Keeping a Distributed Agile Team in Sync Using the Alliance RAPID Productivity Platform

RAPID: Alliance Productivity Platform

26-June-2013

Keeping a Distributed Agile Team in Sync Using the Alliance RAPID Productivity Platform

2© Alliance Global Services 2013

About AllianceAlliance is a software development and testing firm that partners with software, technology and information-intensive businesses on their mission critical work. Leveraging agile practices, Alliance architects and builds software applications, platforms and products that become primary drivers of innovation and revenue growth for its clients and their businesses. Alliance is recognized for driving quality and speed-to-market when business success depends on the software inside. Founded in 1994, Alliance is headquartered in suburban Philadelphia in Conshohocken, PA.

HostSharon LeeDirector [email protected]

Santanu BhattacharyaVP Solutions – Product [email protected]

Speaker


Agenda

Evolving Software Solution

Demand of the Business

The Enabler of Agility

Distributed Teams

RAPID Framework

Visibility of Progress

Knowledge Management

Functional Quality

Engineering Quality

Q&A


PARADIGM SHIFT OF SOFTWARE SOLUTION

Automate Manual Activities

Integrate With Other Systems

Enabling New Areas of Business

Engage Customer for Evolving Plan

& Strategy

The Software Inside

Responding to Change in Eco-

System


BUSINESS DEMAND ON SOFTWARE

Faster Change

Maintainable

Reliable

Scalable

Time To Market

Complex Integration

Leverage New Technologies

Collaboration with Business

Collaboration with Users

Flexibility


THE ENABLER OF AGILITY - PROCESS

Faster Change

Time To MarketCollaboration with Business

Collaboration with Users Flexibility


THE ENABLER OF AGILITY - ENGINEERING

Faster Change

Maintainable

Reliable

Scalable

Complex Integration

Flexibility


THE ENABLER OF AGILITY - MINDSET

Faster Change

Collaboration with Business

Collaboration with Users

Flexibility

Collaboration within the Team


THE ENABLER OF AGILITY - MINDSET


CHALLENGES OF BRINGING IN AGILITY

Ability To Change

• Process which is flexible enough BUT disciplined

• Involving business, users and the whole up-stream & down stream

• Engineering Excellence• Automation• Continuous Integration

Environment for Agility

• Trust• Visibility• Single view of truth• Collaborative• Openness


CHALLENGES OF BRINGING IN AGILITY – DISTRIBUTED TEAMS

Ability To Change

• Enabling the whole team understand the user feedback, business priorities

• Visible engineering excellence across the team• Build automation to reduce dependencies on

people• Continuous Integration

Environment for Agility

• Trusting non-collocated members• Visibility across the teams on all aspects

beyond face to face discussions• Single view of truth• Openness & reduced Perception driven

management


Objectives for RAPID

• Internal:– Enable distributed teams to adopt a visible light-weight process– Improve the predictability of our delivery teams– Move from spreadsheet & email sprawl to metrics based dashboards for better

inspection & adaptation– Improve productivity by reducing delays and waste– Create visibility across a portfolio of projects for better management– Focus on Engineering Quality for Commercial Grade Software– One stop place for understanding project execution

• Customer:– Create visibility and access to information which historically otherwise remains

hidden into the detailed process of building software– Ensure consistent high quality deliverables– Enable distributed Agile teams to work collaboratively across company boundary– Lower risk of outsourcing development or maintenance work


Alliance RAPID Productivity Platform

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Integrated suite for Agile project management, Requirement Management and Prioritization, Project Tracking, Defect Tracking & Release Management


Formal knowledge acquisition and evaluation framework that focuses on knowledge synthesis, assessment and retention so that the full team understands users, features, goals, & processes and “gets it”

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration of the Project as well as static code analysis to maintain the clean code policies as well as enforce the best practices and standards for producing Commercial Grade software in a distributed team environment.

