Agile Project Predictability and Risk
Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
How to optimize predictability and control risk for projects using the three pillars of Agile: Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation
by Lenka Davis
In this article
Your experience with projects
The three pillars for success
Transparency
Inspection
Adaptation
Optimizing predictability
Controlling risk
Your experience with projects?
Have you been new to a project and felt lost and overwhelmed?
Have you worked with a new team of people and tried to figure out how they best work together so you can help them?
Has a project seemed complicated and almost impossible to do?
You may have asked yourself any of these questions at one time or another when working on a project. The more projects you participate in the more experience you will have and that you can apply to the next one you work on. As you apply the three Scrum pillars to projects, you will find that you can predict the outcomes for either the good things and the issues that can occur. Once you identify as many of those positives and negatives as possible you can work to control them and thus reduce the risk.
The three pillars for success
There are three pillars in the Scrum Guide that are necessary for a successful implementation of an empirical process. First let’s define scrum and empiricism.
Scrum Theory* is a framework for developing and delivering complex projects. Scrum is based on empiricism.
Empiricism* is defined as “the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience”, additionally, “knowledge coming from experience and making decisions on what is known”. Basically this all translates into you learning from your experience rather than random ideas or traditions.
* From The Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland
Three pillars are:
Photo by FOX
Transparency
Agile definition: Significant aspects of the process must be visible to those responsible for the outcome.
What does this really mean? When you work on a project with a team that is small, the amount of communication and knowledge that is shared is large and easy (compared to big teams). All the team members know what is being done with the parts of the project they are working on and also know about the other parts not directly related to their piece of work. The visibility into the whole project allows for issues and creative problem solving to happen by the whole team because the amount of time needed to explain the problem to the team is not long.
Example
For example, let’s say the team is developing software for a creative user. In this case the team is building software that takes the user's images, allows the user to crop those images. A creative process such as cropping images involves team members that are subject matter experts (SMEs), that will want features such as crop buttons, corners and anchors, bounding boxes, etc. Already you can see there is a specific vocabulary that the experts use. If everyone on the team building the product starts to learn the vocabulary then communication within the team becomes more clear. If the software developers are not exposed or have visibility into their user’s world then they are less likely to communicate with them. And then less likely to come up with creative and groundbreaking solutions and less likely to anticipate problems they might run into.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska
Inspection
Agile definition: Users must frequently inspect artifacts and progress toward a sprint goal to detect any undesirable variances.
Users, in this case, are team members using the Agile methodology.
Artifacts are items such as the to-do list for this phase (also known as user stories), software features in the release or even the finished product.
Undesirable variances can be caused by big issues like limitations of the current software or hardware technology or a misunderstanding of the requirements. Or it can be caused by unanticipated problems when you put together existing software code and new code or upgrading hardware.
Example
Using the same software example as above of adding a new feature that has an image cropping being added, inspection of the feature happens when new releases are ready. Normally the key members of the technical team and anyone from the business and user side will come to a scheduled demo of these new features. This demo meeting allows the team members to inspect the work; it’s basically a test drive. There is nothing like seeing the feature live and playing around with it to reveal those issues you could not have anticipated.
Photo by Pixabay
Adaptation
Agile definition: If an inspector determines that one or more aspects of a process deviate outside acceptable limits, and that the resulting product will be unacceptable, the process or the material being processed must be adjusted.
The key part of this pillar is that fixes or adjustments must be made as soon as possible so that new issues don’t form. Adjustments can be as small as the software team needs to update their development server, or as big as consumer demand is changing and so a feature such as curb side pick needs to be added to a food business. Or it can be that the business just did a pivot to less professional photographers since demand is high for social media needs.
Example
Think of adaptation as the problems that happen during a remodel of an existing home. Trying to make old floors, plumbing, walls and the style of the house fit seamlessly can present problems. For projects it is inevitable that something will go awry. Anything from issues with communications, technical challenges, logistical problems, etc. can all happen. For technical projects, this happens during the upgrading of the UX/UI of software or replacing hardware parts of devices.
Optimizing Predictability
Transparency and Inspection will lead to optimizing predictability, along with the team’s experience. Learning who is involved, what they do, why certain parts of projects go well, why other parts don’t, and when everything needs to be completed and how it all works together is invaluable experience. Understanding the parts and having visibility to those parts helps small decisions to be made correctly.
When the teams get together to inspect or review parts that are completed you also hear about the hurdles each group had to overcome. This is great because of the experience the teams gain the longer they work together.
Controlling Risk
Of course having transparency with what is going on and reviewing all the work will help control risk, but adapting quickly to fixing issues also reduces risk. Tony Hsieh in his book “Delivering Happiness” has found that one of the three indicators of being happy is having “perceived control”. I love that word, perceived. How does controlling risk and perceived control relate to each other? Well, since you are leaning into controlling the risk, it’s a little bit of both perceived control of that risk that happens in real life and actual control of the risk. I bring this up because I am not talking about total control here, but a control of as much as is needed or possible.
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Fun Fact
Spotify uses the Agile method to stay in business in a highly competitive market. Spotify’s Scrum masters are also experienced Agile coaches.
Spotify’s team successfully uses the Agile method “because their competition is Google, Amazon and Apple, any one of whom could crush them in a nanosecond, unless they’re faster, better, cheaper, and they have to stay that way, they have to keep on running out ahead”
Lenka Davis is a Managing Partner at Fly to Soar. She has worked in marketing, managing projects and building tools in the high-tech industry for Fortune 100 companies and also ran her own business. Follow Lenka and the Fly to Soar Team on Instagram @flytosoarcompany
