Managing Agile Development Projects with

HP PPM Center and HP Quality Center

White paper
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Executive summary
Agile frameworks are rapidly gaining popularity among
software developers in organisations of all types and
sizes. But with the promise of faster development and
better software quality comes an still greater challenge
supporting dozens of fast-paced projects without losing
track of the big picture aligning IT with business
objectives to increase business outcomes.
With multiple development projects both Agile and
waterfall underway or under consideration at any
given time, how do you keep your IT team from getting
overcommitted, over budget and overwhelmed?
Step one is to gain complete visibility into all your
operational and strategic activities, and determine
which ones will deliver the best business results.
Whether your organisation is predominantly Agile
or is working in a hybrid mode of both Agile and
traditional life-cycle methods, IT management
needs to implement effective and flexible controls
throughout the whole organisation. Understanding
project milestones, deliverables, resource and
budget requirements and keeping track of the
project health and quality indicators allow IT
management to bring order to chaos. Without such
controls and visibility, it is impossible to reduce
project schedule and budget overruns, reduce the
risks and achieve true business agility.
This paper discusses how HP Project and Portfolio
Management (PPM) Center and HP Quality Center
(QC) software can give you the information you
need to make better business decisions, lower the
cost of running both your Agile and traditional
development projects, increase collaboration
between business and IT and improve application
quality. We will highlight the core elements of Agile
development methodologies and explore how
Agile development can be aligned with the basic
principles of project and portfolio management to
make sure that IT objectives meet the companys
business goals.
The HP Solution for Managing
Agile Projects
HP Software provides an integrated platform for
planning, staffing and monitoring Agile development
projects, as well as managing application quality.
HP PPM Center offers a consolidated view of all IT
activities so that management has better visibility
into the portfolio, more effective controls, greater
flexibility in applying automated processes and
better-defined quality standards. With the HP
solution, your project and portfolio management
system can give your organisation visibility into
everything that is being worked on including
project health data, non-project work, resource
allocations and cost information. This integrated
solution gives you the unique ability to aggregate
both Agile and waterfall projects and see the critical
interdependencies among projects for example
whether the resource demands of an operational
project or other activity might prevent you from
undertaking a proposed project. This capability
enables you to manage and prioritise the collected
work so you can ensure that the right people are
working on the right tasks at the right time. You
can capture all the details about all current work so
every decision is supported by hard data.
Once an Agile project is underway, the high-level
key project information is passed to HP Quality
Center which can help break down the Product
Vision and Epic-level requirements into more
specific deliverables the User Stories. HP Quality
Center which is tightly integrated with HP PPM
Center combines the elements of requirements
management, release planning and quality
management into one scalable, Web-based solution
that is ideally suited to manage the process of
creating, organising and prioritising the User Stories.
HP Quality Center helps capture User Stories and
stores them in a centralised global repository that
is accessible to all team members. Any changes to
the User Stories are immediately known to the whole
team, making iteration planning easier and more
accurate. HP Quality Center then helps trace the
User Stories throughout the testing process to make
sure that teams are focusing their effort on the right
areas and are fixing the defects that affect the most
critical business functionality.
Software engineering with Agile methodology
is a team effort, and HP PPM Center and HP
Quality Center are specifically designed for
collaborative engineering throughout the development
cycle planning, design, testing, editing, change
management and ongoing maintenance. They are
closely integrated to allow data to flow seamlessly
between stages and to enable control points and
reporting at any point in the life-cycle. Together,
these solutions are exceptionally capable of
supporting both Agile and traditional IT projects.
They enable you to align business goals with
technical resources, help you enhance the business
outcomes of IT projects, and are comprehensive
and flexible enough to deliver true business agility
without the added weight of rigid, bureaucratic
processes project teams will object to adopting.
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Figure 1: Agile methods focus on delivering working software features with acceptable quality in short iterations, each containing steps for
project planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, testing and documentation
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Product Owner
The Team Sprint Review
Daily Scrum
Meeting
Scrum Master
Potentially
Shippable
Product
Sprint Retrospective
Sprint
Sprint Planning Meeting
Product Backlog
No Changes
(in Duration or Deliverable)
Diagram Source: GoodAgileIntroduction to Scrum for Managers and Executives
Main Principles of Agile
Development
There is no single Agile method, but rather a
set of at least 14 broadly recognised methods
centered around a number of common principles:
rapid release cycles, value-driven development,
team collaboration, continuous planning and
improvement, and customer involvement. Instead of
extensive upfront investment and planning, Agile
methods focus on delivering working software features
with acceptable quality in short time-boxes or
iterations that typically last one to six weeks. Each
iteration includes all of the tasks necessary to release
the mini-increment of new functionality planning,
requirements analysis, design, coding, testing and
documentation. At the end of each iteration, the
team re-evaluates project priorities.
