Effective Practices for Applying Agile: Key points

Almost two months ago (July 2012), the GAO published a report called: "Effective Practices and Federal Challenges in Applying Agile Methods". Where they list 32 Agile Adoption best practices identified by evaluating the agile implementation on several organizations. In this post I want to highlight several Key-Points found within the report. 

Motivation

Why GAO Did This Study

Federal agencies depend on IT to support their missions and spent at least $76 billion on IT in fiscal year 2011. However, long-standing congressional interest has contributed to the identification of numerous examples of lengthy IT projects that incurred cost overruns and schedule delays while contributing little to mission-related outcomes. To reduce the risk of such problems, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommends modular software delivery consistent with an approach known as Agile, which calls for producing software in small, short increments. Recently, several agencies have applied Agile practices to their software projects.  

Recommendations

Because your time is valuable, here you have the GAO's recommendations, after that I'll talk about some key points to be noticed on this report.

What GAO Recommends

GAO is recommending that the Federal CIO Council, working with its chair, OMB’s Deputy Director for Management, include practices such as those discussed in this report in the Council’s ongoing effort to promote modular development.

Modular [Software] Development equals Agile Software Development within this context.

10 key practices, found in all (5) federal agencies evaluated

1. Start with Agile guidance and an Agile adoption strategy.
2. Enhance migration to Agile concepts using Agile terms, such as user stories (used to convey requirements), and Agile examples, such as demonstrating how to write a user story.
3. Continuously improve Agile adoption at both the project level and organization level.
4. Seek to identify and address impediments at the organization and project levels.
5. Obtain stakeholder/customer feedback frequently.
6. Empower small, cross-functional teams.
7. Include requirements related to security and progress monitoring in your queue of unfinished work (the backlog).
8. Gain trust by demonstrating value at the end of each iteration.
9. Track progress using tools and metrics.
10. Track progress daily and visibly.

Sprint (Iterations) expectations: 90 to 120 days

A common release cycle, for Agile projects, is a Quarterly one (every 4 month). The OMB's expectations are between 90 (approx. 3 months) to  120 days (approx. 4 months). The actual Agile practices can fit this recommendations without much effort.

For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently issued guidance that advocates the use of shorter delivery time frames, an approach consistent with Agile. ... Specifically, OMB’s June 2010 memo on IT financial system reforms and the December 2010 IT management reform plan 5 encourage modular development with usable functionality delivered in 90 to 120 days.

Agile approaches used (see Appendix IV: Federal Project Profiles)

• 4 of 5: Scrum
• 1 of 5: Iterative with some Agile practices

Costs (see Appendix IV: Federal Project Profiles)

This cost profile is based on the 5 projects evaluated by GAO, values are expressed in millions of US dollars (USD$)

• Minimum:      6.60
• Average:      82.18
• Maximum: 192.30

So, next time someone asks Can Agile be used on large projects?, you can say with no doubt Yes!

Not an easy road (see Federal Challenges in Applying Agile)...

14 challenges were identified while performing this report, below is the complete list organized in four topics: Organizational Commitment and Collaboration, Preparation, Execution, and Evaluation. To expand each topic please refer to the GAO's report.

Organizational Commitment and Collaboration 

1. Teams had difficulty collaborating closely
2. Teams had difficulty transitioning to self-directed work
3. Staff had difficulty committing to more timely and frequent input
4. Agencies had trouble committing staff  

Preparation

1. Timely adoption of new tools was difficult
2. Technical environments were difficult to establish and maintain
3. Agile guidance was not clear
4. Procurement practices may not support Agile projects  

Execution

1. Customers did not trust iterative solutions
2. Teams had difficulty managing iterative requirements
3. Compliance reviews were difficult to execute within an iteration time frame 

Evaluation

1. Federal reporting practices do not align with Agile
2. Traditional artifact reviews do not align with Agile
3. Traditional status tracking does not align with Agile 

The full 32 practices list

Please find the full list in the first entry of this series: