In the "Scrums, Sprints, and Burnouts: Agile Development at Cisco Systems" case study:
- What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the agile development process?
- How is agile development similar to or different from (a) the stage-gate process and (b) the parallel development process described in the chapter?
- What are some of the likely changes agile development requires in management personnel?
- What kinds of projects do you think agile development is appropriate for? What kinds of projects do you think it might be inappropriate for?
Agile Product Development at Cisco: Collaborative, Customer-Centered Software Development Ten years after publication of the Agile Manifesto, the Agile Product Development Methodology is entering the mainstream of IT development. A recent Forrester Research survey reports that 45 percent of software profes- sionals now use Agile methods, and many others use portions of the method. What Is Agile? Agile improves software quality by empowering highly skilled technical professionals to organize into self-managing, accountable, cross-functional teams to create products that Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies deliver tangible business value. Cisco" engineers have put the full principles of Agile based on iterative and incremental development into practice, and worked closely with customers to create more valuable development, where requirements and software through accelerated innovation and products that meet genuine market needs. solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional Despite Agile's promise. its benefits do not come automatically. Instead, the shift from teams traditional "waterfall"software project management to an Agile methodology is a journey The Agile Manifesto introduced the term in that requires a change in thinking and behavior. In this paper we describe our customers 2001 and reads, in its entirety as follows: experiences while working with the group leading Cisco's unified communications and We are uncovering better ways of collaboration business during its shift to Agile. developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we Cisco's Collaboration and Communications Group (CCG) identifies market transitions have come to value: in the way enterprises collaborate, and delivers collaboration software, devices, Individuals and interactions over infrastructure, and services. processes and tools Working software over comprehensive The group plays an important role in Cisco's software leadership. OCG's portfolio documentation includes unified communications (for example, desk phones, softphones, voicemail, Customer collaboration over contract instant messaging, and Cisco WebEx online conferencing with integrated video), desktop negotiation virtualization solutions, contact center solutions, the enterprise social software platform Responding to change over following a Cisco Quad" and the Android-based enterprise tablet Cisco Cius plan That is while there is value in the items on The Road to Agile the right, we value the items on the left more. Like many enterprise IT vendors, Cisco has long used the waterfall development method, and the COG team was no exception. However, as part of an ongoing commitment to accelerate innovation, the COG engineering team began trying the Agile method in 2008. What Is Waterfall? According to COG senior vice president and general manager, Barry O'Sullivan, "Waterfall worked reasonably well, but had some drawbacks. With a big, long development cycle Waterfall is a sequential design process in which progress flows in stages from the top and a big, long testing cycle it wasn't very efficient. If we found something late in the test to the bottom, with a great deal of time being cycle it was hard to go back to the start and make changes." The shift to Agile was, in spent in developing initial requirements, many respects a logical fit with Cisco's culture of collaboration, both between customers analysis, and design; and flowing steadily and employees. "Part of Cisco's culture is to be highly customer focused, and so the downward to testing and implementation. group desired a method with more formal and structured ways to get customer input into The model was developed for the the development process." O'Sullivan explains. manufacturing and construction industries, physical environments where after-the- After successful trials, and with a transition plan already created, CCG announced fact changes are prohibitively costly if not Agile as the group's primary methodology in November 2009. As part of the shift, CCG Impossible, and later adopted for software executives brought in new senior leaders with deep Agile expertise to guide, coach, and as formal models for development did not exist at the industry's inception promote the process. The executive team also invested in training to support an Agile Source: Wikipedia culture and an understanding of the process, and new technology tools for capturing customer feedbackRisks with Traditional Waterfall As Michael McNally, senior COG engineering director and Agile expert explains, "Agile Development requires more discipline than the waterfall process because it is based on frequent Many software projects do not meet delivery of fully developed features for customer feedback With Agile, software develops customer needs feature by