Agile

[MarillionFan]

Seriously does it work for you?

With your bad hip? I doubt it.

[m0n1k3r]

Seriously does it work for you?

Is there anything else that does? Seriously?

[original PM]

Currently working in an agile environment

Inception at start of April - a basic working prototype will be delivered by end of June.

It does work if it is done properly but it is not a suitable methodology for all projects.

So the current project has SME's, developers and a product manager all working together doing 1/2 week sprints at the end of each sprint 'something' is delivered which can be put in from of the stakeholder for review.

It is difficult for middle/senior managers to work with especially if they think they are there to 'challenge everything' - so for example the current prototype we are working on is probably fit for purpose for 70% of what our business does.

We know this because we have consciously not tried to take on the edge cases at this point in time.

So when senior mgmt come along and challenge things we will often get the

"Ah but every leap year on a Thursday in June x,y and z happens and your system does not account for this so it is rubbish"

But that immediately just flags them up for being absolute idiots because they are in effect trying to derail a project to accommodate a 'thing' which in reality does not happen.

Having said that we will be replacing the finance systems soon - and that will not be done in an agile way all the way through.

It is just a case of using the right methodology for the right project.

And also knowing how to use the methodology correctly.

I have been on many waterfall projects where they did not have adequate gateways and sign off points - so for example development would start before requirements have been signed off.

[LondonManc]

Seen it work for small deliverables like Web pages and individual reports.

For my bag of data warehousing and serious BI it's just embarrassing.

I disagree to an extent.

With an Inmon approach to data warehousing, you're absolutely correct. For a design using the Kimball methodology, you can certainly set sprints up to deliver your initial bus matrix then your individual star designs, your ETL and so on. On the information delivery side, you'd use the same principle, certainly for a Cognos Framework Manager or BO Universe model and then any reporting that you want that would be part of the scope.

I'm not saying that I like the approach but it is possible to deliver a warehouse via Agile, but only for Kimball's methodology. Inmon very much lends itself to waterfall. The major flaw comes if you have inadequate analysis staff, which could lead to much higher long-term costs.

[original PM]

Seen it work for small deliverables like Web pages and individual reports.

For my bag of data warehousing and serious BI it's just embarrassing.

Yeah I have to say it does not work very well if you start have a 'transaction heavy' system so as you say fine for webpages which maybe only show info and maybe have a little bit of interactivity.

Other thing to consider is that you can have a ten week sprint if the work required will not fit into 1,2,4 week sprints - it is not so much the length of time but more the continually collaboration of all people e.g. do not just chuck a requirements doc at the dev team and expect something magical to pop out 8 weeks later.

[Cirrus]

In case I haven't told you this story before

My mate Dave was at Royal Insurance. They wanted to set up their first ever on-line motor quote and buy web site. Sensibly they chose to piggy back off the current call centre solution.

He had six programmers (Smalltalk) working XP (Extreme Programming, in pairs etc).

From the moment they started talking to the Business about what they wanted, to the time it went live: 6 weeks.

Agile: No contest

[VectraMan]

With an Inmon approach to data warehousing, you're absolutely correct. For a design using the Kimball methodology, you can certainly set sprints up to deliver your initial bus matrix then your individual star designs, your ETL and so on. On the information delivery side, you'd use the same principle, certainly for a Cognos Framework Manager or BO Universe model and then any reporting that you want that would be part of the scope.

I'm not saying that I like the approach but it is possible to deliver a warehouse via Agile, but only for Kimball's methodology. Inmon very much lends itself to waterfall. The major flaw comes if you have inadequate analysis staff, which could lead to much higher long-term costs.

You must be great fun at parties.

[SueEllen]

My mate Dave was at Royal Insurance. They wanted to set up their first ever on-line motor quote and buy web site. Sensibly they chose to piggy back off the current call centre solution.

He had six programmers (Smalltalk) working XP (Extreme Programming, in pairs etc).

From the moment they started talking to the Business about what they wanted, to the time it went live: 6 weeks.

Agile: No contest

Business knew what they wanted and stuck to it?

[NigelJK]

There's a first time for everything my old Gran used to say.

[eek]

Business knew what they wanted and stuck to it?

Yep and in those days of the Internet whatever worked was accepted.

It's only now everything has to look designed and pretty that things take forever...