Agile-focused delivery

Digital development is complex, priorities change and requirements evolve – so you need a process that caters for this and puts you in the driver’s seat.

Our Agile-focused delivery methods allow us to create a true partnership with our clients.

We begin by requesting that a client representative (Product Owner) is nominated to join the delivery team and work in tandem with us on a day-to-day basis. This allows you, as the client, to experience the delivery process first hand, and presents a level of comfort that we’re focusing on the right things. It also facilitates quick turnaround times for decision making – effectively putting you in control at the level of detail you’re comfortable with.

Agile methodology is optimised to deliver the most important features, set by the Product Owner (ideally based on your customer needs) as quickly as possible, and then iterate. The process includes feedback mechanisms to continually optimize the way we work as a team and ensure we are being as efficient as possible.

How we deliver Agile

The following is a broad outline of some of the terms you’ll hear associated with Scrum, one of the most common implementations of Agile development. Scrum is just one implementation of the Agile philosophy and is our preferred process for large projects and projects where we are delivering continual improvements to the customer.

User stories

Description of a task or feature which is focused on the end-user (customer, member, donor). For example, “As a customer, I need to register for an account, so I can get access to restricted content”. User stories should be written in such a way as to be easily understandable by anybody with knowledge of the product.

Acceptance criteria

A set of tests that need to be true for a user story to be complete. These focus the team on a shared understanding of the work at hand. For example, “Given I am a customer registering an account, when I enter my email address it will need to pass a ‘valid password’ check.”

Product backlog

User stories are placed into a Product backlog, which is essentially an evolving to-do list for the project. One of the benefits of the backlog is that as new requirements arise, they can be slotted into the backlog for future consideration, allowing the team to retain focus on the highest priorities.

Sprint backlog

A sprint is a focused effort of work toward an agreed and shared set of goals. The timeframe is usually between two and four weeks. As with the Product backlog, the Sprint backlog represents a set of user stories the team has selected to be executed in a sprint.

Scrum meeting

One of the keys to the success of this delivery model is a daily meeting, including the Product Owner. This should be less than fifteen minutes at the same time every day and helps align the team and present an opportunity to remove blockers.

Planning

This is specifically included as there is planning in Scrum. Another key to success for this process is making sure enough planning is done during a sprint to be adequately set up for the next sprint.

Definition of done

Depending on the situation, the ‘definition of done’ can vary. Ideally this would be something like ‘User story delivered to production’, however this may not always be possible for large rebuilds.

Retrospective

A meeting every fortnight which allows the team to reflect on the process and provide feedback on what’s working well, what isn’t working so well and anything that warrants further investigation.