Contemporary Development Principles and Practices

The course covers contemporary development principles and practices, including the place of project management, testing and business analysis, within Agile and traditional Waterfall contexts.

The course is intended to be workshop-style with opportunities for delegates to ask questions and explore real life application of the content.

This course comprises a series of modules with each module designed to take 1.5hrs, ie 1 training day would consist of 4 modules.

Intended Audience

This course is aimed at those who want to gain a rapid overview of contemporary Waterfall & Agile software development and the impact on project management, testing and business analysis.

Module 1:  Traditional Development Approaches

• 1.1 Overview of Sequential, Predictive Development Approaches
  • Description of sequential, predictive ‘Waterfall’ approaches
  • Timeline of evolution of Waterfall approaches
• 1.2 Strawman Waterfall
  • Dr Winston Royce’s Waterfall model
  • Benefits of Waterfall for controlling projects
  • Royce’s “Inherent risks”
• 1.3 V-Model
  • Early verification and validation
  • Benefits of V-model
• 1.4 Incremental Models
  • Example of Rational Unified Process
  • Incremental delivery
  • Breaking down scope and managing risk
• 1.5 When to Use Waterfall
  • Defined process control

Module 2:  Prince2 Overview

• 2.1 What is Prince2?
  • Definition and origins
  • Prince2 Certifications: Foundation, Practitioner, Agile
  • Benefits of Prince2
• 2.2 Prince2 Methodology
  • Roles – Project manager, customer, user, supplier, project board
  • Management Techniques – Project assurance, project support
  • Scope - Interaction with contracts and contractual management
  • Controlling Change – Risk, quality, and change management
• 2.3 Prince2 Process Model
  • Directing a project
  • Starting up a project
  • Initiating a project
  • Managing stage boundaries
  • Controlling a stage
  • Managing product delivery
  • Closing a project
  • Planning                             

Module 3:  Agile Overview

• 3.1 Historical Overview
  • Timeline of evolution of ‘Agile’ ideas 90s to present
  • Early Agile approaches – Scrum, XP, DSDM
  • Agile Developments – Kanban, BDD, DevOps, Scaling
• 3.2 The Agile Manifesto
  • Background to creating the Manifesto
  • Agile Manifesto overview
    • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
    • Working software over comprehensive documentation
    • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
    • Responding to change over following a plan

Module 4:  Agile Principles

• 4.1 The 12 Agile Principles
  • Group discussion on each principle
• 4.2 Summary of Agile concepts
  • Iterative planning and development
  • Continuous improvement
  • Continuous learning
  • Collaboration and face-to-face communication
  • Collective accountability
  • Cross-functional teams

Module 5:  Agile Project Management with Scrum

• 5.1 The Scrum Framework
  • Overview – Scrum Guide 2016
  • Scrum roles and responsibilities – Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team
  • Scrum events – Sprint, Sprint Planning, Review, Retrospective, Daily Scrum
  • Scrum artefacts – Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment
• 5.2 Agile Project Management Principles
  • Empirical Process Control
  • Iterative planning and reporting
  • Continuous Improvement and retrospection
  • Resource management and teams

Module 6: Software Testing

• 6.1 Testing Fundamentals
  • The Fundamental Test Process
    • Planning, Analysis & Design, Execution, Evaluation, Closure
  • Test levels – unit, integration, system, user acceptance
  • Test approaches – requirements-based, risk-based, experience-based
  • Test design techniques – white-box, black-box techniques
• 6.2 Agile Testing
  • Agile Testing Quadrants overview – test strategy, planning
  • Test-driven development
  • Test automation principles – test automation pyramid
• 6.3 Test Types
  • Technology-facing tests that guide development
    • Unit testing, TDD, smoke tests
  • Business-facing tests that guide development
    • Story tests, examples, acceptance testing
  • Business-facing tests that critique the product
    • Exploratory testing, Alpa/Beta testing, UAT
  • Technology-facing tests that critique the product
    • Performance testing, usability, quality attributes              

Module 7:  Traditional Business Analysis

• 7.1 What is Business Analysis?
  • Business analysis and the business analyst
  • Levels of business analysis – enterprise, project, operational
  • Business Analysis principles
• 7.2 IIBA BA Book of Knowledge – Knowledge Areas
  • Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
  • Elicitation and Collaboration
  • Requirements Life Cycle Management
  • Strategy Analysis
  • Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
  • Solution Evaluation

Module 8:  Agile Business Analysis

• 8.1 Agile Business Analysis Considerations
  • Iterative development
  • Cross-functional teams
  • Collaboration between business and technology areas
• 8.2 Behaviour-Driven Development Overview
  • Origins in TDD and recent developments
  • Definitions – BDD, ATDD, Specification by Example
• 8.3 BDD Activities
  • Focus on features that deliver business value
  • Derive features collaboratively
  • Keep options open
  • Use concrete examples to illustrate features
  • Write executable specifications
  • Create living documentation
• 8.4 Agile BA Techniques & Tools
  • Business value definition
  • Personas
  • Impact Mapping
  • Real options
  • User Stories and acceptance criteria
  • Relative estimation
  • Given-When-Then template
  • Tool support for BDD