Agile Development

Agile Frameworks and Practices

Agile frameworks and practices support iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.

Example Frameworks

Kanban (requirement reviews)
Kanban (code reviews)
Kanban (testing)
Scrum (software development)
Feature-driven development (FDD)

Example Practices

Data modeling
Domain-driven design (DDD)
Scrum events (sprint planning, sprint reviews and retrospectives)
Test-driven development (TDD)
User story development

Product Backlog

User story development and story decomposition helps to identify and address the underlying issues that are associated with a task. Break down complex tasks into smaller parts. Determine what the natural divisions or units of work are for the product and size them, then identify risks associated with these tasks and prioritize them by largest potential impact on the product.

Sprint Backlog

During a discovery phase, select user stories with good learning potential to complete during an initial sprint, keeping careful notes on issues encountered, environment setup needed, and time taken to complete each task. High-risk tasks are prioritized in order to learn as much as possible.

Discovery Time

The discovery phase is typically four weeks in duration. The discovery timeline (start date) may be delayed depending on several factors (waiting on client inputs, availability of client resources, etc.). In software development projects the User Interface / User Experience (UI/UX) designer time is front loaded with more time more requested early.

Discovery Estimates

Evidence-based estimates for each of the tasks are assembled using the measurements collected during discovery. Estimates are fed into a rough order of magnitude (ROM). The experience of completing a discovery phase, enable the existing requirements to be reviewed and improved where necessary. All of these materials then allow for realistic project recommendations.

Discovery Deliverables

At the completion of a discovery phase a ROM is delivered. The ROM includes evidence-based estimates for all identified and in-scope units of work; recommendations to cover the subsequent implementation phases; suggested updates to the requirements, where appropriate; and any code, documentation, prototypes, and mockups generated during the phase.