Introduction

When an Agile methodology is introduced to an organization for the very first time, it's quite common for
the client to ask: What are the characteristics that indicate a project will have the highest likelihood of
success? Most experienced Agile practitioners have an intuitive feeling for which projects would be
successful using an agile methodology. This includes such factors as the project having a direct
contribution to business value, or having a dedicated business customer. Even though this may be
understood by the experienced practitioner, that does directly help the program manager with the
selection process.

This article describes an "Agile Scorecard" that can be used as a first pass filter for selecting Agile
projects. The intention of the Agile Scorecard is to provide a simple manner in which projects can be
reasonably selected by a project team that is unfamiliar with agile methods.

Caveats
I had misgivings when writing this article because it describes an approach that is based around following
a procedure and a checklist. This is distinctly not Agile. But refusing to discuss this topic doesn't help
anyone, and so I've decided to start this article with the following caveats:

1. The Agile Scorecard is not a substitute for an experience Agile coach. A good Agile coach can
offer more accurately and specific advice that I can encode in a scorecard. If you're thinking of
adopting an Agile methodology, then you need a good coach.

2. The Agile Scorecard is only valid for the first 18 months. After 12 to 18 months of selecting
projects, your personal experience will be more relevant to your organization than the scorecard
can ever hope to be. The scorecard should be viewed as an interim solution to help guide
decision making until the project team has sufficient experience to use their own judgment.

How to use the Agile scorecard

Not all of the criteria are equally important and I've weighted those that I feel have more importance. This
weighting is based on personal experience, so I'm open to suggestions on how it can be improved. After
the scores have been tallied and a total project score is obtained, a final recommendation can be made
as follows:
If the project score is less than 5. The project is a poor candidate for adopting an Agile
methodology and should be address using current development processes.

If the project score is greater than 5. The project has characteristics that would make it suitable
as a pilot Agile project.

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Score
Criteria Response Comments
Tally

Is senior management actively Interest from Management is positive, but lack of attention
interested in the outcome of the is not necessarily detrimental.
project? Yes / No
"Yes", Add 1 to the score
"No", Add 0 to the score

Does the software have direct Being able to demonstrate direct business value is
business value? definitely positive for project. Not being able to demonstrate
Business

business value is a negative for a project.

Yes / No
"Yes", Add 1 to the score
"No", Subtract 1 from the score

Is this a greenfields project (ie new New software development frequently has a higher profile
development) or is this a migration of and more positive "buzz" than migration projects.
functionality? Yes / No
"Yes", Add 1 to the score
"No", Subtract 1 from the score

Is there a single business customer The role of the business customer (Product Owner, Product
who is fully dedicated to the project? Manager, etc) is critically important in an Agile project. The
most common failing for new Agile projects is that there
Yes / No isn't a business customer how's actively involved.

"Yes", Add 1 to the score

"No", Subtract 10 from the score

Does the project have an experienced Having an Agile Coach/Mentor can help a team avoid often
Coach/Mentor? made mistakes. Without the advice of a coach the team is
prone to learning by trial and error.
Yes / No
"Yes", Add 1 to the score
"No", Subtract 2 from the score

Is the development team co-located? Co-location of the team enables them to communicate
quickly and efficiently. Having a team that's not co-located
(ie either a distributed team, or a team separated by offices
or floors) hampers communication and hence
Project

Yes / No
effectiveness.

"Yes", Add 1 to the score

"No", Subtract 1 from the score

Are the requirements of the project Agile methods allow for change and uncertainty, and
well known? projects that have ill defined requirements are well suited to
an Agile process.
Yes / No
"Yes", Add 1 to the score
"No", Add 0 to the score

Is the team cross-functional? Teams that contain all necessary expertise are better
position to identify and resolve impediments as they occur.
Having team members with different experiences and
points of view provides more comprehensive feedback
Yes / No (and hence likelihood of defects.)

"Yes" Add 1 to the score

"No" Subtract 1 from the score
Technolo

Is the project team using some form of Yes / No Continuous Integration provides a means of frequently
continuous integration (anthill, synchronizing the project team, and ensuring that any
newly developed software integrates with the existing

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Score
Criteria Response Comments
Tally

CruiseControl etc)? software without changing its behavior.

"Yes", Add 1 to the score

"No", Add 0 to the score

Is the team doing Test Driven When used in conjunction with Continuous Integration,
Development and/or Pair effective Unit testing provides a safety net for making
Programming? changes to the software product. Without effective unit
testing introducing change (whether through Refactoring,
bug fixing or otherwise) becomes more risky and hence
Yes / No more costly.
gy

"Yes", Add 1 to the score

"No", Add 0 to the score

Does the team have ready access to In order for teams to be self determining they need to be
necessary tools (JUnit, NUnit, able to choose the tools and environment in which they
Fit/Fitnesse, Clover, etc)? work. Mandating tools that the team should use because
its company policy is a poor substitute for using the right
Yes / No tool for the job.

Yes", increase the score by 1

"No", make no change to the score

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