Agile Modelling

When you are following agile software development methodology, you should be aware about agile modelling. That’s because you need to make sure that your software development projects are aligned with agile modelling. Agile modelling is a methodology that the agile software development teams use. In here, they are concerned about initial requirement modelling, model storming, and iteration modelling and acceptance test driven development. Primary objective of this procedure is to make sure that the high level requirements of software development project are understood at the initial phase. Then you will be able to go ahead and gather requirements just in time to proceed with the developments.

In here, the project requirements will come from stakeholders. The stakeholders will actively participate and share their requirements. There can be two different types of requirements, which you can call as behavioural requirements and non-behavioural requirements. Behavioural requirements explain how the user will interact along with the system. On the other hand, non-behavioural requirements explain the technical features available in the system, which are linked with performance, security, dependability, reliability and interoperability.

During the agile modelling phase, it is important to understand the difference between behavioural requirements and non-behavioural requirements. Then it is possible to add them into the backlog and communicate accordingly to the development teams as high level requirements.

There can be several types of requirements that are linked with your software development project. As a result, the different modelling artefacts will treat the different requirements in different ways. Hence, it is important to have different modelling artefacts as mentioned earlier within the intellectual toolkit. Then you will be able to get the most out of it and move forward along with time. Agile modelling will also create an ideal environment for the project development teams to ensure proper elicitation of the requirements as well.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile Metrics

Agile metrics are in a position to provide an overall assistance for the software development teams and project managers to measure the process of software development. Along with that, it is possible to use the agile metrics in order to measure work quality, productivity, and predictability. On top of everything, it can provide some useful figures about the health of the software development team as well as the end product that is being developed at the end of the day.

One of the most important functionalities of agile metrics is to ensure the value developed to clients. It is better to measure the value shared to the customer instead of measuring how much or what we are doing as an agile software development team. Then it is possible to understand the nature of impact created on the customer at the end of the day.

There can be different types of agile metrics. Lean agile metrics is the first type. It focuses on ensuring proper flow of value from the organization to customers, while removing the wasteful activities. This agile matric is focusing on cycle time and lead time. Then you can find another agile metric called Kanban metrics. This is focusing on organizing and prioritizing work and getting them done in a timely manner. A cumulative flow is a perfect metric to prove this. The third type of agile metric is scrum metrics. They are targeting the predictable delivery of a software or a functionality of software to clients. This metric would include team velocity and burndown chart.

When using agile metrics, it is important to ensure that the entire scope of the project is calculated and measured. Then it is possible to make sure that nothing is left out. If the agile metrics is not covering the entire project, it will be a bad metric.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile Fluency Model

Agile teams have to go through four prominent zones when they keep on learning. Here is a quick overview of those four zones.

  • Focusing teams that try to enhance business value.
  • Delivering teams that try to cater to market cadence.
  • Optimizing teams that lead the market.
  • Strengthening teams that make the company strong.

When it comes to Agile Fluency Model, we pay attention towards the most fluent proficiency. It is all about exhibiting proficiency, even when working under pressure.

The Agile Fluency Model focuses to scale the team and produce business value. Then the teams can deliver market cadence. Along with that, the teams can optimize the teams and lead market innovation. Final step is strengthening the teams to ensure that organization becomes strong.

Teams are empowered to take their development efforts to the next level with the support and assistance offered by Agile Fluency Model. Then the teams can strengthen themselves and get work done in an effective manner.

Performance in the agile teams can reduce due to many different reasons. In order to improve the performance, it is possible to go ahead with Agile Fluency Model.

A proper understanding should be offered to the teams in order to get a better understanding about Agile Fluency Model. Then it is possible to take the development methodologies to the next level and get effective work done at the end of the day.

Agile teams are designed to perform. If you want to get the maximum performance, you can go ahead with Agile Fluency Model. Then it is possible to make sure that the entire team is made strong to receive excellent outcomes.

— Slimane Zouggari

SAFe Courses & Certifications

SAFe is a technique that has the ability to implement lean agile transformation into a company. If you want to introduce it, you need to have a solid understanding about the fundamentals of SAFe. That’s where you need to go ahead with one of the SAFe courses and certifications.

