Re: Roll Your Own Agile?

[ The Feature Blitz as an alternative to meetings like Planning Poker Parties. ]
 

 I participated in an agile-scrum group that implemented much from the lean methodologies. This department was able to double programmer productivity almost immediately—but there was some temporary stress increase as the change from waterfall to agile was made—they were able to produce a User’s Guide for each feature while the programming and QA was happening, and they were able to release features most needed by customers in a truly agile and quick manner.  They were able to accurately estimate four 8-month projects and deliver them on time while outperforming competing companies by a factor of 4 times their speed, something I haven't seen since.  They accomplished this by the following practices and some others:
 

 An analyst prepares some ideas for a project’s features and then schedules a meeting (Feature Blitz) where all the development team [domain expert(s), programmer, code reviewer, SQA engineer, the analyst, and any manager that really wanted to attend] decide the features needed, their specs, their implementation, the proposed order they will be coded and list of dependencies, breaks them into iteration-sized mini-projects, and at the end of the meeting assigns people to each of the above roles for each mini-project. The specs are the notes and digital photos from this meeting. Next each member of the team enters estimates of hours for them to finish their role’s work for each iteration or mini-project. The managers, in Iteration Planning, then swap around any resources or mini-project to maximize the use of everyone’s time, keeping in mind that changes may require the new team member to meet with the analyst or others to get up-to-speed on what happened at the Feature Blitz and that the new team member may not be able to do the role’s work as fast as the one who helped decide the particular implementation in the Feature Blitz. Next there is a commitment meeting where the development team (the four roles besides domain expert) commits to their deadlines even if they have to do overtime, which rarely happened because people became good at estimating their work ability. Simultaneously during an iteration, the analyst writes the User’s Guide, the QA engineer wrote a test suite with corner cases and exceptions that programming may not have thought about, the programmer and code reviewer discuss the details of the implementation and do the coding. Obstacles and progress were discussed frequently among the whole team and communicated to management and other stakeholders. QA tested each code drop so a programming path that wasn’t going to work was caught quickly and little code had to be thrown out. QA had enough time to do their job properly and checked how the feature functioned with other features. Analysts, QA, programmers, and domain experts generated other enhancement ideas not only for the project, but for other projects as there was more time for exploratory testing, prototyping, and thinking about the entire product/program. At the end of the iteration, the released product was more closely bug-free than the waterfall methodology. Lastly, QA had test suites that could be assigned in the future to other QA members or customer support for re-testing prior to each product/program release.
 

 Not only did we use this for estimating a single story, but we did an estimate on the entire product, [Cardiology software that was a patient record, drug-drug interaction, prescription sender, billing, ECG and other device integration, etc., etc., that is, a big product].  We did not do any planning poker game or variation ever, but had ACCURATE estimates by using the Feature Blitz as our method, meaning the one who was going to program the feature gave their estimate after domain experts and others (QA & Analysts) all mentioned ramifications of the code changes.
 

 In two and a half years (including when we first started our scrum-agile-lean hybrid), we were only later than “a single day” on one sprint and less than a day late on three sprints (once was due to hardware load testing that uncovered a need for a hardware change). All other sprints were fully completed on time, with most sprints having work from the subsequent sprint started. (Our sprints were 2 weeks.)
 

 

 ---maximum L exceeded so shortened---
 The answer to the question sometimes depends on how the company works.
 

 But for an Agile/Scrum Team, the Team, the Department Head, & any Product Owners may all have valuable insights in how QA can continuously improve.
 

 How can a Scrum Team work together, here's my often posted example:
 Our department was able to double programmer productivity almost immediately; they were able to produce a User’s Guide for each feature while the programming & QA was happening, & they were able to release features most needed by customers in a truly agile & quick manner. This was accomplished by:
 

 An analyst prepares ideas for a project’s features & then schedules a meeting (Feature Blitz) where all the development team--domain expert(s), programmer, code reviewer, SQA engineer, the analyst, & any manager that really wanted to attend--decide the features needed, their specs, their implementation, the proposed order they will be coded & list of dependencies, breaks them into iteration-sized mini-projects, & at the end of the meeting assigns people to each of the above roles for each mini-project. The specs are the notes & digital photos from this meeting. Next each member of the team enters estimates of hours for them to finish their role’s work for each iteration or mini-project. The managers, in Iteration Planning, then swap around any resources or mini-project to maximize the use of everyone’s time. Next there is a commitment meeting where the development team (the four roles besides domain expert) commits to their deadlines even if they have to do overtime, which rarely happened because people became good at estimating their work ability. Simultaneously during an iteration, the analyst writes the User’s Guide, the QA engineer wrote a test suite with corner cases & exceptions that programming may not have thought about, the programmer & code reviewer discuss the details of the implementation & do the coding. Obstacles & progress were discussed frequently among the whole team & communicated to management & other stakeholders. QA tested each code drop so a programming path that wasn’t going to work was caught quickly & little code had to be thrown out. QA had enough time to do their job properly & checked how the feature functioned with other features. Analysts, QA, programmers, & domain experts generated other enhancement ideas not only for the project, but for other projects as there was more time for exploratory testing, prototyping, & thinking about the entire product/program. At the end of the iteration, the released product was more closely bug-free than the waterfall methodology. Lastly, QA had test suites that could be assigned in the future to other QA members or customer support for re-testing prior to each product/program release.
 

 Not only did we use this for estimating a single story, but we did an estimate on the entire product, [Cardiology software that was a patient record, drug-drug interaction, prescription sender, billing, ECG & other device integration, etc., etc., that is, a big product].  We did not do any planning poker game or variation ever, but had ACCURATE estimates by using the Feature Blitz as our method, meaning the one who was going to program the feature gave their estimate after domain experts & others (QA & Analysts) all mentioned ramifications of the code changes.
 

 In two & a half years (including when we first started our scrum-agile-lean hybrid), we were only later than “a single day” on one sprint & less than a day late on three sprints (once was due to hardware load testing that uncovered a need for a hardware change). All other sprints were fully completed on time, with most sprints having work from the subsequent sprint started. (Our sprints were 2 weeks.)
 

 <Sorry I was too lazy to retype, so I just pasted from another site I had posted it on.  Other comments next.>

 

 What to work on was whatever percolated to the top when stuck in this massive spreadsheet inspired by six sigma.  The spreadsheet had the same tasks that we estimated accurately as mentioned above.
 

 Programs were for medical specialties like Cardiology and included ECG device integration and the like into the Electronic Health Record.