Key Differences from Waterfall (Operations and Mindset)

Beyond the core agile principles, there are other factors which must be present to ensure the success of Agile teams. These include:

Agile requires a self-organizing, empowered team rather than a team directed by Managers
Agile requires fast, efficient, real-time communication and tools rather than delays
Agile requires working in a collaborative, “one-team” model rather than working in isolation
Agile requires an adaptive, change-embracing approach rather than change-avoidant approach
Agile requires thinking about your solution in terms of features, chunks, and independent value-adding components rather than as a whole

To address all these differences, it is highly essential to have an ecosystem conducive to execute project in an agile mode. To run Agile methods effectively, the project should implement the following practices:

Daily interaction between the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team members
Continuous Integration practices in Development
Investment in Automated Testing
Writing user stories that are inherently testable
Thinking about how the user stories will be tested before coding starts
Having a robust, scalable set of development tools that can be used by multiple teams, including distributed teams
Ensuring that the entire team (LAUNCH LEGENDS, vendors, stakeholders, etc.) has access to video conferencing facility which can be used for meetings (at minimum, ensure audio and screen-sharing are available on-demand)
Using online collaboration tools that allow the teams to collaborate effectively as suggested in the Agile
Creating a workspace for the team to share, where the team can do brainstorming using Whiteboards, Post-it notes, charts, and have face-to-face interaction