How to understand the agile development from 0 to 1

In the digital age, more and more companies are trying to build their own platforms and applications to support their internal business scenarios and connect the upstream and downstream of the industry chain. With the in-depth use of products and business changes and innovations, enterprise IT departments are faced with the challenge of how to respond more quickly to requirements and changes. At this time, agile development is often mentioned.

In our communication with many customers, we found that many customers have realized the significance of agile development and look forward to using the concepts and methods of agile development to help the team improve. However, there is a general question about how agile development goes from 0 to 1. ? Where is the beginning? How to start? How to define 1?

0: Iteration 0

Here I will first talk about the concept of "Iteration 0", so that everyone can buffer before entering agile iterative development.

In most agile projects, before the start of the first iteration, some "preparatory work" will be done. This is called "iteration 0". In this iteration, future incremental release roadmaps and product backlogs can be formulated. List, etc., analyze the iterative environment and some hardware configurations to "make sure" the project is ready.

If it is a new team, facing brand-new people together, they are often unfamiliar when working together, and they don't know the level and working mode of the other party. In this case, iteration 0 can help everyone get familiar with each other. The cycle of Iteration 0 is often not very long, and can be controlled at about 1 week. The product owner formulates the to-do items for the iteration according to the size of the team.

👉_The team includes three roles, they are the product owner, the development team and the Scrum Master. _

In iteration 0, the team pays more attention to how members cooperate, including story size suitable for the team, story point evaluation method suitable for the team, collaboration mode suitable for the team, development norms suitable for the team, and so on.

Iteration started: Scrum + Kanban

After understanding the "routine" of teamwork, the product owner can formulate a development rhythm suitable for the team. For example: one iteration in two weeks, two iterations plus one week of continuous improvement, so that the rate of one version in five weeks will be updated steadily. This is also the iteration frequency of the Pigtooth R&D team. Of course, if emergencies or personnel changes are encountered during the iteration, the iteration cycle can be adjusted.

The development team usually adopts Scrum+Kanban to carry out work in agile iterations. There are many meetings involved in the agile development process. Before an iteration really starts, there is an important meeting—the iteration planning meeting to determine the to-do list for this iteration. The iteration plan usually takes 2-3 hours and is organized by agile coaches and team members. At the meeting, the product manager described the business background and design logic of the story (that is, the task item), and the team members asked questions, reached a consensus on the product design of the story in the mutual feedback communication, and based on the common understanding of the story, the team members evaluated the story’s The size of the story point (sometimes we also use man-hours), disassembled into workable sub-tasks, and claim specific responsible persons. At the iteration planning meeting, the team finally commits to the to-do list for this iteration based on the estimated story size and team capacity.

After the iteration is started, everyone will carry out the development work according to the priority of the task received before. This stage is called Sprint in Scrum. Daily stand-up meetings are held every day. Stand-up meetings last about 10-15 minutes. Personally talk about what was done yesterday, what to do today, and what support is needed, and use the Kanban tool to advance the task.

At the end of each Sprint, there will be a Sprint review meeting. The most important work of the review meeting is to demonstrate the functions and deliverables, verify the implementation scenarios of the user stories, and accept evaluations. Before the iteration review meeting, the team will check the work of this iteration. In order to fulfill the promise made in the iteration plan meeting, the team will usually find ways to "sprint" to keep its promise, and this is the meaning of the Sprint.

After the Sprint review meeting, the agile/feature team will conduct a Sprint review meeting. The focus of the review meeting is team review and adjustment, and feedback on work problems and improvement points. Agile/Feature Team The agile team will review whether the problems in the previous review meeting have been completely resolved, and prepare in advance according to the objectives of this iteration, product functions, agile processes, and requirements management. Kinds of progress and issues are discussed.

The small "1" of agile development: MVP

MVP (Minimum Viable Product, minimum viable product), that is, it is a product and can run, which means that the product has enough functions for early users to use, users can continue to provide feedback for future product development. However, if there is only one MVP for a product, users may not buy it.

The customer's inner OS: I don't want to just use a simple version. When will I achieve my expectations?

At this time, it is necessary to formulate a roadmap for the MVP at each stage of the project. What does the roadmap need to reflect the "MVP" steps? How to adjust the MVP? What can you see next? Designing the process in the organization in this way allows users to see the progress and incremental results of the product early, so as to improve users' satisfaction with product effectiveness and R&D efficiency.

MVP urges developers to transfer product value to users, forming a small "1", and then through user feedback and the passage of time, this value can be continuously increased, and finally a high-quality "1" can be obtained.

summary

From 0 to 1 in agile development is not only the 0 to 1 through multiple iterations of the product, but also the 0 to 1 collaboration and progress of self-organizing cross-functional teams. The core is that the team has common values and concepts, respects change, iterative development, and uses landable methods and tools to deliver value faster, stronger and more stable.

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This article was originally created by the Toothfish technical team, please indicate the source for reprinting: official website

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The Choerodon full-scenario performance platform provides systematic methodology and collaboration, testing, DevOps and container tools to help companies pull through the requirements, design, development, deployment, testing and operation processes, and improve management efficiency and quality in one stop. From team collaboration to DevOps tool chain, from platform tools to systemic methodology, Pigtooth fully meets the needs of collaborative management and engineering efficiency, runs through the entire end-to-end process, and helps the team to be faster, stronger and more stable. here to try the pig tooth fish