« Total Participation Starting From the Top
Authorized to Manage – Referent Authority »

Letting Go of BDUF

August 7, 2007 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Agile Project Management, Time Management

Letting Go of BDUF (Big Design Up-Front)
By Johanna Rothman

I’ve taught several workshops where people wanted to learn how to start adopting some agile approaches. They knew about timeboxing, but didn’t quite see how to make it work. The part they were missing was having working valuable product at the end of each timebox.

I explain that to the participants, and they nod sagely. Then I ask them to do a simulation. Practicing in a workshop is a safe place to practice. If they don’t do something quite right it’s still ok. Normally this part proceeds well. Some folks have a little trouble, but most people start changing how they work by the third iteration.

At a recent workshop, things didn’t go so well. One group took five iterations to complete the first part of the project when I’d expected three iterations (when designing the simulation). But take a look at a chart of their first project’s velocity.

Iteration Architecture Project 1

They couldn’t predict what they could finish–or not–in an iteration. One of the reasons they had so much trouble is that they did not implement by feature. They attempted to build the architecture first. But as soon as they started attempting features, the architecture didn’t quite work. Instead of throwing away a not-quite-right architecture at the end of iteration 2, they decided to stick with it, because of all the time they’d invested.

Iteration Architecture Project - 2

They had a different experience in the second project (above). In their first iteration, they decided to do an architectural prototype, but not deliver anything. Ok, I could live with that. They had a working architecture, and if they’d put things together, they could have been halfway done with the project. They chose to leave the first iteration as a prototype.

In planning for the second iteration, they told me (senior management), they were going to work on the prototype more. I asked what they would have to show me. It wasn’t going to be product, so I told them that was unacceptable. They didn’t plan much for that iteration, but delivered plenty. Same thing with the next two iterations.

They never did have a predictable velocity, because they were caught in the trap of pre-planned architecture instead of seeing the architecture evolve as the product grew. I asked them if this ever happened in their organizations. Predictably, it did.

This may be the most difficult idea to help people see–that they make more progress implementing the most valuable features one at a time, and letting the architecture evolve. Big Design Up Front (BDUF) slows down the project. You can’t predict what the architecture needs to be.

Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.

Article originally published at: http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2007/04/letting-go-of-bduf.html

Share this article:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • blogmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 and is filed under Agile Project Management, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 people have left comments

Since application architecture is one of the important aspects to the success of the project, can I get the architecture in an non-agile mode and then take up the actual implementation the agile way?

Thanks
Prashanth Shankhawaram

Prashanth Shankhawaram wrote on August 13, 2007 - 6:32 am | Visit Link

[...] WBS – Work Breakdown Structure – An org chart style, hierarchical breakdown of project deliverables or functionality. If done very early or taken very deep in detail it may be considered by agile teams as a form of BDUF. [...]

Waterfall to Agile Dictionary - PM Hut wrote on September 17, 2009 - 8:43 am | Visit Link

[...] practices espouse simple design and avoiding big design upfront (BDUF). Iterative design is to build a reusable asset in successive iterations. Too many systematic reuse [...]

Agile Software Reuse – Key Ingredients - PM Hut wrote on October 5, 2009 - 7:13 pm | Visit Link

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.

Project Management Categories