How agile is Agile

One of the dictionary meaning of agile is "Quick and well coordinated in movement" that's the best interpretation of today's project needs. Here both being quick and well coordinated are equally important and it also signifies being quick without sacrificing coordination.

In my brief stint with project processes I have observed that a single process can not provide solution to all type projects, we have to adjust our project processes as per the need of the project and customers, but there can be some basic guidelines. Some common considerations irrespective of our processes can be :

1. Estimations: All projects start with this step and ends with criticizing this very step, so let's knock it down. Let's start with a question, how much time will it take u to reach office from Home and the obvious answer would be it depends sometimes let's say 15minutes and sometimes up-to an hour. When we plot a graph and it would be something like:

and as expected we will estimate it to be 20 minutes; but hang on a second we are giving estimations for which probability of success is just 50% which is too risky. Ideally, probability of success should be 80% to start with any project.

2. CheckPoints: Projects need a checkpoint when a scrum or an iteration end and thumb rule for it's duration is 4 weeks or 2 weeks but it should also depend on the need and stage of the project. Checkpoint should only happen on completion of a story point which is ideally an independently testable and demonstrable module of the complete application.

3. When to end an iteration: Generally there is an exit criteria for a project to move to SIT phase then to UAT, similar exit criteria should also be there for an iteration to end and iteration is closed only if it is signed off by all the stakeholders and with due acceptance with the permissible limitations (which can be known issues and defects) and a plan to resolve it. It's even better to plan a spike sprint in between to address those limitation instead of carrying the issues till the end. It's important for everyone to understand that it's far more important to make a project successful then to just focus on an iteration.


Will update it further with my thoughts on other project processes till then look for this space.