We're agile…we live it, we practice it and we're evangelical about it.
We've realized many benefits and so have our clients; lots of communication, quick responsiveness to business changes and frequent deployments. We are tightly connected with our clients, the entire team knows where we are and the priority of all the development items. We're able to react to changing business demands and priorities. The short cycles encourage collaboration and keep the team engaged with a shared sense of urgency.
And…the most compelling reason…we hand over working software to our clients every 3 weeks.
There are a few key things we've found are necessary for successful deployments. The first is daily stand ups. Meeting every day creates a tight team, establishes good communication and keeps the client fully engaged, they know what they are getting and when they will get it.
We also found a 3 week sprint cycle is the right duration. It's a cadence that keeps the team focused and energized. If sprints are longer the team loses a bit of energy, if they are shorter the time needed for sprint preparation and management is out of balance with engineering effort.
Third is keeping a well-groomed backlog. If the needs are defined and actionable we can be responsive and quickly pull in more work when priorities or capacity changes. And the last thing is to demo after every sprint. This is our review with the client of the work we've done and serves as our official hand-off or working software.
"Having new software turned over to us at the end of every sprint was so much better than
waiting the 6 months or so as you do with a waterfall approach.
"Moxie owned the process and kept us on track, from requirements and keeping the backlog groomed
to making sure we didn't lose sight of issues and ensuring the goals of the sprint were met."
Chuck Smith
Vice President Information Technology
Aero Fulfillment Services
