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THE PPC AGENCY OF EXPERTS hanapin marketing GUIDE TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING| ADVANCED EDITION | Written by Writing Nights

07 What You'll Learn By the end of this whitepaper, you should have a greater understanding of the audience insights, building personas and audience segmentation 13 Audience Insights Creating and selecting your target audience should be one of your first tasks when crafting your Facebook ad strategy. 21 Personas Demographics and such 29 Page Likes The web is interconnected scaffolding. Need we say links?

Guide to Facebook Advertising - Advanced Edition Becoming the Expert After successfully navigating the setup of a Facebook account and the initial round of settings, optimizations, and expansions, the time has come to not only manage your account according to general best practices, but to really identify how your account will flourish. By the end of this whitepaper, you should have a greater understanding of the audience insights, building personas and audience segmentation, utilizing advanced segmentation for improved targeting, and how to use and find the advanced Power Editor features. Here's what you'll learn: How to use Audience Insights for creating audience segmentation How to build audience personas How to find and utilize advanced features of Facebook Power Editor 2 | HANAPIN MARKETING NOMADIC | 24

Guide to Facebook Advertising - Advanced Edition AUDIENCE INSIGHTS AND PERSONAS Creating and selecting your target audience should be one of your first tasks when crafting your Facebook ad strategy. How you set up your audiences and target them with ads will have the biggest impact on your relevancy scores and performance metrics. Facebook’s platform is set-up to easily target users that matter the most to your business. Ideally, you’ll want to base your ads off your customer personas, website traffic and email lists. If your company already has personas, then start creating ads using Facebook’s demographic, behavioral, device and location targeting to zero-in on this audience. Finding Personas With Audience Insights Facebook Audience Insights is a powerful tool that combines Facebook native data and third party providers (Datalogix, Acxiom, Epsilon, BlueKai) to help marketers uncover deep insights about their audience. Start by going to your Facebook Audience Insights and clicking on people connected to your page. Under the demographics tab, you should see an age and gender breakdown of your Facebook fans, like the chart below. This chart helps to quickly visualize the gender and age group composition of your Facebook audience. NOMADIC | 24 HANAPIN MARKETING| 3

Guide to Facebook Advertising - Advanced Edition AUDIENCE INSIGHTS AND PERSONAS Let’s take a deeper look at one segment of the total audience. Keep scrolling down and you will see that Facebook has paired your audience’s interest data based on purchase behavior, brand affinity and other activities to create mini-personas. Building Your Persona With Audience Insights Let’s say we wanted to create this audience in Facebook, so we could target specific posts and ads - how would we create it? First off, let’s think about what was included in that mini-persona. Active grandparents Singles and couples Presence of children in household NOMADIC | 24 4 | HANAPIN MARKETING



CONTENTS CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ vii List of Figures ................................................................................................. xvii List of Tables ................................................................................................... xxi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... xxiii INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................1 Conventions Used Throughout the Book ...........................................................4 Icons Used to Highlight Important Points..........................................................5 PART I AGILE AND SCRUM PRINCIPLES Chapter 1 Why Being Agile is Easy - and so Hard!! ............................................................9 Chapter 2 Agile and Scrum does not solve your problems..........................................13 Chapter 3 Agile Overview ...................................................................................................18 What is Scrum? ................................................................................................... 20 Scrum is Simple.....................................................................................................21 Scrum Teams are Efficient..................................................................................22 Agile has Underlying Values ...............................................................................23

viii Core Agile Values ................................................................................................24 Scrum in the Context of the Real World..........................................................24 Recap of Scrum Roles........................................................................................ 30 Recap of Scrum Artifacts ....................................................................................31 Recap of Scrum Events.......................................................................................32 Recap of Product/Project Development Phases.............................................33 Chapter 4 Enterprise Scaling ........................................................................................... 36 Scrum of Scrums ................................................................................................. 37 LeSS—Large Scale Scrum...................................................................................39 SAFe® for Lean Enterprises ...............................................................................43 Enterprise Scaling—What to do.........................................................................45 Chapter 5 Agile Execution Focus ...................................................................................... 48 Chapter 6 Scrum vs. Kanban.............................................................................................. 55 High Level Differences between Scrum and Kanban......................................58 Chapter 7 Agile Release Planning .................................................................................... 68 What is a Vision Statement?..............................................................................70 What is a Product or Project?.............................................................................71 The Product Backlog ...........................................................................................74 Agile Release Planning is based on a Product Roadmap.................................78