Agile methods emphasise real-time communication
and empower people to collaborate and make
decisions together quickly and effectively. Most
Agile teams are cross-functional and include all
the people necessary to build the software. All
Agile methods value continuous evolution of both
the project and the software, are lightweight and
inherently adaptable.
Scrum: Overview, Basic Concepts
and Jargon
For the purpose of this paper, we will use the
example, concepts and jargon of a single, and
perhaps the most popular Agile development
method Scrum. Scrum is a simple but powerful
framework for development teams and customers to
continuously monitor project progress and quality
and use the feedback to surface problems, adapt
the processes and adjust the project scope. Scrum
is deeply rooted in collaboration and provides
a high degree of clarity and transparency for all
stakeholders the development team, customers,
product owners, management and others.
Despite its rebellious nature, the basic phases of a
Scrum development process are not that dissimilar
from those used in any other type of project. Project
managers, product managers and project sponsors
plan, define and initiate the development project, the
development team executes the plan, and together
they monitor and control the results. However,
traditional development methods define a single
sequence of initiation, investigation, design, coding
and testing for each project, while Agile development
projects rely on multiple fixed-length iterations, each
including planning, development and assessment
phases.
In the Scrum development method, the Product
Owner owns the Vision a high-level strategic idea
for the product, its intended uses and the value that
it would provide for a specific customer base. The
Vision contains input from customers, end-users,
executives, sales, support, and other external and
internal stakeholders. The Product Owner organises
the Vision into a single list of project proposals that
needs to be evaluated and prioritised based on
the business value and risk. This prioritised list of
requested features and functionality is referred to
as the Product Backlog. The next step is to break
down the large ambiguous features or Epics into
smaller, well-defined User Stories that can be easily
consumed by the development teams in the next
iteration, or Sprint.
Sprint is a fixed period of development time which
typically takes between one and four weeks. Before
each Sprint, the team selects which User Stories from
the Product Backlog it will commit to, and creates a
Task-level plan for how they will deliver the results.
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For each Task, the team estimates the required time
commitment and compares it with the total available
development hours to make sure that they do not
over-commit for this Sprint. The commitment level
and the due dates do not change during the Sprint.
The team meets daily to discuss Sprint progress,
list tasks that have been completed and need to
be accomplished in the next day, and report any
roadblocks. The ScrumMaster keeps track of these
meetings and monitors the daily progress.
The team also updates several simple charts:
The Sprint Backlog lists all current tasks and the
hours remaining for completing each one
The Burndown Chart totals the number of hours
remaining for all tasks
The Task Board shows all tasks that are
in-progress.
The goal for each Sprint is to deliver all the
functionality the team has promised to deliver and
to produce a complete piece of product functionality
that has been designed, developed and tested
with acceptable level of quality. At the end of
each Sprint, the Product Owner, ScrumMaster and
the team review the finished product, discuss the
development process, and incorporate the feedback
into the Product Backlog and future Sprints.
Strategic Planning for Your Agile
Projects with HP PPM Center
software
Agile frameworks emerged as an alternative to
extensive project planning. However, before any
new Agile project can begin, or still be considered,
IT management needs to gain a complete view
of everything that is going on in IT proposed
projects, application changes, strategic initiatives,
services provided and all relevant operational
activities in order to make realistic resource and
time commitments and to select the projects that best
align with the companys business objectives. You
also need to continuously monitor project health to
respond to fast-changing portfolio needs quickly.
Unlike approaches that offer only time-reporting
systems and project scheduling tools, HP PPM Center
offers top-down planning capabilities that are
tightly coupled with bottom-up details of the project
execution. HP PPM Center integrates project and
portfolio management, programme management
and other key functions with all relevant operational
activities, to enable that you have up-to-the minute
visibility into your total IT workload.
To help make strategic decisions on which Agile
projects will be given the green light, HP PPM Center
gives you the portfolio or investment planning tools
to analyse the trade-offs among various investment
alternatives. This creates virtually unlimited scenario-
based planning capabilities and gives you the ability
to forecast the financial and technical impacts of
changes. With HP PPM Center you can clearly see what
resources and capabilities are available at any given
time for your fast-paced Agile development projects.