RAPID Toolbox

Growing collection of reusable tools and components to solve common problems and speed develop of robust web and mobile applications

Shortening time-to-market and enabling predictable delivery of software that works every time

Titanium

xAFTLeveraging:


RAPID Toolbox

Continuous Integration

Lifecycle Management


RAPID Productivity Platform

Product Backlog Management Product Backlog Creation & Prioritization Iteration & Release Planning

Knowledge Management Document, Audio, Video Repository Wiki based collaborative Knowledge Retention Solr Based Search on information

Project Tracking Risk, Issue & Action Items Tracking Project Time Tracking

Functional Quality Management Defect Traceability Defect Tracking

Engineering Quality Management Code Quality Design Quality Continuous Feedback

Metric Driven Delivery Project Metrics & Quality Metrics

RAPID provides full Project Lifecycle Management and is fully integrated into JIRA, GreenHopper, Jenkins & Sonar. It provides tracking the project risks, issues, assumptions and

action items through out the project lifecycle seamlessly.

RAPID• JIRA• GreenHopper• Jenkins• Sonar• Wiki/Discussion Forum• Content Management• Zephyr• Other Code Analysis

Tools


Open Architecture for Easy Extension & Integration

Loosely coupled Architecture

Non-Intrusive in nature to work with-out interrupting the day-to-day work of a team & their workflow

Doesn’t demand altering any established workflow of a team

Easy to extend and integrate with any tool which exposes web-services and/or APIs

Multiple Roles enables workflow implementation as well as access control


ALM – Project Management

Integrated Dashboard for managing user stories (requirements), tasks, issues, backlogs, burndowns, defects, quality & productivity metrics give

a one-stop view of all project activity, progress, and results

• Dashboards• Requirements• Burn-downs• Issues• Team Metrics• Engineering Quality Metrics• Functional Quality Metrics


ALM - Continuous Integration

A comprehensive Enterprise CI environment to ensure Baked-In Quality with automated builds, code analysis, and test coverage metrics

• Enforce Clean Code standards• Building on top of Open Source

Jenkins & Sonar frameworks• Supports Java, .NET, Mobile (iOS

& Android), Ruby, Projects• Unit tests, automated functional

tests, test coverage• Automated code quality analysis• Metrics exposed in ALM

dashboards• Immediate quality feedback to

team and client

Engineering Violations

Unit Tests Code Quality

Unit Tests Coverage

Rules Compliance

Unit Tests Success

Technical Debt Ratio

Design Quality

Unit Tests Failure

Lines To Cover

Duplicate Lines



Knowledge acquisition is formally tracked and institutionalized to provide visibility into the depth and breadth of knowledge across each application and

functional area and ease transition for new team members

OJT PlansKnowledge Wiki

How well does at least 1 person know the Knowledge Area?

How well do at least 2 people know the knowledge area?

Determine to what extent artifacts such as requirements and design documentation exist?

Extent of knowledge coverage and documentation drives whether capability is Institutionalized.

Doc Sharing


RAPID Portfolio View

RAPID provides portfolio view of certain parameters with cumulative data across various projects under the portfolio. This enables a manager who is managing a portfolio of projects to understand at a high level how over-all the projects are performing and if there are any specific

areas at the portfolio level need to be looked at.

Impediments with aging

Cumulative Risks with

drilldown to categories

Effort Variance

Resource Utilization


RAPID IMPACTVisibility In


Issues

Risks

Burnout

Work-In-Progress Tasks

Progress

Functional Quality

Engineering Quality

Impact

Knowledge Improvements & Improvement of Productivity & Quality

Quick resolutions of issues enabling the team to do faster delivery

Early risk impact understanding and collaborative mitigation approach

Controlling Team Turnover

Right prioritization and early business value. Better flow

Continuous planning and course correction on the way through inspect & adapt

Identify gaps early for better quality and less waste

Reduce Technical Debt and Increase Reliability, Scalability and Maintainability of the software


• Define Agility Enablers for your Teams & Organization

• Create Visibility in those areas for Collaboration & Increased Quality & Productivity

• Alliance solved it through the development and usage of RAPID Framework

• Continuous Improvement & Client Participation is the Key

TO RECAP


Q & A


Thank YouSantanu BhattacharyaVP Solutions – Product [email protected]

www.allianceglobalservices.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.allianceglobalservices.com/

Keeping a Distributed Agile Team in Sync Using the Alliance RAPID Productivity Platform

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