MGMT 642: Agile Project Management
MGMT 642: Agile Project Management
Week 9
Outline
• Scorecards and Benchmarks
• Governance and Compliance
• Objectives and Quality Principles
• Activity: Governance
• Assignments
3 2023-08-13
Scorecards and Benchmarks
Benchmarking vs Balanced Scorecard
• Benchmarking is the comparison of actual or planned products,
processes, and practices to those of comparable organizations,
which identifies best practices, generates ideas for improvement,
and provides a basis for measuring performance.
• Enables a manager to know in an instant which metrics are higher or
lower than normal. They can then assess the balanced scorecard to
review the wider impact and check for a healthy performance.
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Agile Balanced Scorecard
• Product: Are we building high-value products that are in demand by
our customers?
• Financial: Are we achieving planned-for financial results?
• Team: Are we working well together as a team and addressing the
needs of the various stakeholders?
• Schedule: Are we on track to deliver within the schedule
commitments
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Product Metrics
An Agile Balanced Scoreboard, [Link]
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Governance and Compliance
What is Agile Governance and Compliance?
• Agile GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance):
• Enables organizations to manage risk and compliance more efficiently and
effectively.
• Emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and continuous improvement,
adaptability, new regulations, and emerging risks.
• Identify and address potential risks and compliance issues early on, reducing
the likelihood of costly errors, non-compliance penalties, or reputational
damage.
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What is Agile Governance and Compliance? Continued
• 3 Steps to a collaborative • Develop cross-agile team RAID (Risks,
agile governance and Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies)
compliance strategy
1) Clearly define roles and
responsibilities
2) Provide support for those
working on risk through
strategy and processes
3) Centralize information and
documentation through a
GRC management
information and RAID, Expert Program Management, Denis G.
technology architecture
10 2023-08-13
Burn Down
• Single line racing towards
zero as the project is
completed.
• It can hide important
information, for example
the effects of scope
change.
• Burn up vs burn down
[Link]
From: Burn up vs burn down chart, Ala’s Elbeheri (2016)
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Burn Up
• Tracks completed work and
total work with two separate
lines, unlike a burn down chart
which combines them into a
single line.
• The total work line
communicates important
information - is the project not
yet complete because work is
slow to be done, or too much
new work is being added.
From: Burn up vs burn down chart, Ala’s Elbeheri (2016)
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Problems with excessive levels of Work in
Progress (WIP):
• WIP consumes investment capital and delivers no return on the investment until it is converted
into an accepted product.
• It represents money spent with no return, which is something we want to limit.
• WIP hides bottlenecks in processes that slow overall workflow (or throughput) and masks
efficiency issues.
• WIP represents risk in the form of potential rework, since there may still be changes to items until
those items have been accepted.
• If there is a large inventory of WIP, there may in turn be a lot of scrap or expensive rework if a
change is required.
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Cumulative Flow Diagram
From: PMI-ACP Exam Prep, Mike Griffiths (2015)
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Objectives and Quality Principles
Pair Programming
• Term coined by Jim Coplien in 1995
• Consists of two side-by-side programmers
• Highly-effective group problem-solving technique
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Williams, L., & Kessler, R. (2002). Pair programming illuminated. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Refactoring
• Term coined by William Opdyke in 1990
• Process of frequently rewriting source code
• Improves readability, maintainability and quality
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Fowler, M. (1999). Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code. Boston, MA. Addison-Wesley.
Test-driven Development (TDD)
• Term coined by Kent Beck in 2003
• Consists of writing all tests before coding
• Ensures all source code is verified and validated
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Beck. K. (2003). Test-driven development: By example. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Continuous Integration and Continuous
Deployment (CI/CD)
• Term coined by Martin Fowler in 1998
• Process of automated build/regression testing
• Evaluates impact of all changes against entire system
19 2023-08-13
Duvall, P., Matyas, S., & Glover, A. (2006). Continuous integration: Improving software quality and reducing risk. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley
Six Sigma
• Mean: average
• Standard Deviation: a measure of how spread out numbers are
• Normal Probability Distribution: Area under a Standard Normal Curve
• Characteristics
• The entire family of normal probability distributions is defined by its mean m and its standard deviation s.
• The distribution is symmetric, and is bell-shaped.
20 2023-08-13
From: The Standard Normal Distribution and Z Scores, BUSPH Learning Modules
Control Chart
• Quality control tool
• A control chart is a graphical
representation over time of a process.
It is used to determine if the process is
“in control”.
• Control charts are SET UP in the Plan
Quality Management process as part of
the effort to determine what will be
quality on the project.
• They are UTILIZED in Control Quality,
where they help determine if a process
is within acceptable limits.
• It’s a tool used primarily to help From: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 6th Edition (2017)
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monitor process variation over time.
2023-08-13
Control Chart Continued
• Control limit calculations begin with the
Centre Line (the average or median of the
data).
• Next calculate sigma. The formula for sigma
depends on the type of data.
• From the centre line, lines are drawn at +/-1
sigma, +/-2 sigma and +/-3 sigma.