ix Agile Estimation is based on Empirical Data—Not Guesswork! ...................80 Agile Release Planning Sample .......................................................................... 81 Common Issues and Challenges........................................................................ 84 Chapter 8 Managing the Product and Sprint Backlogs.................................................91 Prerequisites........................................................................................................ 93 Product—Release—Sprint Backlogs................................................................. 95 Common Issues and Challenges........................................................................ 99 Chapter 9 Delivering Good Product Increments ......................................................... 104 The Importance of Fundamentals or Basic Principles ...................................105 How to Deliver Good Product Increments ....................................................106 Three Main Focus Areas ...................................................................................107 What if You Cannot Do it All?..........................................................................119 Things Keep Changing—Stay Focused on Basics............................................ 121 Chapter 10 Agile Estimation How To ................................................................................ 123 Estimation Uncertainty..................................................................................... 123 Cone of Uncertainty .........................................................................................124 Long- and Short-Term Planning Horizons...................................................... 126 Planning and Estimation Differences between Waterfall and Agile/Scrum129 Common Estimation Approaches..................................................................... 131 Common Resolution Approaches.................................................................... 139 Estimation Team Size .........................................................................................141

x What is Velocity?............................................................................................... 143 Estimate Accuracy and Velocity over Time ................................................... 145 Chapter 11 Why #NoEstimates gets it #AllWrong.........................................................147 The World We Live In........................................................................................ 149 Software Development Myths.........................................................................150 Chapter 12 Quick & Dirty Guide to Writing Good User Stories......................................152 Splitting User Stories with Generic Words .................................................... 156 Splitting User Stories by Acceptance Criteria............................................... 158 Splitting User Stories with Conjunctions and Connectors...........................160 Chapter 13 Definition of Ready (DoR) vs. Definition of Done (DoD)..............................163 The Big Picture .................................................................................................. 163 Definition of Ready vs. Definition of Done .................................................. 166. Chapter 14 Effective Daily Scrum Meetings (aka Daily Standups).............................171 Simple Rules........................................................................................................172 Common Challenges and How to Deal with Them ........................................173 Chapter 15 Effective Sprint Review Meetings................................................................177 Simple Rules....................................................................................................... 178 Common Challenges and How to Deal with Them ........................................179

xi Chapter 16 Effective Sprint Retrospectives ................................................................. 184 Simple Rules .......................................................................................................185 Managing Process Improvements over Time..................................................186 Common Challenges and How to Deal with Them ....................................... 187 Chapter 17 Agile Test Automation ................................................................................... 190 Open Ended Challenges: The Need for Risk Management and Prioritization ........................................191 Will We Still Need Manual Testing?................................................................ 195 Implementing Automated Tests = Coding Application Functionality......... 196 What to Automate.............................................................................................198 Combinatorial Explosions—Why to Automate ..............................................201 What Tool to Automate With..........................................................................203 Standards and What Automation Language to Use…...................................204 What about Regression Testing? ....................................................................206 When to Automate Functional Testing.......................................................... 207 How Unit and Functional Automation Builds Up Over Time .....................209 We have a Large Code Base with NO Unit Tests ........................................... 211 System Instability and Automation ................................................................. 212 Who Should Automate What?......................................................................... 213 Code Coverage ..................................................................................................214 Test Automation ROI Calculations ................................................................. 215

xii PART II AGILE ADOPTION CHALLENGES Chapter 18 Measuring Agile Transformation Success Utilizing the Net Promoter Score ................................................................231 So, how do you measure success of an Agile Transformation? ................... 233 Basic NPS Survey Calculation and Structure............................................... 234 Classic NPS Survey Question......................................................................... 236 Open-Ended survey questions........................................................................ 236 Measure and Improve Customer Satisfaction................................................237 Chapter 19 Agile Assessments— How to Assess and Evaluate Agile/Scrum Projects.................................240 Roles & Responsibilities ................................................................................... 245 Artifacts ............................................................................................................. 249 Process—For example, Scrum ......................................................................... 251 Process—Engineering Best Practices ............................................................ 254 Delivery Effectiveness ......................................................................................257 Organizational Support.....................................................................................257 Assessing Multiple Projects............................................................................. 259 Small Assessments versus Enterprise Assessments...................................... 263

xiii Chapter 20 The Persistent Myth of Multitasking and Why Multitasking Does Not Work ........................... 265 Chapter 21 Team Agility is Dead, Long Live Executive Agility...................................... 270 Chapter 22 Product Owners—What Makes a Good One?............................................. 275 Chapter 23 Scrum Masters - What Makes a Good One? ............................ 280 Scrum Master vs. Product Owner .................................................................. 285 Hiring Tips.......................................................................................................... 287 Chapter 24 Agile Development Teams - What Makes a Good One?............................... 289 Soft vs. Hard Technical Skills...........................................................................290 How to Interview Technical Team Members .................................................. 291 Interpersonal Skills............................................................................................ 293 Oral Communications......................................................................................294 Teamwork........................................................................................................... 295 Problem-solving ................................................................................................ 296 Team Composition............................................................................................ 298 Single Points of Failure (SPoFs), Redundancy, and Cross-Training ...........301 Team Composition Anti-Patterns ..................................................................303 A Word about Maintaining Good Teams........................................................ 307

