Guest post: Avoiding Iteration Zero

Teams new to Agile often realize that they have a lot to do before they get their new development process at full speed. Looking at this big and unknown hill in front of them, many Agile teams choose to do an Iteration Zero (or Sprint Zero) to prepare before they start delivering regular increments of functionality. During this time, they may try to get their ducks in a row with

• A list of features to be built
• A release plan or timeline for those features
• Setting up development infrastructure such as version control or continuous integration servers
• Studying or practicing skills in new technologies they expect to use
• … and other management, infrastructure, and technical endeavors.

They try to get all the preliminaries out of the way so they can hit the ground running full speed in Iteration One. In my experience, they’re still not ready to go full speed. These things are rarely as complete as expected after one iteration, and often aren’t quite in tune with the actual needs of the project. The list of features will likely not be complete, but the attempt to approach completeness will dump in lots of ideas that have been given little thought. Any attempt to project into the future still has no data about how fast things can be accomplished. The infrastructure may or may not be the best for supporting the project, but it is likely that the project will now conform to the infrastructure rather than the other way around. The choice of technologies will be made speculatively rather than driven by the needs of the project. While we may do OK, we’ll have made a lot of decisions with the least amount of information we’ll have in the project lifecycle.

And we’ll have burned an iteration without producing any working software that tests our decisions.

My advice is to borrow an idea from Lean and look at the situation from the output point of view. Ask yourself, “what would it take to start delivering?”

The initial backlog really only needs to be one item in order to start delivering. If you’ve got too many unknowns, then just start with one item. Get the business stakeholders, the programmers, the testers, and anyone else who needs to be in on the discussion (User Experience? Ops?) to talks about it. (I call this a meeting of the Three Amigos.) What is the one obvious thing that needs to be done? (Hint: it’s not “login.” Start with the main purpose of the system.) I can’t imagine a situation where a project is started without any ideas at all.

Take that one thing, and slice it into thinner slices. Decide on the examples that represent acceptance of those slices. Some of the slices will have questions that can’t be answered. Put those aside for the moment. Choose the most central slice that travels through the entire concept from end to end, or as close to that as possible. Estimate that as one team-iteration. (Estimates don’t have to be “right.” They’re just estimates.) Start building it.

Learn the necessary skills in the technology while accomplishing real work. Learn the parts that aid building the system, rather than developing the system according to some framework. When you don’t know how to accomplish something, or you think multiple approaches might work, do minimalistic spikes to give the information needed to make a decision.

Along the way, start slowly building your development infrastructure. Set up a local code repository. You can always migrate the code to an “official corporate” repository later. Right now, there’s not much code. Set up a simple build-and-test script so that everyone builds in the same fashion. You can always add other build targets later. If you’ve got time, you can set up a Continuous Integration server. Otherwise, just do it manually. Checkout & build into a clean workspace. Do what’s needed to run the code so that you can show it working.

If you can’t accomplish this slice in one iteration, it’s probably not thin enough. Or, maybe you haven’t yet solved an essential technical problem. Or the goal isn’t yet clear enough. Figure out what impediment is most in your way, address that, and try again.

More likely, you’ll get this slice done in less than a iteration length. If you get this slice done before the end of the iteration, then pull in another slice. Estimate this as “the rest of the iteration.” Repeat as needed. As long as you’ve gotten one slice done, you’ve got a potentially deliverable product increment.

Yes, there will still be development infrastructure to be developed. There’s no particular rush to get that done. Just keep improving it, so that it helps you get more done. Yes, there will still be technical skills to be developed. That should always be the case. Just keep experimenting and pushing your limits.

Yes, there will still be features to be added to the backlog, refined, prioritized, split into stories, and prioritized again. This should continue throughout the project. It’s part of the “steering” process. Yes, there will still be a need for projections to estimate when functionality can be released, or how much functionality can be released by a certain date. When you think you’ve got enough information about what needs to be done, then consider the initial release plan. By then you’ll also have accumulated a little information about how fast things get done.

There will still be a lot of holes in your knowledge of what needs to be done and how fast things get done. Don’t trust your initial release plan to be “right.” It’s just a stick in the sand to help you judge how things are going. Keep planning, and move the stick as needed. And as time passes, you’ll have a better and better indication of how fast the system gets developed. Even when you think the Release Plan is complete, it needs to be continually reviewed and adjusted. Since it’s never done until the release, there’s no particular hurry for a certain level of completeness.

This sort of beginning is very like the Hudson Bay Start that Johanna Rothman describes in her book, Manage It (pp. 52-53).

The Hudson Bay Start approach was originated by the Hudson Bay Company in the 1600-1700s in northeastern Canada. The Hudson Bay Company outfitted fur traders. To make sure the traders hadn’t forgotten anything they needed, they left Hudson Bay and camped just a few miles away. By making camp just a few miles away, the traders ensured they hadn’t forgotten any tools or supplies–before they abandoned civilization. With just a short start to their journey, they had a better idea about their ability to endure the winter.

There’s really no reason (other than “that’s not the way we do things around here”) that this can’t work for the start of any team/project. It’s a great way of learning the right stuff for the current situation while also making a bit of progress. I use this technique in my Agile in Six Months transition plan.