Value Driven Delivery Flashcards by Dominykas Trimonis

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What are the four elements of the agile value proposition?

• Earlier delivery of business value
• Earlier reduction of risk
• Increased visibility (stakeholder engagement) throughout the project
• Increased adaptability throughout the project

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What are two key reasons why agile focuses on delivering value as early as possible in the project?

The longer a project runs, the longer the horizon becomes for risks that can reduce value such as failure, decreased benefits, and erosion of opportunities.
By delivering high-value elements early, the team demonstrates an understanding of the stakeholders’ needs, shows that they recognize the most important aspects of the project, and proves they can deliver.

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “return on investment” (ROl).

The ratio of the benefits received from an investment to the money invested in it, expressed as a percentage

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “net present value” (NPV).

The present value of a revenue stream (income minus costs) over a series of time periods

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define “internal rate of return” (IRR).

What are some other terms that might be used in referring to a project’s IRR?

The discount rate at which the project inflows (revenues) and project outflows (costs) are equal
Rate of return, discount rate

[Discount rate: The interest rate you need to earn on a given amount of money today to end up with a given amount of money in the future]

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is an S-curve?

What is earned value management (EVM)?

A graph that tracks costs or some other variable against time.

An approach that uses a comprehensive set of project metrics that compare actual cost and schedule performance to planned performance.

EVM metrics include planned value (PV), earned value (EV), schedule variance (SV), cost variance (CV), schedule performance index (SPI), and cost performance index (CPI).

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two advantages of using EVM on agile projects.

EVM metrics are leading indicators, which allow us to look forward and change our approach if necessary.

EVM graphs are visual representations that engage the right side of our brain, helping us intuitively understand and interpret the data so we can plan an appropriate response.

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two cautions for using EVM on agile projects.

Earned value compares actual project performance to planned performance, but in agile’s adaptive planning process, the initial plan is recognized as inaccurate since it is made when we know the least about the project.

Earned value doesn’t truly indicate whether the project is successfully delivering value.

We could be on time and on budget, but building a low-quality product that the customer doesn’t like or need.

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

List four examples of agile key performance indicators (KPIs).

• Rate of progress
• Remaining work
• Likely completion date
• Likely costs remaining

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is the relationship between value and risk?

Risk is anti-value, since risk events have the potential to erode, remove, or reduce value if they occur.

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain what is meant by “customer-valued prioritization.

Prioritizing work items based on the customer’s view of what is most important, and working on the items that will yield the highest value to the customer first

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

List six prioritization schemes used by agile teams other than simple prioritization.

• MoSCoW
• Monopoly money
• 100-point method
• Dot voting
• Kano analvsis
• Requirements prioritization model

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is MoSCoW?

A prioritization method named after the first letters of the four categories that it uses:
• “Must have”
• “Should have”
• “Could have”
• “Would like to have, but not this time”

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is dot voting (also called multi-voting)?

A prioritization method in which everyone gets a number of dots (or some other voting token) to distribute as they wish among the available options

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What is Kano analysis and how is it used for prioritization?

A technique used to classify customer preferences into four categories, usually called Delighters/Exciters, Satisfiers, Dissatisfiers, and Indifferent.

These categories can be useful in setting priorities for product features since they help stakeholders understand how to increase customer satisfaction.

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Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What does “relative prioritization/ranking” mean?

Listing the product features in order of their relative priority to the customer.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain what is meant by “incremental delivery.”

Regularly delivering working increments of the product into production or a test environment over the course of the project

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Define the term “minimal viable product.”

The minimum package of functionality that is complete enough to be useful to end users or the market, but smaller than the entire project

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Explain two disadvantages of using sophisticated project scheduling software on an agile project.

When we use high-tech tools on an agile project, there are two problems that arise:
• Data accuracy perception increases
• Barriers for stakeholder interaction are created

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

Why do co-located agile teams prefer to use low-tech, high-touch tools?

• Allow more people to manipulate and update the tools
• Avoid tool-related perception of data accuracy
• Reduce the learning curve for using the tools
• Engage all team members
• Promote communication and collaboration
• Make it easy to grasp the status of the work at a glance

Value-Driven Delivery | Question
What is a Kanban or task board, and how is it used?

A whiteboard with columns for the various stages of the work process from left to right-for example, “To Do” to “In Progress” to “Done.” The tasks being worked on are represented by sticky notes that team members move through the columns to show their progress.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What does “WIP” stand for?
Explain what this means.

“Work in progress” or “work in process”. Work that has been started but has not vet been completed

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

What problems are associated with high levels of WIP?

• WIP consumes investment capital but delivers no return to the customer.
• WIP hides bottlenecks that slow workflow or throughput and mask efficiency issues.
• WIP presents the risk of potential rework or scrap.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question

How do agile teams ensure that their WIP does not become excessive?

On their Kanban or task board, they set a limit on the amount of work that can be in each stage of the process at a particular time. These are WIP limits.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What is a cumulative flow diagram (CFD)?

A stacked area graph of the features that are in progress, remaining, or completed over time

Value-Driven Delivery | Question How can we identify a bottleneck on a CFD?

Look for an activity band that is expanding (widening); this is the activity that is feeding the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the activity that lies below that band.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question Do the contractors for an agile project need to understand agile methods like the team members do?

They might have to, but it depends on their role in the project. In educating vendors we need to consider the cost-benefit trade-off.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What is emphasized in agile contracting?

Close cooperation between the project team and the customer to focus their efforts on delivering value-adding features. Customer involvement to provide feedback on iteration deliverables, reprioritize the backlog, and rank the value of changes against the remaining work items.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question List five options for structuring an agile contract.

• DSDM contract • Money for nothing and change for free • Graduated fixed-price contract • Fixed-price work packages • Customized contracts

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What is the gulf of evaluation?

The communication gap between what the customer described and what the team heard or interpreted

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What are some of the cycles of frequent validation and verification on a typical agile software project?

• Pair programming (seconds) • Unit testing (minutes) • Customer collaboration (hours) • Stand-up meetings (daily) • Acceptance tests (days) • Customer demos (weeks) • Releases (months)

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What is exploratory testing? What is usability testing?

Exploratory testing relies on the tester's autonomy, skill, and creativity to discover issues and unexpected behavior that can't be found with scripted tests, such as edge cases, system boundaries, and other unanticipated behavior. Usability testing tries to find out how end users will respond to the system under realistic conditions.

Value-Driven Delivery | Question Define "continuous integration."

An automated process in which new and updated code is checked to make sure the system still performs as intended after the new code is integrated into the code repository

Value-Driven Delivery | Question Explain the concept behind TDD. What behaviors are promoted by TDD?

The tests should be written before the code is written. • Thinking about how the functionality will be used by the customer • Making sure that tests are in place • Catching defects early in the cycle when they are cheaper and easier to fix • Writing code in small, tested units, which leads to more modular, flexible, and extendable systems

Value-Driven Delivery | Question What is "Red, Green, Refactor"?

The process of writing a test that initially fails (Red), writing code until the test passes (Green), and then refactoring the code (Refactor)

Value-Driven Delivery | Question Explain the approach of ATDD.

As in TDD, the tests are written before the code, but instead of simply testing whether the code works, we test how the functionality requested by the business behaves at an acceptance-test level.