Scrum, Kanban, and Gantt scheduling in one project –

Nonsense or necessity?

Svante Lidman (Hansoft AB) svante.lidman@hansoft.com

@svante_lidman

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?

This talk

1. Managing efforts involving many teams

2. Techniques and mindsets

3. Old techniques can still be useful

4. Planning at the right level at the right time

5. Vision, whole product, goals/objectives

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Who am I, what do I do?

• Previous 20+ years

– VP Development, Product-Program- Project Management, Developer

• Last 5 years

– Consulting with clients on large scale lean/agile

– Certified Scale Agile Program Consultant (SPC)

– CSM

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Who do we work with?

• Software centric products

– Hardware / Software

– Pure Software

– Services (product mindset)

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Problem Definition: How do we manage or development efforts

(projects, programs) well?

Adaptive • Agile

• Scrum

• Kanban

Plan driven • Waterfall

• Work breakdown structure

• Gantt

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Mix and match?

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What is agile (planning) good at?

• Handling uncertainty

• Being predictive based on true progress

• Fast learning/improvement loop

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Design

Implement Test

Refine

Backlog

Communicate

What is Gantt sheduling good at?

• Visualizing fixed deadlines and what leads up to them

– Dependencies

– Example: external delivery

• Packaging

• Marketing materials

• Training

• Deployment pre-requisites

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Not good for exploratory / iterative work

Anti-patterns

• Gantt scheduling

– Planning everything at detail up front

– Lack of team involvement

– Pushing integration and testing to the end

– Seeing people as resources

• Agile planning

– No upfront planning whatsoever

– Lacking shared vision and objectives

– No commitment to anything beyond the current sprint

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Good patterns

• Gantt scheduling – Capture fixed high level tasks/goals

and dependencies – Delegate details to the involved team – Rolling planning of details

• Agile planning – Clear vision and objectives – Product backlog with the right depth and detail at the

right time. – Roadmap with high level milestones/goals – Sprint objectives for more than the current sprint

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The real issue

• Mindset rather than technique

• Big and detailed plan upfront

– Difficult to change

– Compliance to plan rather than adapting to reality

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Benefiting from both

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(1) Multiple agile teams – One release

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Example 2 – Mandatory process 14

What are the benefits?

• Clear overview of high level planning and dependencies

• Just in time planning of both predictable work and agile work

• Helps to create alignment inside as well as outside the development organization.

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Summary

• Shared vision and tangible goals

• Build and communicate a high level plan for the whole effort

• Emerging product backlog and release planning

• Delegate details of plan/backlog to teams

• Focus on release readiness

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Questions?

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Selected References

• Scrum, Kanban, and Gantt scheduling in one project – nonsense or necessity?

(Lidman) - http://www.hansoft.com/?p=10384 • Agile Software Requirements (Leffingwell) - http://www.amazon.com/Agile-

Software-Requirements-Enterprise-Development/dp/0321635841/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362513353&sr=1-1&keywords=leffingwell

• Corps Business (Freedman) - http://www.amazon.com/Corps-Business-Management-Principles-Marines/dp/0066619793/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362513452&sr=1-1&keywords=corps+business+the+30+management+principles+of+the+u.s.+marines

• The Essence of Software Engineering (Jacobson, Ng, McMahon, Spence, Lidman) - http://www.amazon.com/The-Essence-Software-Engineering-Applying/dp/0321885953

Thank You! svante.lidman@hansoft.com

@svante_lidman http://www.slideshare.net/svantelidman/

http://hansoft.com/expertblog/

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Licensing of this Presentation

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