Simple Agile Design for YOUR Architecture
Agile encourages us to eliminate activities that don’t add value and find the simplest solution possible to solve our business needs. For many teams, that can lead to a state where collaborative design no longer happens or is discussed on a whiteboard that gets erased after the conversation.
How then, can you share the knowledge with team members who don’t work on that feature, or join the team after the feature is built? What about distributed teams, are they unable to have collaborative design because they don't have a whiteboard?
I had those same questions in 2012, when Ron Garton of the Agile Coaching Network showed me a lightweight solution and we stopped creating traditional design documents. Ron provided me permission to bring that solution to the agile community through sessions like these.
This solution helps everyone on the team understand what they will create or change in the current systems before it’s built, which can also be retained to increase the domain knowledge for that system later. Though the template itself can be helpful, like many agile tools, it’s the conversation that it starts that’s truly powerful.
Outline/Structure of the Workshop
I'll connect attendees to the topic with a tech design document, the effort to create it, and discuss that document's value is tied to it's understanding and use: 5 minutes
We'll discuss the benefits of this approach, including passing SOX and PCI audits: 5 minutes
Invite the attendees to recall a recent user story and acceptance criteria scenarios and write them on index cards: 5 minutes
Ask participants to use the template to design the solution for their story: 5 minutes
Participants share the story, acceptance criteria and design with their table to invite questions and feedback: 20 minutes
Show how the approach can identify tasks for the sprint backlog, be adapted to match their System, and help distributed teams collaborate on design: 5 minutes
Learning Outcome
- Learn an alternative approach to technical design documents
- Have a quick and easy way to collaborate with all team members regardless of physical location
- Bring everyone to the same level of understanding of what will be built
- Quickly identify tasks to include in the Sprint Backlog
- Identify how to test before the code is developed
- Pass your next internal audit, even if it hasn't been updated for your agile methods
Target Audience
Architects, Designers, Developers, Testers, Development Managers and Scrum Masters can benefit from this approach.
Prerequisites for Attendees
A basic knowledge of an n-tier system architecture is needed to participate in the workshop, however, practitioners can benefit from observing the approach and use of the tool even if they aren't technical.
Links
My speaking history:
Panelist - SoFla PM's and Agile Practitioners 2015
Panelist - ITPalooza 2015
Recognizing your own Value - Women in Agile South Florida (WiASF) 2016
Flipping Agile: How to remodel your future using Agile principles - WiASF 8/16 & Agile Coaching Journeys 1/17
Wheel of Misfortune: a team dysfunction role-play - Agile Coach Camp 10/16
Scrum Prevails: How we recovered from an Agile Implementation failure - WiASF 2/17
Agile Games Night - Joint Event with WIaSF, SFAA and South Florida PM's and Agile Practitioners 3/17
What about the Managers? Strategies to Engage and Transform Leaders - Agile Coach Camp 4/17
How to Increase Transparency and Visibility through Metrics and KPI's - WiASF 9/17
Us and Them - what can we do to overcome our differences? - WiASF 11/17
Agile Track Facilitator - ITPalooza 12/17
Agile Games Night - WiASF 12/17
#BePartoftheGood - an Agile Response to Crisis - Agile & Beyond 2018
schedule Submitted 4 years ago
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