Question: What are the criteria Caroline and Phillip should use to select the second pilot? 1) State and define at least four criteria; 2) Specify a metric to evaluate each criterion to determine how you would measure and compare the project options.

** Use any selection criteria to your knowledge. Selection criteria has not been provided by the book or the professor which is why I'm seeking help for this question.

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Introducing Agile Development at American Attire Welcome to American Attire, said CEO Lisa Ross with a smile, warmly shaking her new CIO's hand. We're glad youre here. The sooner you can get IT whipped into shape, the better. The competition's killing us! Gene Engler smiled broadly back at her, more to reassure the room full of senior execs gathered to meet him than to communicate any positive message to Lisa. More than anyone, Lisa knew what a challenge she had given him. When he'd been recruited, she had been blunt. Our IT project spending is too high and projects are taking too long to complete, Lisa had said. The retail world is changing rapidly and everything that can change is becoming visual or interactive content. This is not a world where we can take several years to develop an IT project. American Attire is a chain of clothing stores that had started as clothes for workmensuch things as boots, overalls, heavy-duty shirts, socks, and glovesthat was now trying to morph into a business casual clothing store for both men and women. Our growth strategy is to attract more women and to stock more attractive and functional casual clothing that will appeal both to working men and women across a broad range of occupations, and to these same people on their days off, Lisa had told Gene in his interview. But to do this, we need to revamp our systems to further enable our marketing capabilities and introduce next generation e-tail technologies to the company. You'll find some of us are skeptical that IT can do this so it's going to be up to you toshow them the money' and prove that IT can deliver the goods. I'm hearing a lot of muttering that we should outsource the whole IT function. Over the next few weeks, Gene made a point of sitting down with his business colleagues to get the lay of the land before launching into any changes. Their complaints were pretty consistent: We need to improve our time to market, and We shouldn't take so long to deliver our IT projects. Turning to his IT direct reports in their first group meeting with him, he asked, How long did it take us to deliver our last three large projects? After some meaningful looks between them, the director of the Project Management Office, Caroline Taylor, spoke up. They each took more than a year to implement, she stated. But you have to understand that a significant part of this time was taken up documenting system requirements and objectives and more time was taken up dealing with scope creep because the business kept adding new things that they couldn't live without. Gene frowned, absorbing this information. So are you saying that it's the business' own fault or that IT takes too long to do these things? It's a bit of both, I'd say, said Brian Brophy, Director of Application Development. Part of it is our methodology, which requires us to dot every i and cross every t' before we can move ahead. The procedures and paperwork can be onerous, especially for the business. But part of it is how we work with the business. We often have to hunt people down to help us with the requirements and then they don't do their homework and forget things that come back to haunt us. Sometimes it takes weeks to get them to sign off on their requirements and we're left to take the blame. I agree with Brian, said Caroline. But you have to remember that our methodology was put in place for a good reason. We need controls for all sorts of reasonsto ensure privacy, security, financial transparency, risk management, and effective operationsjust for a start. Our systems are so central to the company that any mistake could cost us big time! Just look at the data breaches that have been in the media or the recent bank systems crash. These things are front-page news. We need to be careful! Youre absolutely correct about that, Caroline, said Gene, yet the fact remains that we need to do something to speed things up. Sounds like you are still developing systems using the traditional waterfall method. Other companies are managing to work more quickly and responsively so we have to start delivering more, faster, or Lisa will find someone else who will. Who's got some ideas? For the next hour or so they debated how to streamline their methodology, improve governance processes, and increase outsourcing. It looks like there's some value in doing all of these things, Gene concluded. But it also looks like you've done a pretty good job in most of these areas already. We have, agreed Brian. But we still waste a lot of time getting requirements done, getting the right business people involved, and then doing the testing. Everyone in the room groaned at the word testing. Testing takes between 20 and 40 percent of the development effort, Brian added. We have three levels of testing: first by the development team, then by a separate quality assurance (QA) team, and finally by the business users. These last two groups take their own sweet time because they follow their own processes and don't understand the impact they have on the progress of an individual project or on the business as a whole. Gene looked around at the earnest faces at the table. You're a good team and you've done well holding the fort since last year when George Nichols retired. George had been the company's long- serving CIO who understood the old ways of doing things at American Attire