Balance & Serialize, from the newly published book, Beyond Agile.

[From Chapter Six, Beyond Agile (beyondagilethebook.com), A book by Jesse Tayler with Alex Cone —a must read for anyone with a stake or interest in the outcome of software production.]

Schedules are critical to software planning at any size or stage. 

As teams grow and multiple disciplines emerge —schedules become the key to inter-departmental organization and reliably joining technical efforts into the broader release plan.

There is one overarching strategy behind accurate schedules and release projections in Beyond Agile. We refer to this process and strategy as “balance and serialize”.

Although software is invisible, construction schedule is governed by a visibly identifiable phase.

In other words, phases can be identified by taking note of the types of activities in which each team is currently engaged, and we can use this information to know where in the development Cycle any team or project truly is. 

Because Cycles repeat phases in order, we can determine the boundaries of our schedule as surely as predicting spring follows winter.

Balance First

A well-designed release plan focuses on only a handful of major architectural issues for any given team or group. These are either previously identified bug-makers or creations of new features that require architectural consideration. 

It is not practical to tackle too much design for any given release, and thus there is always a balance between quality and progress which is itself, bound by schedule and resource. 

This is balance.

[Figure 3. Balance. Compare and estimate quickly and accurately.] 

Any product already in use, will have a list of issues reported from the production system. These bugs must also be separated into major Architectural elements or simple logical flaws and misunderstandings. This task is best performed by the leading software architect of that system.

Within the methodology of Beyond Agile, even a minor release can pile on many simple logical fixes, however major Architectural elements are separated at birth and given a different life.

Ticket to Defer

Logical flaws and bugs being tracked must be ordered with an eye to that which we might call deferment. 

The choice to defer bug fixes, is critical to efficiency. 

[Figure 4. Serialize. Visualize the balanced values as a serial schedule that can contract and expand without loss of integrity of phase.]

Consider that we’ve noted the impact of design and that we can only address a few Architectural issues in any given Cycle. This knowledge greatly impacts the order in which bugs are most effectively scheduled.

If a future release is intended to address underlying design problems in a “bug-maker” element of the software, we may well fix those issues all at once. 

Bugs having a root cause relating to Architectural design should be part of that designer’s scope of work when that scheduled time arrives. 

Handily, each group of related Architectural bug reports becomes a set of proofs that provide a useful unit-test for that one software element.

It is only sensible to line up bug reports in ways that are most efficient. By quickly identifying Architectural elements, we can easily see the most effective ordering of fixes. This practice is at the very foundation of highly effective scheduling promoted in Beyond Agile.

Balancing any release or milestone is as simple as asking “how different is this phase from the previous build? Is there a lot more to design? Is this release going to need more debugging or less?” —If we divide and compare by phase, we can estimate and serialize quickly and accurately.

Relying upon this practice of “balance and serialize”, the schedule can contract and expand with internal or external pressures. We can accordion the length of all phases at once and without disrupting the integrity of the Cycle as a whole.

Balance is by design.

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Read more about the new trend in software construction methods that is taking over efforts large and small. Beyond Agile is the book that sums up this new spirit and ushers in the awakening of this new era. Take advantage of expert knowledge and make your software teams happier and more productive than you ever imagined was possible.

beyondagilethebook.com