Agile & Blended Shore Projects

My whitepaper is finally published. It's titled "Adapting the Agile Unified Process to Blended Shore Projects." You can read it here.

I have put nearly all of my recommendations into practice and they are working. Our next step is to collect more metrics to help us plan the project.

New Metrics

• Use Function Point Analysis to create estimates by feature
• Review & update FPA estimates after each iteration
• Record the number of function points per feature in the Product Backlog
• Record the actual effort for each feature after it is implemented
• Team Productivity = Total # of function points implemented in an iteration
• Track actual effort per function point
• Track team productivity over time; the trend should be that the team's productivity increases as they become more familiar with the domain and technology

What's Working

• Product Backlog as the master feature set
• Iteration (Sprint) Backlog for each team
• Daily Scrum
• Iteration Assessments (Sprint Review Meetings)
• Iteration Planning Sessions (Sprint Planning Sessions)
• Early and frequent delivery to QC within an iteration
• Storyboards
• Modeling
  

Challenges

• No automated test tools are available for Avalon/WinFX
• Technical reviews of requirements are not conducted soon enough; we plan to bring more technical resources onshore to close the communication gap
• Tracking rework and changes; we have revised our change control process so we have a record of the changes requested and the effort to implement each

This is fun and it's working well!!!