The world is going agile. Are you?

The world is going agile. Are you?
In the face of the global economic turbulence, organizations are forced to become nimble and agile so that they can respond to market changes quickly. Over the last few years, many organizations have adopted adaptive project management methods like Agile to increase the efficiency of their project management function. Among the different Agile frameworks, Scrum in particular has become extremely popular in most of the organizations.
While more and more organizations are adopting Scrum as their preferred framework for managing projects, they need to overcome the initial challenges in the transition process. As with any change, there will be some resistance during the transition to Scrum. Middle managers will typically fear their loss of role or loss of authority. They may not understand their new role or how they contribute to the success of the team. People who are invested in the old methodology will also typically resist the change. These people may be systems engineers or other related positions that fear losing their role as a result of changing to Scrum.
The two basic methods of transitioning to Scrum are top down and bottom up. In top down, the transition is widely communicated. There is an effort to provide education about the change to everyone involved. This communication can be a source of change resistance. The other possibility is to change things gradually within the organizational culture. Then, the transition to Scrum will be incremental.
Another aspect of transition to consider is how much of the organization requires a transition to Scrum methods. The entire organization could be transitioned at the same time. However, this method is more susceptible to problems that may result in interrupting profit generating activities. Therefore, it is more advisable to transition different divisions in an iterative fashion to reduce risk and to provide lessons learned for future iterations.
For a start-up organization or who has a fairly clean slate, it is easy for them to adopt Scrum. However, if your organization is used to traditional project management environment, there is no doubt that you will face lot of challenges at the beginning.  It is a good idea to hire some Scrum Experts to help you in the transition process. Also, training plays a pivotal role here. It is important to train your whole project team before you start using Scrum. There are many professional training organizations who offer Scrum training around the globe. Also, there are many training programs which are associated with some recognized Scrum certifications. As a matter of fact, many organizations prefer these training programs because of several reasons – 1) employees get trained in Scrum, 2) employees can earn a professional certification at the end of the training program (of course after taking the certification exam) which in turn increases the motivation of employees, 3) certification exams also help organizations to measure the effectiveness of the training program and employee performance in a more tangible manner.
If you are trying to implement Scrum and are facing issues which seem to be uphill, do not give up quickly as the benefits of implementing Scrum is far-fetched than the initial challenges.

 To know more click on: http://www.scrumstudy.com/blog/

Quality considerations for Agile Projects

In Agile, Quality and Testing teams’ roles and responsibilities often overlap. That is because ideally, matrices are not required in Agile Projects. So, Quality teams are often merged into testing teams for the sake of convenience, though it depends on a lot of factors. Also, as customers are closely involved in providing feedback every sprint, so even they can be considered as a part of Quality Team.
Now, in Agile projects, ideally, “Quality should be baked in”. What it means is that since coding, integration and testing happens in parallel, so there is no concept of quality being checked at a later phase, which in turn means that it has to be maintained from beginning till end, by the combined efforts of all the stakeholders put together. In other words, quality has to be fed into a product from the beginning, rather than trying to test it in later. Hence, even a Project Manager conducts a functionality testing if required. Even a BA conducts smoke testing if needed. And even the clients chip in with their random testing during demo and walkthrough. All of these efforts ensure that “Quality” is not a phase as such in Agile, it is an everyday affair.
Another thing to realize is that in traditional method, quality ideally should be allocated as much time as coding based on the relative importance, but more often than not, this is not the case. What happens is that coding takes longer than allocated, and that is compromised in the quality check/testing phase. But in Agile, each increment of coding is tested as soon as it is done, and immediately iteration after rectifying bugs. Developers can never actually get ahead of the testers, because according to Definition of Done, a code is not done till it is tested. This fundamental difference between both the methodologies is what makes Agile so much more Quality Conscious.
Regarding Testing, it is an altogether different approach in Agile Methodologies. Instead of writing test cases from a requirement document build by a BA, even before any coding has started, the testers will have to write test cases for user stories as per the priority in an iteration just hours before actual coding takes place. It requires a collaborative approach between a business representative, a domain expert and/or programmer. Functional testing, exploratory testing, smoke testing, pair programming etc. everything is done to ensure the quality of the iteration remains on the higher side. When tests demonstrating minimum functionality are complete, the team can consider the story finished.

To know more click on : http://www.scrumstudy.com/blog/quality-considerations-for-agile-projects-2/