Agile by Design

Agile by Design

by Rachel Alt-Simmons
Released October 2015
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781118905661

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Book description

Achieve greater success by increasing the agility of analytics lifecycle management

Agile by Design offers the insight you need to improve analytic lifecycle management while integrating the right analytics projects into different frameworks within your business. You will explore, in-depth, what analytics projects are and why they are set apart from traditional development initiatives. Beyond merely defining analytics projects, Agile by Design equips you with the information you need to apply agile methodologies in a way that tailors your approach to individual initiatives—and the needs of your projects and team.

Lifecycle management is a complex subject area, and with the increasingly important integration of analytics into multiple facets of business models, understanding how to use agile tools while managing a product lifecycle is essential to maintaining a competitive edge in today's professional world.

  • Gain an understanding of the principles, processes, and practices associated with effective analytic lifecycle management
  • Discover techniques that will enable you to successfully initiate, plan, and execute analytic development projects with an eye for the opportunity to engage agile methodologies
  • Understand agile development frameworks
  • Identify which agile methodologies are best for different frameworks—and how to apply them throughout the analytic development lifecycle

With analytics becoming increasingly important in today's business world, you need to understand and apply agile methodologies in order to meet rising standards of efficiency and effectiveness. Agile by Design is the perfect reference for project managers, CFOs, IT managers, and marketing managers who want to cultivate a relevant, forward-thinking lifecycle management style.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright
  3. Introduction
    1. Who Should Read this Book
    2. What's Inside
    3. The Companion Website
  4. About the Author
  5. Chapter 1: Adjusting to a Customer-Centric Landscape
    1. It's a Whole New World
    2. From Customer-Aware to Customer-Centric
    3. Being Customer-Centric, Operationally Efficient, and Analytically Aware
    4. Our Example in Motion
    5. Enabling Innovation
  6. Chapter 2: The Analytic Lifecycle
    1. What Are Analytics, Anyway?
    2. Analytics in Your Organization
    3. Case Study Example
    4. Beyond IT: The Business Analytic Value Chain
    5. Analytic Delivery Lifecycle
    6. Getting Started
    7. Summary
  7. Chapter 3: Getting Your Analytic Project off the Ground
    1. A Day in the Life
    2. Visioning
    3. Facilitating Your Visioning Session
    4. Think Like a Customer
    5. Summary
  8. Chapter 4: Project Justification and Prioritization
    1. Organizational Value of Analytics
    2. Analytic Demand Management Strategy
    3. Results
    4. Project Prioritization Criteria
    5. Knowledge Acquisition Spikes
    6. Summary
  9. Chapter 5: Analytics—the Agile Way
    1. Getting Started
    2. Understanding Waterfall
    3. The Heart of Agile
    4. The Agile Manifesto/Declaration of Interdependence
    5. Selecting the Right Methodology
    6. Summary
  10. Chapter 6: Analytic Planning Hierarchies
    1. Analytic Project Example
    2. Inputs into Planning Cycles
    3. Release Planning
    4. Analytic Release Plan
    5. Summary
  11. Chapter 7: Our Analytic Scrum Framework
    1. Getting Started
    2. The Scrum Framework
    3. Sprint Planning
    4. Sprint Execution
    5. Daily Standup
    6. How Do We Know When We're Done?
    7. Sprint Review
    8. Sprint Retrospective
    9. Summary
  12. Chapter 8: Analytic Scrum Roles and Responsibilities
    1. Product Owner Description
    2. Scrummaster Description
    3. Analytic Development Team Description
    4. Additional Roles
    5. Summary
  13. Chapter 9: Gathering Analytic User Stories
    1. Overview
    2. User Stories
    3. Tools and Techniques
    4. Invest in Good Stories
    5. Epics
    6. Summary
  14. Chapter 10: Facilitating Your Story Workshop
    1. Stakeholder Analysis
    2. Managing Stakeholder Influence
    3. Agile versus Traditional Stakeholder Management
    4. The Story Workshop
    5. Must-Answer Questions
    6. Post-Workshop
    7. Summary
  15. Chapter 11: Collecting Knowledge Through Spikes
    1. With Data, Well Begun Is Half Done
    2. The Data Spike
    3. Data Gathering
    4. Visualization and Iterations
    5. Defining Your Target Variable
    6. Summary
  16. Chapter 12: Shaping the Analytic Product Backlog
    1. Creating Your Analytic Product Backlog
    2. Going Deep
    3. Product Backlog Grooming
    4. Defining “Ready”
    5. Managing Flow
    6. Summary
  17. Chapter 13: The Analytic Sprint: Planning and Execution
    1. Committing the Team
    2. The Players
    3. Sprint Planning
    4. Velocity
    5. Task Definition
    6. The Team's Definition of Done
    7. Organizing Work
    8. Sprint Zero
    9. Sprint Execution
    10. Summary
  18. Chapter 14: The Analytic Sprint: Review and Retrospective
    1. Sprint Review
    2. Sprint Retrospective
    3. Sprint Planning (Again)
    4. Layering in Complexity
    5. Summary
  19. Chapter 15: Building in Quality and Simplicity
    1. Quality Planning
    2. Simple Design
    3. Coding Standards
    4. Refactoring
    5. Collective Code Ownership
    6. Technical Debt
    7. Testing
    8. Summary
  20. Chapter 16: Collaboration and Communication
    1. The Team Space
    2. Things to Put in the Information Radiator
    3. Analytic Velocity
    4. Improving Velocity
    5. The Kanban or Task Board
    6. Considering an Agile Project Management Tool
    7. Summary
  21. Chapter 17: Business Implementation Planning
    1. Are We Done Yet?
    2. Analytic Release Planning
    3. Model Review
    4. Persona-Based Design
    5. Summary
  22. Chapter 18: Building Agility into Test-and-Learn Strategies
    1. What Is Test-and-Learn?
    2. Layering in Complexity
    3. Incorporating Test-and-Learn into Your Model Deployment Strategy
    4. Creating a Culture of Experimentation
    5. Failing Fast and Frequently
    6. Who Owns Testing?
    7. Getting Started
    8. Summary
  23. Chapter 19: Operationalizing Your Model Deployment Strategy
    1. Finding the Right Model
    2. What Is an Operational Model Process?
    3. Getting Your Data in Order
    4. Determine Model Scoring Frequency
    5. Model Performance Monitoring
    6. Analytics—The Success to Plan For
    7. Summary
  24. Chapter 20: Analytic Ever After
    1. Beginning Your Journey
    2. Supporting the Analytic Team
    3. The Importance of Agile Analytic Leadership
    4. Finding a Pilot Project
    5. Scaling Up
    6. The End of the Beginning
  25. Sources
  26. Index
  27. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: Agile by Design
  • Author(s): Rachel Alt-Simmons
  • Release date: October 2015
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781118905661