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Agile Scrum, PMI, Rapid Results

Best Practices and Success Stories*

Begin With The End In Mind:  What results are we trying to achieve?  Tom’s personal Agile project results:

  1. Flowserve SOX Project:  Replaced dysfunctional $750,000 software package for $125,000.  Saving $350,000 per year in labor and extreme cost of mistakes (estimates).  System in production in 120 days.    CLICK HERE for technical details.

  2. Technology Startup – Software product development project in extreme trouble.  Brought project under control through story board, process flow, use cases, scope management, standards enforcement.   Recovered $300,000 from non-performing vendor and reduced cost to bring product to market by $14 Million in 90 days.    CLICK HERE for technical details.

  3. Celanese - $5 million complex infrastructure upgrade project in trouble:  Brought under control, scope reduced, change control implemented, project completed in 90 days. CLICK HERE for technical details.

  4. Texas Instruments:  Two advanced imaging / workflow projects completed in 120 days.  Saved $2.25 million in labor over 5 years in accounts payable, improved internal customer service 400%, freed up $5 million+ in cash from accounts receivable over 5 years.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  5. Crossmark:  Series of 90 day projects resulted in $7.5 million saved over three years for cost of less than $400,000.  Consolidated 36 offices to 13 while creating a nation-wide set of standard sales and service processes.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  6. Frito Lay:  Imaging / workflow project completed in 90 days. Resulted in 25% reduction in accounts payable cost per invoice, accounts payable cycle time reduced by 25%.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  7. Handleman Subsidiary: Series of 90 day projects for sales support systems resulted in 30 small sales totaling $6.5 million and a landmark sale of $5.5 million to P&G. CLICK HERE for technical details.

  8. Specialty Retailer:  Order processing time reduction from 5 days to 1 1/2 days.  Completed in 90 days.   CLICK HERE for technical details.

  9. Johnson & Johnson Subsidiary - Database to estimate IT department work load and manage scope.  Resolved 200% IT department under-funding.  Completed in 60 days.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  10. Northern Telecom:  Software development for telephone switch product completed in 90 days.  Scope and change control enforced, preventing 33% overrun. CLICK HERE for technical details.

  11. Engineered Air Balance:  90 day project resulted in 30% labor savings on critical process and improved customer service.     CLICK HERE for technical details.

  12. Grote Consulting:  Software specification and bid package for web development. Completed in 90 days after multiple failures by previous vendors.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  13. Ruhrpumpen – Quality project:  Resulted in extremely complex manual processes, mapped as-is, designed to-be, workflow and advanced SharePoint application developed within 60 days.  CLICK HERE for technical details

  14. Viscotech:  Resulted in processes mapped, sales, purchasing, shipping applications up and running in SharePoint in 90 days for minimal cost.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

  15. MCI:  Two advanced imaging / workflow projects.  Resulted in reduction of cycle time for deployment of workflow systems from 6 weeks to 6 days.  Completed in 60 days. CLICK HERE for technical details.

  16. City of Fort Worth – Year 2000 project:  Resulted in 25% reduction in testing and quality assurance cycle time.  Completed in 90 days.  CLICK HERE for technical details

  17. Ettinger Rosini (Manufacturer's Rep), complex sales project tracking and reporting.  Process map, requirements, initial prototype developed in one week.  Full prototype developed in 30 days.  Full solution requiring complex reporting developed in 90 days. CLICK HERE for technical details

(Remember - there is a Dark Side - See at Bottom - Agile Projects that Got Into Trouble...)