perfectly, but who had been reluctant to introduce much change in his final years of service. But I was brought in with a mandate from Lisa to shake things up, he continued. Seeing their apprehensive faces, he hurried on. That doesn't mean people are going to be losing their jobs. There will be some restructuring but, as I said, we have a good group here. We just need some refocusing on how to deliver more value faster to the business. I'd like us to consider agile development. A hush fell across the room as they all considered this idea. This would never have been considered when George "Keep the Lights On Nichols was CIO. He had spent years putting structured development practices and governance in place to provide company systems and guarantee operational stability. And these had served the company well ... in their time. Projects were delivered on schedule and on budget and operations barely hiccupped. The problem was that the business needed more, faster. "How would that work? asked Caroline. She, like her colleagues, knew about agile development from trade publications and conferences, even if they'd never used it. It's a big change and as I understand it, it would affect most parts of IT in some way or another. "You're right, Caroline, said Gene. Agile works differently and we don't have all the capabilities in place to go full speed with agile right now, but I want to undertake a pilot project that will help us learn, work out the kinks, and demonstrate that we can be a more flexible, responsive, and business-centric IT function that can meet the needs of our business. Let's think about what we'll need and put some thought and effort into making it work. The first steps will be choosing the right pilot project and team and then getting everyone some training in agile development principles. What type of project do you think we should be looking for? The project we choose shouldn't be overly complex or too dependent on integration with existing systems, suggested Brian. We would need to ensure we have a cooperative sponsor, offered Philip Hayhoe, Director of Relationship Management. As I understand it, an agile development project needs more or less full-time business participation. What about operations participation? asked Joe Pereira, the Infrastructure Director. An agile project has new implementations every two weeks or so, correct? So we need direct involvement. "I think you're both right with these ideas, concluded Gene. And I think we should get QA involved as well. I also know someone who would be a great agile coach for our first project. Let me speak with him and work with Caroline and Phil to find the right project. I've already got Lisa's mandate to get started, so in the meantime think about what else we'll need to do to make this pilot successful. We need to all pull together to make this project a showpiece of what IT can do." Over the next few weeks, with some major participation from Gene, the pieces fell into place. Gene sold the idea to the senior business managers by telling them, We could spend six months documenting detailed requirements with the traditional method or we could spend two weeks and deliver something functional that everyone can see. He got their approval for two pilot projects. We'll take what we learn from the first and apply it in the second, he told his team. Then, after that, the company will make a decision about future developments. In the meantime Brian explored agile tools and processes so that when the approval came to test the concept, IT would be ready. The first project was well defined and the sponsor was willing to act as a guinea pig for the new process. The challenge was that the system had to be fully functional and implemented by November- less than four months away. AssortAA was a product that would assist buyers in better predicting assortments across the countryin sizes and stylesaccording to previous patterns of purchases, integrating these with industry demographic data, and then dynamically adjusting them as needed. The reason for the deadline was that buyers and store operations all met at headquarters in November to finalize the spring orders and the date couldn't be changed. Brian had selected a development team and appointed a scrum master from among his top performers, and QA and Operations had each appointed a person to work with them on a dedicated basis. A project room had been organized so that everyone could sit together. The sponsor had agreed to send someone to the training session. So far, so good. The first glitch came late in the first sprint. Our business rep, Cathy Jang, won't make any decisions, complained Vic Robeznieks, the scrum master. She says she's got to take all decisions back to her boss and then takes a few days to get back to us. And she's hardly ever in the project room with us. She says most of what we're asking her to do isn't her job!" I'll talk to Phil right away about this, promised Brian. Phil and Brian discussed this matter. There's a lot of confusion in the business about what their roles and responsibilities are for this project, said Phil. Ken, our sponsor, wants to be involved in making all the decisions about this project but obviously he can't be there all the time. Cathy's too junior to be given full decision-making authority, and she's only been allocated to this project part-time. That's ridiculous! fumed Brian. We told them we needed full-time participation right up front! The only way this is going to work is if they understand what they're supposed to do and put the right people in place. I think we need to escalate this to Gene. While Gene worked on getting the right level of business participation and educating Cathy and her boss about their roles and responsibilities, fresh problems emerged as they neared the end of the second