Size Matters

People may ask:

“What’s new to Agile development? Iterative development is not a new idea, which is as old as Waterfall.”

“What’s the difference between User Stories and BRD?”

“What is special on Continuous Delivery? Even in Waterfall, delivery by phases is a common practice.”

“What’s the difference between Pod and team? Even in the existing structure, all IT teams align with specific business functions.”

 

All the questions above ignore an important point, which is the SIZE.

 

Yes, iterative development is really not a new idea. But Agile development is SHORT iterative development, which results in short feedback loop. With such short feedback loop, we can collaborate with business to try error rapidly and evolve the product continuously to ensure it can completely fulfill the business need. The duration for each iteration should be as short as possible (of course, we need to consider the overhead). The other Agile practices like Daily Meetings, Continuous Integration and Test Driven Development, are also designed for rapid feedback.

 

One of the key features of User Story is SMALL. A User Story should be the SMALLEST deliverable with certain business value, which can be delivered within a short iteration. If it’s not small enough, it should be split. Whether the User Stories are small enough is the foundation of Aglie development and continuous delivery.

 

You are right, delivery by phases often happens in Waterfall too. But the interval of each phase may be months. The scope of each phase is still very big, which is very risky. It’s as scaring as a Big Bang release. Continuous Delivery’s interval is shortened to monthly, weekly or even daily. Since the scope of each delivery is very SMALL and easy to roll back, it is the most effective way on risk control.

 

A Pod should be the SMALLEST group of people who can deliver features independently, which is also called “2-pizza Team” (2 pizzas can feed this team). Big team results in bad communication and slowness (to get to the same place, a 5-people group must move much faster than a 20-people group). A Pod should always keep the smallest size with ability of autonomy and independent delivery, to ensure the efficiency of communication and delivery.

 

In short, SIZE MATTERS. The most essential feature on Agile development is SHORT and SMALL. If there is issue on delivery efficiency, please review the following:

 

• Whether the cycle of iteration and feedback is too long?

• Whether the User Stories are too big, can they be split?

• Whether the release cycle is too long and its scope is too big?

• Whether the team is too big, can it be split?

About the Author

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• An early Agile evangelist;

• Started from Extreme Programming;

• Proficient in Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Kanban, Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration (CI), Behavior Driven Development (BDD).

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