AXA EMERGING MARKETS

EMEA LATAM

AGILE WHITE BOOK

V1.0

Agile White Book AXA Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM

Thank you very much to the first writer, Erich Bhler,
for make us shine through the whole book and teach us a
lot about Agile!

We also appreciate the co-writer and editor, Xavier

Albaladejo, and the reviewers: Vasyl Netakhata,
Nikos Batsios, Albert Cumplido, Steven Wallace,
Silvia Sistar, Gabriel Prat and Nino Dafonte for
suggesting improvements.

Finally, thanks to Elie Saeigh and Mara del

Carmen Pradel for designing the cartoons
and for the book visual identity.

Agile White Book AXA Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM

 Foreword
The Agile White Book shares a vision of Agile in AXA
Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM region. Since
there are different Agile adoptions and maturity levels
at each country, this book has been written with the
aim of gathering a common terminology and basic
approach for Agile Coaches or future Scrum Masters
that will get into Agile: main concepts and simple
practices & tricks to start, based on the lessons learnt
until now at AXA Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM.

Enhancements can be done in the future based on the

Agile progress and higher maturity levels achieved.

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2 Agile White Book AXA Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM
 Introduction to Agile .............. 7

Launching Agile in a Team .............. 27

Agile framework .............. 81

Agile Requirements .............. 123

Agile Estimating .............. 161

Agile Planning (Release and

.............. 187
Sprint)

Agile Retrospective .............. 247

Agile Metrics .............. 273

Scrum framework .............. 299

Kanban .............. 337

Extreme Programming .............. 369

Agile Testing .............. 405

Agile Distributed Teams .............. 431

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HOW THIS BOOK is organised
This book is intended to assist you in the first steps in your journey towards Agile. Even if you used Agile before,
we strongly recommend you to read this first chapter in a sequential way in order to make sure that you
refresh your knowledge and fully become aligned with terminology. We are sure you will enjoy the reading and
learn many techniques that will be useful in your day-to-day and future projects. After this, you can read the
book based on your current needs, as every chapter has been written to allow you to read it independently.
This manual is organised in the following chapters:

Chapter Format

1. Introduction to Agile

2. Agile implementation

3. Agile framework

4. Requirements

5. Estimating

6. Planning

7. Retrospectives

8. Metrics

9. Scrum

10. Kanban

11. Extreme programming

12. Agile testing

13. Distributed teams

Booklet Focus on explaining the theory and shows some examples.

Includes How-To lists to help understand the different stages

How-to
and steps required to do a practice.

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HOW THIS BOOK is organised
One important thing for you to have in mind is that this first chapter includes a brief introduction to
Agile but it is the 3rd chapter which covers it in greater detail. This has been done in this way to allow
you interiorise some core concepts and go deeper into the practises later.

Hi,
I am Silvia your Agile Coach and will be here to help you
understand concepts and enjoy your journey towards Agile

ICONS USED IN THIS BOOK

In some cases, information deserves special attention. The icons in this manual identify that
information for you. Here is a brief explanation for each icon so you will recognise them when they
are available.

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HOW THIS BOOK is organised

The checklist and how-to icon presents you with practical instructions or a
stepby-step document which will help you do something. Refer this chapter Checklist to
see how a checklist looks like.

The Tip icon reminds you or points to information that describes a special benefit of
working with Agile or a specific practise.

6 Agile White Book AXA Emerging Markets EMEA-LATAM

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION TO AGILE
V1.0

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Contents
WHAT WILL I GET TO KNOW FROM THE CHAPTER? ........................................................................................................................................................ 10
WHY AGILE ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11
COMPETITIVE MARKETS: TIME TO MARKET VALUE ...................................................................................................................... 11
THE BENEFITS SOUGHT ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
WHY AGILE IN AXA EMERGING MARKETS EMEA-LATAM .......................................................................................................... 12
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS ............................................................................................................................................................ 13
GET INTO THE BASICS ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE RISKS ........................................................................................................................................... 16
AGILE FOCUS AREAS ............................................................................................................................................................... 17
FOCUS ON THE ORGANISATION ................................................................................................................................................ 18
FULLY SUPPORT PEOPLE .......................................................................................................................................................... 19
WHAT WE EXPECT & WHAT FRAMEWORKS TO IMPLEMENT ........................................................................................................................................ 20
SCRUM AT A GLANCE .............................................................................................................................................................. 21
KANBAN .............................................................................................................................................................................. 24
ENGINEERING PRACTICES (XP) ................................................................................................................................................. 25
TAKE AWAY .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26

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 Introduction to Agile

Agile is an adaptative way of developing products

and managing work in companies. Its principles are
collaboration and teamwork (with close integration
between Business & IT) and regular quality time for
introspection.