sprint. We've way overestimated what we can do in this sprint, Vic told Brian, Caroline, and their agile coach, Mike Khan. Everyone's asking for changes after the last sprint and we need to do a better job of prioritizing them. "You're right, said Mike. You want to ensure that key changes are made but not get distracted from your main goal of getting this project done. That's the job of your product owner. He or she needs to make these decisions and keep the big picture of the product in view. And Vic, Mike continued, make sure you and your team follow the 80:20 rule when deciding what gets done. Turning to Brian and Caroline, Mike said. You two may also need to work more closely with the team to help them get their user stories right. Estimation is still difficult with agile and sprints often end up too big and this can be discouraging. You need more consistency of delivery so that your clients can see progress. Wow, Caroline said to Brian when they were alone. I didn't realize we had to be this involved with agile. I wonder how it will work if all our projects are delivered this way?" Not long after this, there were grumblings from the project team, which had been set up in a converted meeting room. Brian dropped in on Gene midway through the fourth sprint. Our guys have now been at it flat out for almost two months and the backlog of changes is growing even while they're trying to get out new functionality. There's hardly room to swing a cat in the team room and while it's nice being co-located with everyone so that we can get answers when we need them, people need their space and they're getting on each other's nerves. The noise is irritating some people, and others feel that their personal work styles are not supported. And there's absolutely no privacy!" "I'm not sure what I can do in the short term," said Gene, but your concerns are noted. He knew what Brian was talking about. The project room was cluttered and smelly from various takeout meals. There were constant interruptions and very little room to spread out papers or take a break. But space was at a premium. At about the same time, Ethan Matthews, Director of IT Architecture, ran into Vic in the hall. How's AssortAA going?, he asked casually. "It's going well, said Vic enthusiastically. We're getting some better support from the business now that they can see what we're delivering and how it's working. They love the graphical interface we've given them." That's great, said Ethan, but what are you doing about our traditional consultations, like those with architecture, to ensure that the bigger picture is taken into consideration? It seems like architecture and portfolio management and some higher-level objectives have been left out of project planning. We haven't even seen the graphic package you implemented. Vic nodded. Youre absolutely right. We just went into the development with only a sketch of an idea. We're under the gun here and don't have the time to get into all that big picture stuff, reviews, stage gates, and sign-offs. We're lucky if we get home after a twelve-hour day! If you want more process, you're going to have to take it up with Gene. Ethan nodded thoughtfully as Vic hustled off toward the project room. This was definitely an issue that needed to be raised with Gene, and right away. Something needed to be done about this cowboy mentality unless the company wanted to go back to the bad old days when systems were developed ad hoc and without regard to the overall technical direction and operational sustainability of the infrastructure and applications. By the beginning of the fifth sprint, it had become clear that more resources were needed. Vic, Caroline, and Brian conferred and agreed that they needed to bring in some staff from their offshore outsourcer in India. I think if we can turn over two user stories to them over the next two sprints, we can finish on time, said Vic. Can they handle this? asked Caroline. They assure us that they can handle this new methodology, said Brian. My idea would be to act as the manager of the whole portfolio while Vic manages the team here, and we have another scrum master in India for that team. I'd help them with coordination and guidance and get them another ops person and QA tester. I'll also speak with Gene about how we get more business participation for this team." By the end of this sprint Gene felt that he should install a revolving door on this office. The head of QA had just left after complaining that the Indian team had not interpreted "agile as tested code but merely as developed code. It's not our job to do these tests or to make sure that the new code integrates with the old, she'd told him. You need to do a better job educating these people about our standards." By the end of this sprint Gene felt that he should install a revolving door on this office. The head of QA had just left after complaining that the Indian team had not interpreted "agile as tested code but merely as developed code. It's not our job to do these tests or to make sure that the new code integrates with the old, shed told him. You need to do a better job educating these people about our standards." Gene couldn't disagree and he picked up the phone to get Brian and Mike together for an impromptu meeting to see how they could best do this. He got an earful from Brian. We need better tools to coordinate with India, he complained. I can't do my job when theyre working completely opposite hours from me and I can never get them and Vic's team together to talk. Can we get some better video and collaboration in here? "I'll add it to the list, sighed Gene. At the beginning of the sixth sprint, Gene dropped into the team room to rally the troops for the final effort. You've all been great!, he said enthusiastically. I'm getting lots of positive feedback from