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Tennessee Agile Since 2006
Digital transformation is a journey between now and what is to come.
My first exposure to the Agile was in 2006 when Wachovia bank was moving from Waterfall to Agile ( Wagile as we call it). I initially saw the stages of the Agile process being just a formalized structure of what I was already doing.
Agile 'iterations' - cycles of product creation, each of them includes planning, analysis, design, development and testing seemed like a good change but was very similar to what I was doing because I had meeting cadences for all of that already just the jargon was different.
Sprints (or daily scrums) - short intervals which every iteration is divided into also brought a higher level of structure to the work effort process. Yet again, just re-defining what I was already doing because I was very organized around work and core team structure already.
So, I kept Agile in the background and kept working Waterfall. Eventually I came around to adopting Agile.
Tennessee Customers
Some information I know about Tennessee is I believe the state was admitted or ratified to the United States around or about 'June 1, 1796'. Tennessee is located around latitude '35.860119' and longitude of '-86.660156' and has a population of roughly '6,910,840 million'. If I remember correctly the capital is 'Nashville' and the largest city is 'Nashville'.
The Move to Agile
First off, I am NOT an agilist and honestly no one should be because 'What works best for the team' is what matters the most. The fact is many companies even in 2022 are still Wagile and not 100% Agile at all. I am sorry if that derailed your day but let's continue.
For years I managed my Waterfall projects with common sense and the best approaches I had learned over the years. When I researched Agile I realized I was already running my projects in an Agile fashion just the terminology was different.
Word of Mouth
Take a moment to read related case studies and testimonials below around my experience with Agile.
Case Study
The bank needed someone to manage complicated efforts for Merchant Services. I served as a Scrum Master / Agile Coach for 5 sprint teams running the governance and ensuring teams are adhering to enterprise standards, also handling all retros and demos..
"Eddie is very strong given his expertise from years of software development. Eddie spends quality time observing things working well and also those that are not. Based on the patterns he has always engaged with the teams to provide constructive feedback and ensured to the solution."
5/27/2023
Arun Nitta | USA
SVP - Portfolio Delivery Manager / Program Manager
Bank of America
Case Study
The bank needed someone to manage complicated efforts around ATM Updates inclusive of releases related to Diebold ADA changes as well as Enterprise Splunk / Cribl initiatives. I ran Agile/Scrum cadence utilizing Jira and removed impediments as needed. I coached the teams around Agile practices as well.
"I highly recommend Eddie Drye for any future role as Scrum Master for software development teams. He has a very calming demeanor, is a good listener and he learns fast. He contributed within his first few days here and was in a rhythm quickly."
12/2/2022
Larry Imperiale | USA
Senior VP, APS&E Operational Intelligence
Bank of America
Case Study
The bank needed to track highly visible project status work around Operational Intelligence. I ran Agile/Scrum cadence with emails on progress for external groups/vendors. I coached the team around Agile practices as well.
"Eddie, Fantastic update on the technical status for the Operational Intelligence body of work."
11/9/2022
Phil Rice | USA
VP Architect of Channels Technologies CTO
Bank of America
Case Study
Bank of America needed a scrum master to assist with their nationwide ATM Updates and Enterprise Splunk activities. I managed it all in Jira.
"Eddie, thanks for all you are doing. We, ESQ and Vynamic View project team, all appreciate what you are doing. We see improvements already."
8/26/2022
Doug Elkins | USA
VP Infrastructure Engineer II
Bank of America
Case Study
Pike needed someone to manage Agile projects across a diverse line of technologies and vendors for the construction of quality solutions. I managed Pike's fleet software development and integrations.
"Eddie, I really like how you run the Fleet projects. I enjoy working with you."
10/14/2021
Scott Cash | USA
Director of IT Management
Pike Engineering
Case Study
Ahold Delhaize had cybersecurity issues come up where we needed to manage Varonis located issues and much more. I was the PM over the cybersecurity work effort.
"Eddie did a great job researching tons of documents to put the GSPLAD project back on track."
10/14/2019
Lee Quackenbush | USA
IAM Manager
Delhaize
Case Study
Food Lion had a vendor drop out that was handling a large amount of aggregated data feeds. That broke a lot of systems. I had to assist in BRD and FRD's for the urgency.
"Thanks go to Wilson and Eddie for their hard work to complete these BRD/FRDs."
1/22/2018
Stephen Rossi | USA
Nitro Project Manager
Delhaize
Case Study
Food Lion needed solutioning around customer search, customer preferences, customer digital wallet with gamification which I solutioned for IT to create for Sales and Marketing.
"Special thanks to Eddie, who joined me in burning the midnight oil this week."
