Agile Delivery Quotes

What you're really seeing is Agile for delivery, but the rest of the organization and context is anything but Agile.

The feature delivery approach helps define a workable interface between customers and product developers.

When project leaders focus on delivery, they add value to projects. When they focus on planning and control, they tend to add overhead.

The client gets to see the next iteration of the system every three weeks, instead of waiting five years for one “big bang” delivery.

agile development reflects a product lifecycle approach (continuous delivery of value), rather than a project approach (begin-end). While an individual release of a product can be managed as a project, an agile approach views a release as a single stage in a product’s ongoing evolution.

Traditional waterfall methods deliver value at the end of the project, often months or years after the project begins. Agile projects can deliver value quickly and incrementally during the life of the project. Capturing value early and often can significantly improve a project's return on investment, and utilizing iterative, feature-based delivery is the cornerstone practice in making that happen.

Driving exploration is critical, but knowing when to stop is also. Product development is exploring with a purpose, delivering value within a set of constraints. Frequent, timeboxed iterations compel the development and product teams and executives to make difficult tradeoff decisions early and often during the project. Feature delivery contributes to realistic evaluations because product managers can look at tangible, verifiable results.

We’ve lost our way” is how another manifesto author, Andrew Hunt, put it in a 2015 essay titled “The Failure of Agile.” Hunt tells me the word agile has become “meaningless at best,” having been hijacked by “scads of vocal agile zealots” who had no idea what they were talking about. Agile has split into various camps and methodologies, with names like Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). The worst flavor, Hunt tells me, is Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe, which he and some other original manifesto authors jokingly call Shitty Agile for Enterprise. “It’s a disaster,” Hunt tells me. “I have a few consultant friends who are making big bucks cleaning up failed SAFe implementations.” SAFe is the hellspawn brainchild of a company called Scaled Agile Inc., a bunch of mad scientists whose approach consists of a nightmare world of rules and charts and configurations. SAFe itself comes in multiple configurations, which you can find on the Scaled Agile website. Each one is an abomination of corporate complexity and Rube Goldberg-esque interdependencies.

Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive. Traditional development and delivery frameworks such as waterfall are often ineffective. In contrast, Scrum is a value-driven agile approach which incorporates adjustments based on regular and repeated customer and stakeholder feedback. And Scrum’s built-in rapid response to change leads to substantial benefits such as fast time-to-market, higher satisfaction, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage.

It seems to me that Scrum and other agile techniques are being used as substitutes for careful modeling, where a product backlog is thrust at developers as if it serves as a set of designs. Most agile practitioners will leave their daily stand-up without giving a second thought to how their backlog tasks will affect the underlying model of the business. Although I assume this is needless to say, I must assert that Scrum, for example, was never meant to stand in place of design. No matter how many project and product managers would like to keep you marching on a relentless path of continuous delivery, Scrum was not meant only as a means to keep Gantt chart enthusiasts happy. Yet, it has become that in so many cases.

It seems to me that Scrum and other agile techniques are being used as substitutes for careful modeling, where a product backlog is thrust at developers as if it serves as a set of designs. Most agile practitioners will leave their daily stand-up without giving a second thought to how their backlog tasks will affect the underlying model of the business. Although I assume this is needless to say, I must assert that Scrum, for example, was never meant to stand in place of design. No matter how many project and product managers would like to keep you marching on a relentless path of continuous delivery, Scrum was not meant only as a means to keep Gantt chart enthusiasts happy. Yet, it has become that in so many cases.

aim is to make the delivery of software from the hands of developers into production a reliable, predictable, visible, and largely automated process with well-understood, quantifiable risks. Using the approach that we describe in this book, it is possible to go from having an idea to delivering working code that implements it into production in a matter of minutes or hours, while at the same time improving the quality of the software thus delivered. The vast majority of the cost associated with delivering successful software is incurred after the first release. This is the cost of support, maintenance, adding new features, and fixing defects. This is especially true of software delivered via iterative processes, where the first release contains the minimum amount of functionality providing value to the customer. Hence the title of this book, Continuous Delivery, which is taken from the first principle of the Agile Manifesto: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

Instead of having a lengthy integration and qualification cycle, an agile process makes it part of the ongoing development process. This shift is accomplished through approaches like continuous integration/delivery, sprints with complete requirements, test-driven design, and automated testing. All this is put in place so that when customers think they have enough of the capabilities ready, the code is close to being ready to deploy.

countries allow organizations to claim some aspects of software development as R&D and thereby receive tax benefits for doing so.

Agile project management is a style of project management that focuses on early delivery of business value, continuous improvement of the project’s product and processes, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering well-tested products that reflect customer needs.

Handoffs are mostly a result of specialization. Organization design cannot reduce these handoffs, but it can make them faster and cheaper by making them occur inside a single team.

Designing for second-order success from the beginning runs the risk of compromising first-order success.

tools that blur boundaries between specialists are better than those that reinforce them.

Good business outcomes are testable, valuable, independently achievable, and negotiable (TVIN). As

This book lays a lot of emphasis on having teams responsible for business outcomes (outcome-oriented teams) as opposed to being responsible for activities (activity-oriented teams). To

An organizational norm that says, “We value practice over theory but we value theory-informed practice over ad-hoc practice” helps to restore some respect for theory. We

Collaboration across teams tends to be discontinuous and discrete (e.g., via meetings).

Instead of a central finance function tracking if funds are utilized as per plan, we have outcome owners accountable for realizing value out of pre-approved funds tied to outcomes rather than plans.

By adding the expertise of QA, IT Operations, and Infosec into delivery teams and automated self-service tools and platforms, teams are able to use that expertise in their daily work without being dependent on other teams.