feature, adding new capabilities and adapting to customer feedback as it grows." Over 60% of project requirements With the waterfall method there is a detailed project planning cycle at the start, and a long change during execution code evaluation cycle (where quality is measured and customer feedback is considered) at 80% of the value is in 20% of the features the end. Confined waterfall teams working without regular customer feedback amplify the risks of project failure, and produce inconsistent customer satisfaction. The development Source: Agile Principles and values by Jeff Sutherland, 2010 team may have misunderstood the customer needs in the beginning. or those needs may have changed by the time the software is delivered. Features that look good in PowerPoint presentations and Visio charts may not integrate with existing processes, or may be overly complex to use efficiently and effectively. Typically by the time it is delivered, the software Agile Program Customer Case: Zone Labs Product: Cisco SocialMiner has over-promised and under-delivered in the customer's eyes. Zone Labs has been an important Agile In contrast, Agile teams stay in touch with business in "real business time." Agile teams customer while COG developed Cisco address all technical and quality concerns each time they prepare to seek customer SocialMiner, a social media customer care feedback - an activity they do every 2 weeks to 2 months. They deliver fully functioning solution that helps businesses proactively respond to customers and prospects who features in iterations called 'sprints," and they deliver the features that are of most value to are communicating through public social the customer's business first. Then, in regular cycles, customers provide feedback on the media networks such as Twitter Facebook, software developed in the past sprint and help direct the team on the top-value feature or other public forums or blogging sites. to be developed in the next sprint. In effect, features that meet customer needs and Cisco SocialMiner provides social media expectations are the only ones developed monitoring queuing, and workflow to organize customer posts on social media The engineering practices we employ to get Agile right lead to happier people and networks and deliver them to a business's tend to produce better quality code." says McNally. "Engineers are empowered, work- social media customer care team. ing in self-directed, self-managed teams. Agile drives better products, but this type of Zone Labs was pursuing a social media strategy to better engage social customers eadership can be more challenging and more fun than waterfall. We are committed to an and gain visibility for their health and weight environment where every member of the team - all our product managers, engineering management products, and the team was managers, and engineers - are accountable to creating superior customer value." In a phase of experimentation In the early stages, their monitoring and outreach Currently, 85 percent of product teams in CCG organizations targeted for Agile transition methods weren't making an impact. "Other (150 teams) use the methodology and 90 percent of the systems teams (10 teams) do. than hosting forums on our Facebook Software is now delivered in 6- to 8-month cycles (as opposed to the 12- to 18-month pages, we weren't getting the visibility we waterfall cycle), and customers receive software more closely adapted to their business sought." comments Derrick Goodwin, Zone Labs' Social Media Manager. environments. Not only that, innovation has accelerated as people feel more empowered. In an attempt to monitor online discussions At the same time, CCG operates in a hybrid Agile and waterfall development cycle. CCG about diets and health, the team was using prepares 12-month product plans that inform the larger Cisco ecosystem, and delivers email applications such as Google Alerts and performing manual Internet searches to new or updated COG software applications to the market within 8- to 8-month cycles. find comments on public networks such as As CCG's O'Sullivan points out. "You never want to take backward steps as you improve, Facebook and Twitter However, the volume so while moving to Agile we kept what's good from the traditional process - which is of comments and manual processes was overwhelming system-level stability and integrity. If you come up with the greatest widget in the world but When Cisco approached Goodwin as it doesn't work with the rest of Cisco's products, it's not very useful for customers. You've a Social Miner Agile customer, Goodwin got to innovate with Agile, but also subject that to a very rigorous system testing process." saw an opportunity to solve his business problem. About his participation, he reports, Agile in Action at CCG The whole process has been about better OCG invites broad participation from Agile customers in different industries and market sculpting SocialMiner to be what it should be. We sat down once a week and I would segments, and supports them in working together with the software development team to shape products. Customers provide input to product requirements before development begins, and then work with Agile teams as the products are developed and brought to market.give the team my thoughts on what was The Agile process has served equally well for both new and existing