Building a Product Vision: Initiating
a Project Proposal
To initiate an Agile project, the Product/Application
Owner creates the high-level Project Vision and
submits it as a project proposal within HP PPM
Center. Based on the project details and supporting
business case that are included in the proposal,
the Portfolio Manager can begin the process of
evaluating it against other initiatives proposed
or in-flight and make a decisions on whether the
project will be funded.
HP PPM Center lets business and IT stakeholders
collaboratively govern the whole IT portfolio with
multiple levels of input, review and approval. From
proposal initiation, justification and review to project
initiation, execution, deployment and benefits
realisation, HP PPM Center uses automatic, real-time
updates and a clear and flexible process to keep all
stakeholders involved.
To streamline the process of submitting the project
proposal, the Product/Application Owner can
draw on the powerful and flexible workflow engine
within HP PPM Center. HP PPM Center facilitates the
process of gathering input from all stakeholders,
routes the proposal through required approval
stages and consolidates all supporting materials in a
central location, transforming the high-level Product
Vision into a detailed project proposal.
Creating a Product Roadmap:
Managing Agile IT Projects
Once the proposal is approved, it becomes an IT
project. At this stage, a high-level Product Vision is
broken down into several Epics specific definitions
of the products features and functionality that span
multiple releases.
An Epic is a big enough slice of product
functionality to have its own plan, resource estimates
and milestones. The Product/Application Owner can
initiate an IT project for each Epic, in order to plan
and track its phases, deliverables and tasks. Only as
multiple Epics stem from a single vision, multiple IT
projects can be linked to the same proposal, which
contains all the supporting information, background
and value propositions.
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Figure 2: HP PPM Center acts as the central point of control for managing and continuously assessing the health of the project
The HP PPM Center Project Management
module provides a Web-based platform for
project collaboration among team members and
stakeholders with real-time visibility into resources,
processes, status and inter-project dependencies.
Agile Product/Application Owners and team
members can plan and schedule Sprints, create
preliminary staffing plans and track project status,
health and deliverables through the HP PPM Center
Project Management dashboards. Throughout the
duration of the project, the Project Management
module can act as the central location for managing
and continuously assessing the health of the project.
HP PPM Center also offers bi-directional integration
with Microsoft Project.
Managing User Stories with HP
Quality Center
One of the most important concepts in all Agile
development methodologies is the notion of
value-driven User Stories. Instead of trying to
find a product idea that will satisfy many kinds
of different customers, Agile Product/Application
Owners attempt to connect each product feature
with its intended user and focus on the value that
it provides for this user. A User Story could be a
product requirement, an internal deliverable, or any
other type of a container for related tasks. All User
Stories must be small enough to be completed within
a single Sprint.
The integrated solution from HP allows for User
Stories to be derived directly from the Product Vision
and Epic details that were captured during the
planning phase of the Agile project.
HP Quality Center is a collaborative, Web-based
solution that can help Agile teams organise and
manage the User Stories in a central repository.
The HP Quality Center Requirements Management
module contains customisable hierarchical fields for
capturing the User Story and its attributes: name,
description, fit criteria, owner, estimated efforts and
all related tasks.
All User Stories are typically stored in order of
priority and referred to as Product Backlog. To plan
the next Sprint, the development team selects the
top User Stories from the Product Backlog and adds
them to the next cycle. HP Quality Center supports
the concepts of release and cycle management
as integrated parts of the Application Quality
Management process. With HP Quality Center,
you can see not only detailed descriptions of each
Sprint, but also complete statistics on the User
Stories that are included in this Sprint, test plans
associated with it, and detailed quality information.
In most Agile methods, User Stories are further
broken down into Tasks the actionable work items
that get assigned to individual team members. HP
Quality Center allows for tracking and managing
of Tasks as part of its Requirements Management
module. Tasks are defined as a requirement type,
and the process of creating, refining and completing
the Tasks is governed by the customisable workflow
within HP Quality Center. For example, when the
Task is first added, it is assigned a draft status.
After the definition has been completed and
the ScrumMaster has added the effort estimate, the
Task status changes to defined. As soon as
the Task is assigned an owner, its status changes to
in progress, and finally when the Task is finished,
its status is set to completed.
