Silos are for farms, not agile development teams...

naked ALM - A better way than staggered iterations for delivery

There is a better way than staggered iterations for delivery that will keep you on the path to agility.

I have seen many companies that are trying to move towards greater agility get trapped in the past by creating artificial silos based on skills. They believe that by creating a timebox for planning, development and testing that we can get closer to agility and move away from our traditional models. Unfortunately the actual result is to enshrine that traditional staged model and step sideways on the path to agility, not forwards. In many cases it can be a significant step backward that will take many painful years to rectify.

..

The problem with staggered iterations for delivery

In the diagram above we have an 18 week cycle from inception to delivery. That’s more than 4 months between ideation and delivery with a lag of 2 months to even get feedback with a 2 month lag for all subsequent feedback. Worse this is the most expensive kind of feedback as the Coding and Testing teams ..

...

The solutions to staggered iterations for delivery

We need to foster teams over individuals and make those teams responsible for the delivery of working software. To get that we need cross-functional teams that can turn ideas into that working software. And we need to do it often.

• Cross-functional teams –We need to have...
• Asynchronous development -  Ideally you want...
• Test first – Test first is about not doing any work unless there is a measurable test that ...
• Working software each iteration – If you don’t create working software at the end ...
• Quality Assurance requires no testing – If you consider that all testing is done as part of the sprint, ...

...

Conclusion

The expected result of staggered iterations would be an increase in rework and in technical debt. If you are moving from a 4 year iterative process to a 4 month one you will see value, but your process will be opaque and will only reduce your ability to deliver working software.

Yes your cycle time will be reduced, but you can do so much better....

I've been here, done that, but I've found that without support and buy-in by everyone, this is an easy trap to fall into. Heck even cross functional teams can be a political beast that can't be slain, let alone everything else.

Yet, that doesn't mean we can't dream and strive for something like this.