Numerous SAFe courses and certifications are available for you to consider. Here is a list of the courses that you can follow to

  • Implementing SAFe
  • Leading SAFe
  • SAFe for teams
  • SAFe scrum master
  • SAFe advanced scrum master
  • SAFe release train engineer
  • SAFe product owner/product manager
  • SAFe DevOps
  • Agile software engineering
  • SAFe for architects
  • Lean portfolio management
  • Agile product and solution management.

Content that you can find in all these SAFe courses are thoughtfully created to help employees with ensuring agile transformation within their workplaces. Therefore, you will be able to follow these certification courses with the peace of mind and achieve excellent results.

You should start with the beginner courses in SAFe and then move to the advanced courses. Likewise, you should also follow SAFe courses that are related to your job description. For example, if you are into DevOps, you need to follow SAFe DevOps certification course. It will help you to understand your responsibilities in leading lean agile transformation within the company.

After you obtain SAFe cortication, you will need to renew it annually. You will need to pay a renewal fee of $100 to retain the certification as well. It is totally worth because SAFe can help you to introduce much-needed agile transformation to a company and retain it and stay updated along with time.

— Slimane Zouggari

Visualizing Nexus spring backlog

Nexus spring backlog will be created at the time of Nexus sprint planning. This is a visualization of the work that has to be done throughout the Nexus, which contains all dependencies. Primary objective of Nexus sprint planning is to properly coordinate the activities of the scrum team within a single sprint.

Implementation of Nexus model within the agile scrum team to scale it properly will make Nexus spring backlog possible. It will help the scrum team to get to know about the dependencies and volume of work that has to be done.

When it comes to Nexus spring backlog, the entire product development roadmap will be visualized. Then it is possible to get a clear understanding on what kind of developments will come up in the future and how to prepare accordingly. Along with that, it is possible to visualize all the dependencies as well.

We tend to go ahead with Nexus spring backlog in order to make sure that all the upcoming developments are properly aligned with planning. This will also help us to manage the dependencies effectively. Along with this understanding, proper scaling of teams can be done.

In order to get the most out of Nexus spring backlog, you need to make sure that you are getting the most out of Nexus sprint planning. That’s because Nexus sprint planning will determine how the backlog items are properly utilized for the developments.

Nexus spring backlog is used when the development team, or the product owner has a clear understanding about the development roadmap available in front, but needs to properly scale the development team, so that developments can be completed timely.

— Slimane Zouggari

Nexus

Nexus is a scaling framework that you can find in agile. If you want to scale the agile teams within your company, this is the right approach available to move forward with. This framework focuses on how to organize teams to deliver a project that has a large scope.

Scrum model has bottlenecks when delivering large projects within a short time period. That’s where Nexus comes into play. This framework can help a company to get two or more teams involved to complete a project. Along with that, it is possible to deliver the large scale project within a short time period.

If a large project has to be completed, one team will not be able to work on it and deliver it within a short time period. This is where the help of more than one team is required. Nexus comes into play in such a situation. You can easily scale two or more teams through this framework and get them to work collaboratively ensure timely delivery of the project.

Scaling teams is important to get most work done within the limited time. Therefore, it is important to go ahead with the Nexus framework and properly scale the teams to complete a large project with tight deadlines.

When two or more teams are working to achieve one common objective, misunderstandings can happen. Hence, it is important to understand how to overcome them.

If a development has to be completed within a short time period, it is important to overcome overheads. Overcoming such overheads will become an easy thing to do with the help of Nexus model. That’s because it has got the ability to eliminate the bottlenecks and deliver positive results.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile workspaces

If you want to make the workplace agile, adding whiteboards will not be enough. You should have a clear understanding about the concept of agile workspaces. An agile workspace is a diverse workspace, which is supporting all types of creative work to happen. They include socializing, learning, collaborating and focusing. In addition to that, it is possible for the workers to understand what space is best related to the tasks that they have to achieve.

In order to ensure an Agile workspace, it is important to provide a clear understanding about the concept and benefits that can be obtained out of it. Primary objective of providing such different settings is to help them move through easily and quickly to support the activity based environment.

