What are benefits of agile process improvement?

Agile methodologies that we have today are a resultant of the experiences gained from the real life projects that were undertaken by the leading software professionals. These professionals were thorough with the challenges and limitations imposed by the traditional development methodologies on various projects. 

- The agile process improvement directly addresses the issues of the traditional development methods both in terms of processes and philosophy behind it. 

- Agile process improvement provides a simple framework to the development teams suiting varying scenarios while focusing up on the fast delivery of the business values. 

- With all these benefits of the agile process improvements, the organizations have been able to reduce the associated overall risk with the development of the project. 

- The delivery of the initial business values is accelerated well by the agile process improvement. 

- This is achieved through a process of constant planning and feedback. 

- Agile process improvement ensures that the business values are maximized throughout the development process. 

- With the API’s iterative planning plus feedback loop, it becomes possible for teams to align the software process with the business needs as required. 

- Another major benefit of the agile process is that the software development process can adapt to the ever–changing requirements of the process and business. 

- By taking a measure and evaluation of the status based up on the amount of work and testing done, visibility can be obtained to a more accurate value. 

- The final result of the agile process improvement is a software system that is capable of addressing the customer requirements and the business in a much better way. 

- By following an agile process improvement program, not only just deployable, tested and working software can be delivered on an incremental basis but also increased visibility, adaptability and values are delivered earlier in the software development life cycle. 

- This proves to be a great thing in reducing the risk associated with the project. 

- There are a number of problems with the traditional development methods. 

- In a research it was found that the waterfall style development methodology was the major factor in the contribution of failure of the software. 

- Some other software could not meet the real needs. 

- They had the inability in dealing with the changing requirements and late integration. 

- All this has proven that the traditional development methods prove to be risky as well as a costly way for building software. 

- Thus the majority of the industry has turned towards agile development.

- There is a continuous feedback input from the customers and a face to face communication among all the stake holders. 

- The business needs associated with the agile process improvement are ever changing. 

- Organizations want quick results from what they invest. 

- They want their improvement programs to keep pace with these changing business needs. 

- The agile process improvement is composed of several mechanisms using which all this can be achieved. 

- Working iteratively lets you deliver the product before the deadline to the customer. 

- It lets you deliver only the things are actually required i.e., it does not let you waste your time on the un-required things. 

- Also, early and regular feedback from the customer lets you deliver the product with quality as desired by the customer.

- Agile projects are distributive in nature i.e., the work is divided among people. 

- Agile software development is still an immature process and there is a need for improving it for the betterment of the software industry. 

- Agile process improvement is one way to do this.

What is the need of Agile Process Improvement?

It is commonly seen that a number of change projects are designed and published but none of actually goes into implementation. Most of the time is wasted in writing and publishing them. This approach usually fails. We should stop working with this methodology and develop a new one. Below mentioned are some common scenarios in the modern business:

1. Developing a stronger project
2. Changing the people working on it.
3. Threatening that project with termination
4. Appointment of a committee that would analyze the project
5. Taking examples from other organizations to see how they manage to do it.
6. Getting down to a dead project
7. Tagging a dead project as still worth of achieving something.
8. Putting many different projects together so as increase the benefit.
9. Additional training

-Drops in the delivery of the normal work always follow a change. 

-Big change projects are either dropped or rejected.

-It all happens because the changes introduced by such projects are mandatory to be followed.

-This threatens the normal functioning of the organization. 

-So, the organization is eventually compelled to kill the whole process and start with the old way of work again. 

-Instead of following this approach, a step by step process improvement can be followed that is nothing but the agile process improvement. 

Now you must be convinced why agile process improvement is actually needed. 

- The changes needs to be adaptive then only the process will be balanced. 

- An example is the CMMI maturity level. It takes 2 years approx. for completion and brings in the following:

1. Restructuring
2. New competitors
3. New products

-Only agile methods make these changes adaptive in nature.

-The change cycles when followed systematically produce results in every 2 – 6 weeks.

-Thus, your organization’s workload and improvement stay perfectly balanced. -The early identification of the issues becomes possible for the organizations thus giving you it a chance to be resolved early. 

-By and by the organization learns to tackle the problems and how to improve work.

-At the end it is able to adapt to the every changing needs of the business.

-The responsibility of the deployment and evaluation of the improvement is taken by the PPQA. 

