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Continuous Digital

An agile alternative to projects

Allan Kelly

First there was Agile, then there was Continuous Delivery, and now there is Continuous Digital: the Agile Alternative to Projects - aka #NoProjects, Beyond Projects. Because every business is now a digital business and while projects end ask yourself: do you want your business to end?

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About

About

About the Book

In a digital world business must develop software, the business must grow and the software must grow. The project model doesn't reflect this world because projects end. In the digital world both software and business are continual. So management needs a new model.

This books sets out the Continuous model of software development based on continuous work streams. Continuous Digital is a logical continuation of agile software development which enables continuous delivery.

 

The #NoProjects movement has successfully set out the problems with project thinking over the last three years but has rightly been criticised for not elaborating on what should replace the project model. This volume sets out to address that problem. This book focused on describing an alternative to projects and for completeness contains a critique of the project model.

This volume is divided four parts:

Part 1: An alternative

1. Omni present software

2. Software as an Asset

3. Higher purpose

4. Team-centric development

5. Work to be done

6. Value

7. Summarizing the alternative model

Part 2: Interlude

8. Diseconomies of scale

9. Diseconomies and risk

10. Living with diseconomies

11. Schedules

12. Time-value profiles and elastic deadlines

13. I need it yesterday!

14. Theory X,Theory Y and strategy

15. Planning

16. Piecemeal growth

Part 3: Teams

17. Devolved decision-making

18. Team strategy

19. Stable teams

20. Team life cycle

21. Team life cycle – another example

Part 4: Money

22. Real options and venture capital

23. Continuous governance

24 Budgetting

25. Assets and accounting

26. Money trouble

The individual parts of Continuous Digital are (or will soon be) available as individual publications.

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Author

About the Author

Allan Kelly

Allan Kelly calls himself an Agile Guide. He helps software professionals enjoy more fulfilling and satisfying work by improving the way work is organised and requests are made. Happier people and better ways of working make for more effective companies, greater value and competitive advantage.

His wide experience of the challenges faced in software development underpins his advice, coaching, training and writing. He is the author of seven books including "Xanpan - team centric Agile Software Development", "Business Patterns for Software Developers" and "Continuous Digital". He has pioneered techniques such as Value Poker, Time-Value Profiles and Retrospective Dialogue Sheets. His blog is at https://www.allankellyassociates.co.uk/blog/

Leanpub Podcast

Episode 252

An Interview with Allan Kelly

Contents

Table of Contents

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Project Myopia

Preface

  1. Digital
  2. Agile and continuous delivery
  3. Products, not projects
  4. Once upon a time…
  5. And now for something completely different…
  6. IAn alternative

1.Omnipresent software

2.Software as an Asset (SaaA)

  1. Assets decay
  2. Fighting decay
  3. Software decay
  4. Software lives
  5. Software is an asset

3.Higher purpose

  1. Not money
  2. Obliquity
  3. Organizations and teams
  4. Scale
  5. Mutable
  6. Individuals
  7. Project completeness
  8. Closure
  9. Finally

4.Team-centric development

  1. Conway’s Law
  2. Amoeba teams
  3. Minimally viable teams
  4. Value-seeking teams
  5. Deadlines over end dates
  6. Continuity
  7. Stable not static

5.Work to be done

  1. Teams and products
  2. Who does it?
  3. Fail fast, fail cheap, learn, salvage
  4. Tolerate failure
  5. Constraints breed innovation

6.Value

  1. What is value?
  2. Who benefits?
  3. Profit-maximizing organizations
  4. Default to money
  5. Numbers
  6. Non-financial benefits
  7. Non-profit organizations
  8. A workaround
  9. Thought experiment
  10. Conclusion

7.Summarizing the alternative model

  1. Emergent: strategy, products, design
  2. Key points
  3. IIInterlude

8.Diseconomies of scale

  1. Milk is cheaper in large cartons
  2. Evidence of diseconomies
  3. Think diseconomies, think small

9.Diseconomies and risk

  1. A project example
  2. Conclusion

10.Living with diseconomies

  1. And projects…
  2. Making small decisions
  3. Optimize for small
  4. Kelly’s Laws
  5. What if?

11.Schedules

  1. Worked example
  2. Adding effort estimation
  3. Analysis costs too
  4. Summary

12.Time-value profiles and elastic deadlines

  1. Worked example
  2. Options
  3. Time-value profile
  4. Time-value profile for Halloween
  5. The answer is…
  6. Parallel build
  7. Pre-work investigation
  8. Costs
  9. Accuracy of time-value profiles
  10. Assumptions and sensitivity
  11. Finally

13.I need it yesterday!

14.Theory X, Theory Y and strategy

  1. Theory X and Y
  2. Business strategy
  3. Emergent design
  4. Volkswagen
  5. Patterns
  6. Finally

15.Planning

  1. Doing is learning too
  2. Problems
  3. Planning is useful
  4. Back in the USSR
  5. Moore’s Law
  6. Finally

16.Piecemeal growth

  1. Small advances
  2. Democracy
  3. Economics
  4. Fake it
  5. Test-driven
  6. Refactoring
  7. Finally
  8. IIITeams

17.Devolved decision-making

  1. Zen’in keiei
  2. Authority, not empowerment
  3. Organizational structure
  4. Failure tolerance
  5. Fast-moving environment
  6. Finally

18.Team strategy

  1. Strategic sizing
  2. Amoeba teams
  3. Flow the work to the team
  4. Fail fast, fail cheap, learn and salvage
  5. Team skills
  6. Managers
  7. Finally

19.Stable teams

  1. Stable, not static
  2. Optimization
  3. Camaraderie
  4. Area of speciality
  5. Area of responsibility
  6. Finally

20.Team lifecycle

  1. Example scenario
  2. New initiatives and MVTs
  3. The board
  4. More growth
  5. Steady state
  6. More growth
  7. Split
  8. Continued growth
  9. Reverse process
  10. Multiple products
  11. Unplanned work and interruptions

21.Team lifecycle – another example

  1. Budgeting
  2. What are you building?
  3. Set-based engineering
  4. Scope
  5. Test-driven regulation
  6. The minimally viable team
  7. Tracer bullets
  8. Expanding the technical side
  9. Non-IT work
  10. Growth
  11. Peak and beyond
  12. A project in hindsight
  13. Pre-project?
  14. To end or not to end
  15. Finally
  16. IVMoney

22.Real options and venture capital

  1. Venture capital funding model
  2. Real options
  3. Cones of uncertainty
  4. Finally

23.Continuous governance

  1. What is governance?
  2. Why do governance?
  3. Flip control
  4. What governance is not
  5. Project-centric governance
  6. Framework
  7. Fixed governance iterations
  8. Portfolio
  9. Scorecard
  10. Face to face
  11. The future
  12. Finally

24.Budgeting

  1. Budgeting for a ‘project’
  2. Budgeting for something new
  3. Managing risk
  4. Beyond budgeting
  5. Finally

25.Assets and accounting

  1. Capital or expense?
  2. WorldCom
  3. CapEx, OpEx and projects
  4. Test first is CapEx
  5. Refactoring – CapEx or OpEx?
  6. Defect-free
  7. Fundamental problem
  8. Finally

26.Money trouble

  1. The trouble with profit
  2. Time lag
  3. It isn’t just software
  4. Strategy
  5. The attribution problem
  6. The value of null
  7. Finally

About the author

  1. Also by Allan Kelly

Major influences

Acknowledgements

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