Process Increments: My Approach for Agile Adoption

Tomorrow, inshaAllah, I'm presenting at the RECOCAPE first gathering. I will be talking about the 'Process Increments' method, which me and my colleague Mohamed Amr have authored in 2010, and presented at the Agile Conference 2011.

Now, this is a good opportunity to introduce this new concept about 'Process Increments'.

A Process Increment is a process improvement chunk which can be implemented in a relatively small time (1-2 weeks) and still provide value for the organization. A Process Increment is independent from any other process increment, although it may have prerequisite ones.

The concept of  Process Increment  in software process improvement (SPI) projects is almost identical to user stories in Agile development projects, as appears in the next diagram:

Process Increments mapping to Themes, Epics, and User stories

Furthermore, the process increments are estimated in points, and have very well defined 'Done' definition. They can even be written on index cards!

Also, the whole project is planned in releases and iterations, and tracked using burn charts. In short, process increments is about running process improvement projects as typical agile projects. 

We found that this approach has excellent results, including:

• Better project visibility
• Faster adoption of Agile practices
• Faster improvement velocity in general
• Very high team morale!

If you would like to read more about the results of the study, this is the link to the paper at the IEEE Xplore digital library.

Also, you may download the paper for free at the Agile Alliance website. You may also download the presentation and watch me presenting it live at the Agile conference 2011 at Salt Lake City, Utah.