Large-scale Agile development practices : HP LaserJet product line success of agile transformation

Agile Software Development Series

by [ MEI ]Mike Young [ MEI ]Pat Fulghum [ MEI ]Gary Gruver

Industry Pub Date :2013-11-01 189 Chinese China Machine Press . large-scale Agile development practices : HP LaserJet product line of successful experience in agile transformation is a classic in the field of large-s...

Genres: Business, Management, Technology, Technical, Nonfiction, Software, Programming

Paperback

First published September 19, 2012

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I read this book NOT because I'm interested in agile development (I'm currently a medical student), but because my father co-authored the book. The details of the book went over my head, but I enjoyed reading about the general principles of agile and seeing the success that came in their team.

[Jolyon Direnko-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Approachable, Insightful and Digestible

Referenced in Jet Humble’s “Why Scaling Agile Doesn’t Work”, the story of HP’s effort (and successful result) in re-imagining their firmware development for an agile world is an object lesson in applying the agile mindset at scale. That is, there is not a single prescription for success, rather agile success is a process of experimentation and discovery.

Do not read this book expecting to find a recipe for how you should “implement agile” or complete an “agile transformation” in your enterprise. Rather examine the processes and principles by which HP reached their successful outcomes (some of which they highlight as being somewhat counter to accepted agile thinking).

But do read this book.

[Leila Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A a software developer and manager who has spent a lot of my career working with embedded software and firmware, it was great to read a book about DevOps practices being used for firmware with great results. I enjoyed the book so much that I presented on it at a company tech talk. We were already an agile development shop, practicing scrum and working on integrating more continuously - but this book takes it to the next level. The book is well written and provides many great tips on how to get started on a similar journey. I'd especially recommend it to anyone in the software industry who thinks that DevOps and continuous delivery are concepts that only make sense for web applications.

[Mario Sailer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book gives some interesting insight in what HP did to become more agile without sticking to some method or even without aiming for agility. Just by thinking how the development process could be improved.
I read the book two times to avoid missing something. What I learned was
1. the architecture of the software was changed in order to be able to support the business better and
2. a lot of effort was put into testing and putting a test harness into place

What I did not learn was how HP managed Large-Scale Agile Development. How did they scale, which challenges did they face and how did they address these challenges.

So in general it is a good book, but I find the title misleading.

[Krzysztof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great entry point for non-technical project managers who want to get acquainted with the design-to-delivery software/firmware tools and techniques. For those with more experience it may reveal a few interesting tweaks that make a difference in "just applying the practices" to "making it work". This book describes in great detail the struggles of Program Management Officers from their experience and issues resolved along the delivery.
The warning for the newbies is that this book uses some non-standard nomenclature, but the namings are fairly intuitive.
Personally I loved this book for the fact I got to know characters described there in real life.
Kudos to Mike for being a PMO guru at HP Firmware dept.

[Shreyas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some fantastic ideas in this book for any firmware team looking to scale.

[Pramod]

Knowledge

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry, but worth reading because of (at least) 2 ideas:

1. A scalable architecture is table stakes. They figured out how to rearchitect their system to be scalable across products before doing any organizational change.

2. The HP team used "system engineers" to "work out the feature definition by taking new requested features from 'new' to 'investigated,' where they are well defined and ready for handoff to the technical team."

Basically systems engineers offload the technical team by being a middleman between engineering and marketing/product. This is a role that might be called a "product manager" in some (mostly smaller) companies. The idea is to get as much of the feature definition ironed out before bringing it to the technical team for actual scheduling/planning.

[Ben Linders · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the book “A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development”, the authors Gary Gruver, Mike Young and Pat Fulghum tell their story about applying agile and lean principles in a large scale software development program for the HP laserjet futuresmart firmware.

This book is a description of a large scale agile implementation, with the nuts and bolts of actually doing agile. It shows that the agile journey that HP laserjet futuresmart firmware took wasn't easy, but that is was worthwhile doing it.

A book review and interview with the authors is available at http://www.infoq.com/articles/practic...

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being called (and being) a practical approach, this is extremely well principled: the directives around metrics are worth the price of the book alone.

It's also a very honest and humble book, documenting failure, challenge and regret as much as triumph, showing a true learning mindset.

The only caveat I'd offer to readers is that offered by the authors: this is their journey, their story, their decisions in their context. It does show (and openly state) that following what has become methods orthodoxy is not the only path, but that their journey is not your journey, and would have benefited from stronger engagement with the wider community at an earlier point.

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a successful story about implementing agile at scale at HP. It was written before scaling agile became trendy, something we should appreciate. It esntially focus on the engineering stuff, especially the continuous integration where the team obviously succeed to deploy an amazing plateform, making all the practices aligned on it with good results.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici

[Miguel Alho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about applying Agile practices in large sized projects / enterprise level development groups. The first person point of view, mentioning the strategies applied and obstacles encontered was a good choice por the presentation.

Lots of tips in this one worth thinking about and following. I think it could have been a bigger book with more detail, but the info that exists is still very usefull.

[Tim Jarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry? Sure. Did I skim parts? You bet. But I also highlighted and wrote notes over large chunks of this book, and if you work in software you probably will too. Though you can tell it was written by committee (the portion on continuous integration was riveting—others less so), there are so few detailed case studies on large scale agile projects that it's definitely worth a read, assuming you're into that sort of thing.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are a technical manager in a large company that is implementing agile development, you'll find useful stuff here. I bored through most of this because several at work were reading in in preparation for a consulting visit from the author.

[Srinath · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone needing a reality check in their Agile journey.

While the HP LaserJet team took their decisions, do not assume their decisions are globally applicable. "Learn as you go" is the best way to do - irrespective of how HP or any other company did.