Agile Practices & Patterns

What is Agile Pattern

An agile is a mindset which bring empirical process control to uncertain environment. it strikes to release value early and often, mistakes can be learned through direct experience and risk can be handled in a timely manner.

The most commonly we heard that there are no "best practices" for getting an agile mode of delivery. Despite, it is possible to identify certain recurring patterns that lead a productive implementation. Whether it works in iteration, value driven releases or on demand or at regular sprint, limiting work-in-progress, or having clarity of what "done" means, a common terminology can be filtered. In short, there are patterns of project execution through which agile enterprise might be unfold.

Agile Transformation

In many organization it's being observed, only executive sponsorship can give sufficient urge to move from convention project management. Agile patterns are often differ greatly from established practice and there is organizational gravity which cause hurdle and that must be address. Most companies doesn't prefer work iteratively, or even have cross functional team in place that have clear understanding of such process. Without the clear sponsorship an agile can fail to imprint upon organizational culture, and the management will revert to convention practice.

A pattern may be needed to change the organization culture in a way which facilitate to adopt agile way of working. To do this a transformational process will be used like a catalyst which will reinforce the change and make success more likely. For example, When agile ways are described to team, new practices can be emerged and used to shape and assess progress and maturity. The challenge is to make sure that each change brings most relevant agile method and it's not implemented for its own sake. but has need and effect upon outcomes.

We are going to discuss different agile practices and patterns which companies implemented as per their culture and magnitude of organizational gravity which they have to manage.

Following are the list of Agile patterns which is categorized by Ian Mitchell who is chief scientist at Proagile Ltd. and in coming post we will discuss it in detail.

1. Backlog: List down all work in ordered list
2. Controlled Failure: Terminate project and free resources from other activities
3. Done: Avoid rework and complete work with known standards
4. Increment: Deliver tested potential release early and frequently
5. Forecast: Predict competition and estimate the size of backlog
6. Information Radiator: Define status of a team and it's work immediately reflect
7. Avatar: Who is working on what, good for WIP
8. Inspect and Adapt: Team improve their own working practices
9. Kanban Sandwich: Appropriate agile way of working, it's scaled agile framework
10. Iterate: Minimize in progress stories deliver value more quickly and reduce waste
11. Relative Sizing: Relative sizing of backlog items when it's difficult to estimate stories
12. Product Ownership: Provide single point of contact who represent customer requirement
13. Swarm: Put all resources on one thing in order to expedite delivery.
14. Servant Leadership: Protect team from distraction and impediment and facilitate them to resolve dependencies to achieve their goals
15. Quality of Services: Address issues quickly which include service level agreements