What tools do you use

for Large Scale Agile?

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Tool Need IdentifiedBackground

• Multiple Agile tracking tools used by early Agile teams

• ISG transition to Agile beginning Sep 22nd, 2010

Needs

• Need to have an Agile management tool for new Agile teams to use

• Need to be able to roll-up product status across ISG product lines

Decision Space

• Hierarchical Roll-Up• Multi-Team Program Management

Project Planning

• Sprint and Release Status• Agile Reports• Resource Allocation and Tracking

Project Management

• Theme, epic, and story capture

• Acceptance Criteria

Story Capture

• System Requirements Documentation

• Document Change Control and Tracking

Documentation Management

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

• Software Version Control System

• Continuous Integration

Software Development

• Manual Test Case Creation & Execution

• Automatic Test Case Management

Test Management

• Defect Creation and Tracking• Defect Integration With Sprints• Defect Integration With Stories/Requirements

Defect Management

• The full ALM tool space is shown at left

• This tool decision was focused on the highlighted areas

• It is assumed that Documentation Management and Software Development will be handled externally to the tool

Agile Tool Team Composition• Goals

• Include at least one member from each team already doing Agile in ISG

• Include at least one member from each Agile role (scrum master, product owner, developer, tester)

• Keep team to a manageable a size

• Team

Decision Analysis Process•The team elected to use the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to conduct the decision analysis. This uses the following method to reach a decision.•

1. Identify decision criteria 2. Identify alternatives3. Do pairwise comparisons between the criteria in order to

determine the relative weight of each4. For each criteria, do pairwise comparisons of all alternatives to

get the criteria score for each alternative5. Summarize criteria contributions for each alternative6. The alternative with the highest score is the recommendation

Identification of Candidate Tools• Goals

• Review all Agile tools currently in use within ISG• Review market leaders

• Candidates• Quality Center (Hewlett-Packard)• Jira (Atlassian)• Team Foundation Server (Microsoft)• DevSuite (TechExcel)• Rally (Rally Software)• VersionOne (VersionOne Software)

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Tool Needs•The team identified the five categories of needs shown below. Each category is further broken into individual criteria in the following pages.

• Planning and Tracking• Story Definition • Development Integration• Quality Assurance• Infrastructure Operations

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Planning and Tracking Criteria•The Planning & Tracking criteria focus on how scrum masters, product owners, and managers plan future work and track the current status of development. •

• Criteria• Agile Project Management• Agile Reports• Hierarchical Stories/Projects/Roll-Up• Multi-Team Program Management• Story, Task, and Kanban Boards• *See notes section for details

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Planning &Tracking

Story Definition

DevelopmentIntegration

QualityAssurance

InfrastructureOperations

Story Definition Criteria•The Story Definition criteria focus on how product managers and owners enter the details of work to be completed for the coming iterations.•

• Criteria• Story Capture• Acceptance Criteria• Attachments• Tasks/Sub Tasks• UI Spec

• *See notes section for details

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Planning &Tracking

Story Definition

DevelopmentIntegration

QualityAssurance

InfrastructureOperations

Development Integration Criteria•The Development Integration criteria describe how well the candidate tool integrates with other tools commonly used for application development.•

• Criteria• IDE Integrations• Open API• Source Control• Integration Across Functional Subsystems

• *See notes section for details

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Planning &Tracking

Story Definition

DevelopmentIntegration

QualityAssurance

InfrastructureOperations

Quality Assurance Criteria•The Quality Assurance criteria detail how the testers manage defects and planned tests.•

• Criteria• Defect & Defect Suite Management• Automated Test Management• Integration with Quality Center• Manual Test Management

• *See notes section for details

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Planning &Tracking

Story Definition

DevelopmentIntegration

QualityAssurance

InfrastructureOperations

Infrastructure Operations Criteria•The Infrastructure Operations criteria focus on how the tool is brought in and maintained within the organization.•

• Criteria• Cost • Availability• Hosting Options• Configurations• Intangibles

• *See notes section for details

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Planning &Tracking

Story Definition

DevelopmentIntegration

QualityAssurance

InfrastructureOperations

Overall Category Weighting

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Criteria Weighting By Category

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Planning & Tracking

Story DefinitionDevelopment

Integration

Quality Assurance Infrastructure Operations

Candidate Tool Analysis• Quality Center

• Pros• Already used widely within IVS• Very strong test and defect functionality

• Cons• Very poor Agile UI (planning, stories, tasks, status)• Limited Agile functionality (boards, reports, resource planning)• Poor responsiveness

• Jira• Pros

• Good implementation of common Agile items• Very strong development integration tools

• Cons• Fair Agile UI (planning, stories, tasks, status)

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Candidate Tool Analysis (cont)• Team Foundation Server

• Pros• Across-the-board development integration • Acceptable implementation of common Agile items

• Cons• Only integrated with Microsoft development tools• Did not provide good method for non-developers to access Agile information

• DevSuite• Pros

• Across-the-board development integration • Used in other Deere factories

• Cons• Very fragmented UI requires use of 4 separate tools to track Agile development• Somewhat limited Agile functionality (poor taskboards, prioritization, test plans)

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Candidate Tool Analysis (cont)

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• Rally• Pros

• Very strong Agile UI implementation• Included all targeted Agile functionality needs

• Cons• Only fair support for development integration

• VersionOne• Pros

• Strong Agile UI implementation• Included nearly all targeted Agile functionality needs

• Cons• Less intuitive story hierarchy• Less functional test cases

Final Scoring Results

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Final Score Contributions By Category

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Conclusions• As the team reviewed tools, it became apparent

that the tools built to do Agile from the ground up provided better functionality and user interface than those tools that added Agile to existing functionality.

• The team feels confident in the decision result that identifies Rally as the strongest candidate. Rally demonstrated strength in all targeted areas of Agile functionality and proved to be the quickest tool to both learn and use.

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Chad “Agile Ninja” Holdorfwww.scaledagiledelivery.com

Hi, my name is Chad Holdorf and I call myself the Agile Ninja because I hate being called a Process Pro. The reason I hate the title Process Pro is because I love delivering products. In 2008 I was asked to lead a team in the development of a software project using Agile. My response was, “WHAT?!?!” Today I’m proud to say I am all in on Agile | Lean Methodologies and teach it every day.I work for a John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group in Des Moines, IA as an Scaled Agile Coach. I’m not sure that is the right title, but my role is to roll out and support Agile at all locations.The challenges I blog/tweet/talk about are related to how John Deere is tailed around hardware and waterfall processes. This drives me bonkers when we try to make are software follow a hardware process!I’ve been applying Agile practices since Feb08. As an Agile Coach, I orchestrated the first large-scale Agile transformation within the company. This project included over 200 people and 30+ managers and was initiated, successfully, just four months prior to a critical product launch. I specializing in organizational change, optimization, efficiency and business value delivery, I make organizations better. Today 600+ people are practicing what I call “Scaled Agile Delivery Methodology” within John Deere.It’s never been a better time to be a part of John Deere and we are going places in the world of software development! If you want to join Deere, you can see the job listings here.