-Whole process is implemented in 4 sprints:

1. Prototyping
2. Piloting
3. Deploying
4. Evaluating

-A large participation and leadership is required for these changes to take place.

-Some other agile techniques along with scrum can also be used in SPI.

-We can have the improvements continuously integrated in to the way the organization works. 

-The way of working can also be re-factored including assets and definitions by having an step by step integration of the improvements.

-Pair work can be carried out on improvements. 

-A collective ownership can be created for the organization. 

-Evaluations and pilots can be used for testing purpose. 

-In order to succeed with the sprints is important that only simple solutions should be developed. 

-An organization can write the coaching material with the help of the work description standards.

-This sprint technique helps the organization to strike a balance between the improvement and the normal workload. 

-In agile process improvement simple solutions are preferred over the complex ones.

-Here, the status quo and the vision are developed using the CMMI and SCAMPI. 

-Status quo and vision are necessary for the beginning of the software process improvement.

-SPI when conducted properly produces useful work otherwise unnecessary documentation has to be produced.

-An improvement in the process is an improvement in the work. 

-Improving work is what that is preferred by people. 

What is an Agile Process Improvement?

A process improvement program is successful only when the meaning of the word ‘process’ is clearly understood. Process means work. So when one improves, the other one also improves. The quality of the software depends a lot on the process. Whenever a change is introduced, a temporary drop in performance is always recorded. In most cases what happens is that the organization stops the implementation of changes fearing the disruption in the normal work since so much effort is required. To avoid such situations, the changes need to be adaptive. It is the agile process improvement that makes this possible. You might say that such a way of iterative improvement is not new. Well, the agile techniques introduce discipline in the whole program.

Stages of Agile Process Improvement

The following are the stages of the agile process improvement:

1. Initiating:

Ø  Stimulus of change

Ø  Set context

Ø  Build sponsorship

Ø  Charter infrastructure

2. Diagnosing:

Ø  Characterize current and desired states

Ø  Develop recommendation

3. Establishing:

Ø  Set priorities

Ø  Develop approach

Ø  Plan actions

4. Action:

Ø  Create solution

Ø  Test solution

Ø  Refine the solution

Ø  Implement solution

5. Learning:

Ø  Analyze

Ø  Validate

Ø  Propose future actions

- The improvement cycles are meant to be followed systematically so that the results might be obtained in time ranging from 2- 6 weeks.

- The whole process lets you maintain a balance the workload as well as the improvement. 

- The flow of the process is as follows:

1. Prioritized list of improvements
2. Detailed plan for the current cycle
3. Implemented improvement
4. Feedback

- After this process, the following becomes possible for the organization:

1. Identification and resolving of the issues earlier in the cycle.
2. Learning process regarding how to tackle difficulties and working of this process.
3. Adaption to the business needs that keep changing.
4. Giving response to the feedback.

- The sponsor holds the responsibility for prioritizing the improvement backlog at the start of each sprint. 

- Also, he is the one responsible for ROI. 

- Prioritization is a good tool for the sponsor to direct the change. 

- Using prioritization, the goals and feedback can be revised from quality assurance. 

- A focus can be kept on the benefit received from each improvement cycle. 

- PPQA deploys and evaluates the improvement in organization in every sprint. - The improvement package consists of 4 sprints namely:

1. Prototyping
2. Piloting
3. Deploying
4. Evaluating

- Active participation and leadership is required for a change to take place. 

- An endorsed vision and status quo is required for the beginning of the process. 

- Both of these are established via SCAMPI and CMMI. 

- The change is led by the management on an everyday basis.

- An excellent description is provided by the generic practices of CMMI for the leadership purpose.

- Similarly participation is a key element that is facilitated by the change team. - A vision is required for initiating the improvement project. 

- The initial improvement backlog is defined by 3 things namely scrumMaster, change team and the work owner i.e., the sponsor all based up on an assessment. 

- The organization is facilitated by the change team.

- With each sprint a tangible improvement is delivered. 

- The change is led by the management in a sprint.

- The effect introduced by the change is evaluated at the end of each sprint by PPQA. 

-The new improvements are defined by the work-owner who is also responsible for adding those in to the backlog of improvements and prioritizes it.

-Commitment is supported at the end of the sprint by appraisal.

-The improvements can also be continuously integrated in to the organization’s way of working.