EA and Agile methodology (SCRUM)

[V.Wilmet]

Is somebody have some experience in using EA with project managed with SCRUM or any other Agile methodology.
The main question I have so far is "How to manage User's Story ?" ...

Thank you for advices or reference.
Vincent

[Takeshi K]

The following Add-in may help you:

EA Extension for Scrum
http://www.sparxsystems.es/New/products/ea-extension-scrum.html

[Stoppy]

Hi V.Wilmet,

Last organisation we integrated EA with TFS 2010.

I won't go into implementing as there is documentation on sparx site for that and you need to be a techie.

One of the lessons we learnt was to document the process, so everyone understands what was expected of them. From memory this is how the process ran:

1. Business Analyst would create user stories in EA and any business related requirements were captured in linked documents.
2. With the Addin the User Stories would be created in TFS.
3. Business Analyst would document acceptance criteria and associated task and run a hyperlink to the HTML Export.
4. User Stories were then managed from Sharepoint Workspace for Iterartions and Sprints (I think this can even integrate with MS Project)
5. Developer would use Visual Studio and the User Stories to develop against.

Hope this helps.


Stoppy  

[Robert Sheridan]

EA will do the job: user stories can be implemented as use cases. The next hurdle is how you capture the supporting detail for the user stories, we create requirements under the user story so that everything moves together.  

To manage the user stories we have a standard package hierarchy which we use to create User stories under.  User stories start of in a project model, move into a release model when they are accepted for development and end up in a live model when they are delivered.  As a user story passes through the life cycle we update its status and the status of any associated requirements and other artefacts.

The next problem is how you share the user stories with the other teams.  Ideally they all use the EA repository; however, this seems to be often not the case. We generate a rtf document and baseline the relevant part of the model whenever a new or updated set of user stories are released to a team.

If user stories are allocated to a release but not implemented they are moved into a backlog model and which is reviewed when the next release is being planned.

We evaluated the SCRUM extension and it looks great for doing standard SCRUM; however, the local working practises mean that it is not suitable.  This is a common problem as transitioning people to a standard way of working using a tool is difficult (but essential to using the tool as Stroppy says).

As always the devil is in the detail.  Keep it simple and evolve and you should get there.