your organisation and apartment a computer program or computer system and entity that can make a decision use cases can be used to document requirements for IT ANR on IT projects here is an example of a high-level use case the key components of a use case are the actor performing the event such as you going to an ATM the system or process which the actor interacts with likely ATM the overall marks which represents the boundaries further requirement anything outside the box is out of scope the inside the box indicates the types of things the actor can do with the system such as making a deposit purchasing steps checking abounds and withdrawing money the outside the box shows the various actors they can interact with the system such as and 80 maintenance person management who receive reporting information even a thief use case text can also be used to describe the scenario in detail the use case process help stakeholders imagine all the ways in which requirement will address the business needs via features another requirements Jerome is the performance requirement core these are similar to a feature car with a describe requirement that is applicable to multiple features for example your accounting department may have performance requirement for the amount of time allowed to process incoming imports for a help desk the requirement could be each call will be injured within X-Men shown here is a simple performance car each requirement will need to have a unique identification name or title along with a short description the difficulty factor assist the business in prioritising the requirement compared to other requirements and features and lastly the acceptance tests section of performance car describes how to verify the requirement has been achieved once the product is developed documenting requirements as a central for any project with your agile Project requirements will continually evolve having a business analyst work ahead of the court team will help you be ready for each sprint with just-in-time relevant features in requirement information

Designing and running your stand-up meetings

The daily stand-up meanings are the heartbeat of an agile project this meaning is crucial to the success of the project is critical information should be sure to enable roadblocks to be removed still the meaning should be about 15 minutes long sharp and to the point having the attendees remained staining helps keep the meaning short of be an active all business and technical specialist team members should attend all the project manager sometimes called a scrum Master ideally the project manager does not lead the meeting instead team members will it provide the update have your team presenters that is in a different sequence each day having a rotating goes first and energy to your meanings assigned someone on the team to be timekeeper keep the group focused that may all be necessary until the group's condition to the daily meaning format 30 to 60 seconds per person should be sufficient the timekeeper should be rotated fridge spoil probably the hardest habit to break is not to resolve issues during the meaning handle issues after the meaning ensuring only the necessary team members are part of the discussion hold the meaning at the same time each day consistency is very important here are some things you to observe during the daily meanings is the team collaborating with the attention in the year risks surfacing that could impact future sprints is the common issue or problem that you can help resolve after the meaning of course is the list of issues growing if agile is a new concept to the team are some team members struggling with the agile process as you can see the valuable information you can obtain from you stand-up meanings if you're paying attention be alert and take action is needed I suggest you always in the meaning a positive note has a team surely win same experiences the less meaning for instance the business really like what they saw during the prior review the technical team member Walter a challenging problem the really proud of having team members sure wins shows the team and progress is being made in keep positive momentum going if you have a small call located team and collaborating extensively throughout each day you may find the daily meanings less viable is everyone already aware of what's been sure in this situation you have the meaning was often maybe two or three times a week to ensure progress is being made and to check upholster the team on a weekly basis you may want to avoid additional project stakeholders to the meaning for instance business managers technology managers and users of the product that are not for the court team could benefit from hearing how the project is going and what people working on the more engaged people are the better I suggest you will are five minutes question time at the end of the meaningfully additional attendees it's amazing how important and valuable a 15 minute meaning can be concentrated on making your standard meaning focused and valuable

Controlling and adjusting the plan

Many people who don't understand agile leave agile projects do not have control mechanisms that is actually far from the truth there are agile specific techniques that help you manage and monitor your agile projects scope was managed by the backlog list scope was controlled by completing features to reduce the backlog list and adding new features is the identified the business in conjunction with the technical team consistently reprioritise is to determine which features will be implemented during the next when these changes to the backlog Mr Carman however you should remember the scope of the current to spread should always be locked down once the list of features has been agreed for that spring it should not change the larceny is the term used to describe how many functions the team's completing in the average spread this can be calculated by examining previous spreads assuming the team resources and speculation The same by understanding your normal velocity you can determine if your current sprinter striking to the larceny rate if you're not tracking is expected you need to start dealing to determine why the larceny raiders decreasing if the larceny rate needs to be adjusted downwards the future spreads you'll need a replay and and reduce the number of features to be completed in a given spread the benefit of velocity is very provides controls that allow you to understand Roger production raiders and you can adjust your release plan or team resources accordingly of the downtrodden is a communication tool used to show the work left to complete an agile project the backlog truck computer features any expected time to complete the x-axis represents the project timeline the y-axis is the work that needs to be completed for the project spread the time estimates for the worker meaning will be represented by the sexes the project start date is the furthest point to the left of the chart the project and is appointed as furthest to the wider the chart and occurs on the predicted less day of the project oral aspirin at the start point the actual worker meaning is the total amount of work remaining as time progresses the actual work completed line here and read can be trapped against the overall split plan hearing gold so you can see if you're ahead or behind schedule you can then adjust the features to complete its Brent extended time and cost a replay in the features you going to produced will line the plane to your ability to produce features the burned-out shark clearly demonstrate of the project features are being completed ahead or behind schedule and will features will be completed the key is using this information to continually monitor progress you can make adjustments if required to maximise team productivity if you use these simple control techniques you'll have a very good handle on your agile project progress

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