Agile Methodology example (STAR Methodology)
The core of agile methodology is to work in incremental manner. Instead of solidifying the requirements at the start of the project, the agile team understand that implementation is a complex process and the change requests are inevitable to achieve the objective of the project. Agile processes promote continuous communication, encourage the development teams to be self-organized and take their advice on technical front and timelines.
Situation:
Simon is the Scrum Master and his team got a new project assigned. It’s a 500 hour, 2 months reimplementation of a current Customer Experience Management from a legacy platform to a new platform. Along with the reimplementation, clients also want to develop new features. The project is complex because the legacy and new platform are quite different and migrating the functionality as well as historical data would require lots of transformation.
Task:
Simon’s task now is to plan the project. He created “user story” for every feature that needs to be implemented. Then, he arranged a project planning meeting with the stakeholders, Project owner and the technical team. He gave a brief about the project’s goal and how the agile development works. Then, Simon asked the stakeholders to arrange the “user stories” as per their priority. The “User Stories” will be implemented as per the priority.
Actions:
Simon planned that they will have 4 sprints of 2 weeks each. Simon sat with the Scrum Team and explained each “User Story” and asked the team to estimate the efforts needed. The team is self-organized and they themselves assigned the tasks to themselves. Now, after selecting the top priority User Stories, Simon started the 2 week Sprint. During the sprit, stakeholders came back to Simon asking for few changes in the implementation. Simon asked the stakeholders for the priority of the tasks and revisited the Project’s goal. Simon always wants to ensured that the User Stories are always in line with the Project’s goal, within the agreed scope and budget. However, Simon is also empathetic and understands that even stakeholders might not have full understanding of nitty-gritty of the project so he helps them to see the bigger picture and make changes to the plan or push back.
Result:
After end of 2 weeks, the Scrum Team had the MVP of basic CX management program. The stakeholders reviewed the MVP and they had a whole kitchen-sink of change requests. Simon, Product owners again had a meeting where they reprioritized the requirements and created User Stories. Simon again explained to clients how the development will work for next two weeks and what to expect at the end of the sprint. This planned way of working ensured that the development team is always in-line with the actual requirement and that the Stakeholders have a MVP where they can view the working product and are active part of implementation.
