Tag Archives: Agile

What is a Sprint Burndown Chart?

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The Sprint Burndown or the Iteration Burndown chart is a powerful tool to communicate daily progress to the stakeholders. It tracks the completion of work for a given sprint or an iteration. The horizontal axis represents the days within a Sprint. The vertical axis represents the hours remaining to complete the committed work. The purpose of a sprint burndown chart is to show the total amount of work remaining.

Let's take an example. The below table shows the actual number of hours remaining at the end of each day within a Sprint to create a sample Sprint burndown chart. The table also captures data for ideal remaining hours. The ideal remaining effort is calculated by assuming a uniform rate of task completion each day. In the below example, you can see that the ideal and actual remaining hours were same at the beginning of the sprint, however, as the sprint progresses, the actual remaining hours vary from the ideal remaining hours. 

Sprint Burndown Chart Table

Next, we will plot a sample Sprint Burndown chart using the above table data. The below diagram depicts the sample chart with ‘Date’ represented on the horizontal axis and ‘Remaining Effort (Hours)’ represented on the vertical axis. 

Sample Sprint Burndown Chart

From the above chart, you can conclude that:

  • There were no spillover stories since the actual remaining hours at the end of the sprint were zero.
  • The team started a bit slow in the first week of the sprint, but then caught-up during the second week.

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Waterfall Vs Agile

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Let's analyze the core differences between the plan-driven Waterfall approach and the Agile methodology.

 

  • In Waterfall methodology, project development flows steadily downwards like a waterfall from one phase to another. The common phases are: Define, Analyze, Design, Build, Test, Launch, and Maintain. The preceding phase must be completed and signed-off before the next phase can begin. In Agile methodology, work evolves in an iterative and incremental manner with an emphasis on collaboration, responding to change, and continuous improvement. Its core foundation was laid with the Agile Manifesto for Software Development in 2001. 

 

  • The Waterfall methodology encourages conformance to plan and processes, however, the Agile methodology values people interactions more. 

 

  • Waterfall is the plan-driven or the traditional project management approach that requires comprehensive documentation, whereas, the agile methodology focuses on working software over comprehensive documentation.

 

  • The plan-driven or the Waterfall approach restricts new ideas that arise during design, build, or test phases of the project, whereas the agile methodology encourages experimentation and new ideas at all times.

 

  • Waterfall promotes a process-centric environment, whereas Agile promotes a people-centric environment.

 

  • With Waterfall methodology, projects are dependent on contract negotiation with customers or suppliers, however, Agile encourages customer collaboration more than contracts. 

 

  • The traditional Waterfall methodology requires conformance to a detailed project plan, whereas, the Agile methodology embraces change. The change control process in the Watefall methodoly is a very time-consuming process that requires a detailed impact analysis, a feasibility study, and possible re-distribution of resources/funds. With Agile, desired changes can simply be written as new user-stories/work items and can be added to the product backlog at any time. 

 

  • Waterfall requires a continuous effort to motivate the team. Most often, team members are not interested in the outcome of the project. On the contrary, Agile focuses on creating high performing, self-organizing, and motivated teams. In an Agile environment, team members understand the objectives and iteration goals and feel connected to the greater purpose. 

 

  • The Waterfall approach requires huge rework to accommodate late changes during design, build, test, or rollout phases of the project. As a result, the cost of change in this approach is quite high. On the other hand, Agile welcomes change even late in development with minimal rework, keeping the cost of change low.  

 

  • When Waterfall is synonymous with upfront planning, Agile is all about Just-In-Time (JIT) planning. 

 

  • With the Waterfall methodology, there's a high possibility of mismatch between approved requirements and the released product, whereas, Agile encourages frequent feedback loops that reduce any mismatch between expectations and results.

 

  • Often, with the Waterfall approach, customers stay unhappy in spite of the effort put in by the development team. Agile methodology is customer-focused. Customers stay delighted due to frequent feedback and quick response to changes or team agility.

 

  • Waterfall requires upfront decisions and approvals for the requirements document, the design documents, test strategy, etc. In Agile, decisions wait until the last responsible moment (LRM). LRM is a strategy of not making a premature decision but instead delaying commitment and keeping important and irreversible decisions open until the cost of not making a decision becomes greater than the cost of making a decision.

 

  • In the Waterfall approach, there is a limited interaction between the developers and customers (especially once the design phase starts). On the contrary, Agile promotes frequent collaboration with customers with daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, iteration planning, and product demo, and retrospective ceremonies for each iteration or sprint.

 

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What is Technical Debt?

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If you are applying the Agile Scrum Framework at work, you must have heard the term, Technical Debt. So, what is the Technical Debt? Who invented this term? In this article, you will understand what it means and how to manage it.

 

The Definition

Ward Cunningham introduced the concept of technical debt in 1992. He defined it as follows:

“Shipping first-time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite…. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwise.”

Cunningham used the ‘Technical Debt’ metaphor to emphasize the benefits and limitations of speedy development. The metaphor was well received by both business and technical people as it resonates with the financial debt. Like the financial debt, this debt accumulates interest with late repayment.

 

In 2004, Joshua Kerievsky describes ‘design debt’ in his article ‘Refactoring to Patterns” and the associated costs. Then again in 2014, Grady Booch compared evolving cities to evolving software and described how lack of refactoring can lead to the technical debt. He stated:

“The concept of the technical debt is central to understanding the forces that weigh upon systems, for it often explains where, how, and why a system is stressed. In cities, repairs on infrastructure are often delayed and incremental changes are made rather than bold ones. So, it is again in software-intensive systems. Users suffer the consequences of capricious complexity, delayed improvements, and insufficient incremental change; the developers who evolve such systems suffer the slings and arrows of never being able to write quality code because they are always trying to catch up.”

 

Main Causes of the Technical Debt:

Review your product, system, code, practices, and processes for:

  • Outdated design
  • Low code coverage
  • Lack of automated regression test suite
  • Lack of continuous integration
  • Lack of appropriate testing
  • Tightly-coupled code
  • Delayed code refactoring
  • Aggressive timelines

 

How to manage the Technical Debt:

An organization should enforce good technical practices to all the developers, including but not limited to technical design review, code review, automated regression suite, high code coverage, adequate testing, and continuous integration. This will limit the accrual of this debt. The products that have accumulated the debt should focus on refactoring to reduce technical debt and improve maintainability. Below techniques will reduce your debt:

  • Have a strong definition of done
  • Create visibility for the tech debt
  • Prioritize the tech debt
  • Leverage an incremental approach

 

Learn more about the technical debt and other concepts of the Agile Scrum Framework with my book, The Basics of SCRUM: A Simple Handbook to the Most Popular Agile Scrum Framework, available on Amazon.

 

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