xiv Chapter 25 Agile Coaches – What Makes a Good One?...................................................309 Agile/Scrum Competencies .............................................................................. 311 How to find a good Agile coach ....................................................................... 315 PART III AGILE ADOPTION PITFALLS Chapter 26 The Executive Cheat Sheet to Agility ..........................................................323 Common misconceptions ................................................................................ 325 Starting without a clear goal in mind .............................................................. 329 Doing agile vs. being agile ................................................................................330 Underestimating organizational culture.......................................................... 331 Thinking it’s another tool or tweak.................................................................. 332 Come yourself or send no one ........................................................................ 333 Underestimating organizational gravity ......................................................... 334 Ignoring Human Resource considerations..................................................... 334 Not providing an ideal office setup................................................................. 335 Not going all in.................................................................................................. 336 Not communicating a sense of urgency .........................................................337 Driving Agile Transformation as part of another program............................337 Not understanding “plateauing” and “zigzagging” ........................................ 338 Overlapping or mapping Agile into an existing process framework ............340

xv Changing the company culture is too difficult; let’s change Agile/Scrum! 341 Not understanding value stream mapping and flow.......................................341 Not reconsidering reports and metrics........................................................... 342 Lack of empirical process control....................................................................343 Project instead of product focus .....................................................................343 Lack of executive change .................................................................................344 Chapter 27 Methodology Fatigue ..................................................................................... 346 Waterfall ............................................................................................................ 347 V-Model.............................................................................................................348 Spiral ................................................................................................................... 349 IBM Rational Unified Process.......................................................................... 351 Agile.................................................................................................................... 352 Chapter 28 Lack of Organizational Realignment.......................................................... 357 Human Resources............................................................................................. 358 Facilities ............................................................................................................. 363 Communications Technology.......................................................................... 365 Product and Business Strategy ....................................................................... 366 Chapter 29 Agile Burnout Death Spiral .......................................................................... 368 Chapter 30 The Fizzle ......................................................................................................... 373

xvi Chapter 31 Process Overlay .............................................................................................380 Chapter 32 Lack of Engineering Best Practices.............................................................393 Chapter 33 Ignoring DevOps...............................................................................................400 Appendix ...........................................................................................................409 Notes .................................................................................................................411 About the Author ............................................................................................415 Index.................................................................................................................. 417

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 - Agile/Scrum Process .............................................................................. 10 Figure 2 - The Growing Agile Umbrella ................................................................ 19 Figure 3 - Scrum Roles, Artifacts, and Events ......................................................21 Figure 4 - Scrum Process Framework...................................................................22 Figure 5 - Team Definitions in Scrum ...................................................................23 Figure 6 - Agile/Scrum Planning and Execution Phases.....................................25 Figure 7 - The Pragmatic Marketing Framework™..............................................26 Figure 8 - Expanded Scrum Roles, Artifacts, and Events...................................27 Figure 9 - Forces Influencing the Agile/Scrum Team ........................................ 28 Figure 10 - Agile/Scrum Vertical and Horizontal Team Coordination, Functional Breakdown....................................29 Figure 11 - Agile/Scrum Vertical and Horizontal Team Organization............... 30 Figure 12 - SAFe® Full .......................................................................................... 44 Figure 13 - Agile/Scrum Planning and Execution Phases................................... 50 Figure 14 - Team Definitions in Scrum.................................................................. 51 Figure 15 - Deming Cycle aka Shewhart Cycle................................................... 56 Figure 16 - Scrum Overview .................................................................................. 59 Figure 17 - Scrum Task Board ................................................................................ 60 Figure 18 - Scrum Burndown Chart ..................................................................... 60 Figure 19 - Push vs. Pull Model .............................................................................. 61 Figure 20 - Kanban Board ......................................................................................62 Figure 21 - Scrum Task Board vs. Kanban Board................................................. 64 Figure 22 - Continuously Refined Packages of Progress—Timing Focused.....72 Figure 23 - Continuously Refined Packages of Progress - Goal Focused........73 Figure 24 - Continuously Refined Packages of Progress - Scope Focused .....73 Figure 25 - Planning Horizons - Roadmap, Release, Sprint Levels ...................74 Figure 26 - The Product Backlog ...........................................................................75 Figure 27 - Product Backlog Grooming/Refinement Process ...........................76 Figure 28 - Product Backlog Sizing .......................................................................78 Figure 29 - The Sprint Backlog ..............................................................................78

