ICEAA-C · 2019. 9. 12. · • The fact that your project is agile is not a cost driver • There are otential cost implications p to adopting agile practice • Estimation team

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Agile Estimation –What are we Really Looking For?Arlene Minkiewicz

September 2019

ICEAA-C

Presented at the 5th Annual ICEAA Canada Workshop, September 17-18, 2019 – iceaa.ca/2019

© 2019 PRICE Systems, L.L.C. All Rights Reserved

Agenda

• Introduction

• Agile Software Development

• Agile Estimation‒ What to estimate‒ What’s the same, what’s not

• Emerging Methodology

• Other Agile Cost Considerations

• Wrap Up

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Introduction

• Agile development practices have enabled organizations to deliver quality software that optimizes customer satisfaction

• Agile processes rely on highly skilled developers communicating with clients and each other to optimize value delivered

• This requires a mind shift during project planning‒ Development teams‒ Consumers

• From a purely agile perspective estimation doesn’t make sense

• From a business/program perspective estimation is still important

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Introduction

• Back in the day … Complexity of applications was overshadowed by the logistics of implementation

• Technology improved … today software solves increasingly complexity problems

• The so called ‘software crises’ (mid 60’s to 80’s) resulted in many ‘silver bullet’ type solutions

• Lots of smart software development professionals began looking for more lightweight methods to address complexity in achievable chunks

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Agile Software Development



Agile Manifesto

• We are discovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it‒ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools‒ Working software over comprehensive

documentation‒ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation‒ Responding to change over following a plan

• All agile projects adhere to this manifesto• All agile projects share a common set of principles• Each agile project uses a unique set of agile practices to

implement these principles• Successful estimation for an agile project is like software

estimation for any project – you need to understand the project properties and the practices employed

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Traditional Software Development

• Requirements are analyzed

• Architecture and design are created

• Requirements are implemented, tested and delivered

• Months (or longer) occur before there is usable software for the customer to evaluate

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Agile Software Development

• Usable chunks of software are developed in short periods of time (sprints, iterations, etc.)

• Requirements are translated into user stories and become the project backlog

• User stories deliver business value and are small enough to complete in an iteration

• Customer works with team and reviews software regularly

• Each iteration focuses on the user stories that are currently the highest priority of the customer

• Priorities may shift from iteration to iteration

• Agile teams expect and embrace change

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12 Guiding Principles for Agile Development

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Common Agile Practices

• Pair programming

• Continuous integration with automated testing

• Test driven development

• Daily stand up meetings

• Co-located teams

• Code refactoring

• Small releases

• Customer on team

• Simple design

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Some Agile Terminology Related to Work

• Epic – a large duration effort that encompasses a set of high level capabilities – generally spans many releases. The vision for the software project.

• Feature – a specific amount of work that means a specific customer need. Functionality is described with enough detail so it can remain stable through development and integration

• Story – smallest level of detail in an agile program. A story is weighted with story points or some other development team specific metric.

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Agile Estimation



What is Agile Estimation?

• Known facts….‒ Agile Team Size‒ Length of Iterations‒ Release Cycle

• Predetermined (but negotiable) facts…‒ Capability delivered‒ Number of releases

• If we know who we have and how much time we have –what is there to estimate?

• And yet, estimates are necessary for project and resource planning

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Agile focus is on value driven by customer

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Scope

Quality

Schedule Cost

Scope

Quality

Schedule Cost

Traditional Waterfall Agile

= Fixed = Variable



Various levels of estimation for an Agile Project

• Sprint/Iteration level ‒ Stories => tasks => Hours

• Release level‒ User stories => story points

• Project or Proposal (Epic) Level‒ What the customer thinks they want => cost/effort

• Need to bridge the language gap between agile developers and estimators without dragging down the process of top levels for planning

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Estimators concerns….

• Size‒ Though negotiable, there needs to be a starting place

• Agile Team Size• Iteration Length• Release Cycle• Other team, project and program factors ‒ Like any other software development project

• Estimators job becomes determining‒ Schedule feasibility‒ Iterations required‒ Uncertainty around proposed capability

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Common Agile Metrics Suitable for Cost/Schedule Performance Monitoring

• Velocity – amount of work done during sprint/iteration

• Burn Up/Down Chart – burn up shows work completed, burn down shows work remaining

• Roadmap – plan of action for how product will evolve

• Backlog – a prioritized features list – short description of all functionality desired in product

• Kanban or other task board

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Emerging Solution – Agile Inputs

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Traditional Inputs

Agile Inputs



Emerging Solution – Agile Outputs

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Emerging Solution - Burn Down Metrics

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Other Considerations for Agile Projects

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The fact that your project is Agile is NOT a cost driver!



Agile Cost Drivers

• The fact that your project is agile is not a cost driver

• There are potential cost implications to adopting agile practice

• Estimation team needs to determine which agile practices apply and how they impact cost and schedule

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Agile Cost Drivers

• Agile teams tend to be highly skilled• Hard to be a slacker in an agile environment• Working closely with high skilled team members, learning curve for new

members is quick• Input parameters to your model indicating team experience would be affected

• Agile teams tend to have tool sets that are quite sophisticated

• This would be especially true on teams working with space systems as it would greatly facilitate compliance to standards

• Input parameters around tools or automation would be affected

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Agile Cost Drivers

• Co-location of teams should improve team productivity• Culture of interruption• Questions answered in real time• Team cohesion increases• Co-locating stakeholders and SMEs with development team creates a real time

IPT• Well run stand-up meetings increase productivity and quality• Cost drivers indicating distribution of team and communication practices would

be affected

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Agile Cost Drivers

• Continuous integration with automated testing should increase delivery productivity

• Important in space systems to maintain safety critical compliance requirements.

• Code is checked in frequently and builds are run and test regularly before developers forget what they changed

• Red tests raise red flags – team fixes them right away

• Since little code is changed, errors are east to track down

• Fixes occur quickly • Cost drivers focused on integration test

complexity would be affected

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Wrap Up

• Planning for agile projects requires a different mind set than planning for a more traditional projects

• Cost and Schedule are pre-determined, scope is negotiable

• Planning still needs to occur to determine‒ Schedule feasibility‒ Content related risk‒ Coordinated release plan

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The fact that your project is agile is not (necessarily) a

cost driver!


Documents

ICEAA-C · 2019. 9. 12. · • The fact that your project is agile is not a cost driver • There are otential cost implications p to adopting agile practice • Estimation team