1/21/2018
Wilson Schmidt | USA
DiPLA Business Analyst
Delhaize
Case Study
Food Lion needed solutioning around developing customer centric analytics, search history, search preferences, faster website search, more relevant search and faster caching. I created all of those in record time and Google ranked my POC eCommerce site the fastest they had tested at the time.
"Eddie this is a really good start at troubleshooting this! (Production Issue)"
1/16/2018
Jon Nebauer | USA
DiPLA Solutions Manager
Delhaize
Case Study
Food Lion had a slow website. I utilized my experience to anamize every aspect of the site performance and provided solutions through Jira ticket creation for a better customer experience.
"Great Catch Eddie, release R3.1.6 seems to be making 200 additional coupon calls in production."
8/11/2017
Kapil Gujar | USA
Performance Test Team
Delhaize
Case Study
When RJMW a leader in Catastrophic Insurance needed a system to turn around insurance estimates faster they came to me. What I created for them was a cutting-edge claims and adjuster deployment system that took 7 day turnarounds to 3.
"Eddie has been a fantastic help in updating our claims system software. He has always been responsive and has come up with innovative ideas that have transformed how we do business. I would highly recommend Eddie and his company to anyone that needs custom software done."
April , 2016
Jay Crisp | USA
Director of TAP and Special Operations
RMJW
Case Study
ScanOnline hired me to manage manufacturing and government software development for small clients to large clients like the FBI and Executive Offices of the Whitehouse. NTI Solutions was a subsidiary of ScanOnline selling QuarterMaster software at the time for asset management. Many federal agencies used Quartermaster to manage checkout of assets whereas the Whitehouse utilized it to manage furniture for events.
"Eddie had respect and faith in his developers to perform their jobs with the best of their abilities. Eddie was always willing to offer his assistance and had an excellent rapport with the companys customer base. He was always available to answer any questions or help with any issues that would arise. His management style was unique in that he let developers have a sense of control."
October, 2015
Anthony Downs | USA
Developer
NTI Solutions
"I worked directly with Eddie and his team of developers to review, fix, enhance, create and deploy products. He has a very positive attitude, acknowledges teammates input and has an excellent rapport and ability to communicate well with clients, making him a valuable member of the team. I was also impressed with his forward thinking and ideas."
October, 2015
Lynn Stone | USA
Product Manager
ScanOnline
"I am a fan of the dashboards you create our customers are going to love them."
January, 2015
Brian Graves | USA
VP of Sales
ScanOnline
"We are confident that Eddie is the right person to help ScanOnline meet strategic and growth objectives in the coming years."
November, 2014
Lee Pickler | USA
President
ScanOnline
Case Study
First Med EMS Ambulatory services needed a custom document management solution that encompassed scanning in-house ScanTron styled documents via ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) scanners. The goal was to forgo the purchase of expensive ScanTron equipment and recognize scanned OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition).
My solution saved First Med EMS over 100,000 the first month work began on the project with a home-grown Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) which automatically scanned both sides of pages through the Automatic Document Feeders. His scanning engine was smart enough to ignore blank pages on the Epson GT-S50 scanners tested. Resulting scans were slammed into a SQL Server Full Text search database and saved as OLE Blob Image format.
Saving images in the database resolved a huge industry problem of file pointers to disk locations which was slower on retrieval difficult when locating files where folders could have 200,000+ images or more making research painfully slow. I utilized Lead Tools Recognition engine to zone out all OCR/OMR areas for extraction of key values into the database with all appropriate key and search values filled in.
"I knew when I interviewed Eddie, he was what the organization needed. His expertise proved me to be right. He was invaluable and created a Scantron replacement system we are very proud of. Eddie also created a drivers manifest with turn-by-turn directions and built a location system for our ambulances."
December, 2013
Chris Martin | USA
CEO
Life Ambulance Services (First Med EMS)
"Eddie, great job on EDMS (Electronic Document Management System), when your back in Wilmington I will treat you to a steak dinner!"
August, 2013
Robb Stone | USA
CTO
Life Ambulance Services (First Med EMS)
Then Came Scrum
In 2011 Bank of America brought me into the Scrum world using Computer Associates Rally project management software. I was the scrum master over many projects namely Sparta a Javascript stack web builder solution for customer facing websites. Since then I have utilized Jira / Confluence and Azure DevOps (my favorite PM tool) to manage projects.
My Agile Background
Over the years I have led Agile projects in project management, as an Agile coach, Scrum Master and Technical Scrum Master. My duties were to manage roadmaps, daily standups, sprint reviews, user story grooming, PO/PM coaching, PO/PM priorities, remove impediments, implement Agile practices, self-organized teams, management updates and ensuring teams understood the definition of done.
