Agile the Squads Way

18
Agile Development the Squads Way 10 agile principles we apply to deliver maximum customer value every weekly sprint @squadshq | www.squads.com

Transcript of Agile the Squads Way

Page 1: Agile the Squads Way

Agile Development the Squads Way 10 agile principles we apply to deliver maximum customer value every weekly sprint

@squadshq | www.squads.com

Page 2: Agile the Squads Way

Content

Investment Proposal

•  Challenges in Software Development 3

•  Agile Development 4

•  Agile Manifesto 5

•  Benefits of Agile 6

•  Agile at Squads 7

1 Stable Teams 8

2 KanBan Boards 9

3 Pair Programming 10

4 Weekly Sprints 11

5 Remote Work 12

6 Real-time Communication 13

7 Retrospectives 14

8 Performance Ratings 15

9 Guns, Guardians & Guilds 16

10 Lean Startup 17

2

Page 3: Agile the Squads Way

Challenges in Software Development

Investment Proposal

Designing and developing new software products is

challenging. The business context is extremely

dynamic, making it hard to plan ahead.

New products need to be adaptable and nimble.

This renders the traditional waterfall model for product

development practically obsolete. Approaches like

agile development, extreme programming and lean

startup help innovators remain flexible and customer-

focused. At Squads we specialize in designing and

developing innovative digital products.

To do this successfully, we rely on a mix of approaches

which we’ll discuss in this short guide.

3

http://bbc.in/29ogv3D

Page 4: Agile the Squads Way

Agile Development

Investment Proposal

Agile refers to a flexible approach to developing

new products & services in a highly uncertain

context. It’s all about quickly building a basic

version of the product and then improving it in

multiple iterations. The product is refined based

on user feedback. The work is broken down into

‘sprints’ (1 to 4 weeks). A new version of the

product is delivered at the end of every sprint.

There is a wide range of approaches available

that vary strongly in how strict and

comprehensive they are. The guiding principles

for all of these approaches are written down in

the Agile Manifesto, which was written by a

group of software developers back in 2001.

4

Page 5: Agile the Squads Way

The Agile Manifesto consists of four core values and twelve principles. These principles have proven

very useful for software development:

1.  Satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

2.  Welcome changing requirements, even in late development

3.  Deliver working software frequently

4.  Business people and developers work together daily

5.  Build projects around motivated individuals

6.  Convey information via face-to-face conversation

7.  Working software is the primary measure of progress

8.  Maintain a constant pace indefinitely

9.  Give continuous attention to technical excellence

10.  Simplify: maximizing the amount of work not done

11.  Teams self-organize

12.  Teams retrospect and tune behavior

Agile Manifesto

5

http://www.agilemanifesto.org

Page 6: Agile the Squads Way

Benefits of Agile

Investment Proposal

A good amount of research has been done into the benefits of Agile over traditional product development methods. Most research concludes that there are four core benefits of the Agile approach:

PRODUCTIVITY Agile projects see a 20-50% increase in productivity. More projects are delivered on time and within budget. This results in a huge cost reduction overall. ENGAGEMENT Project teams and initiative owners are happier with the project. They report better collaboration and communication. Project visibility & transparency improve as well. QUALITY The software produced is better. 30-50% less product defects are reported and products are easier to maintain. This leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and significant risk reduction. TIME-TO-MARKET Product delivery cycles are reduced and delivery frequency increased by 20-50%. Projects are more responsive to changes in market and customer demands.

6

Page 7: Agile the Squads Way

Agile at Squads

At Squads, we embraced Agile in everything

we do. Our platform and community of 45+

development teams is built on Agile

principles. We had a good look at Spotify

and how they scaled Agile with their tribes of

multiple Squads. But we have given it a slight

twist for it to work in our context and for our

clients. This results in a unique development

approach for digital products.

Check it out on Squads.com

Read on to find out more about our way of

working.

7

Page 8: Agile the Squads Way

Building a high-performance team is a challenge. It costs 4-6 months to get

a team through the stages forming-

norming-storming to performing. Most organizations create a team for each

project. At Squads, we like to work with

stable, high-performance teams and feed

them projects. They can run 2-3 in parallel and remain hyper-productive. Research

has shown that working with stable teams

increases productivity and customer satisfaction by 60%.

The approach has worked for us and we

hear the same from our customers.

8

Stable Teams 1

Page 9: Agile the Squads Way

Investment Proposal

Work planning and management

needs to be simple, yet clear. KanBan

boards are great for this purpose and a

crucial part of our agile toolset. We love

them at Squads, especially when they

are available online. We like to work

with tools like Trello to keep things

going. These tools foster (remote)

cooperation between our teams and

the product owner on the client side.

All team members can pick-up and

track their tasks online. Everyone can

monitor progress.

It’s a great way to build things together!