It emphasis on techniques that help a company

learn and discover the most important areas in a
product to focus. It is based on business value
prioritization with quick loops for getting feedback
from clients on product increments (that implies
flexibility for responding to changes).

It relies far more on face-to-face communication,

facilitation (for creating cross-functional, stable,
motivated, self-organizing teams), simplification and
technical excellence.

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What will I get to know from the chapter?

INTRODUCTION TO AGILE

LEARN THE
KNOW AGILE
BASICS OF AGILE KNOW THE AGILE
WHY FRAMEWORKS
- Organisation
AGILE ECOSYSTEM - Scrum
- People
- Kanban
- Mindset change
- XP

I know Agile and its benefits.

I know the principles of Agile.

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WHY AGILE
COMPETITIVE MARKETS: TIME TO MARKET VALUE
Highly competitive markets need Time To Market and quick feedback in order to better
adapt products to customer needs and early-better monetize. Business value focus,
flexibility and high performance are key, considering that Time To Market is more important than
only to focus in pure productivity, as product success has far more profit margin than cost reduction.

Working in an Agile way well be faster but this is not the

essential point. We dont want to faster develop squared
wheels but to test our value hypotheses as soon as
possible, in order to have time to pivot the solution, which
also implies flexibility for responding to changes.

In order to arrive faster to the market, we need to be very exigent in selecting the first minimum
key features of a product and test their usefulness in the market as soon as possible (test &
learn of Minimum Variable Product, continuous beta versions/high frequency versioning, etc.). This
idea also applies for internal product development: we need to be more selective on the
management of the demand to make better use of the company resources, focusing on the
functionalities really used in the company.

This approach is the opposite of creating the full featured product, that would take a lot of time to be
developed without real feedback from clients usage (by the way, people dont want complex products
difficult to understand, and product simplicity is a key factor for productivity).

The Standish Group

As we can see from the Standish Group study, focusing in only selecting and developing the
key product features will save time, effort and money (around a 50%).

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WHY AGILE
THE BENEFITS SOUGHT
There are specific benefits that are expected to be achieved with Agile:

These are some of the Agile benefits I see:

WHY AGILE IN AXA EMERGING MARKETS EMEA-LATAM

To address these needs companies look for alternate work approaches with focus in demonstrating
business value in shorter periods of time. To make a qualitative change, people need an explicit
framework to assist them on regular and disciplined product management and development,
as well as reflection on how to continuously improve as a team.

Agile has then been determined as a way to accelerate product development in AXA Group. We
believe it is a key facilitator for value creation in the coming years in the company areas where it makes
more sense from a business perspective because of Time to Market needs, initially starting in Digital &
MultiAccess.

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WHY AGILE
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
Agile is a culture, a set of principles and a discipline for some environments that can support a fast &
continuous collaborative lifecycle between Business and IT. Note that Agile principles like these
are already used in some projects but being Agile is not so easy.

An Agile transformation is based in experienced coaching more than training, because there
is not only a question of incorporating new practices but to foster a cultural change.

Agile is to be introduced in the parts of the organization where it makes more sense from a
Business perspective (Time to market, quick market feedback to adjust products, etc.), team
by team, in a gradual way.

An appropriate context is needed, but we wont wait to have the perfect context.
Well shape it gradually. The test & learn principle will also be key to succeed in the Agile
adoption. Below you can find the key success factors to take into account in each area to
transform.

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GET INTO the basics

The origin of Agile is in the software development industry, where complexity is common
(requirements uncertainty, participation of different people skills, new technologies, etc.). Currently
Agile principles and practices are being adopted in different areas as product
development, complex project management, team growth and environments constituted by
knowledge workers.

You can find the Agile values and principles, the Agile Manifesto, in the following links:

Agile values
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile principles
1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's
competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to
get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-
face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to
maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior
accordingly.

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GET INTO the basics

I have grouped some of the Agile principles in three areas that I want you to initially think on:

Product management focus:

o It helps select the more valuable and useful product features to be produced at
each moment.
o It develops products in short cycles to give visibility, facilitate rapid and continuous
customer reviews on final product, align expectations offering flexibility to changes
and warrantee product quality.
o It delivers in a test and learn approach in order to early assess real business
impact and make quick adjustments.

