Top 5

Challenges in

AgileA Guide to Overcoming

How to address the challenges in your agile processes, and get the results you really want.

A Publication of

Table of Contents

Introduction

Challenge 1Communicating the value of agile to leadership

Challenge 2Clarifying roles and responsibilities

Challenge 3Delivering value consistently within each iteration

Challenge 4Delivering working software at the end of each iteration

Challenge 5Avoiding waterfalling your iterations

Conclusion

Introduction

The word “agile” has become very popular in the project management and software development communities. Many people expect agile to be the “silver bullet” that they are looking for, the way to solve the problems plaguing their projects.

Based on our experience, we know that agile is not a “silver bullet.” Despite that, we also believe agile is more than just a buzzword. We have seen the benefits that can come to a company after they adopt agile methodologies. These benefits range from faster project delivery and time to market to greater team learning and cohesion; benefits that are both tangible and intangible. Through our consulting and training, we have also seen many of the challenges that companies face when trying to go agile.

In this ebook, we present the top five challenges we have identified based on our agile coaching and training experience. You will also find ideas on how to overcome each challenge.

CHALLENGE ONE

Communicating the value of

agile to leadership

Communicating the value of

agile to leadership

One fundamental challenge with agile is getting it off the ground. Before you can fully integrate agile, you need the support of leadership.

Leadership support will give you the green light to move forward and will help remove project barriers. Although, before leadership can sign off, they need to foresee the benefits. A lack of leadership support comes from the fact that agile advocates in the organization are not able to effectively communicate value of agile to the leadership.

How to overcome: Determine what the leadership’s top challenge is and then show them how agile can help them overcome that challenge.

Here are just a few of the ways that agile helps address these specific challenges:

• Speed up time to market: Not only does agile speed time to market by resulting in faster delivery of working software, it also allows the customer to choose when they are satisfied with the end product. This flexibility allows them to get their product to market faster.

• Managing changing requirements: Agile welcomes changes, even late in the project, turning the problem of changing requirements from an obstacle to an opportunity for added value.

• User dissatisfaction: Agile leads to greater user satisfaction by offering the users and customers a greater voice in the product’s development.

“Determine what the leadership’s

top challenge is and then show

them how agile can help them

overcome that challenge.”

CHALLENGE TWO

Clarifying roles and

responsibilities

Clarifying roles and

responsibilities

We often see teams struggling to clarify the roles and responsibilities that are most critical to an agile project’s success. In particular, we see that teams have difficulty defining the role of the product owner.

How to overcome: Break down the most critical traits and then match the role to people who have those traits—or, if needed, go find them.

For example, we have seen that the product owner is the most critical role to fill. An agile project without a product owner is like a bus without a driver—you may be seated and ready to go, but you are not going to go anywhere.

For the product owner, the most critical traits are:

1. Deep knowledge of the product. This is mandatory.2. Authority within the organization to effectively set priorities. We

have found that someone senior within the company often fills the role well.

3. Adequate time to perform the product owner role—and only the product owner role—on a full-time basis or close to it. The product owner should not also be the Scrum Master or a team member.

“Break down the most critical

traits and then match the role to

people who have those traits—or,

if needed, go find them.”

CHALLENGE THREE

Delivering value consistently

within each iteration

Delivering value consistently

within each iteration

More often than not, we have seen that teams struggle to deliver value consistently within each iteration. A big part of this struggle is getting teams to commit to delivery of items that are high value, but intimidating due to difficulty or size. Teams often are frozen by the idea of a large, high-value item that is difficult to do, especially if it will not fit within one iteration.

How to overcome: If it does not fall within one iteration, move it to be done in the release, and split the story to achieve the highest-value parts within each iteration.

The key is to remember that agile is not a checklist-driven methodology. The goal is not to be able to cross the most items off the list, it is to deliver the highest-value items to the customer.

Going off a checklist is like placing too much value on the destination; the journey, or the road to overcome the difficulties, is where maximum learning and team cohesion takes place.

“If it does not fall within one iteration,

move it to be done in the release, and

split the story to achieve the highest-

value parts within each iteration.”

CHALLENGE FOUR

Delivering working software at

the end of each iteration

Delivering working software

at the end of each iteration

Teams also commonly struggle to deliver working software, which means that the software has been both developed and tested. Many times, developers will wait too long before wrapping up development –within one or two days before the iteration ends, which means that the testers only have a couple of days to test all of the stories.

This problem lends itself to two additional problems: 1. Errors will be found with no time left for developers to fix them.2. Testing time will run out and too much will be left untested.

How to overcome: The key to overcoming this challenge is developing the skill to break down user stories.

This is a skill that seems easy, but is very hard in practice. The team will better develop this skill after they have practiced agile more, maybe after 6-10 iterations.

By further breaking down the user stories, developers can finish their chunks earlier, allowing testers to hit those parts while the developers move on to the next parts. This distributes the work of testers better than other approaches.

Team members can also switch hats, with developers working as testers

and vice versa. This approach achieves the same goal. One caution is to

make sure that developers aren’t writing their own tests without

having someone review. If that developer misunderstands the

requirements, the testing may not catch that.

“The key to overcoming this

challenge is developing the skill to

break down user stories.”

CHALLENGE FIVE

Avoiding “waterfalling” your

iterations

Avoiding “waterfalling” your

iterations

Many agile team members have used the waterfall methodology for a long time, making it tempting to switch back or incorporate waterfall elements into an agile iteration—a term we call waterfalling.

Two common patterns are inter-iteration and intra-iteration waterfall.1. Inter-iteration: The first iteration is defining the requirements, the

second is building / coding the product, and the third is testing, meaning the customer doesn’t see anything until iteration three.

2. Intra-iteration: The define-build-test cycle is done for all stories at once, so nothing gets tested and finished until close to the end, introducing the same risks we discussed in challenge two.

How to overcome: Cross-functional iterations are key to overcoming this challenge.

Cross-functional iterations use the same define-build-test cycle on a per-story basis. The entire cycle occurs for the highest-priority user story and no definition occurs for the second one until the first one is fully tested and complete. That way, the first story is completely done and at least some value has been delivered if the iteration were to end there.

The cross-functional iteration works well because it takes one familiar aspect of development, the define-build-test cycle, and uses it to address something often unfamiliar, which is completing a full story before moving on to the next.

"Cross-functional iterations

are key to avoid waterfalling your

iterations."

Conclusion

The top five challenges we identified with agile can occur at many different stages of the project. Early on, getting leadership on board and clarifying team roles and responsibilities can be challenges. Once the project is underway, you may find breaking old habits to be the most difficult next step. Sometimes teams are reluctant to tackle the highest-value, highest-difficulty user stories. Other times, they might struggle to deliver working software in each iteration, or fall back into the waterfall pattern too quickly.

Whether it’s getting started on the agile journey or making sure the journey stays agile, these challenges need to be overcome to steer agile projects toward success. We have seen from experience that implementing and remaining agile poses many problems. We know that agile can be difficult in both mindset and processes, but the benefits are worth it. With agile growing in prominence, it is important for any company to be able to address these challenges to avoid getting left behind.

ARE YOU STILL FEELING STUCK?

If you are experiencing any of these agile challenges, your project may be going off-course. Agile training and coaching is one of our areas of

excellence. Our free 4-hour consultation can be a first step to bringing your project back on track. We're here to help.

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