Agile Scrum - Summary of Key Concepts:

PROBLEMS AGILE SCRUM CHAMPIONS FACE

 

Executive Sponsor

User Participation

Scope

Business Case

Day to Day Problems

Burn Down Chart Reporting

Non-Integrity Conduct

 

AGILE SCRUM FUNDAMENTALS

 

Roles

 

Product:  Desired end result, has features, produces benefits

 

User Stories:  One sentence:  “As a (role), I want (feature), so that (benefit)

 

User Epic:  A collection of user stories, risk of trying to include too much in a single story

 

Product Backlog (Wish List):  Collection of all user stories

 

Sprint:  

 

Release Planning:  Prioritize product backlog, estimating.  Includes 2 to 12 sprints

 

Estimating:  

 

Burn Down Charts (Integral to Status Reporting and Release Planning): 

Agile Burn Down Chart with Notes 

Daily Scrum:  15 minute stand up meeting to communicate work completed, obstacles, “plan to complete today”

 

Scrum Retrospective:  Debrief meeting on what went right, what needs improvement

 

Tools:  Big wall chart, note cards, spreadsheets, SharePoint, MS Project or formal software developed by www.axosoft.com (try for free)

Observations from Brad S:  (Client in West Texas, Work Ongoing)

 

PMI (Project Management Institute), Best Practices of Waterfall, Previous Techniques: 

(12.8) The Gold Standard: Business Problem - Process Solution - Requirements - Project Plan - Specification - Develop or Buy Software – Implement - Results - All Managed Through Earned Value

 

VIDEO SCRIPT NOTES:

 

 

 

Rapid Results - Agile Summary of Common Concepts:  Robert H. Schaffer, author and creator of Rapid Results Methods, pioneered the "business side" adoption of Agile methods for General Electric (called the GE Work Out method) and other notable companies.  CLICK HERE for our summary of his successes and methods

1.    An answer to Big Bang, Waterfall project problems.

    

2.    Break project into 30 to 90-day chunks – small teams of people close to the work.

 

2.1  Series of 90 day, rapid results projects used to change the culture, move toward the desired big changes.

 

3.    Engage business people by solving high-value business problems in 30-90 days.  Actually put into production.

 

4.    Joint worker / customer-first focus.

 

5.    Well planned team meetings, work sessions.  Input from all, obligation to dissent, listen, follow.

 

6.    Owners, accountability for completing actions

 

7.    Help the business people discover and communicate requirements / what they need, best solutions within available time.

 

8.    Some autonomy for team, decisions close to the work

 

9.    High value work drives out lower value

 

10.  Fact-based, Deming (Crosby) approach:  Study, experiment, measure results, adopt.

 

11.  Big Cautions:

 

11.1.              Process implications:  undefined, continually changing

11.2.              Can’t afford to do it right – want juice without the squeeze

11.3.              Contain the iterations

11.4.              Scope management

11.5           Watch factors beyond our control:  e.g. all people and money absorbed by big SAP financial implementation

11.6.              User and executive sponsor support, participation, funding, buy-in

11.7.              Managing architecture, framework, software supported – longer term

11.8           Worker / Customer-first stays top priority

 

Agile Projects In Trouble (Where I Assisted in Turning Around)

 

(It is important to understand why Agile projects get into trouble and how to prevent problems in future. Full project details below.)

 

Federal Express:  Extreme cost overruns and delays due to constantly changing scope and “religious zeal” among the developers.  Developers had to be severely disciplined to return their focus to results needed by the business unit.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

 

Technology Startup:  Extreme cost overruns and delays due to unsupervised, out of control vendor and technology focus by engineers / developers.    CLICK HERE for technical details.

 

First Command:  Extreme out of control vendor created dozens of iterations, uncontrolled scope and changes, extreme cost overruns and delays.   Resulted in lawsuit and $3.5 million settlement for First Command.    CLICK HERE for technical details.

 

Northern Trust:  Extreme problems matching technical solution to business process changes.  Multiple, well intended vendors were uncoordinated, resulting in extreme delays, iterations and a 10-fold technology cost overrun.  Lawsuit narrowly avoided.  CLICK HERE for technical details.

 

 

 

* Full credit and honoring of copyrighted materials is due to Robert H. Schaffer's body of work, especially his excellent book Rapid Results, 2005,  excerpts from Agile Project Management with Scrum by (Microsoft Professional) Ken Schwaber, 2004, The Project Management Institute and an excellent Agile Scrum video by Hamid Shojaee, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU0llRltyFM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOM INGRAM AND ASSOCIATES, INC. 972-394-5736  tom@tomingraminc.com