the business because you're actually showing them what we're delivering and giving them a chance to give you feedback and correct misunderstandings. Everyone's looking forward to the great unveiling of the fully tested and implemented system at the buyers' meeting in a couple of weeks. After some enthusiastic clapping, the team got back to work, and Brian walked out into the hall with Gene. Thanks for the pep talk, Brian said. People really appreciated it. Some of them are having a tough time with this new way of working. You know, many IT people aren't really people-people.' Now theyre asking if they can do some of their work from home and I don't know what to say. Mike told us we really need daily attendance to make agile work. Gene looked thoughtful. Apart from that, how are you managing?" You've given me a first-class team for this pilot and they've worked really hard, said Brian. But I'm not sure if we have the skills as an organization to do this all the time with all our projects. We're asking a lot of them. And the operations and QA people feel the same way. They're proud of what we're all accomplishing with AssortAA but they feel like they're in a pressure cooker all the time. And very few of our people feel comfortable working so closely with the business. They don't have the business knowledge or skills to interact easily with business people outside the team. That's always been the job of the relationship managers. "I know, said Gene, but that's going to have to change. IT's too important to the business for there to be an us' and 'them'mentality. Business and IT are each business people first and foremost and everyone has to be an equal stakeholder in our projects. But I do hear what you are saying, Brian, added Gene. You've all done a terrific job and gone the extra mile to get this project off the ground. It's been a heroic effort. Once AssortAA has been delivered, I want to get everyone together again to look at what we've accomplished and what needs to be done for the second pilot to make agile development a more repeatable, sustainable methodology for all our work. We've had some major kudos from the business and Lisa tells me she's hearing lots of positive buzz about IT, so I think we're on the right track. Two weeks later, Brian and Vic and their team realized the extent of their accomplishments when they stood on the stage of the auditorium and accepted the applause of a couple of hundred buyers and store operations people who had been blown away by the AssortAA live demo. We really did it!, Vic whispered to Brian. I didn't think we could actually get this done in just four months, but we did! The pride of the team was undeniable. There was no way anything in IT had ever generated such a positive response. As the team gathered together in the local watering hole for a well-deserved celebration, Brian and Vic's phones pinged simultaneously with identical emails from Gene. Congratulations on your success! Can you meet me at 3 p.m. to start planning the second pilot? It's bigger and much higher profile so I want you to help me figure out what we need to do better and how to do it. Cheers! Introducing Agile Development at American Attire Welcome to American Attire, said CEO Lisa Ross with a smile, warmly shaking her new CIO's hand. We're glad youre here. The sooner you can get IT whipped into shape, the better. The competition's killing us! Gene Engler smiled broadly back at her, more to reassure the room full of senior execs gathered to meet him than to communicate any positive message to Lisa. More than anyone, Lisa knew what a challenge she had given him. When he'd been recruited, she had been blunt. Our IT project spending is too high and projects are taking too long to complete, Lisa had said. The retail world is changing rapidly and everything that can change is becoming visual or interactive content. This is not a world where we can take several years to develop an IT project. American Attire is a chain of clothing stores that had started as clothes for workmensuch things as boots, overalls, heavy-duty shirts, socks, and glovesthat was now trying to morph into a business casual clothing store for both men and women. Our growth strategy is to attract more women and to stock more attractive and functional casual clothing that will appeal both to working men and women across a broad range of occupations, and to these same people on their days off, Lisa had told Gene in his interview. But to do this, we need to revamp our systems to further enable our marketing capabilities and introduce next generation e-tail technologies to the company. You'll find some of us are skeptical that IT can do this so it's going to be up to you toshow them the money' and prove that IT can deliver the goods. I'm hearing a lot of muttering that we should outsource the whole IT function. Over the next few weeks, Gene made a point of sitting down with his business colleagues to get the lay of the land before launching into any changes. Their complaints were pretty consistent: We need to improve our time to market, and We shouldn't take so long to deliver our IT projects. Turning to his IT direct reports in their first group meeting with him, he asked, How long did it take us to deliver our last three large projects? After some meaningful looks between them, the director of the Project Management Office, Caroline Taylor, spoke up. They each took more than a year to implement, she stated. But you have to understand that a significant part of this time was taken up documenting system requirements and objectives and more time was taken up dealing with scope creep because the business kept adding new things that they couldn't live without. Gene frowned, absorbing this information. So are you saying that it's the business' own fault or that IT takes too