Create Your Successful Agile Project: Principles Over Practices (PMILOC)

Many teams and organizations decide on a specific agile approach, such as Scrum, and “install practices.” But, because an agile approach requires culture changes, many Scrum teams fail. As a result, many so-called “agile” teams practice waterfall while calling it “our agility.

Instead of “failed agile,” or waterfall masquerading as agility, your team can use four specific principles to create more agility and better outcomes for everyone. When teams learn how to create a project rhythm, to visualize how they work, the measures that reinforce delivery and improvement, and how to create a culture of continuous improvement, they live the agile principles. And with any luck, they never have to have a standup.

In this presentation, Johanna Rothman will clarify the four principles and the flow metrics, so you can learn to use these principles and watch your team improve daily.

You will learn about and see examples of these principles:

• How to create a project rhythm
• Ways to visualize the work
• Which measures reinforce delivery and improvement
• How to create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments.

Transcript

1. Create Your Successful Agile Project: Principles Over Practices Johanna Rothman @johannarothman www.jrothman.com
2. © 2025 Johanna Rothman 4 Principles 1. Create a project rhythm 2. Visualize work and the bottlenecks 3. Develop and use measures that reinforce the team’s delivery and improvement 4. Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments 2 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture
3. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 1: Create a Project Rhythm • Many teams start with Scrum in 2-week iterations 3
4. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Iterations Work Well When… • Everyone understands when the iteration starts and fi nishes: • Enough hours of overlap • The entire team works together on one product • You can right-size features to fi t into an iteration • You don’t need to accommodate too much interrupting work 4
5. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Which Project Rhythms Might You Need? • Finish a story—every day or two. • Kaizen to address a small improvement. • Assess team satisfaction—daily. • Demo—weekly or biweekly. • Re fi ne more stories to prepare for more work—once or twice a week. • Weekly or biweekly retrospective. • Weekly or biweekly planning. • Standups—do you need them?? 5
6. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Flow With a Cadence Also Works • One team always re fi nes stories on Mondays and Thursdays for 20-30 minutes. • They demo every Wednesday at the PO’s 10 am (and record the demo) • They conduct a kaizen when they want to • A more formal retro on Fridays at noon Eastern 6
7. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 2: Visualize Work and Bottlenecks • If we can see the work, we can choose how to manage it • If we can see where the bottlenecks are, we can choose to experiment or change 7
8. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Different Boards Solve Different Problems 8
9. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Where Is Your Work? 9
10. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Map Your Current Work States • What states does your team need to fi nish work? Example: code review. • Use those states to de fi ne your board. • This is a value stream map. The work time is the cycle time. 10
11. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 3: “Virtuous” Metrics • Measures that reinforce: • More of what we want and • Less of what we don’t want 11
12. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Possible (Virtuous) Measures • Team-visible measures • Cycle time (and/or lead time) (Want to reduce cycle time) • Cumulative fl ow (Want to reduce/manage WIP in various states) • Share the team’s progress outside the team: • Demos • Features chart • Product backlog burnup chart • Done and not yet released 12
13. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Flow metrics are reality and reinforce each other 13
14. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Little’s Law • WIP (Work in Progress) • Throughput (work items per unit time) • Cycle or lead time (time to release value as a trend) • Aging (how long a piece of work has been in progress) • (Notice: you can count all of these, except for the cycle time series) 14 Work in Progress = (WIP) Cycle Time * Throughput
15. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Little’s Law as a Reinforcing Loop 15
16. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Relative Size Estimates Don’t Include Delays • One team: • Estimated this item would be a day or so (1 story point) • People only spent a day or so on it • But, the team took many days or weeks to deliver it • Where did the time go? (Value stream map and Cycle time explain) 16
17. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Cycle Time Example 1: Team Works as Individuals 17
18. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Cycle Time Example 2: Work as aCollaborative Team 18
19. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Cycle Time Example 3: Insuf fi cient Hours of Overlap 19
20. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Notes About the Value Stream Images • Most of the teams I work with have much longer cycle times • Work times of one day or so. Wait times of 4-7 days, for a total of 8 days of cycle time • Count weekends. Your customers don’t stop wanting work just because it’s a weekend 20
21. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Cycle Time Offers Helpful Forecasting 21
22. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Use Cycle Time to Forecast/Estimate/Predict • How long do items “normally” take to fi nish? • When do we have out- of-bounds unexpected cycle times? 22
23. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Add 50%, 80%, 90% Con fi dence Lines 23 See https:// www.jrothman.com/mpd/ 2024/04/how-to-move- from-story-points-and- magical-thinking-to- cycle-time-for-decisions/ for more information
24. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Measure Completed Features • Completed features (running, tested features) only. • Your customers use them • You can release them • They are valuable • Include total and remaining features so we have a sense of where we are • Depends on deliverables, not epics or themes • Never measure story points or velocity 24
25. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Product Backlog Burnup • Real earned value • Partial answer to “Where are we?” • Shows value feature-by-feature • Shows when features grow 25
26. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Done and Not Yet Released 26
27. © 2025 Johanna Rothman What Do You Want Less of? • Work In Progress (across entire project or program) • How often can you release internally and externally? • Defects: when they occur and when you detect them? • Other “Less of”: • Multitasking • ? 27
28. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Principle 4: Continuous Improvement with Experiments • Retrospectives • Kaizen • Choose one thing to experiment with every week or two • This is more important than any other meeting you have 28
29. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Entire Team Re fl ects • All the people who create the product re fl ect together • Kaizen: 20-60 minutes to discuss issue, select alternative, create action plan • Retrospective: 60-120 minutes on a regular basis to gather data and decide what to do. (Highly recommend Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great) 29 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture
30. © 2025 Johanna Rothman How Can You Use These 4 Principles Now? 1. Create a project rhythm 2. Visualize work and the bottlenecks 3. Develop and use measures that reinforce the team’s delivery and improvement 4. Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments 30 Ideas Responsible Person Ranked Backlog Cross-Functional Team The team produces shippable product on a regular basis Demo Retrospective General Agile Picture
31. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Flow Ef fi ciency Thinking: A Helpful Frame • Focus on the work item, not the person doing the work • Resource ef fi ciency focuses on the person • Flow ef fi ciency focuses on the work • Make this the one standup question: “What do we, as a team, need to do move this work to done?” 31 Resource E ffi ciency Flow E ffi ciency
32. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Many Links for Your Reading Pleasure • See the value stream maps in Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity: https://www.jrothman.com/ mpd/2019/09/measure-cycle-time-not-velocity/ • Hudson Bay Start: https://www.jrothman.com/ mpd/2025/01/how-to-conduct-an-agile-hudson- bay-start-to-test-how-your-team-works/ • Flow metrics newsletter: https:// www.jrothman.com/newsletter/2024/01/ fl ow- metrics-and-why-they-matter-to-teams-and- managers/ • https://linktr.ee/johannarothman 32
33. © 2025 Johanna Rothman All My Books (Organized) 33 Product Development Management Personal Development
34. © 2025 Johanna Rothman Let’s Stay in Touch • Pragmatic Manager: • www.jrothman.com/ pragmaticmanager • Please link with me on LinkedIn • Create Your Successful Agile Project: https://www.jrothman.com/cysap • Project Lifecycles: https:// www.jrothman.com/lifecyclebook 34