xviii Figure 30 - Sample Product Roadmap ................................................................. 79 Figure 31 - Product Backlog feeding various Release Backlogs ......................... 79 Figure 32 - Improving Estimation Accuracy over Time ...................................... 81 Figure 33 - Product Backlog feeding various Release Backlogs with Story Points................................................................................83 Figure 34 - Graph Showing Unpredictable Velocity...........................................89 Figure 35 - Product Backlog Sizing.......................................................................92 Figure 36 - Product Backlog Grooming/Refinement Process.......................... 94 Figure 37 - Product Backlog feeding various Release Backlogs with Story Points................................................................................96 Figure 38 - Sample Tags .........................................................................................96 Figure 39 - Product Backlog to Sprint Backlog Refinement ............................. 97 Figure 40 - The Sprint Backlog ............................................................................. 97 Figure 41 - Agile/Scrum Roles, Artifacts, Events................................................99 Figure 42 - Fundamental Best Practices............................................................ 107 Figure 43 - Engineering Best Practices..............................................................108 Figure 44 - DevOps Best Practices..................................................................... 112 Figure 45 - Agile/Scrum Process ......................................................................... 118 Figure 46 - Agile/Scrum Roles, Artifacts, Events .............................................. 119 Figure 47 - Cone of Uncertainty - Estimation Variability ............................... 125 Figure 48 - Traditional Planning Onion ...............................................................127 Figure 49 - Traditional Planning Onion Showing Timing and Planning/Estimation Levels............................................................. 128 Figure 50 - Long and Short Term Planning Horizons ....................................... 128 Figure 51 - Waterfall Planning Model .................................................................130 Figure 52 - Agile/Scrum Planning Model ...........................................................130 Figure 53 - Absolute vs. Relative Estimation ..................................................... 132 Figure 54 - Estimation Poker Using Fibonacci Numbers................................. 134 Figure 55 - What Size? ......................................................................................... 136 Figure 56 - The Cone of Uncertainty as Applied to Agile/Scrum Estimation and Planning......................................................................................140 Figure 57 - More People Does Not Mean Better Estimates!........................... 141 Figure 58 - More Team Members = More Communication Paths ................. 142

xix Figure 59 - Estimation Accuracy Improves over Time......................................144 Figure 60 - Product Backlog feeds the Sprint Backlog, which results in Burndown Charts .............................................................................145 Figure 61 - The Product Backlog..........................................................................164 Figure 62 - Agile/Scrum Process ......................................................................... 165 Figure 63 - Daily Scrum Meeting......................................................................... 171 Figure 64 - Simple Running Improvements Log Used in Daily Scrum Standup......................................................... 173 Figure 65 - Agile/Scrum Events - How to deal with time zone distribution... 176 Figure 66 - Sprint Review Discussion ..................................................................177 Figure 67 - Sprint Retrospective Discussion ......................................................184 Figure 68 - Risk Management - Assess, Avoid, Control .................................. 193 Figure 69 - Sprint + 1/Iteration + 1 Approach to Test Automation.................. 197 Figure 70 - System Architecture Drives the Categories of Test..................... 199 Figure 71 - Different Categories of Test ........................................................... 200 Figure 72 - Iterating over Various Test Categories........................................... 207 Figure 73 - Automated Regression Test Suite Build Up over Time................209 Figure 74 - Automated Unit Test Build Up over Time......................................210 Figure 75 - Gradual Test Automation Build Up over Time ..............................210 Figure 76 - Top Down and Bottom Up Approach to Test Automation............ 211 Figure 77 - Progressive Automation as System Components Stabilize ......... 213 Figure 78 - Agile/Scrum Assessment for one project ...................................... 242 Figure 79 - Assessment comparing several projects.......................................... 261 Figure 80 - Assessments tracking improvements over time ........................... 263 Figure 81 - Product Owner Skills........................................................................ 278 Figure 82 - Teams and Influencing Forces......................................................... 282 Figure 83 - Scrum Master as Buddhist Monk ................................................... 283 Figure 84 - Scrum Master as Enforcer ..............................................................284 Figure 85 - Scrum Master as Director...............................................................284 Figure 86 - Happy Teams are Productive Teams..............................................290 Figure 87 - Ideal Developer Skills Distribution ................................................. 292 Figure 88 - Too many Type A personalities make for loud discussions .......... 298 Figure 89 - Development Team Sill/Experience Pyramid ............................... 299

