Agile Development and Project Management

What is Agile Development/Project Management?
This Nugget introduces Agile Development, defines what Agile Development is and provides many compelling reasons why Agile Development should be considered by everyone doing IT development in today's demanding business environment 00:35:56

Business-Based Development
This Nugget focuses on the important role of business in a successful Agile project. Continuous involvement of knowledgeable, empowered and respected business representatives is critical to the overall success of an Agile project. 00:31:56

Agile Risk Management
This Nugget explores Risk Management in an Agile project. It explains how to take advantage of Agile project characteristics, such as evolutionary design and ongoing re-planning, to eliminate many risk items early in an Agile project. 00:30:55

What it takes to be an Agile Team Member
Not every IT resource is suited for Agile projects. This Nugget defines the characteristics required to be an Agile team member. Flexibility, highly refined communications skills, well defined technical skills and strong team players are just a few of the Agile skills explored here. 00:30:01

Planning for Agile Development
Planning exists in an Agile project, but not in the traditional sense. Agile planning is often defined as "just-enough" or "just-in-time" planning. This Nugget defines what these terms really mean and defines the planning approaches necessary for successful Agile project delivery. 00:35:43

Agile Design
Design exists in an Agile project, but not conventional design. Conventional design, often labeled "big-up-front design" by Agilists, attempts to design 100% of the system up front. In this Nugget we explore the Agile method of design: limited up front design to set the foundation or design principles and then evolutionary/continuous design throughout the project. 00:23:44

Writing User Stories
User stories are a core principle of Agile development. A business representative writes detailed user stories to define the overall system requirements. Each user story is self-contained and fully descriptive. While this may sound simple, it takes a great deal of skill (and practice) to write a good user story. This Nugget defines what a good user story is and explores some tips and hints for writing good stories. 00:44:12

What is an Iteration
A second core principle of Agile development is Iterations or Iterative Development. Agile projects are delivered through a series of short, one-to-four week iterations. Each iteration develops a specific set of user stories and results in complete production-ready modules. Techniques for defining and managing iterations are explored in this Nugget. 00:38:22

Agile Databases
Databases that are well defined, fully normalized and managed in a database management system are very NON-AGILE, but they're virtually pre-requisite for any business-focused application. This Nugget explores how to adopt non-Agile database characteristics and make them fit into an Agile project. 00:31:46
Planning an Iteration
Each iteration begins with a definitive Iteration Plan that says exactly what functionality (stories) will be developed in that iteration. This definition of an Iteration plan seems non-Agile at first glance, but without an Iteration plan, Agile projects may become disorganized. 00:30:42

Iteration Zero
Many Agile projects begin with Iteration Zero, even though Iteration Zero typically delivers NO business value and includes NO completed user stories. Project teams use Iteration Zero to set up their project’s technical environment. They can also use it when other preparation is needed to finish user stories in the first iteration. 00:25:01

Pair Programming and Other Agile Techniques
This Nugget concerns available Agile project options during delivery. Techniques such as Pair Programming, Refactoring, Participatory Decision Making, Collective Code Ownership, Technology Debt and Test Driven Development are presented for consideration. Each project should determine which Agile techniques work and which are simply not appropriate. 00:36:14

Test Driven Development
Test Driven Development is a key Agile principle. A complete and automated testbed must exist for each Agile project. The existence of this testbed allows the Agile team to tackle any piece of code with confidence. The testbed validates that changes made did not accidentally change any existing functionality. This Nugget explores the principles and defines the environment associated with developing support through Test Driven Development. 00:35:35

The Daily? Build
The Daily Build is a pre-requisite to Test Driven Development. The Daily Build is required to assemble the complete set of program modules that make up the final system and combine to make it an implementable/executable package. This package is then validated through the testing process to ensure that the code meets the business requirements. To support the high productivity requirements of an Agile project, this build must take place at least once a day. This Nugget explores the requirements for a Daily Build and provides some tips and hints on how to achieve this target. 00:26:52

Ongoing Refactoring
Ongoing Refactoring, or constant, incremental improvement of the code base is the foundation of "being Agile." It allows the developer to fix code flaws, shortcomings and inefficiencies as they are discovered. The Agile project builds time into the project to allow for refactoring. This ensures that the code base is improved each time code is checked back into the system. 00:30:36