long to do these things? It's a bit of both, I'd say, said Brian Brophy, Director of Application Development. Part of it is our methodology, which requires us to dot every i and cross every t' before we can move ahead. The procedures and paperwork can be onerous, especially for the business. But part of it is how we work with the business. We often have to hunt people down to help us with the requirements and then they don't do their homework and forget things that come back to haunt us. Sometimes it takes weeks to get them to sign off on their requirements and we're left to take the blame. I agree with Brian, said Caroline. But you have to remember that our methodology was put in place for a good reason. We need controls for all sorts of reasonsto ensure privacy, security, financial transparency, risk management, and effective operationsjust for a start. Our systems are so central to the company that any mistake could cost us big time! Just look at the data breaches that have been in the media or the recent bank systems crash. These things are front-page news. We need to be careful! Youre absolutely correct about that, Caroline, said Gene, yet the fact remains that we need to do something to speed things up. Sounds like you are still developing systems using the traditional waterfall method. Other companies are managing to work more quickly and responsively so we have to start delivering more, faster, or Lisa will find someone else who will. Who's got some ideas? For the next hour or so they debated how to streamline their methodology, improve governance processes, and increase outsourcing. It looks like there's some value in doing all of these things, Gene concluded. But it also looks like you've done a pretty good job in most of these areas already. We have, agreed Brian. But we still waste a lot of time getting requirements done, getting the right business people involved, and then doing the testing. Everyone in the room groaned at the word testing. Testing takes between 20 and 40 percent of the development effort, Brian added. We have three levels of testing: first by the development team, then by a separate quality assurance (QA) team, and finally by the business users. These last two groups take their own sweet time because they follow their own processes and don't understand the impact they have on the progress of an individual project or on the business as a whole. Gene looked around at the earnest faces at the table. You're a good team and you've done well holding the fort since last year when George Nichols retired. George had been the company's long- serving CIO who understood the old ways of doing things at American Attire perfectly, but who had been reluctant to introduce much change in his final years of service. But I was brought in with a mandate from Lisa to shake things up, he continued. Seeing their apprehensive faces, he hurried on. That doesn't mean people are going to be losing their jobs. There will be some restructuring but, as I said, we have a good group here. We just need some refocusing on how to deliver more value faster to the business. I'd like us to consider agile development. A hush fell across the room as they all considered this idea. This would never have been considered when George "Keep the Lights On Nichols was CIO. He had spent years putting structured development practices and governance in place to provide company systems and guarantee operational stability. And these had served the company well ... in their time. Projects were delivered on schedule and on budget and operations barely hiccupped. The problem was that the business needed more, faster. "How would that work? asked Caroline. She, like her colleagues, knew about agile development from trade publications and conferences, even if they'd never used it. It's a big change and as I understand it, it would affect most parts of IT in some way or another. "You're right, Caroline, said Gene. Agile works differently and we don't have all the capabilities in place to go full speed with agile right now, but I want to undertake a pilot project that will help us learn, work out the kinks, and demonstrate that we can be a more flexible, responsive, and business-centric IT function that can meet the needs of our business. Let's think about what we'll need and put some thought and effort into making it work. The first steps will be choosing the right pilot project and team and then getting everyone some training in agile development principles. What type of project do you think we should be looking for? The project we choose shouldn't be overly complex or too dependent on integration with existing systems, suggested Brian. We would need to ensure we have a cooperative sponsor, offered Philip Hayhoe, Director of Relationship Management. As I understand it, an agile development project needs more or less full-time business participation. What about operations participation? asked Joe Pereira, the Infrastructure Director. An agile project has new implementations every two weeks or so, correct? So we need direct involvement. "I think you're both right with these ideas, concluded Gene. And I think we should get QA involved as well. I also know someone who would be a great agile coach for our first project. Let me speak with him and work with Caroline and Phil to find the right project. I've already got Lisa's mandate to get started, so in the meantime think about what else we'll need to do to make this pilot successful. We need to all pull together to make this project a showpiece of what IT can do." Over the next few weeks, with some major participation from Gene, the pieces fell into place. Gene sold the idea to the senior business managers by telling them, We could spend six months documenting detailed requirements with the traditional method or we could spend