The agile process helps reduce such risks as poor product quality or building the wrong product entirely. Though agile and Scrum were originally designed for software projects, their iterative process and techniques apply beyond their initial intended industry.
Here are five ways agile and Scrum techniques can curtail project quality risks:
1. All practitioners must review project requirements with the client.
In agile, the "user story" is the basic building block for agile requirement lists. A formal "acceptance test" is an integral part of that user story, as is explicitly reviewing it with the client to verify you have customer concurrence on the deliverable.
2. Agile teams collaborate while creating project components.
Inspections or pairing can prevent up to 50 percent of possible defects, according to research I conducted with colleagues. In addition, collaborating helps team members share other knowledge about the product or tools used to meet project needs at a critical stage.
3. Authors create a consistent set of verification measures.
Ideally, this takes the form of automated verification tests designed to catch missing functions or incorrect product behavior. These tests are run by the original author, as a sort of control against variables, and also used for regression testing by other team members. Yet even if a project passes these tests, it's also crucial that the product components are streamlined from the get-go so they can be easily maintained or extended in the future. This is called "refactoring."
4. Quality teams test small project deliverables as they are written.
Since the deliverables have been inspected or pre-tested, at this point you should expect few errors.
5. Feedback from a demonstration.
Agile teams hold demonstrations for their stakeholders, showing items completed since the last demonstration. The key is to elicit feedback from stakeholders and use it to improve the product. This provides one final chance to confirm that what the team produced was what the customer wanted. In this way, ideas and changes can be addressed before the completion of the project.
In addition to the following checklist for agile and Scrum risk reduction, it never hurts for teams to employ risk lists to further improve project performance:
How else do you think agile helps mitigate risk? What steps do your teams take to mitigate risk?
Read the Organizational Agility report for an in-depth look at how agile organizations increase their success rate on new projects, even in a volatile global economy.
Here are five ways agile and Scrum techniques can curtail project quality risks:
1. All practitioners must review project requirements with the client.
In agile, the "user story" is the basic building block for agile requirement lists. A formal "acceptance test" is an integral part of that user story, as is explicitly reviewing it with the client to verify you have customer concurrence on the deliverable.
2. Agile teams collaborate while creating project components.
Inspections or pairing can prevent up to 50 percent of possible defects, according to research I conducted with colleagues. In addition, collaborating helps team members share other knowledge about the product or tools used to meet project needs at a critical stage.
3. Authors create a consistent set of verification measures.
Ideally, this takes the form of automated verification tests designed to catch missing functions or incorrect product behavior. These tests are run by the original author, as a sort of control against variables, and also used for regression testing by other team members. Yet even if a project passes these tests, it's also crucial that the product components are streamlined from the get-go so they can be easily maintained or extended in the future. This is called "refactoring."
4. Quality teams test small project deliverables as they are written.
Since the deliverables have been inspected or pre-tested, at this point you should expect few errors.
5. Feedback from a demonstration.
Agile teams hold demonstrations for their stakeholders, showing items completed since the last demonstration. The key is to elicit feedback from stakeholders and use it to improve the product. This provides one final chance to confirm that what the team produced was what the customer wanted. In this way, ideas and changes can be addressed before the completion of the project.
In addition to the following checklist for agile and Scrum risk reduction, it never hurts for teams to employ risk lists to further improve project performance:
- Client review of each acceptance test
- Team collaboration in inspection or pairing
- Test automation by the author and refactoring cleanup
- Independent testing by the quality team
- Demo to the client
How else do you think agile helps mitigate risk? What steps do your teams take to mitigate risk?
Read the Organizational Agility report for an in-depth look at how agile organizations increase their success rate on new projects, even in a volatile global economy.
User stories are the cornerstone of Agile and it takes time to move from specs to crisp stories. Product Managers should work closely with the agile team to define acceptance criteria, which is often not the case in an offshore environment when Product Manager works remotely or is not with the team.