Delivery Frameworks

Agile

Agile itself isn’t a project management framework. It’s more conceptual than that and is simply a series of principles for delivering digital products.

At the heart of the Agile Manifesto are 4 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

And 12 supporting principles:

1. Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery
2. Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process
3. Frequent delivery of working software
4. Collaboration between the business stakeholders and developers throughout the project
5. Support, trust, and motivate the people involved
6. Enable face-to-face interactions
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress
8. Agile processes to support a consistent development pace
9. Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility
10. Simplicity
11. Self-organizing teams encourage great architectures, requirements, and designs
12. Regular reflections on how to become more effective

There are a variety of different frameworks that can be used when delivering projects agiley, the most well-known are; Scrum and Kanban.

Scrum – A framework

Scrum is one of the most popular agile frameworks with the latest version released in 2020. It has Empiricism (‘learning by doing’) at its core, and has five values (Commitment, Courage, Focus, Openness and Respect) and three pillars (Transparency, Inspection and Adaption).

‘Sprinting’ (1-4 week development cycles) is one of the key events of Scrum, and there are 4 distinct ceremonies that happen within each sprint; Daily Scrum, Planning, Review (Demo) & Retro. To find out more about these ceremonies, please read my guide to Agile Terminology.

The Scrum Guide

Kanban – A framework

Kanban is a method for managing the delivery of software with an emphasis on Continual Delivery. A basic Kanban board only includes 4 states; To do, In Progress, In Review and Done. Kanban allows teams to only focus on items actually being delivered and one of its strengths is to reduce Cycle Time.

One of the core fundamentals of Kanban is to limit Work In Progress (WIP), this allows the team to focus on getting work items to a ‘done’ state and allows them to swarm around issues that are troublesome.

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) – A framework

Dynamic Systems Development Method is an Agile Project Framework that is all about aligning projects to clear business goals.

DSDM Guide

Extreme Programming (XP) – A framework

Extreme Programming is a style of software development. It involves practices such as test automation and refactoring.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) – A framework

Scaled Agile Framework can be used for managing multiple agile development teams (50-120 people) through ‘release trains’. It connects business processes with development planning through Product Increments.

Scaled Agile Framework

LeSS – A Framework

LeSS is a scaled up version of one-team scrum, which means that for between 2-8 teams there will be a single Product Owner, a single Definition of Done (amongst others).

It is similar to Scrum but includes two distinct planning meetings; Sprint Planning One (entire product team) and Sprint Planning Two (team specific). It also has a team retrospective and an overall retrospective, as well as Product Backlog Refinement being a formal expected event.

LeSS Framework

Nexus

Nexus is a framework that can be used for scaled scrum (i.e., to allow multiple teams to work from a single product backlog.

Lean-Agile

Lean-Agile is a set of principles and practices for working that aims to minimise waste whilst maximising value. This enables organisations to make quality a priority in their products and services.

Lean-Agile is a hybrid between Lean principles and Agile practices.

Waterfall

Waterfall is a traditional form of managing projects where each step (UX, Design, Development) is done in sequence. Waterfall requires a lot of up-front planning before the project can properly kick-off.

PRINCE2 – Methodology

PRINCE2 is a waterfall methodology (a methodology is like a framework but is more prescriptive). PRINCE2 guides the team through the essentials for managing successful projects, regardless of type or scale. Built upon seven principles, themes and processes, PRINCE2 can be tailored to meet your specific requirements.

PMBOK – Framework

PMBOK stands for Project Management Body of Knowledge and it is the entire collection of processes, best practices, terminologies, and guidelines that are accepted as standards within the project management industry.