If at any point you decide to reach to me just know the area codes I am familiar with for Tennessee are '423, 615, 629, 731, 865, 901, 931'. For Agile assistance you will find my rates very reasonable for Tennessee. Now just keep in mind my time zone is 'Eastern Standard Time (EST)' and I know the time zones in Tennessee are '"West Tennessee: Central Standard Time (CST) / Middle Tennessee, plus Marion County: Central Standard Time (CST) / East Tennessee, except Marion County: Eastern Standard Time (EST)"' in case you wish to call me. Anyway let me continue.
For companies desiring to move from Waterfall or 4D Methodology to Agile I would implement Dev / QA pipelines and Agile ways of working by modernizing the development and deployment processes. I developed 'Engage' an Agile solution for businesses needing assistance moving from Waterfall to Agile.
6 Stages of the Agile Development Life Cycle
- Scope out and prioritize projects
- Diagram requirements for the initial sprint
- Construction/iteration
- Release the iteration into production
- Production and ongoing support for the software release
- Retirement
Innovate or Die
If tech companies want to remain relevant in a fast-paced, ever-changing industry, software development teams need a way to push their products forward as much as possible in a short time frame. The Agile software development methodology was developed specifically for the rapid development and deployment of software.
I break down the stages involved in the Agile software development life cycle (SDLC) to determine whether this process will fit your team's needs.
1. Sprint Planning - Scope out and prioritize projects
During the first step of the Agile software development life cycle, the team scopes out and prioritizes projects. Some teams may work on more than one project at the same time depending on the department's organization.
For each concept, you should define the business opportunity and determine the time and work it'll take to complete the project. Based on this information, you can assess technical and economic feasibility and decide which projects are worth pursuing.
2. Diagram requirements for the initial sprint
Once you have identified the project, work with stakeholders to determine requirements. You might want to use user flow diagrams or high-level UML diagrams to demonstrate how the new feature should function and how it will fit into your existing system.
From there, select team members to work on the project and allocate resources. Create a timeline or a swim lane process map in to delineate responsibilities and clearly show when certain work needs to be completed for the duration of the sprint.
For example, our product team created the following diagram to visualize how the team would implement the Print & Ship process for a business. The columns show each team member's workload, and the rows show the work completed during each sprint.
You know, I don't make it out to Tennessee much but I would like to see the 'Mockingbird' state bird. I am a little familiar with the Tennessee 'Purple iris' state flower as well. However, I do not know much about Tennessee's state tree the 'Yellow Poplar'. Fishing is fun to me perhaps I would like reeling in the Tennessee 'Channel Catfish' state fish. Anyway, sorry I went off topic. Let me continue.
[ Release Plan ]
3. Construction/iteration
Once a team has defined requirements for the initial sprint based on stakeholder feedback and requirements, the work begins. UX designers and developers begin work on their first iteration of the project, with the goal of having a working product to launch at the end of the sprint. Remember, the product will undergo various rounds of revisions, so this first iteration might only include the bare minimum functionality. The team can and will have additional sprints (iterations) to expand upon the overall product.
4. Release the iteration into production
You're nearly ready to release your product into the world. Finish up this software iteration with the following steps:
- Test the system. Your quality assurance (QA) team should test functionality, detect bugs, and record wins and losses.
- Address any defects.
- Finalize system and user documentation. Utilize a tool which can help you visualize your code through UML diagrams or demonstrate user flows so everyone understands how the system functions and how they can build upon it further.
- Release the iteration into production.
5. Production and ongoing support for the software release
This phase involves ongoing support for the software release. In other words, your team should keep the system running smoothly and show users how to use it. The production phase ends when support has ended or when the release is planned for retirement.
6. Retirement
During the retirement phase, you remove the system release from production, typically when you want to replace a system with a new release or when the system becomes redundant, obsolete, or contrary to your business model.
[ Agile Sprint Planning ]
Within the Agile SDLC, work is divided into sprints (iterations), with the goal of producing a working product at the end of each sprint. A sprint typically lasts two weeks, or 10 business days. The workflow of a sprint should follow this basic outline:
- Plan - The sprint begins with a sprint planning meeting, where team members come together to lay out components for the upcoming round of work. The product manager prioritizes work from a backlog of tasks to assign the team.
- Develop - Design and develop the product in accordance with the approved guidelines.
- Test/QA - Complete thorough testing and documentation of results before delivery.
- Deliver - Present the working product or software to stakeholders and customers.
- Assess - Solicit feedback from the customer and stakeholders and gather information to incorporate into the next sprint.
In addition to sprint planning meetings, your team should gather for daily meetings to check in and touch base on the progress, hash out any conflicts, and work to keep the process moving forward.
Remain flexible and open to changes, too. After all, this methodology is called "Agile" for a reason.
Bottom line: The goal of the Agile software development life cycle is to create and deliver accurately working software as soon as possible.
Ok, let's move on... Assessment ->
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Word of Mouth
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