WHITE PAPER: PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT FOR AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Managing Agile Projects with CA Clarity PPM

JUNE 2007

Mike Metcalf
CA C L A R I T Y P P M

Table of Contents
Executive Summary
SECTION 1

Adoption and Implications of Agile Development Continuous prioritization Dispersed agile teams Program management for agile and non-agile projects Agile project governance
SECTION 2

Managing Agile Projects with CA Clarity PPM Continuous prioritization Dispersed agile teams Program management for agile and non-agile projects Agile project governance
SECTION 3

Conclusions
SECTION 4

References
SECTION 5

About the Author

ABOUT CA

Back Cover

Copyright 2007 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document As Is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages.

Executive Summary
Challenge
For most organizations, the introduction of agile methods is an evolutionary process that begins with small project teams on select projects. As the use of agile methods increases in scale, however, issues such as agile tooling, PMO support, project portfolio management and risk and compliance management are increasingly important. As agile development scales beyond small teams to the enterprise, IT organizations will look for solutions that help them assimilate agile development into their broader IT management processes.

Opportunity
Agile development techniques are becoming increasingly popular as a means of accelerating software delivery. The majority of these approaches is aimed at improving productivity for small teams of developers and emphasizes feature-driven, iterative, incremental delivery over plan or schedule-driven approaches. For many IT organizations, however, agile methods are just one of many IT processes that must co-exist and be effectively managed to ensure optimum IT performance. This paper examines how CA Clarity helps organizations realize the benefits of agile development in the typical world of agile and non-agile project portfolios, IT governance and compliance mandates.

Benefits
Organizations are increasingly trying to simplify and unify the management of Information Technology. Assimilating agile development methods with other enterprise IT management disciplines such as business relationship management, IT service portfolio management, and compliance and risk management is the best way to both accelerate software delivery and ensure sustained business value from IT.

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SECTION 1

Adoption and Implications of Agile Development

This paper offers some answers to the challenges faced by corporate IT organizations incorporating agile development teams into their broader IT portfolio management practices. There are numerous sources of information, such as the agilejournal.com, on the application and advantages of the array of agile methods. The various agile methods, including SCRUM, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Extreme Programming (XP), RUP, Agile UP, Crystal, Lean Development and Feature-Driven Development (FDD), while having unique characteristics, all fundamentally prescribe an iterative, incremental approach to software development that involves continuous planning, testing and integration A 2006 survey1 of over 4000 software professionals revealed that 41% had adopted an agile methodology. This number increased to around 56% in organizations with over 500 IT professionals. XP was the most widely adopted method, followed by FDD and SCRUM. Another, smaller survey2 revealed that the adoption within large organizations (100 or more IT professionals), however, is still relatively small with 55% of organizations reporting 25% or less of their developers using agile methods. Based on these results, it is clear that many IT organizations are faced with managing both agile and non-agile teams and that there remains a great deal of variety in the agile methods being used. For corporate IT organizations, particularly those within public corporations, the management of agile projects can pose significant challenges. These primarily stem from a fundamentally different way that agile projects are managed for example, in agile IT projects: Planned work changes with every 2-4 week development cycle or iteration Ideally, all team members are dedicated to a single project and are co-located Agile and non-agile projects are often inextricably linked Funding approval and oversight is difficult when the project scope is a moving target Continuous prioritization In plan-driven projects, work is planned, assigned and scheduled based on an estimate of required resources and overall capacity and the project is managed to control scope, schedule and cost. Agile methods prescribe a fixed cycle time or iteration (2-4 weeks) during which the team attempts to deliver complete, tested and, in theory, releasable software. Naturally, if the time is fixed, the scope must be variable. This means that scope changes or backlog prioritization becomes an almost continuous process. It is the responsibility of the Product Owner to manage this backlog and prioritization but most IT organizations require the involvement of many stakeholders to achieve a consensus on prioritization. The challenge for internal IT organizations is to ensure all stakeholders are appropriately included in this continuous prioritization process.
1 Results from Scott Amblers March 2006 Agile Adoption Rate Survey available at www.agilemodeling.com/surveys 2 2006 Agile Project Management Tooling Survey Results, Trail Ridge Consulting

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FIGURE A

TYPICAL AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Agile methods prescribe a fixed cycle time or iteration (2-4 weeks) during which the team attempts to deliver complete, tested and, in theory, releasable software.