People and teamwork focus:

o It is based on motivated people who work in a sustainable pace.

o It is all about interactions & collaboration. It is about creating high performance

self-organised teams, and because it takes time we need them to be stable.

o Agile cross-functional teams include as much as possible of all the value chain
(projects keep self-contained inside a team), and this is why they are constituted by
Business & IT people, so we constantly involve the customer.

Continuous improvement focus:

o It is a discipline. Key meetings (as joint planning, team synchronizations,
retrospectives) are never cancelled. That not only helps keeping a stable cadence but
reinforcing and modelling a positive behaviour.

o It requires regular quality time for reflecting, learning

and changing for the better.

One important characteristic of Agile is that recognises that most effective processes cannot be
full up front defined and that there is the need of a continuous improvement process that
never ends. You will see that almost everything focuses on getting always better and better.

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GET INTO the basics
UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE RISKS
Agile is being faster while managing typical project risks and having discipline.

In order to keep the risk under control, I always keep an eye on these factors:

Customer priorities are a key a project plan should be based on customer priorities. We
get first a tangible core product half-way and add pieces incrementally to it in order to
complete the whole vision.

Short iterations we always work with short cycles to limit the complexity of the coming
requirements and to get early feedback of customer expectations, on product results and
working processes performance.

Incremental we use incremental iterations to focus on having stable products with excellent
quality.

Create synergies to be more productive we make sure we share, learn and daily
synchronise teams to identify impediments and always reflect on past events
(retrospectives).

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GET INTO the basics
AGILE FOCUS AREAS
Additionally to what we have seen so far, Agile needs you to focus on certain areas, as a previous
step for the implementation. Based on the Agile principles we use The Agile Star concept as a
visual diagram to refer to these areas that we have identified that are important to discuss before start
moving the wheel.

Based in The Agile Star concept, www.proyectosagiles.org

Go to Chapter 3 Agile Framework for more details.

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GET INTO the basics

You have to consider two main key factors when you want to
start adopting Agile: organisational and people related areas. If
some are not met before the time of Agile implementation, I strongly
believe that you should go ahead anyway and then create the right
conditions. Agile requires the proper context to work but dont wait to
have the perfect environment and all things in place at once but
test & learn what are the more important things to improve at each
moment.

FOCUS ON THE ORGANISATION

These are the keys for a successful Agile organisation:

Customer collaboration - clients have to be truly involved in a project in order for things to
work. Customer collaboration is the important factor for successful product development and
getting higher levels of satisfaction. This requires not only having customers available on site
with the product development team, but also highly motivated and active.

Autonomous teams in order to be fast in decision time, teams include as much skills needed
to be as autonomous as possible, thereby allowing them to take their own decisions.

Team co-location it is the preferred option that especially technical members should be
sitting together. When this is not possible we can work with distributed teams, but tools (as
quality videoconfence) should be provided to help the lack of face-to-face communication (read
more on Chapter 13).

Corporate Culture - having the right corporate culture is a must and it is a necessary factor
determining the introduction of agile methodologies. We need of transparency, continuous
improvement and learning culture.

Dynamism and uncertainty - Agile product lifecycle is always ready to respond to changes
over following a strict, fixed plan.

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GET INTO the basics
FULLY SUPPORT PEOPLE
As people are a key factor, we always encourage placing a strong emphasis on the following social
areas:
People competences and stable teams we develop team competences as well as technical
people competences. This is why we keep people working together for 1 to 3 years (we foster
stable teams), in order to create a real team with people who perfectly integrates. We also make
them repeat types of projects in order to increase their performance on a Business domain.
Personal characteristics selecting the right people for a team is key to success. Team
members may not be necessarily extremely experienced skilled people but having honesty,
collaborative attitude towards others, sense of responsibility and readiness to learn are
considered a key attribute in Agile.
Communication and negotiation - communication and conflict management skills plays an
important role during a product lifecycle. One of the important requirements for agility is fast and
effective communication between developers, customers, management and business areas. This
is best achieved by face-to-face conversations.
Training and learning - continuous learning is the fundamental in Agile. People should be
eager to share information with others and continuously learn/teach.