xx Figure 90 - 2-2-1-1-1 Development Team ....................................................... 300 Figure 91 - 3-3-2-1 Development Team.............................................................301 Figure 92 - Sample Skill Set Overlap ................................................................. 302 Figure 93 - Top Heavy Anti.................................................................................304 Figure 94 - Too Inexperienced Anti Pattern.....................................................305 Figure 95 - Extreme Geographic Distribution Anti Pattern...........................306 Figure 96 - Agile/Scrum Roles ............................................................................310 Figure 97 - Core Agile/Scrum Competencies .................................................... 311 Figure 98 - The Waterfall .................................................................................... 347 Figure 99 - The V-Model.....................................................................................348 Figure 100 - The Spiral......................................................................................... 349 Figure 101 - The IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP) ...................................350 Figure 102 - Agile/Scrum .................................................................................... 352 Figure 103 - Agile/Scrum in a Nutshell ............................................................. 383 Figure 104 - Project Management Groups and Knowledge Area Mapping .. 386 Figure 105 - Sample PMBOK Inspired Phase Gate Process .......................... 387

LIST OF TABLES Table 1 - Differences between Scrum and Kanban.............................................. 58 Table 2 - Detailed Comparison of Scrum Task Board and Kanban Board........ 66 Table 3 - Velocity Definition .................................................................................80 Table 4 - Release Plan at Steady 60 Story Point Velocity................................ 83 Table 5 - Release Plan Assuming Gradual Velocity Increase............................. 84 Table 6 - Sample Varying Velocity........................................................................ 88 Table 7 - Absolute vs. Relative Estimation .......................................................... 133 Table 8 - Simple Running Improvements Log Used in Sprint Retrospectives..............................................................186 Table 9 - Pareto Analysis Example 1 ....................................................................194 Table 10—Pareto Analysis Example 2.................................................................. 195 Table 11 - Platform Proliferation and Combinatorial Explosion .......................202 Table 12 - Agile/Scrum Assessment Areas .........................................................244 Table 13 - Assessment comparing several projects............................................260 Table 14 - Assessments tracking improvements over time............................... 262 Table 15 - What makes a good Product Owner? ............................................... 276 Table 16 - Agile/Scrum Focus within the Project Management Groups and Knowledge Area Mapping.........389



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and without them I could not have had such a fun career. It has been a blast, in large part due to the incredibly smart, dedicated, funny, and outright brilliant people I have had the honor to work with. Some people that I am deeply appreciative of are: Armand Aghabegian, who gave me my first job in the US after I relocated from Germany. Thanks for taking a chance! Kent Beck, who explained to me that automated unit testing really required a standardized framework in order to scale. Thanks for open- ing my eyes! Josh Sharfman, who showed me that you can make hard business decisions and keep your humanity at the same time. Thanks for giving me hope! Roberto Edwards, who always offered completely unvarnished feedback. Thanks for always having my back!

xxiv Sayuri Bryant, who taught me the value of truly listening to the voice of the customer. Thanks for never backing off! All the great software engineers, test engineers, analysts, managers, and executives that put up with me. Without you, I would not have learned anything! Thank you all.

INTRODUCTION Why would you want to read this book? Because you are either in charge of, or part of, a team trying to move from an established pro- cess methodology to Agile. You are supposed to help your team, group, department, division, or company become more Agile. Con- gratulations! There are thousands of books, articles, and blogs out there talking about one or the other Agile/Scrum subject: • Books that explain the basic Agile/Scrum concepts. • Books focused on specific Scrum roles: How to be a good scrum master, product owner, scrum team member, or Agile coach. • Books that are focused on more narrow subjects: Agile think- ing, how to write good user stories, how to manage the prod- uct backlog.

2 Brian Will • Books how to develop user interfaces in an Agile matter— Agile UX. • Books that help you obtain certifications. • Books that talk about various Agile flavors, such as eXtreme Programming, or how to scale Agile processes in an enterprise. It is a testament to our industry and the success of the Agile Mani- festo,1 Scrum, and various Agile pioneers that we have all this variety and all this information available. But, how do you tie it all together? How can you transform your organization and truly become Agile, become more competitive, shorten time-to-market windows, and compete with the best? After all, you have a day job and you are supposed to keep things going while adopting a new process and improving things. Also, the challenges of Agile Adoption and Transformation are vastly different, depending on the environment. A lean and mean garage startup might have totally different chal- lenges, and advantages, as compared with a well-funded startup— think about the freedom of being broke with no way to go but up versus the pressure of managing investors and an ever-increasing burn rate! The issues faced by a medium-sized software company might be radically different from the issues faced by a large multi-national be- hemoth producing industrial machinery or an international consulting firm selling mostly professional services. A market leader of the past, on a slow decline due to changing tech- nologies and changing markets, might embark on an Agile transformation