two weeks and deliver something functional that everyone can see. He got their approval for two pilot projects. We'll take what we learn from the first and apply it in the second, he told his team. Then, after that, the company will make a decision about future developments. In the meantime Brian explored agile tools and processes so that when the approval came to test the concept, IT would be ready. The first project was well defined and the sponsor was willing to act as a guinea pig for the new process. The challenge was that the system had to be fully functional and implemented by November- less than four months away. AssortAA was a product that would assist buyers in better predicting assortments across the countryin sizes and stylesaccording to previous patterns of purchases, integrating these with industry demographic data, and then dynamically adjusting them as needed. The reason for the deadline was that buyers and store operations all met at headquarters in November to finalize the spring orders and the date couldn't be changed. Brian had selected a development team and appointed a scrum master from among his top performers, and QA and Operations had each appointed a person to work with them on a dedicated basis. A project room had been organized so that everyone could sit together. The sponsor had agreed to send someone to the training session. So far, so good. The first glitch came late in the first sprint. Our business rep, Cathy Jang, won't make any decisions, complained Vic Robeznieks, the scrum master. She says she's got to take all decisions back to her boss and then takes a few days to get back to us. And she's hardly ever in the project room with us. She says most of what we're asking her to do isn't her job!" I'll talk to Phil right away about this, promised Brian. Phil and Brian discussed this matter. There's a lot of confusion in the business about what their roles and responsibilities are for this project, said Phil. Ken, our sponsor, wants to be involved in making all the decisions about this project but obviously he can't be there all the time. Cathy's too junior to be given full decision-making authority, and she's only been allocated to this project part-time. That's ridiculous! fumed Brian. We told them we needed full-time participation right up front! The only way this is going to work is if they understand what they're supposed to do and put the right people in place. I think we need to escalate this to Gene. While Gene worked on getting the right level of business participation and educating Cathy and her boss about their roles and responsibilities, fresh problems emerged as they neared the end of the second sprint. We've way overestimated what we can do in this sprint, Vic told Brian, Caroline, and their agile coach, Mike Khan. Everyone's asking for changes after the last sprint and we need to do a better job of prioritizing them. "You're right, said Mike. You want to ensure that key changes are made but not get distracted from your main goal of getting this project done. That's the job of your product owner. He or she needs to make these decisions and keep the big picture of the product in view. And Vic, Mike continued, make sure you and your team follow the 80:20 rule when deciding what gets done. Turning to Brian and Caroline, Mike said. You two may also need to work more closely with the team to help them get their user stories right. Estimation is still difficult with agile and sprints often end up too big and this can be discouraging. You need more consistency of delivery so that your clients can see progress. Wow, Caroline said to Brian when they were alone. I didn't realize we had to be this involved with agile. I wonder how it will work if all our projects are delivered this way?" Not long after this, there were grumblings from the project team, which had been set up in a converted meeting room. Brian dropped in on Gene midway through the fourth sprint. Our guys have now been at it flat out for almost two months and the backlog of changes is growing even while they're trying to get out new functionality. There's hardly room to swing a cat in the team room and while it's nice being co-located with everyone so that we can get answers when we need them, people need their space and they're getting on each other's nerves. The noise is irritating some people, and others feel that their personal work styles are not supported. And there's absolutely no privacy!" "I'm not sure what I can do in the short term," said Gene, but your concerns are noted. He knew what Brian was talking about. The project room was cluttered and smelly from various takeout meals. There were constant interruptions and very little room to spread out papers or take a break. But space was at a premium. At about the same time, Ethan Matthews, Director of IT Architecture, ran into Vic in the hall. How's AssortAA going?, he asked casually. "It's going well, said Vic enthusiastically. We're getting some better support from the business now that they can see what we're delivering and how it's working. They love the graphical interface we've given them." That's great, said Ethan, but what are you doing about our traditional consultations, like those with architecture, to ensure that the bigger picture is taken into consideration? It seems like architecture and portfolio management and some higher-level objectives have been left out of project planning. We haven't even seen the graphic package you implemented. Vic nodded. Youre absolutely right. We just went into the development with only a sketch of an idea. We're under the gun here and don't have the time to get into all that big picture stuff, reviews, stage gates, and sign-offs. We're lucky if we get home after a twelve-hour day! If you want more process, you're going to have to take it up with