Escaping the Brownfield: Lean and Agile Survival Techniques for Maintenance
Your in a predicament. The system needs re-architecture. There are a lot of bugs to stamp out. You need to turn it off, but you can't - it's mission critical to your business.
When most of us learn about Agile, the examples and stories we are told are from a Greenfield perspective; Greenfield meaning new development. Most organizations that aren't start-ups have many applications already in use; this pristine start just doesn't exist. Existing software needs to be maintained and continuity of operations is the highest priority; these are the circumstances of Brownfield development. This is essentially any application past its first release. Making this more difficult is that teams need to maintain legacy code and update antiquated architectures.
This session will cover techniques you can use at the team level to help this maintenance activity. We’ll specifically look at the use of the Mikado Method, Kanban, and some indicators you may want to use to analyze your application portfolio from a maintenance perspective.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
What do we mean by brownfield and legacy code? (2 min) - AKA who starts with a blank screen anymore?
The Maintenance Problem Areas (1 min) - quickly review these 4 areas
- Technical
- Predictability
- Personnel
- Financial
Technical: “no one understands the code”; “when we fix one thing, 3 other things break” (~10 min)
Mikado Method in a nutshell - describe the Mikado method and how it can help allow discovery of underlying code
Add tests as you maintain - discuss strategies for incrementally adding tests
Tech Debt - what is it and why one should pay attention to it
Predictability: “how long will it take to fix that bug (or add that feature)?” (~10 min)
Kanban & Lead-time - how to give accurate forecasts where there is uncertainty
Applying the Theory of Constraints - look for system bottlenecks and how to elevate these and increase capacity
Personnel: “how do we motivate people to do a good job just fixing things” (~2 min)
Connect people to Purpose - help people understand why it is important
Maintenance Innovation - translate this to Mastery, give people freedom to try new things with safety
Financial: “why is maintenance so expensive?”; “when should we replace this app?” (~10 min)
Spelunking is Hard, Stop Being Cheap - the fallacy of paying less for maintenance
Some Metrics to Consider
By the Team - code coverage, performance data, team confidence
By Management - WSJF, MTTR, team health
How Do We Avoid Falling Into This Trap? (Maintain to Expensive Replacement then Repeat) (~5 min)
Discuss full-lifecycle teams vs dev teams handing off to maintenance
Call to action for education to stop greenfield projects in degrees
Q&A (remaining time)
Learning Outcome
This session will help people understand:
- How do I maintain legacy applications in an Agile fashion?
- What people considerations do I need?
- What measurements would be meaningful?
- How do I avoid this mess in the first place?
Target Audience
Development Managers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Team Members, CS Educators, Portfolio Managers, CxOs
Prerequisites for Attendees
Some understanding of Kanban and technical approaches, as well as some familiarity with what a portfolio is and what metrics or measures may be important.
Links
The following link is a presentation that only focused on Mikado & Kanban; this presumed little to zero knowledge of either.
https://www.slideshare.net/pmboos/mikadokanban
schedule Submitted 2 years ago
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