Agile Adoption and Transformation 3 effort in order to stay competitive or hold on to their market position. This book focuses on the main issues that most projects and com- panies are facing when they venture down the path of an Agile adop- tion and transformation effort: • What are the main principles of Agile/Scrum? • What are the main challenges you will be facing? • What are common pitfalls and how can you avoid them? This book is not about teaching you every little detail of Ag- ile/Scrum—there are many good books that do that—but rather providing a brief overview of the Agile/Scrum principles and then ad- dressing all the real world challenges you might face. The book is organized into three main sections: • Part I lays out the basic principles of Agile/Scrum—just in case you have not read other books about it if you need an ex- ecutive summary. • Part II addresses the challenges that are common in all kinds of organizations. • Part III focuses on the pitfalls of Agile adoption. What are the traps that most organizations fall into when trying to transform their organization—and how do you avoid them? Last but not least, why refer to Agile/Scrum? Why not another Agile methodology, such as eXtreme Programming or Kanban?

4 Brian Will For two main reasons: 1. Scrum is not specific to software development and can be ap- plied to all kinds of industries. 2. Scrum is by far the most popular Agile methodology in the market today. Conventions Used Throughout the Book Typography Clues Whenever an important term or concept is introduced, it appears in bold type. Direct quotes from the giants of the field, as well as points being emphasized, appear in italic type.

Agile Adoption and Transformation 5 Icons Used to Highlight Important Points The Lightbulb Something noteworthy! Pay attention to these lightbulbs as they signify important issues to understand. The Bomb Something bad! Literally a bombshell, pitfall, common problem, or issue that companies are facing and struggling with.



PART I AGILE AND SCRUM PRINCIPLES



CHAPTER 1 WHY BEING AGILE IS EASY - AND SO HARD!! Agile/Scrum processes are easy to understand. Any decent Agile coach and trainer can explain the Scrum process to complete novices in less than 30 minutes. Admittedly, 30 minutes is not enough time to understand it in depth. However, the fact that the basics can be explained in that short a time is testimony to the simplicity and elegance of the process. Anybody having observed a delivery-focused, productive, and ef- fective Scrum team knows that there is “something else.” Yes, there is the well understood process, the artifacts like the backlogs, or the cer- emonies like the planning meetings, the daily standups, or the retro-

10 Brian Will spectives. But that is not what makes a good team. There is some- thing intangible that sets good teams apart from the rest of the pack. Figure 1 - Agile/Scrum Process So, why is being truly agile so hard? Why are many teams, despite following Agile/Scrum process frameworks to the letter, not producing the desired results? Why are so many Agile/Scrum teams perceived to not be agile? Why, after an Agile adoption process, are many teams delivering just as slowly as they did under their old waterfall process? Here is what has been observed over the years—and it is a com- pletely subjective list! 1. Old management structures stayed in place (meaning there was no organizational realignment). 2. Old processes were not adjusted (meaning many Agile/Scrum teams are forced to deal with two overlapping process models).

Agile Adoption and Transformation 11 3. The team was not empowered to focus on execution (meaning decision making is still top-down, resulting in long decision making cycles typical in a command and control structure). 4. The team is focused on long discussions and plausible denia- bility instead of focused on getting things done and delivered. 5. The team does not understand the product/project goal or success criteria. Easy ways to spot a team that is truly agile: • Does the team regularly produce value for their stakeholders? Unless value is delivered all the time, with every sprint, the team is failing. • Does the team validate their work to the best of their ability? Value needs to be delivered in working order. It makes no sense for a team to deliver a car where the wheels come off immediately upon trying it. • Are stakeholders actively involved? Teams cannot operate in a vacuum and need stakeholder feedback; if teams are isolated, they usually fail. • Is the team self-organizing? Teams needs to be able to adjust by themselves without management supervision. Who should do what? Who can help out? • Does the team strive to improve its process? Teams need to have the ability to improve their own process. If process im- provement stalls, productivity stalls.

12 Brian Will Simply following an Agile process will not make you more agile. You really need to buy into the self-organizing team idea in order to be able to tap people’s full potential. You need to unburden the Agile team from other processes. Oth- erwise you simply ask them to do double the work. You need to enable the team to fail, to learn, to self-correct, and to self-organize—all things that many organizations do not perceive as acceptable. Teams that follow a traditional waterfall model can be incredibly agile, not because the waterfall process supports agility, but because the team has been empowered to be self-organizing, they self- corrected, they helped each other, etc.—in short, it is following Agile principles. Agility is not a matter of the process that you follow, but a matter of enabling the intangibles to work their magic. Don’t do Agile, be agile!