9

KanBan boards 2

Page 10: Agile the Squads Way

Pair Programming

Investment Proposal

At Squads, we embrace pair programming. This is

an agile software development technique where

two developers collaborate on one screen.

In traditional cases they sit behind one physical

screen. At Squads, we do pair programming

online. We use video chat & screen sharing.

One developer, aka the driver, shares the screen

whilst writing code and ‘working out loud’ -

which basically means he’s explaining his/her

thinking. The other, the observer, reviews the

code as it is typed and gives feedback. These roles

switch during the process. We strongly believe in

the power of pairing. Not only for writing better

code, but also to stimulate critical reasoning and

learning in teams.

10

3

Page 11: Agile the Squads Way

Weekly Sprints

Investment Proposal

Agile is all about developing in sprints.

At Squads, we typically do weekly sprints.

We cut out most of the overhead to make

this possible. Of course we do a call for sprint

planning, but we don’t do the daily scrum.

Team members can continuously

communicate through our online channels.

Work completed and pending tasks can be

tracked on Trello and via our Slack rooms,

which we keep per project. We present the

results to the customer in a weekly demo

(sprint review) and we host retrospectives as

a team to evaluate the way we work in general

and in specific projects.

11

4

Page 12: Agile the Squads Way

Remote Work

Investment Proposal

Squads teams work remotely 95% of the

time. We hate losing time commuting and

are not convinced that offices and meetings

work well for software development.

Yet, one agile principle is: convey information

via face-to-face conversation. We do so, but in

an online setting. We use video conferencing

tools like Skype, Hangouts and Zoom.

With good equipment this works really well.

It’s still great to meet in person every now

and then. That’s why we have a bi-yearly

get-together. The digital nomads in our

community meet in person as they travel

around the world too.

12

5

Page 13: Agile the Squads Way

Real-time Communication

Investment Proposal

When working remotely, communication

tools are critical. Our Slack platform is

At the heart of everything we do.

It’s where we have our project rooms, team

rooms, guild rooms and private chats.

The heartbeat of the Squads community

is visible and transparent for everyone.

We have connections to Squads.com here

and project owners can check all the

Github software commits. Besides a-

synchronous communication, we have

synchronous communication via tools like

Skype and Hangouts. We are in sync 24*7

with the community of team members,

customers and even company fans.

13

6

Page 14: Agile the Squads Way

Retrospectives

Investment Proposal

Retrospectives are done at team level.

So not per project, just per team.

Members get together to evaluate their

performance across projects. The

retrospectives are normally a group video

call with a shared notepad. One person is

facilitating the meeting. These meetings

are always structured around three

questions: what went well? What can be

improved? What actions should we take?

Every improvement task gets an owner

responsible for picking it up. This way,

teams reflect on and tune their behavior.

14

Swarm IT team retrospective with team members from 5 different countries working together on client projects via Squads.com

7

Page 15: Agile the Squads Way

Performance Ratings

Investment Proposal

At Squads, every team is rated by clients based

on their deliveries each sprint. Performance is

rated according to the following criteria:

predictability, transparency and sprint results.

Performance ratings are visible for all clients on

the platform. This puts the pressure on teams

to deliver value in every sprint. It also ensures

that teams are actively managing team health.

Non-performing members are a threat to

the overall rating. That is why teams are invite-

only. It’s great that one of the agile principles:

‘teams self-organize’ really works well within

Squads.

15

8

Page 16: Agile the Squads Way

Guns, Guardians & Guilds

Investment Proposal

The model of squads and tribes works really well

even at scale. Spotify is probably the most well

known case to prove this. But at Squads, teams

don’t work on a single Project. They work for multiple

clients. So we introduced some add-ons:

•  Hired Guns: are people with a specific

skill not represented in a team. Teams can

decide to pull in a hired gun for projects.

We have hired guns for design, testing and

continuous deployment.

•  Guardians: our customers want to have one point

of contact in teams. That’s why we work with guardians - a team member that is responsible for

client communication.

•  Guilds: we took the guild idea from Spotify and built it into our community. Everyone can join

guilds to share knowledge about front-end, UX/UI and growth hacking for instance.

16

9

Page 17: Agile the Squads Way

Besides agile, we love lean startup.

We think it’s a great fit for the work we

do. Together with clients, we aim to

go through build, measure, and learn

loops as fast and intensively as possible.

By delivering working software in weekly

sprints, we can learn quickly.

This prevents customers from building

stuff that doesn’t work. It helps them

get to a minimum viable product (MVP)

as soon as possible. And it reduces the

amount time spent on features that are

not valued by users. All of our teams are fluent in Lean Startup and what this means for software

development. That’s how we deliver the best value for money.

Lean Startup

Investment Proposal

17

10

Page 18: Agile the Squads Way

Iwein Fuld

[email protected]

+31624731477

Get in touch!

B E R L I N – L O N D O N - N E W Y O R K - S A N F R A N C I S C O

Amsterdam (HQ)

Weteringschans 165