The elements of agile workspace have made it possible to create agile workspaces with ease. These elements include open plan, breakout, resources, touchdowns and quiet zones. In here, both science and creative would come into play and create perfect balance in designing workplace environments to be vibrant, productive and space efficient.

One of the biggest reasons available to introduce agile workspaces is that it can create a productive environment for the employees. They will also be able to remain flexible. As a result, the employees can get the most out of work that they do without getting stressed out. It will even lead employees towards greater engagement and greater collaboration.

If the employees are stressed out and if they are not in a position to complete work that is thrown on their way in a timely manner, it is possible to introduce an agile workspace. Along with the agile workspace, employees will be able to have more freedom to get work done by eliminating stress, which can increase productivity and reduce costs.

— Slimane Zouggari

YAGNI

YAGNI refers to You aren’t gonna need it. This is one of the principles that you can find in Extreme Programming (XP). It is stating that a programmer should not go ahead and add any added functionality into the unit unless it is required. This is one of the best methodologies that are being used as of now in order to make sure that the developers don’t get stuck with overloading with work.

YAGNI is encouraging the developers to go ahead and implement things that are actually needed by them, instead of accommodating everything that is available down on the pipeline. If a developer foresees that it is not needed, there is no possibility to go ahead with it. This understanding creates a perfect environment to go ahead with YAGNI.

YAGNI focuses more on doing simple things that can possibly work. The developer has to understand what should be really done and then go ahead with it.

When it comes to agile software development, the developers have a limited time to get their work done. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the developers are only undertaking what is needed by them to work on.

In order to get the most out of YAGNI, it is important to understand what can be done in terms of developments and remove the other work.

A developer will be able to take a look at the product backlog. Then it is possible to deep dive through the stories and understand what is needed to be implemented. The rest can be ignored to save time.

— Slimane Zouggari

What’s VUCA?

VUCA stands out of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. This acronym was initially introduced in the year 1987. This concept is widely being used for project management in today’s world. If you are working with software development projects, it is important to have a clear understanding about what VUCA is and what it can offer to you.

Primary objective of VUCA is to improve strategic significance and behavior of groups as well as individuals within organizations. It pays more attention towards systematic failures and behavioral failures as well. These failures will eventually contribute towards organizational failure. Hence, it is important to overcome these failures accordingly.

It is possible to find many use cases for VUCA. For example, rapid change within a theme will be able to create a negative impact on it. In fact, it will keep the entire team away from achieving successful results at the end of the day. Such a situation can be managed effectively with the understanding that a project team has on VUCA. That’s because it is possible to reduce volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity associated with the rapid change.

Along with time, the definition of VUCA was subjected to several changes. Along with those changes, VUCA 2.0 came into play as well. In fact, VUCA 2.0 was introduced by a senior fellow who is working for the Harvard Business School. According to his definition, VUCA 2.0 refers to Vision, Understanding, Courage and Adaptability. It has the ability to touch some different aspects of project management. However, it also has the ability to create a strong impact on the results that can be achieved out of project management at the end of the day.

— Slimane Zouggari

Spotify Model 

Spotify model is an organizational methodology that is using guilds, chapters, squads and tribes. Squad is the underlying foundation of this framework. It is acting similar to a Scrum team. Squad will self-organize and determine the best method to work. A tribe will be made from a group of individuals who are working for a common area.

Squad in Spotify model is single project and single product focused. Product owner is responsible for managing the backlog. In the meantime, agile coach will be able to accelerate the transformation process and make it move forward in the positive direction. Tribe will be co-located along with the squad, but it is limited only to 100 individuals. Chapters will be a part of squad, where the team members are working together. Final aspect in Spotify model is the guild, which is made out of a group of individuals who share similar interests.

An agile team will tweak the formation of the team and move forward with Spotify model. It will be able to streamline the nature of work that is done.

If a client wants the development as soon as it is requested, Spotify model is the right option available to go ahead with and achieve the desired functionality.

If the team is used to traditional agile methodology, making the shift to move forward with Spotify model will be quite challenging.

Most of the multinational companies are currently using Spotify model. That’s because they want to beat the competition and deliver products quickly to customers. If a competitor is doing something, Spotify model will help to get that requirement delivered quickly to the market before competitors.

— Slimane Zouggari