Agile Delivery
FAS-IT has adopted Agile-driven approaches in order to efficiently deliver modernized solutions. This section of the Playbook aims to help you understand the key concepts of Agile, as well as providing tools, templates, Jira Apps, and links to the FAS Agile community and to advanced training resources. Explore the resources below to familiarize yourself with Agile methodologies and the ways in which GSA incorporates Agile methodologies into their work.
Before You Get Started
Welcome to the FAS Community!
If you are new to FAS, we hope you find this page useful as you and your team seek to quickly get up to speed on how your division leverages Agile principles and techniques in the development process. The FAS community comes with a wide range of experience with Agile, with some teams using it since 2014 and others beginning to leverage it more recently. Here are a few things you should know as you navigate this page:
- Through COMET, FAS-IT is engaging in several long-term IT modernization projects that require significant work from numerous development teams.
- For more information on FAS-IT’s organizational structure, please visit the About FAS-IT page.
- This page will focus on how Agile is being implemented and standardized within FAS-IT, both at the broader enterprise level and the tactical, team level.
You will find that when working with FAS-IT, many flavors of Agile and other software development methodologies have been used. The methodology you use will depend on what division you are working with. The Team Profiles can help illuminate which flavors of Agile are being used by each team.
For those who already have familiarity and experience with Agile delivery, the sections below will be helpful in developing an understanding of how FAS has incorporated and implemented Agile principles into everyday development work.
The Jira and Confluence section describes how FAS has leveraged Jira and Confluence to support Agile practices, including for writing stories, planning sprints, and building portfolio epics. This section also contains lots of helpful training and information about specific use cases and add-ons that can be leveraged in Jira.
The Resources section contains a wide variety of trainings and other tools that may be useful for those already accustomed to Agile development principles, including templates for key activities in the Agile process, training materials from the FAS Agile Community of Practice, and useful Quick Tips on Agile methodologies.
Agile is considered an alternative approach to traditional project management or product development. It can be summarized as a value-based, iterative approach under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Success in Agile is based on an attitude of “servant leadership” and focuses on the entire team, both Business and IT, not just developers. As teams work to solve large, complex problems, teams must “be(come)” Agile and not just “do” Agile.
Though it arose out of software development practices, Agile is not just a software-development framework. It is neither methodological nor prescriptive; there is no exact way to become Agile. There are best practices and popular approaches, particularly Scrum. However, Agile is not synonymous with Scrum (or Kanban, TDD, etc.) or even a specific tool (i.e. JIRA, Rally, etc.). The overall goal of Agile is to encourage collaboration, accountability and ownership across the team, and provide transparency and visibility throughout the process.
For those who are new to Agile, the Agile Values & Principles is a fundamental section to become familiar with. The Team Member Roles and the Roadmaps, PIs, and Sprints sections are helpful in terms of building an understanding of how FAS approaches Agile on a more tactical level. The Epics and Stories (Issue Types) and Metrics sections provide helpful guidance for incorporating Agile practices and ideas into a team’s day-to-day work.
For those who already have familiarity and experience with Agile delivery, the sections below will be helpful in developing an understanding of how FAS has incorporated and implemented Agile principles into everyday development work.
The Jira and Confluence section describes how FAS has leveraged Jira and Confluence to support Agile practices, including for writing stories, planning sprints, and building portfolio epics. This section also contains lots of helpful training and information about specific use cases and add-ons that can be leveraged in Jira.
The Resources section contains a wide variety of trainings and other tools that may be useful for those already accustomed to Agile development principles, including templates for key activities in the Agile process, training materials from the FAS Agile Community of Practice, and useful Quick Tips on Agile methodologies.
Agile is considered an alternative approach to traditional project management or product development. It can be summarized as a value-based, iterative approach under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Success in Agile is based on an attitude of “servant leadership” and focuses on the entire team, both Business and IT, not just developers. As teams work to solve large, complex problems, teams must “be(come)” Agile and not just “do” Agile.
Though it arose out of software development practices, Agile is not just a software-development framework. It is neither methodological nor prescriptive; there is no exact way to become Agile. There are best practices and popular approaches, particularly Scrum. However, Agile is not synonymous with Scrum (or Kanban, TDD, etc.) or even a specific tool (i.e. JIRA, Rally, etc.). The overall goal of Agile is to encourage collaboration, accountability and ownership across the team, and provide transparency and visibility throughout the process.
For those who are new to Agile, the Agile Values & Principles is a fundamental section to become familiar with. The Team Member Roles and the Roadmaps, PIs, and Sprints sections are helpful in terms of building an understanding of how FAS approaches Agile on a more tactical level. The Epics and Stories (Issue Types) and Metrics sections provide helpful guidance for incorporating Agile practices and ideas into a team’s day-to-day work.
Agile Topics and Concepts
General Guidance on Agile
While FAS does not specifically prescribe standards in these areas, there are generally accepted practicies in these areas that may be helpful to your team in the sections below.
Agile Value & Principles
Check out this summary of general Agile values and principles tailored especially for those newer to Agile.
Agile Value & PrinciplesTeam Member Roles
Learn more about the roles that are commonly used within FAS-IT to build a well-rounded team.
Team Member RolesRequirements and Issue Types
Explore approaches for gathering requirements and breaking down development work using issue types.
Requirements and Issue Types
Standardized Components of Agile
You will find that when working with FAS-IT, some aspects of Agile will be prescribed across the whole organization. These include: metrics, terminology, and roadmap. These areas are defined in greater detail below.
Metrics
Summary of what metrics are standard within FAS-IT, such as:
- Cycle Time
- Team Morale
- Escaped Defects
- Planned-to-Done
Agile Terminology
Summary of what terminology is standard within FAS-IT, such as:
- Issue Types: Epics, Capabilities, Stories, etc.
- Ceremonies: Retrospective, Planning, etc.
- Planning Horizons: Sprints, Program Increments (PIs), etc.
Roadmaps, PIs, Sprints
Overview of the standardized roadmap components, which leverage the FAS Jira Project Template (FJPT) issue types.
Roadmaps, PIs, Sprints
Agile Team Profiles
This section provides summarized information about each division’s use of Agile, how their teams are structured, and how they track progress throughout development. The profiles are intended to help new vendors quickly get up to speed on how Agile is being adopted within their respective teams.
Team Profiles
Additional Resources
These resources are generally more helpful for those with prior Agile experience that are seeking to know more about the tactical side of implementing Agile within a team. The Jira and Confluence page focuses on how FAS-IT has incorporated standard tools for all divisions to use to maintain their backlogs, stories, epics, etc. The Agile Resources contains a myriad of useful tips, definitions, and other guidance for more seasoned Agile team members.
Jira and Confluence
GSA has invested in Jira and Confluence, tools by software company Atlassian that support Agile software development.
Jira is designed to help teams of all types manage work. Originally, Jira was designed as a bug and issue tracker. But today, Jira has evolved into a powerful work management tool for all kinds of use cases, from requirements and test case management to agile software development.
Confluence enables teams to collaborate in a Wiki-like Web environment ideal for creating and sharing requirements documentation, files, illustrations, and more.
COMET BPA holders and vendors are to use – in alignment with FAS guidance – the GSA IT instance of the Atlassian stack (Jira, Confluence and others). They are the standard, enterprise-wide Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools for GSA FAS.
Agile Resources
For those more experienced with Agile, there are several helpful resources and tips on this page to help team members get familiar with how FAS-IT and GSA are implementing Agile principles in their work.
Agile Resources