• +3 sigma = Upper Control Limit (UCL)
• -3 sigma = Lower Control Limit (LCL)
• Exercise – Control [Link]
From: Struggling with Control Chart Limits?, QIMacros
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Histograms
• Histograms are used to plot the number of occurrences of a problem
and can be related to the check sheet.
• It displays data in the form of bars or columns.
• It shows what problems are worth dealing with.
• A typical histogram arranges data in no particular order.
From: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 6th Edition (2017)
23 2023-08-13
Pareto diagrams
• A type of histogram, but it arranges the
results from most frequent to least
frequent to help identify which root
causes are resulting in the most
problems.
• Pareto charts are used in quality control
to identify causes of problems; action
will be taken to fix first the problems
causing the highest number of defects.
• 80/20 rule: Roughly 80% of the effects
come from 20% of the causes.
From: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 6th Edition (2017)
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Issues Troubleshooting Options
Resolving Unclear purpose
Unclear team
Agile charter
Working agreements, Team charter
Issues expectation
Unclear team context Agile charter, Roles
Unclear requirements Product Vision, Product Roadmap
Poor user experience Iteration Review
Poor estimates Right story size, Story vs Effort
Unclear assignments Self-organizing, Self-managing
Team obstacles Servant leadership, Coaching
Defects Pair-work, Testing, Control chart
Technical debt Testing, Pay technical debt early
Product complexity Keep It Simple
Slow team improvement Shorten durations, Monitor velocity and adjust storypoints
To much upfront work Consider spike
False starts Consider Iteration 0
Inefficient backlog Prioritize by value
Difficult stakeholder Servant leader to work with stakeholder, Block stakeholder access to the team
Delays Resolve impediments ASAP, Track burn up/down
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Siloed teams Build cross-functional teams
Feedback Techniques
• Daily standup – Early warning
• Pair programming – Reduces defects
• Testing – Reduces defects
• Code reviews – Reduces defects
• Iteration review – Customer feedback/collaboration
• Iteration retrospective – Product, process, team continuous
improvement
• Release testing – Last chance before a release.
• Escaped defects – Defects that weren’t caught prior to a release. The
most expensive.
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Iteration Review Activities
• Review/Demo is a meeting for the purpose of obtaining feedback and
adapting in order to add value.
• On the last day of the iteration, plan for 2-4 hours of review/demo to
the stakeholders.
• Reviews are formal sign-off/demo meetings to discuss what was
planned and what was accomplished.
• Completed stories are shown with the demo.
• Incomplete stories are moved to the backlog.
• Any valid feedback may become new/revised stories that move to the
backlog.
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Iteration Retrospective Activities
• Attendance is limited to the Cross-functional team members, Product owner, and
Team facilitator.
• On the last day of the iteration, plan for 2-4 hours of retrospective after the
Iteration Review.
• This is very similar to Lessons Learned.
• A retrospective is not about blame; it is a time for the team to learn from previous
work and make small improvements.
• This is not about the actual product deficiencies.
• Look at the qualitative (people’s feelings) and quantitative (measurements) data.
• The team may end up with items to be added to the backlog.
• Look at ‘Start’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Continue’.
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Iteration Retrospective – Start/Stop/Continue
• What Do You Need to - Start Stop [Link]
• For continuous process improvement, ask the team what to start, stop
or continue doing.
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From: What Do You Need to: Start – Stop – Continue?, Frank Lio (2013)
Iteration Retrospective – Start/Stop/Continue Continued
• Example
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From: What Do You Need to: Start – Stop – Continue?, Frank Lio (2013)
Continuous Improvement
• Successful agile teams embrace the growth mindset, where people believe they
can learn new skills.
• From a servant leader perspective:
• Educate stakeholders how to be agile.
• Support the team through mentoring and support.
• Advocate for training and career development.
• From a team member perspective:
• Admit what you don’t know.
• Practice self-awareness to develop interpersonal and technical skills.
• Ask for help, leverage coaching and mentoring from facilitator and team.
• Pair, share and work with others to learn or enhance skills.
31 2023-08-13
Activity: Governance
PDCA – Case Study
• PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) –
Control and continual
improvement of processes and
products.
• [Link] – What steps go into
each box?
From: [Link]
[Link]/csr/report_e/7_management/image/e-G-6_pict_01.png
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Assignments
Homework Problem 9: Start, Stop, Continue
• Come up with at least 3 real-life examples of each of the Start, Stop, Continue in
an agile project.
• To be more consistent, please use below naming convention for your following
assignment:
• Homework9_[Last name]_[First letter of first name].pptx
• If file naming is not followed, there will be a grade deduction.
• Upload to the Homework section in Moodle.
• I will pick one group and the group will do 8-10 minute presentation at the start of the next
class.
• If you go under or over time, there will be a grade deduction.
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Assignments due before next class
• Online forums
• One most interesting thing you learned about agile from today
• Weekly summary
• Review today’s lecture and summarize
• Homework Problem #9
• Project Case Study #3
• Final Exam next week
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