Agile requirements

[Theme]

Hello everybody :)
I was thinking about minimal requirements for team to succeed in agile
development. And come up with following:

1. Constructive environment - critics will not be applied to person
but to it's job, and people won't afraid to report failures to the
team.
2. Attitude to learning - team members want to gain new knowledge and
apply it on practice (and they are able to do it :) )

I didn't mention formal practices because they depend on process in
project.
I am interested in hearing your opinions and cases from real life.
Have you ever seen project that fit that requirements? Was it
successful?

[sun]

1. responsibility (вменяемость)
2. cross-competence (взаимозаменяемость, кросскомпетентность)
4. member of agile team is teamworker (NOT lonely worker or juggler
(people who is trying to do everything in the same time))
3. each person should understand that a command is responsible for a
result, not PM or some separete person.

--
sun

[Sergiy Movchan]

as for my experience there are only 2 requirements that should be met
in order to succeed in agile - one internal and one external:
1. internal - commitment (this also applies to other methodologies,
not just agile).
2. external - the team should be allowed to use agile. or better to
say organization should not only formally allow agile but also
actively assist in this.

that's all.

--
...dali bude...

[Serhiy Yevtushenko]

I would add third condition:

 

Autonomy - team has all required resources and environments for the development in their control. Absense of technical environment and its control will kill team very quickly in Agile.

 

2007/12/21, Sergiy Movchan <sergiy....@gmail.com>:

[Sergiy Movchan]

On Dec 21, 2007 10:57 AM, Serhiy Yevtushenko <syevtu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would add third condition:
>
> Autonomy - team has all required resources and environments for the
> development in their control. Absense of technical environment and its
> control will kill team very quickly in Agile.

this is what i mean by "assisting" :) i don't think an organization
seriously expect a product from a team that lacks technical
environment, but this is a tricky one. organization should and can
provide only resources. the team should build environment off
resources itself.

--
...dali bude...

[Serhiy Yevtushenko]

Take into account outsourcing.

In this case you have two organizations - customer and software development organization, and very often environment control lays mainly on customer side. So, in this case team will need active assistance from customer, and at least non-interfering from the software development.

 

2007/12/21, Sergiy Movchan <sergiy....@gmail.com>:

[Sergiy Movchan]

> So, in this case team will need active assistance from customer, and
> at least non-interfering from the software development.

:) and what did i say? "organization should allow (or better assist)
the team to be agile"

--
...dali bude...

[Alexey]

Hi guys!

I agree with each statement said below. But I'd like to add that from my
point of view one of the main requirements for the project to succeed in
adopting Agile is support from the business side (the project sponsors) who
should understand the Agile principles and values and are OK trying it in
order to improve the business situation.

Otherwise, if the biz people are out of the Agile adoption game, the Agile
principles cannot be fully implemented and might look meaningless from the
financial point of view.

Let's analyze this step by step:
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
If the clients are bound to the tools and "don't have the time" and good
will to invest in improving interaction - this principles will hardly be met
solely by the team. Though, the team can pay more attention at interactions
between themselves, which for sure will be a positive thing.

> Working software over comprehensive documentation
If the clients "don't have the time" to review the increments at regular
basis, if they don't provide timely feedback, the team will suffer from lack
of information and will have to make a lot of blind guests, which affect the
results in negative way. Though, the team still can try delivering the
working results and improve the technical aspects of the process.

> Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
As I see, this point is 100% relying on the clients to commit to the Agile
principles and values.

> Responding to change over following a plan
This one probably can be achieved by the team by meeting changing
requirements in a friendly-way. But planning (not plans) is a mandatory part
of Agile business strategy and if the clients don't know how to do that,
trying to adopt Agile will bring no business affect. Hence, it will be
meaningless for the financial point of view (in business everything ends
with money).

[Alexander Rivkind]

I would mention:
1. Good level of expertise, enough to solve faced problem
2. Willing to share knowledge
3. Willing to take responsibility
4. Business needs understanding - on each level make a decision
optimal from all perspective (time, resources, robustness,
flexibility, etc.)

[Alexey Krivitsky]

Hi all,

Merry Orthodox Christmas :)

Thanks for starting and developing this thread. I think it is very useful .
I made the summary of the requirements to agile teams.

In order to be able to adopt Agile the team should have/be:
- Constructive environment
- Attitude to learning
- A will to take responsibility and give commitments
- Be team-working and cross-competence
- Autonomous in decision making
- Good level of expertise
- A will to share knowledge
- A will to understand the business needs

Nice!

Interesting is that the list is quite similar to the the attributes of high-performing teams that we generated on the Certified ScrumMaster class with Mike Vizdos in June 2007, see attached.

Skype: alexeykrv