Agile thinking simply says that we should empower small teams to inspect and adapt rather than stick to a plan. Lean thinking gives that small team ways to speed up its inspecting and adapting process to maximize its impact. Continuous Delivery and DevOps place the entire value stream in the hands of that small team so that it can “optimize the whole” (a term of art in Lean thinking) and be empowered as a team to own the entire value delivery process.

Software architecture plays a pivotal role in the delivery of successful software yet it’s frustratingly neglected by many teams.

Agile DevOps Cloud computing Design thinking These practices all share a cybernetic model of control. This

Agile is a response to the need for more continuous software repair. Its central strategy is to reduce the size and increase the frequency of the design-develop-test lifecycle. Over time, Agile has discovered and incorporated several powerful techniques to remove noise from the iterative lifecycle. These

DevOps simply adds the idea that small, cross-functional teams should own the entire delivery process from concept through user feedback and production monitoring.

Archetype Other descriptions Achievement Performance, accountability, focus, speed, delivery, meritocracy, discipline, transparency, rigour Customer-Centric External focus, service, responsiveness, reliability, listening One-Team Collaboration, globalisation, internal customer, teamwork, without boundaries Innovative Learning, entrepreneurial, agility, creativity, challenging status quo, continuous improvement, pursuit of excellence People-First Empowerment, delegation, development, safety, care, respect, balance, diversity, relationships, fun Greater-Good Social responsibility, environment, citizenship, meaning, community, making a difference, sustainability

What I envision is an architecture that brings all the data management areas much closer together by providing a consistent view of how to uniformly apply security, governance, master data management, metadata, and data modeling, an architecture that can work using a combination of multiple cloud providers and on-premises platforms but still gives you the control and agility you need. It abstracts complexity for teams by providing domain-agnostic and reusable building blocks but still provides flexibility by providing a combination of different data delivery styles using a mix of technologies.

here are some steps to identify and track code that should be reviewed carefully: Tagging user stories for security features or business workflows which handle money or sensitive data. Grepping source code for calls to dangerous function calls like crypto functions. Scanning code review comments (if you are using a collaborative code review tool like Gerrit). Tracking code check-in to identify code that is changed often: code with a high rate of churn tends to have more defects. Reviewing bug reports and static analysis to identify problem areas in code: code with a history of bugs, or code that has high complexity and low automated test coverage. Looking out for code that has recently undergone large-scale “root canal” refactoring. While day-to-day, in-phase refactoring can do a lot to simplify code and make it easier to understand and safer to change, major refactoring or redesign work can accidentally change the trust model of an application and introduce regressions.

Agile teams rely on automation heavily in order to get the speed, repeatability, and consistency that they need to keep moving forward. However automation itself comes with its own risks. The tools themselves can be the target of attack and an attack vector in themselves,

Automated systems can allow mistakes, errors, and attacks to be propagated and multiplied in far more damaging ways than manual systems. As the DevOps comedy account @DevOpsBorat says, “To make error is human. To propagate error to all server in automatic way is #devops.” 2 Furthermore, automated tooling is fallible; and as we know so well in the security world, it can be easy for humans to begin to trust in the computer and stop applying sense or judgment to the results. This can lead to teams trusting that if the tests pass, the system is working as expected, even if other evidence might indicate otherwise.

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

The first Agile principle is that our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. This provides the grounding teams need as they pursue the Agile path.

Thus, a mindset of responsiveness considers time efficiency from the customer’s or requestor’s point of view rather than cost-efficiency from the service provider’s point of view.

Responsibility and accountability create self-organizing teams that work. The Declaration of Interdependence contains the principle, "We boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness." When an individual commits to delivering a particular feature during an iteration he accepts accountability for that delivery. When the team commits to a set of features by the end of the milestone, all members of the team accept that accountability. The product manager agrees to be accountable for providing requirements information to the team. The project leader agrees to be accountable for resolving impediments to team progress. When a team member commits to provide some information to another the next day, he has agreed to be accountable for that action. When team members commit to each other, when the team commits to the customer, when the project leader commits to provide the team with a particular resource, they are all agreeing to be held accountable.

heard things like “DevOps is the new Agile,” “Lean doesn’t apply to software delivery,” “Of course this worked for the mobile app team. They are a unicorn.

The Agile project manager plays a crucial role in ensuring the successful delivery of projects using Agile methodologies. They act as facilitators, coaches, and leaders, guiding the team through the iterative development process. Here are some key responsibilities of an Agile project manager: Orchestrating the project's lifecycle: This involves planning and breakdown of work into sprints, facilitating ceremonies like daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives, and ensuring the project progresses smoothly towards its goals. Promoting collaboration and communication: Agile thrives on open communication and collaboration. The project manager fosters an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas, concerns, and updates. They actively remove roadblocks and ensure everyone is aligned with the project vision and goals. Empowering the team: Agile teams are self-organizing and empowered to make decisions. The project manager provides guidance and support but avoids micromanaging. They trust the team's expertise and encourage them to take ownership of their work. Stakeholder management: The project manager acts as a bridge between the development team and stakeholders, including clients, sponsors, and other interested parties. They keep stakeholders informed of project progress, manage expectations, and address their concerns. Continuous improvement: Agile is an iterative process that emphasizes continuous improvement. The project manager actively seeks feedback from team members and stakeholders, analyzes project data, and identifies areas for improvement. They implement changes to the process and tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Overall, the Agile project manager plays a vital role in driving successful project delivery through Agile methodologies. They wear multiple hats, acting as facilitators, coaches, leaders, and problem-solvers, ensuring the team has the resources, support, and environment they need to thrive.