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Figure 3: Through tight integration between HP PPM Center and HP Quality Center, key Agile project information is accessible to all team
members, allowing for greater visibility and control at every stage of the development process
Create
Proposal
Evaluate
Proposal
Approve Proposal
funding
Create Project Define Project WBS
Summary resource
assignment at
Sprint level
HP PPM Center
Epic-level
requirements
HP Quality Center
Total Story points
added in QC
Break Epic-level
requirements
into User Stories
and Tasks
Manage the
Backlog of User
Stories and Tasks
Assign User
Stories and
Tasks to Sprints
Execute and
update Tasks
during Sprints
Burndown
Charts and
other reporting
Each User Story typically includes the high-level
preliminary estimate of engineering hours required
to complete it. After the Sprint has started, these
numbers can be refined based on the more
accurate, Task-level estimates. All time estimates in
HP Quality Center can be aggregated to the Sprint
or release level, enabling the Agile development
teams to make more accurate commitments for
each cycle.
The same aggregated view can be used by the
ScrumMaster to monitor the progress of Sprints
and releases. Integrated, customisable graphs and
reports in HP Quality Center allow the Agile teams
to quickly view the essential graphs, such as the
Backlog and the Burndown charts.
Managing quality in Agile projects
with HP Quality Center
HP Quality Center provides a Web-based,
integrated system for automated software quality
testing and management throughout a wide range
of application environments. It provides the visibility
needed to validate both functionality and automated
business processes and identifies bottlenecks in
production that hamper business outcomes.
HP Quality Center enables Agile teams to engage in
application testing still before the development process
is complete, thereby providing the ability to accelerate
release schedules while maintaining a high-level of
quality. HP Quality Center is an effective tool for Agile
QA because it is specifically designed to facilitate the
type of collaboration and cross-pollination that is key
to Agile software engineering.
To learn more about HP Quality Center and its
support for Agile quality methods, download the
Managing Quality in Agile Projects with HP Quality
Center white paper.
Building a Quality Center of
Excellence
The idea of establishing a Center of Excellence
(CoE) for managing the quality of Agile applications
may first sound illogical to an organisation focused
on quick and nimble development. The truth however
is that managing quality as a shared service can
actually help you achieve better business results
faster and with less process overhead. HP Center
Management for Quality Center is built on HP PPM
and Quality Center software and provides
pre-packaged content and workflows to automate
key processes for quality management and enables
best practices for project collaboration as well as
project and resource management.
HP Center Management for Quality Center provides
a single dashboard view for application owners to
create, manage and track both Agile and traditional
development projects. This view improves the project
delivery process and helps you properly assign
resources to tasks and manage them efficiently
based on the business criticality of each project.
HP Center Management for Quality Center also
helps enforce best practices by enabling the shared
CoE to define a QA project template that can be
reused by different Agile projects.
With a Quality Center CoE, you can simultaneously
track the quality of multiple Agile projects, gain
real-time visibility into requirements, tests and
defects, aggregate results and reporting throughout
multiple HP Quality Center instances and projects
and improve your organisations quality practices.
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Figure 4: HP Quality Center allows for tracking and managing of Agile project Tasks as part of its Requirements Management module
First Level contains
Backlogs and
Cycles
Multi-Backlog
handling for
enabling
Scrum-of-Scrum
All items are
assigned to a
specific target
Release and Cycle
Aggregated Effort per
level for Estimates, Actuals
and Remaining and
Percentage Completed
Summary
There is no question that Agile methodologies are
here to stay. They are gaining traction in large
business development organisations and are being
successfully used to build mission-critical financial,
healthcare and government software systems.
But it would be a mistake to assume that
implementing Agile techniques removes the need
for organisation portfolio management, demand,
resource and budget planning and project
management. On the contrary, with so many Agile
development projects being proposed and already
underway in any organisation, IT management
needs still greater visibility into all IT projects, a way
to manage and prioritise IT investments, flexible
controls over the release processes and solid
compliance objectives.
The strength of HP PPM Center is in enabling
collaborative decision making that complements the
basic Agile principle of individuals and interactions
over processes and tools. It works especially
well throughout geographies, with Web-based
collaboration and the free flow of information among
project stakeholders and different teams. This helps
support the offshore outsourcing models for IT
development projects.
Together, HP PPM Center and HP Quality Center
help you focus on optimising business outcomes
instead of only running individual Agile projects.
Using the integrated HP solution, companies can
achieve the true alignment between business and IT
that leads to a transformation in business results.
Sources:
Focus on Value: How to create value-driven user
stories by Chris Sterling
http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/89-focus-
on-value
Glossary of Scrum Terms by Victor Szalvay
http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/39-
glossary-of-scrum-terms
GoodAgile Introduction to Scrum for Managers
and Executives www.goodagile.com
Technology for better business outcomes
To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/ppm
Copyright 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject
to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express
warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as
constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions
contained herein.
4AA2-4193EEW, January 2009