Developing a Spike or Split
Spikes and Splits allow Agile Projects to develop incrementally with confidence. Spikes let the team explore better methods, identify alternative ways to program and generally experiment to determine the best approach to completing a User Story – thus satisfying a business requirement. A Split allows the team to take a piece of code that is too large, too complex or that supports multiple delivery approaches and split it into two or more simpler modules. 00:25:00

Tracking and Velocity
Agile development is very managed, but managed in an Agile way. Tracking and Velocity are key Agile management techniques. Tracking allows for the identification of work completed per iteration and focuses on completing each iteration on time. Velocity consists of identifying how much time was spent on each user story, which stories were developed in a given iteration and determining, with confidence, how much development time is available for story completion in the next iteration. 00:37:18

Daily Status Meetings
Daily, standup status meetings are a key component of Agile development. Short, 10-minute-or-less, daily status meetings keep the team focused on its identified stories and ensures that work is progressing toward completing the iteration on-time. Due to the limited time frame of each iteration, two weeks for example, these daily status meetings are critical to keeping everyone focused and on track. 00:27:43

Release Management
Each iteration only develops a small amount of incremental code, due to the short duration of each iteration. An Agile project typically does not fully implement "production code" at the end of each iteration. Instead, the completed code from several successive iterations is accumulated until the business sees sufficient incremental value to justify a release/implementation. The determination of how many iterations are accumulated into a release is determined solely by the business. 00:28:26

Implementation
Implementation of a Release, which is the accumulated result of several iterations, happens when an Agile project becomes "non-Agile." Unlike the development and management activities leading up to Implementation, an Agile project team typically implements, converts, trains and moves developed code into production using traditional methods and procedures. This Nugget examines what Implementation means and explores several considerations for being Agile, while still supporting traditional implementation procedures. 00:30:27

Scrum
This Nugget reviews the specific principles and processes for Agile development defined by the SCRUM approach as documented by Ken Schwaber and Jess Sutherland. 00:32:18

eXtreme Programming
This Nugget reviews the specific principles and processes for Agile development defined by the eXtreme Programming approach documented by Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham and Ron Jefferies. 00:29:03

RUP
This Nugget reviews the specific principles and processes for Agile development defined by the RUP approach documented by Rational Software (now IBM). 00:27:00

Crystal
This Nugget reviews the specific principles and processes for Agile development defined by the Crystal approaches documented by Alistair Cockburn. 00:27:13

Other Agile Methods (FDD, ASD, DSDM)
This Nugget reviews the high level principles and processes of other documented Agile development processes, specifically Feature Driven Development (Peter Coad), Adaptive Software Development (Jim Highsmith) and Dynamic Software Development Method (Jennifer Stapleton). 00:33:59

Agile Documentation
Agile projects produce documentation. However, Agile project teams ask critical questions before producing documentation: Is documentation really needed?; Who uses it?; Is there a better, more Agile way?; Agile documentation methods explored in this Nugget include Wikis (and related systems), business driven documentation and self-maintaining documentation. 00:34:34

Agile Life Cycle
To ensure that an Agile project achieves its identified business objectives, the project must follow an Agile Life Cycle. Vision defines the overall direction for the project, while many iterations of Iteration Planning and Agile Development successively develop the final system. A larger repeating cycle, including Implementation, moves developed code into production based on defined business benefits. And finally, Close ensures that lessons learned, reusable materials and overall organizational process improvements are harvested from each Agile project. 00:28:05

Distributed Agile Development
Agile projects – which consist of small, co-located teams with continuous business involvement – are non-distributed. But with a little hard work, a little imagination and a generous application of advanced technology tools, distributed projects can be successfully completed (or even internationally distributed to the other side of the world) in an Agile or near-Agile manner. 00:31:22

Large Scale Agile Development
While some Agile Development methods are very specifically defined for small projects, many approaches exist to scale Agile development approaches to teams of hundreds and even thousands. This Nugget explores several methods for scaling your Agile projects to the size required. 00:24:28

Agile Development Summary
This Nugget wraps up the Agile Development series with a detailed look at the Agile Manifesto and the thirteen Agile Principles. 00:29:45