Gene. Ethan nodded thoughtfully as Vic hustled off toward the project room. This was definitely an issue that needed to be raised with Gene, and right away. Something needed to be done about this cowboy mentality unless the company wanted to go back to the bad old days when systems were developed ad hoc and without regard to the overall technical direction and operational sustainability of the infrastructure and applications. By the beginning of the fifth sprint, it had become clear that more resources were needed. Vic, Caroline, and Brian conferred and agreed that they needed to bring in some staff from their offshore outsourcer in India. I think if we can turn over two user stories to them over the next two sprints, we can finish on time, said Vic. Can they handle this? asked Caroline. They assure us that they can handle this new methodology, said Brian. My idea would be to act as the manager of the whole portfolio while Vic manages the team here, and we have another scrum master in India for that team. I'd help them with coordination and guidance and get them another ops person and QA tester. I'll also speak with Gene about how we get more business participation for this team." By the end of this sprint Gene felt that he should install a revolving door on this office. The head of QA had just left after complaining that the Indian team had not interpreted "agile as tested code but merely as developed code. It's not our job to do these tests or to make sure that the new code integrates with the old, she'd told him. You need to do a better job educating these people about our standards." By the end of this sprint Gene felt that he should install a revolving door on this office. The head of QA had just left after complaining that the Indian team had not interpreted "agile as tested code but merely as developed code. It's not our job to do these tests or to make sure that the new code integrates with the old, shed told him. You need to do a better job educating these people about our standards." Gene couldn't disagree and he picked up the phone to get Brian and Mike together for an impromptu meeting to see how they could best do this. He got an earful from Brian. We need better tools to coordinate with India, he complained. I can't do my job when theyre working completely opposite hours from me and I can never get them and Vic's team together to talk. Can we get some better video and collaboration in here? "I'll add it to the list, sighed Gene. At the beginning of the sixth sprint, Gene dropped into the team room to rally the troops for the final effort. You've all been great!, he said enthusiastically. I'm getting lots of positive feedback from the business because you're actually showing them what we're delivering and giving them a chance to give you feedback and correct misunderstandings. Everyone's looking forward to the great unveiling of the fully tested and implemented system at the buyers' meeting in a couple of weeks. After some enthusiastic clapping, the team got back to work, and Brian walked out into the hall with Gene. Thanks for the pep talk, Brian said. People really appreciated it. Some of them are having a tough time with this new way of working. You know, many IT people aren't really people-people.' Now theyre asking if they can do some of their work from home and I don't know what to say. Mike told us we really need daily attendance to make agile work. Gene looked thoughtful. Apart from that, how are you managing?" You've given me a first-class team for this pilot and they've worked really hard, said Brian. But I'm not sure if we have the skills as an organization to do this all the time with all our projects. We're asking a lot of them. And the operations and QA people feel the same way. They're proud of what we're all accomplishing with AssortAA but they feel like they're in a pressure cooker all the time. And very few of our people feel comfortable working so closely with the business. They don't have the business knowledge or skills to interact easily with business people outside the team. That's always been the job of the relationship managers. "I know, said Gene, but that's going to have to change. IT's too important to the business for there to be an us' and 'them'mentality. Business and IT are each business people first and foremost and everyone has to be an equal stakeholder in our projects. But I do hear what you are saying, Brian, added Gene. You've all done a terrific job and gone the extra mile to get this project off the ground. It's been a heroic effort. Once AssortAA has been delivered, I want to get everyone together again to look at what we've accomplished and what needs to be done for the second pilot to make agile development a more repeatable, sustainable methodology for all our work. We've had some major kudos from the business and Lisa tells me she's hearing lots of positive buzz about IT, so I think we're on the right track. Two weeks later, Brian and Vic and their team realized the extent of their accomplishments when they stood on the stage of the auditorium and accepted the applause of a couple of hundred buyers and store operations people who had been blown away by the AssortAA live demo. We really did it!, Vic whispered to Brian. I didn't think we could actually get this done in just four months, but we did! The pride of the team was undeniable. There was no way anything in IT had ever generated such a positive response. As the team gathered together in the local watering hole for a well-deserved celebration, Brian and Vic's phones pinged simultaneously with identical emails from Gene. Congratulations on your success! Can you meet me at 3 p.m. to start planning the second pilot? It's bigger and much higher profile so I want you to help me figure out what we need to do better and how to do it. Cheers