CHAPTER 2 AGILE AND SCRUM DOES NOT SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS Software development blogs and the internet are abuzz about Ag- ile/Scrum and other agile variations of the SDLC. Vendors of all col- ors and sizes are hyping Agile methodologies as the way to better and faster software delivery. We know we have arrived at a place of complete buzzword penetration when industry representatives other than Silicon Valley software develop- ers are talking about the need for “being Agile.” President Obama’s press secretary once mentioned the need for government to become “more Ag- ile” and respond quicker to emergencies such as the Zika virus.

14 Brian Will Everybody from the front line tech support representative to the company’s CEO seems to talk about “Agile,” “being Agile,” or “be- coming more Agile.” Of course, we are seeing unprecedented acceleration of delivery processes, yearly updates of major hardware and software platforms (think iPhone/iOS), almost constantly frictionless and transparent app updates on our phones, regular updates to our antivirus software, and public criticism toward companies that do not update product and services all the time. Social media hype cycles accelerate infor- mation flow to instant blips on a continuous stream of data floating by. There is also a lot of white noise about Agile/Scrum. The problem is that many companies are jumping to the conclu- sion that adopting an Agile methodology will solve all their woes— without reflecting on the shortcomings or deficiencies of their current development capabilities. You have to know where you are in order to decide where you want to go. An Agile methodology will not solve all your woes. Simple truth is that even for simple processes, you must crawl before you walk, walk before you run, and run really well before becoming a track and field star. You cannot skip levels. You have to learn each step of the process before progressing to the next one. As simple as this principle seems, companies frequently try to go from an ad hoc, chaotic, and dysfunctional software development or IT process to an Agile development methodology, hoping to improve

Agile Adoption and Transformation 15 software delivery cycles, quality, and customer satisfaction. This kind of silver bullet thinking will lead to great disappointments. Malcolm Gladwell documented this principle of “crawl before you walk” in his book, Outliers,1 where he makes the point that you need about 10,000 hours of experience in anything before you become real- ly good at it. This principle applies equally to organizations. You can- not skip levels, from novice to expert, without putting in the time to hone your skills. Maybe this is the reason that some companies that follow an old style waterfall process outperform their more aggressive, Agile-based, competitors? Maybe they just learned over the years how to do re- quirements analysis, project planning, coding, unit testing, continuous integration, and system testing in a way that allows them to reliably deliver their systems, whereas other companies that follow the latest Agile approaches are struggling through the learning process? The author is a strong proponent of Agile delivery methods, but has healthy respect for companies that have made other methodologies work successfully for them. In short, it is preferred to have a well-organized development organization that uses a waterfall methodology over an ad hoc, crisis-driven, unorganized Agile development organization. Agile/Scrum does not automatically equate to faster or better sys- tem delivery. Nokia had been dedicated to Agile development for years and long struggled to put competitive products out to market. We all know how that ended. So, Agile/Scrum does not equate to better and faster delivery or business success. The point here is not to argue that waterfall is better than Ag-

16 Brian Will ile/Scrum. Rather, the basic engineering principles still apply. Simply adopting an Agile methodology will not fix your problems if you have not mastered those engineering principles. You cannot skip levels. An Agile methodology will not fix your problems if you have not already mastered software engineering principles. Scrum is a product development framework and does not actually ad- dress software engineering practices at all. If you have not already mastered a software engineering practice, that should be part of your “becoming agile.” Having said that, if you have done your homework and all things being equal, Agile software development frameworks are superior to the older waterfall/iterative models. Let’s not forget the lessons we learned from excellent engineering companies (whatever development methodology they used) that died an unceremonious death because they missed the market. Good devel- opment methodologies and good engineering practices are a support function for achieving business success, not the other way around. There are other factors that influence if and why a business can be successful that are beyond the scope of this chapter, but if you want food for thought you should watch this fascinating TED Talk by Bill Gross: The single biggest reason why startups succeed.2 Having reviewed success criteria for startups, he prominently points out that market timing seems to be of paramount importance. It’s certainly something to keep in mind. You can have great business success without Agile and without

Agile Adoption and Transformation 17 good engineering practices—and the business can fail completely de- spite using the best Agile and engineering practices. This is some- thing Agile practitioners should keep in mind. Agile/Scrum is not the magic bullet solution to all problems.