markets. In the working, what wasn't working I kept a list of mature contact center reporting market, business applications are being shaped and things I would change about the product. refined to best serve customer needs. In the rapidly evolving social media customer care and the problems I was having and mobile collaboration areas, COG has used Agile to create the Cisco SocialMiner w The result was that requests for specific and Cisco Cius products by building rapid prototypes, and iterating to meet fast- features (for example, a search bar and changing customer needs. In both cases significant business benefits and accelerated filters) were rapidly fulfilled, and while the software helped Zone Labs meet innovation are the result. its business goals, Cisco developed a more valuable product that is relevant to Agile Across Cisco the market as a whole. SocialMiner has CCG pioneered the use of Agile at Cisco, but over time, other teams in Cisco's allowed Zone Labs to automate their social Development Organization became interested. Those teams went to CCG for help. media monitoring function and reach out to prospects and customers not as an advice, and support in launching their own Agile efforts, and CCG supported them. But advertiser, but as a resource with useful ultimately CCG found itself in a vortex of Agile interest, and looked for a solution to help information. Agile scale across Cisco. Since Cisco's release of SocialMiner in A central engineering team that supports common processes and initiatives in the Cisco November 2010, product conversations with Zone Labs continua Goodwin and the Development Organization took on the challenge and began to standardize the Agile Cisco team now meet every other week to process. Jack Dickranian, the new initiative leader, audited Agile meetings in CCG to learn review business needs, test functionality. more about the process himself and then formed the Agile@ Cisco team - a group of Agile and plan future iterations. champions in various technology and business groups, which now has more than 4700 associates. "We used the Agile process to first create a backlog of priorities for the Agile@ Cisco Agile Program Customer Case: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater team, then we prioritized among them," explains Dickranian. "Our first priority was to Product: Cisco Cius draft a standard Agile process framework in alignment with Cisco business processes. Cisco Cius is a business tablet that offers We piloted its use within six teams, then released a formal Cisco Product Development mobile access to the communications Methodology-Standard Agile method in January 201 1." Today any team at Cisco can collaboration, and compute capabilities access, understand, and use the Cisco Standard Agile methodology with centralized you are accustomed to using in your office. training, consultative coaching, and access to the Agile management tool. This innovative product responds to a rapidly evolving tablet market, so feedback Within Cisco's diverse product and technology groups are Agile adoption leaders who from Agile program participants is strongly operate as extensions of the Agile@Cisco team. Junilu Lacar, a member of the Cisco shaping its direction. The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is an important Agile Services Agile Focus Team, is an example. His team uses Agile to develop security tools advisor on the Cisco Cius. that offer network insight and help reduce service disruption in customer networks As As Nick Ciesinski, network architect for the an advocate for Agile adoption within Cisco Services, he led the creation of an Agile University, explains, he became interested in Governance Board which guides Services teams through their Agile transformation. testing Cius after first being exposed to the product 1 heard about Cius at Cisco Live Across Cisco, Agile has proven to greatly improve the likelihood of producing software in the summer of 2010, and I immediately that meets users' genuine needs - on time and within budget. Agile adoption extends thought the product might have some value the company's longstanding commitment to customer focus, continuous innovation, and for the University A week later a faculty software leadership. The Agile@ Cisco team is eager to expand Agile adoption, and to member who saw a press announcement meet the challenge of extending Agile to hardware development. approached me with an idea for using Cius in the classroom environment." Ciesinski Leading management authors such as Stephen Denning have observed that approached his contacts at Cisco and companies that have widely adopted Agile demonstrate far higher degrees of employee offered to test the product through the Agile program. Shortly thereafter, the University's engagement and client satisfaction. Their Agile culture allows for a reinvention of the way IT team began meeting with Cisco product work is accomplished and superior business results on a broad scale'. Given Cisco's managers to communicate the features commitment to Agile. the methodology's transformative impact, and the evident customer they'd like to see in Cius and the elements benefits achieved so far, we expect the positive impact of Agile at Cisco to accelerate as they would prefer to change we move forward. "Denning. Stephen, The Leaders Guide to Radical Management Jossey Bass, 2010