Dispersed agile teams The second challenge: the small, dedicated, co-located team, is a practical impossibility for most development organizations. As agile practices extend to larger teams and multiple projects, most organizations are faced with the challenge of coordinating agile teams spread across multiple locations and time zones. This is, in part, responsible for the emergence of a wide range of open source and commercially available agile tools that replace the cards and whiteboards typically used to manage the product backlog, iteration planning and release management. These tools are often light-weight collaboration tools used by development teams knowledgeable in agile methods and are difficult to use or interpret by business users not familiar with agile methods. In addition, they produce an information silo and provide little in the way of recognizable management visibility or financial reporting. Program management for agile and non-agile projects Many corporate IT development projects share common resources and components such as technical architecture which can cross multiple agile and non-agile projects. It is often not possible or desirable to deliver these projects using an iterative, incremental process. Additionally, broader product launch and introduction activities such as documentation, user acceptance and training, marketing, and distribution are usually dependent on traditional plandriven scheduling. The result is that many IT organizations must manage a blend of waterfall and agile projects some of which have inter-project dependencies. The challenge for IT management is to balance the process and tooling needs of agile teams with the portfolio, project and resource management capabilities needed for effective project portfolio management.

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Agile project governance Finally, the growing adoption and clear benefits of project and portfolio management within IT organizations emphasize the need for a rigorous project approval and funding process. This project selection and funding approval process is significantly challenged when the project scope is continually changing with each iteration. The question becomes, what exactly are we approving? In effect, each iteration or release requires oversight and approval adding another dimension to the management of agile development. Clearly IT organizations need to implement a strategy that will standardize and promote proven IT management and governance processes and have the flexibility to accommodate evolving IT processes including agile development practices.

SECTION 2

Managing Agile Projects with CA Clarity PPM

CA Clarity is a Project and Portfolio Management solution that enables IT organizations to integrate management of their services, projects, people and financials. It provides an enterprise-wide view of all IT management information, delivered through executive dashboards for fact-based decision-making and better alignment between IT and the lines of business it supports. CA Clarity PPM also provides enterprise-wide project and resource management for enhanced project delivery. Continuous prioritization CA Clarity provides a simple means of capturing backlog items such as enhancement requests, defects, user requirements, and features. Using configurable workflow and scoring tools, each of these backlog items can be routed to appropriate stakeholders for scoring and prioritization. These prioritized backlog items can then be associated, on a rolling basis, with specific iteration or release plans. Within CA Clarity, these iterations and releases are not only available to the agile project team but are also visible to all project stakeholders ensuring that additional stakeholder input or approval, when required, can be rapidly communicated. Each backlog item can then be fully described, its effort and cost estimated and can be scored and ranked against all other items with the direct involvement of the customer.

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FIGURE B

PRIORITIZING THE BACKLOG USING CA CLARITY

Within CA Clarity all iterations and releases are visible to all project stakeholders ensuring that additional stakeholder input or approval, when required, can be rapidly communicated.

Dispersed agile teams One of the most significant advantages of managing agile projects using CA Clarity is the ability for CA Clarity to coordinate agile teams that are geographically dispersed. Without the ability to join daily stand-ups, or view whiteboards and sticky notes, remote agile team members need an effective way to get daily updates, communicate issues and risks with their team members and status their backlog items. CA Clarity provides a rich collaborative environment where remote team members have access to all information required to fully contribute to the agile project. Each team member has a personal view of his/her backlog, action items and tasks. Issues, risks and changes are also maintained so that every member of the team has access to all relevant project information at all times.

