Agile+ In Practice

Foundation Workshop

In the world of Agile+, work is organized into projects, and each starts with a Foundation Workshop. The participants are stakeholders who know the business with its strengths and weaknesses and have a desire for change. The ground rules are agreed and the boundary is explored. This workshop typically takes just a few hours. The objective is to establish a rough boundary, understand the critical business issues, and explore opportunities for the business (e.g. in terms of cost-cutting, increased sales, better customer service, positive impact on cash flow).

The outputs are very specific:

A short boundary report
A diagram showing the high-level data structure (also known as an ERD/Class Diagram)
The Time and Cost Model

The latter details the time, elapsed time and cost of delivering the application using the Appligenics Designer and Generator tools. Whether the project is resourced internally or externally there is a cost to delivering a solution, and this early focus on actual costs is radically different to anything that you will have seen before. The Appligenics Time and Cost Model in itself is a critical decision making asset, which can help you to avoid problems with projects where the expectations of time and cost are dramatically different to the final results. There is no place for the lack of certainty in projecting time and cost in today’s business world.

Main Workshops

The Time and Cost Model is an effective filter of projects, eliminating those with poor ROI. If the project gets the go-ahead then the workshops start in earnest. First, the learning behavior of the participants is determined. This helps the Practitioner to develop the sessions.

As the questions and answers develop the application starts to take form on white boards and flip charts around the room. These documents become the specification. There is no need for charts, reports and long-winded diagrams that add nothing but cost to the process. This is one of the principal areas for unnecessary cost and delay in existing methods, and is one where Agile+ scores highly with its pragmatic outcome-oriented methods.

Where complexity is identified, which is usually around the main business rules, then more detailed studies may be required and we have found that spreadsheets, hand-written flow charts and formulas on paper are various ways to extract the intellectual property that resides with most clever stakeholders. Anything more formal is usually a waste of money and can alienate the stakeholders who rarely have time and patience for elaborate charts and diagrams. Agile+ does recognize, however, that certain industries have regulatory requirements for detailed documentation, and if essential, output from the de facto industry tools can be used as an adjunct in the process.

After each workshop the subsets of the model are entered into the Designer by the Agile+ practitioner (e.g. details of the data and processes, relationships, business rules and processes).

At this stage Agile+ delivers one of its most powerful features. As soon as possible the first systems are generated. This quick delivery is important for the stakeholders, who are able to see within a few days or weeks some tangible progress. There is no substitution for a demonstration, even if that is only to see a menu with static maintenance and enquiry programs. This early and substantive delivery provides the basis for another key distinguishing feature of Agile+.

Learn and Adapt

Rarely do you foresee when you set out to create a new process or system all of the possible facets of what you will need. Some things which seem like a fantastic idea in a workshop may be truly awful in practice. Also, once you see something tangible your thinking will develop and you will devise new opportunities to improve. Agile+ gives the stakeholders the opportunity to see, touch, feel and do at an early stage, and this stimulates cognition. The tools that generate the end-result from the Agile+ process are supremely adaptable, and this adds a level of dynamism that will take your breath away. What could be fundamental changes to a process can be achieved relatively quickly, often immediately, which means that you can incorporate new ideas and thinking without jeopardizing your overall project. Contrast this with what you have been used to in the past where you can’t see anything until the end of a long development process, and then to suggest change results in sharp intakes of breath.

So, we know through experience that when stakeholders see the application for the first time, they immediately want to make changes. In the past, changes were always resisted and everyone was immediately unhappy, but with Agile+ you can embrace change without fear of the consequences. Change is encouraged and an important watershed is passed - the stakeholders feel real ownership of the application.

Rapid Deliverables

As the project progresses there are automated deliverables from the Appligenics Designer that are very useful in moving the project along:

Database worksheets (cross-referencing entities, elements, relationships and rules)
Element worksheets (row and columnar descriptions and help text)
Business Rules (in pseudo English so that a stakeholder can be walked through them)
Process (with program subsets, parameters and a pictorial representation of the format)
Actual working menus and program

These documents provide constant visible demonstrations of progress and involve the stakeholders in formal approval throughout the project.

Ready for Formal Testing

Testing is such an inexact step in traditional development as tens of thousands of lines of code (sometimes millions), have to be checked. Even using the highest levels of quality assurance, the results are a long departure from the Six Sigma standards that we now expect in other manufactured goods. Agile+ uses automatic generation technology which means that the computer-based deliverables are created at silicon-chip speed rather than traditional hand-crafting (for example, a moderate business PC can create programs at 6,000 lines per second, whereas a good programmer will hand-craft around 400 lines per day). As the rules of programming are being executed by a program, the output is consistent with the rules and contains few, if any, errors in the actual code. Instantly you have eliminated a vast amount of testing time which is focused on rectifying manual coding errors.

Agile+ is therefore focused on the specific areas that are high risk, i.e. the outcome of calculations and the accurate representation of the processes. To assist this process, the Appligenics tools create Test Packs, and test data input and results may be checked, including physical database entries. This quickly identifies the areas where business rules are misinterpreted or defined incorrectly, usually miscalculations by the Practitioner. Changes can be made, and in effect, major parts of the generated application simply do not require testing as they have been tested on hundreds of projects in the past.

Deployment

Existing methods for Quality Assurance and User Acceptance Testing can still be used, any further refinements made and incorporated quickly, prior to actual deployment.

A strong philosophical thread runs through Agile+ which dictates that nothing generated should be dependent upon the Appligenics tools for it to run. In other words, the software applications that you get can be run on your choice of infrastructure: your database, application server, operating system, etc. If you run a web site then you can run an Appligenics-built application. We even make use of open source (i.e. zero cost) software wherever possible.