CHAPTER 3 AGILE OVERVIEW Although the terms “Agile” and “Scrum” have been around for more than 20 years and the Agile Manifesto1 was signed by its signatories in 2001, it seems there is no shortage of Agile methodologies, frame- works, and flavors.

Agile Adoption and Transformation 19 Figure 2 - The Growing Agile Umbrella • Scrum • Lean • eXtreme Programming The most popular flavor by far seems to be Scrum, especially con- sidering that Scrum forms the basis for some of the other flavors. A search of Amazon in May 2017 yielded the following results: • Scrum: 1,374 book results

20 Brian Will • Lean Software Development: 289 • eXtreme Programming: 393 Considering the fact that Lean and eXtreme Programming are software development specific, this really leaves Scrum as the domi- nant general purpose Agile framework that can be applied to many kinds of environments, challenges, and development efforts. For the purposes of discussing key principles, challenges, and pit- falls, this book will refer to Scrum. Although many of the issues dis- cussed in this book are showcased referring to Scrum, there is nothing inherently Scrum-specific about them; many of the lessons can be ap- plied to Lean or XP environments as well. What is Scrum? The original meaning of the term “Scrum” goes back to Rugby, where it is defined as “an ordered formation of players, used to restart play, in which the forwards of a team form up with arms interlocked and heads down, and push forward against a similar group from the opposing side. The ball is thrown into the scrum and the players try to gain possession of it by kicking it backward toward their own side.” The original thinkers must have had a Rugby player on the team! The Rugby-related meaning of the word has been lost, unless you play Rugby, and the for people who are not sports aficionados, the term “Scrum” seems like one of the many weird software-related ac- ronyms. As such, you can see raging discussions online on whether we should spell the term as “scrum,” “SCRUM,” or “Scrum.”

Agile Adoption and Transformation 21 According to the Scrum Alliance®,2 “Scrum is an Agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software de- velopment projects, but it works well for any complex, innovative scope of work.” Please note that for the purpose of this book we will talk about Scrum when referring to the development framework and Agile when we talk about overarching principles or issues that generally are appli- cable to all Agile methodologies. Scrum is Simple At its core, Scrum is composed of very few defined roles, artifacts, and events. Figure 3 - Scrum Roles, Artifacts, and Events Because of the limited number of roles, artifacts, and events, Scrum is often referred to as a “lightweight framework” as opposed to

22 Brian Will other “heavyweight frameworks” that define many more roles, arti- facts, and events in order to accomplish their purpose. Figure 4 - Scrum Process Framework This approach of being lightweight and easy to understand is very much in line with the old KISS principle—KISS is an acronym for “Keep it simple, stupid” as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, sim- plicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. Scrum Teams are Efficient Similarly to the roles, artifacts, and events, the Scrum team structure is equally simple and straightforward to understand.

Agile Adoption and Transformation 23 Figure 5 - Team Definitions in Scrum Agile has Underlying Values Underlying all this simplicity are basic principles that were published as the Agile Manifesto:3 We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over process and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

24 Brian Will Core Agile Values • Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development • Deliver working software frequently • Business people and developers work together daily • Build projects around motivated individuals • Convey information via face to face conversation • Working software is the primary measure of progress • Maintain constant pace indefinitely • Give continuous attention to technical excellence • Simplify: Maximizing the amount of work not done • Teams self-organize • Teams retrospect and tune their behavior Reviewing the roles, artifacts, and events; the simplicity of the pro- cess; the composition of the (relatively) small team; and the underly- ing values, it becomes clear that the main focus areas are: • Simplicity of Process • Efficiency of Communication • Delivery Focus Scrum in the Context of the Real World The Scrum framework in and of itself works well for small, relatively isolated development efforts. Without getting into enterprise chal-

Agile Adoption and Transformation 25 lenges (see later chapters), the reality is that many projects are done in existing organizations, with existing processes, active stakeholders, and already existing departments that might influence your process. Hence, within the enterprise context, we are most likely faced with various phases of a product or project development effort that resem- bles something like this: Figure 6 - Agile/Scrum Planning and Execution Phases Although this can vary depending on your specific environment, almost all companies follow a process where planning and preparation

26 Brian Will precedes the execution and delivery of a product or project. The Pragmatic Marketing Framework™ specifically addresses strategy and planning phases that address product roadmaps, requirements man- agement, and launch planning. Figure 7 - The Pragmatic Marketing Framework™ So all product and project development efforts follow some kind of phased approach where the vision gets translated into a roadmap, which forms the basis for a high level plan, which gets refined into lower level plans, allowing you to deliver in an Agile/Scrum frame- work—but with a slightly expanded list of roles, artifacts, and events.