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FIGURE C

AGILE TEAM COLLABORATION WITH CA CLARITY

Issues, risks and changes are maintained so that every member of the team has access to all relevant project information at all times.

Program management for agile and non-agile projects As discussed earlier, corporate IT organizations must manage both agile and non-agile development projects that may include dependencies between projects, particularly where architecture is shared across many applications. While it is the responsibility of the project team to uncover and resolve impediments to their next iteration, the project governing body should have access to performance across all programs and projects and should identify and resolve cross-project conflicts and impediments. CA Clarity provides management information across all IT initiatives both agile and non-agile. Inter-project dependencies can be easily tracked and issues and risks can be communicated across project teams. Instead of separate silos of project information, CA Clarity provides a single portfolio of all IT projects, resources and financial information. Inter-project dependencies and constraints can be defined at the iteration or release level so that backlog prioritization includes accommodation for shared deliverables or components. Downstream activities that depend on plan-driven schedules such as documentation, user training and potentially commercialization and sales can be maintained and synchronized with the agile project. As discussed earlier, dedicating all resources to agile projects is impractical in many organizations. Specialist skills are often shared across several projects. With CA Clarity, these scarce resources can be allocated to both your agile and non-agile projects and resource conflicts can be quickly identified and remedied. Team capacity can be adjusted over time to reflect improved understanding of team velocity resulting in more accurate effort estimation and iteration planning.

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FIGURE D

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT OF AGILE AND NON-AGILE PROJECTS

CA Clarity provides program management for agile and non-agile projects. Inter-project dependencies can be easily tracked and issues and risks can be communicated across agile and non-agile project teams.

Agile project governance Typically project approval is based on a complete estimate of the project cost, schedule and scope. In many cases this approval is further refined using approval gates between major stages of the development and launch lifecycle. In an agile project, each iteration and release constitutes a complete development cycle. In effect, each iteration is a new stage or phase that may require review and approval. With CA Clarity all project stakeholders have access to both summary and detailed iteration and release information. Agile planning information can include details of the prioritized iteration backlog, detailed actual and ETC costs including any capital expenditure required. If further approval is required, the Product Owner can notify project stakeholders who have immediate access to the project plan via a personalized home page. CA Claritys powerful portal and home page configuration capabilities mean that project stakeholders do not need to be familiar with agile practices or tools in order to provide effective oversight. In addition, with CA Clarity, existing IT governance and compliance controls can be applied to all projects both agile and non-agile alike.

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SECTION 3

Conclusions
There is no disputing the increased adoption of agile methods in corporate and independent software development efforts. The challenge for IT leadership will be to embrace these practices while maintaining essential enterprise controls, managing combined agile and nonagile programs and project portfolios and adapting project governance practices to deal with iterative, incremental project delivery. CA Clarity combines the flexible team collaboration and planning capabilities required of agile teams with the project portfolio management, financial management and resource management functions critical for effective Enterprise IT Management (EITM). Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2007 and as a leader in the Forrester Wave: Project and Portfolio Management, Q1 2006, CA Clarity uniquely resolves the challenge of capturing, prioritizing and balancing all IT demand with IT capacity, and provides an enterprise IT management solution for organizations adopting agile development practices.

SECTION 4

References
Results from Scott Amblers March 2006 Agile Adoption Rate Survey http:/ /www.agilemodeling.com/surveys 2006 Agile Project Management Tooling Survey Results, Trail Ridge Consulting http:/ /www.trailridgeconsulting.com/surveys.html

SECTION 5

About the Author

Mike Metcalf has been associated with the development and marketing of software products for over 25 years. He has managed the product management and product marketing of project and portfolio management tools, agile development tools and solutions for software development and new product development and introduction. He is currently Director of Product Marketing for CA Clarity.

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CA, one of the worlds largest information technology (IT) management software companies, unifies and simplifies complex IT management across the enterprise for greater business results. With our Enterprise IT Management vision, solutions and expertise, we help customers effectively govern, manage and secure IT.

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