Real World Agile Checklist

More of our clients are interested in doing “agile” development.  Some succeed, others don’t.  Once you’ve made the decision to apply the agile methodology to your project, here are some things to keep in mind - lessons from the “real world”…

• Overall Strategy – needs to be clear to all participants, and also translated into “actionable” work steps, so that everybody understands how the strategy will be implemented, roles/responsibilities, goals and milestones, and commits to make it happen
• Release Planning – frames up what will be released when, based on functional priorities and any delivery commitments that may be in backlog
• Iteration Planning – clarify the scope of each iteration (sprint), what’s included and what’s not, discuss details about the process of producing and testing each iteration to hit acceptance targets and assure project continuity needed to meet the plan
• Daily Monitoring – one of the hardest parts – need to assure all moving pieces are well coordinated in a fast-moving agile project – through meetings, conversations, reviews, etc. – keep your fingers on daily problems/issues, changes to specifications or scope, resource availability, project participants/tasks not synchronized with each other, IT policy/standard adherence, criteria for testing and acceptance – know that there will likely be revisions and updates to strategies, releases, iterations, etc., over the lifecycle of the project.