Last Saturday, I led two sessions at P-Camp. The first was “Agile 101”, and you can read about how that went here. The second session was “Why do Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)?” In this session, the participants shared over 20 practices that they felt were key to the success of their past agile projects. Here we are discussing an idea.

After the ideas had been presented and discussed, the group got up out of their seats and used DOTS (Decision Optimizing Tiny Stickies) to vote for the most important ideas, based on their own experiences. We managed to do all of this in less than 45 minutes!

Here are the practices that the group deemed most valuable.

Tier One
Small Chunks of work with frequent feedback

Tier Two
Agile is for everyone, not just dev
Trusted and open communication between PM and Dev
Aligning stories with vision & strategy
Cohesive direction and vision

Tier Three
Customer Communications, with as many customers as possible
Education and commitment from the top execs
Explore technologies before committing to them (Spikes are good)
Recheck assumptions

Tier Four
Participation from upper management
Retrospectives
Keeping the team lineup stable
Some buffer/down time for the team
QA involved in the story process
Lineup behind customer value

Thanks to all who participated!

Cheers,

Chris