In summary:

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement

Agile is a way to work that has emerged to provide more flexibility to customers and meet their
expectations in less time, with less risk and more creativity. For achieving this, more collaboration is
needed, people enjoying the work they do and quality time for improvement.

Remember that one of the primary objectives is to grow motivated real teams that constantly
look for high performance while keeping a fluent communication between the parts.

So far we have seen that Agile is about values and practices. This is certainly true but this is also
about a number of practises, frameworks, and techniques.

Any process or technique to be used has to be compatible with

Agile values and principles to promote the right mindset. For
example, we promote Scrum (a time-boxed iterative approach) for
project and team management because of its adaptive planning,
evolutionary development & delivery and it encourages a rapid and
flexible response to change.

Agile uses techniques that the industry has been learning for years and has helped shaping the
adaptive, iterative and evolutionary development. Scrum and Kanban are usually used with XP
practices and Lean Principles. We can use the diagram below as a reference of this combination
(notice that the diagram circles do not represent containers).

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement
SCRUM AT A GLANCE
Lets learn now about Scrum, one of the frameworks that are part of Agile and is widely used in this
book and popular in the Agile World.

Scrum main advantage is that it offers a group of practises and tools that allow early feedback, flexibility
and time to market while supporting people.

Scrum is based on experience and learning rather than theory. Lets see their basic components:
Product Backlog - List of prioritised requirements that define
a product.
Small cycles with complete functionality - usable product that meets the clients business
goals (working software/product)
Regular team planning and synchronization.
Regular interaction between business & IT.
Quality time for reflection.

There are mandatory meetings such as the Sprint Plan, Daily Scrum, Product Backlog
Refinement, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective; most of them are time-boxed (with a fixed
time) and all have a clear objective.

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement
Scrum defines the following 3 roles:

Product Owner
Unique representative of all stakeholders and users.
Facilitates priorities agreement in the Business side based on Biz strategy and
ROI.
Regularly accepts the completed product.
Collaborates with the Development team in requirement analysis and detailing.

Scrum Master
Develops a high performance, motivated and self-organized team, including Bz and
IT, that collaborates and improves continuously.
Process responsible, transmits the Agile values and principles.
Facilitates meetings, makes the team flow and creates synergies.
Removes impediments that the team cannot solve by itself.

Development Team
Cross-functional and self-organized.
Estimates requirements and provides a solution.
Presents the results to the Product Owner.

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement
We may also consider some extra roles in order to make it more functional to a large corporation
reality.

This is role is still needed due to the Experts that collaborate

complex environment and that the on a part-time basis and
organization is on its way to agilization. communicate directly with
the Development Team.
Coordinates relationships with third parties They are permanent team
and other plans (Communication, members.
trainings, HW & SW provisioning, etc.)

Project Manager Removes impediments that are out of the Extended Team
scope of the SM (mainly organizational).
Financial, terms and scope control.
Project reporting.

Go to Chapter 9 Scrum for more details.

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement
KANBAN
Kanban is a technique for visualising the flow of creation of products through its different stages. It
is oriented to continuous delivery and Just-In-Time by working in small batches. Kanban
implements a pull system based on each stage capacity and it increases flow by limiting work in
progress. Kanban 6 core practices are:

1. Visualize the workflow

2. Limit WIP

3. Manage Flow

4. Make Process Policies Explicit

Implement feedback loops

Improve Collaboratively

Go to Chapter 10 Kanban Techniques for more details.

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WHAT WE EXPECT & what frameworks to implement
ENGINEERING PRACTICES (XP)
Agile software development practices are based on having quick feedback, an always stable and
tested product and team knowledge spreading in order to achieve fast speed to requirements
changes in a controlled way, productivity and quality.

Go to Chapter 11 eXtreme Programming for more details.

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TAKE AWAY

REMEMBER
Business heavily involved and working with IT
Fast and collaborative short lifecycles and feedback loops are a characteristic.
Business value is the trading currency.
Stable teams are needed.
Agile values and practises are needed in order to implement it.

DEEPEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Agile Manifesto
Agile Alliance
Agile Atlas
Agile methodology

BENEFITS
Business & IT are aligned to achieve a shared goal.
Working software / product is the primary measure of progress and features are created incrementally.
Encourage deep involvement throughout the products development and a very cooperative
collaborative approach.
Change is broadly accepted even in late phases of development.
Small incremental releases make the product visible and help to identify any issues/risks early.

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