A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware (Paperback)

Today, even the largest development organizations are turning to agile methodologies, seeking major productivity and quality improvements. However, large-scale agile development is difficult, and publicly available case studies have been scarce. Now, three agile pioneers at Hewlett-Packard present a candid, start-to-finish insider’s look at how they’ve succeeded with agile in one of the company’s most mission-critical software environments: firmware for HP LaserJet printers.

This book tells the story of an extraordinary experiment and journey. Could agile principles be applied to re-architect an enormous legacy code base? Could agile enable both timely delivery and ongoing innovation? Could it really be applied to 400+ developers distributed across four states, three continents, and four business units? Could it go beyond delivering incremental gains, to meet the stretch goal of 10x developer productivity improvements?

It could, and it did—but getting there was not easy.

Writing for both managers and technologists, the authors candidly discuss both their successes and failures, presenting actionable lessons for other development organizations, as well as approaches that have proven themselves repeatedly in HP’s challenging environment. They not only illuminate the potential benefits of agile in large-scale development, they also systematically show how these benefits can actually be achieved.

Coverage includes:
• Tightly linking agile methods and enterprise architecture with business objectives
• Focusing agile practices on your worst development pain points to get the most bang for your buck
• Abandoning classic agile methods that don’t work at the largest scale
• Employing agile methods to establish a new architecture
• Using metrics as a “conversation starter” around agile process improvements
• Leveraging continuous integration and quality systems to reduce costs, accelerate schedules, and automate the delivery pipeline
• Taming the planning beast with “light-touch” agile planning and lightweight long-range forecasting
• Implementing effective project management and ensuring accountability in large agile projects
• Managing tradeoffs associated with key decisions about organizational structure
• Overcoming U.S./India cultural differences that can complicate offshore development
• Selecting tools to support quantum leaps in productivity in your organization
• Using change management disciplines to support greater enterprise agility

如今，即使是最大的開發組織也轉向敏捷方法論，以尋求重大的生產力和質量改進。然而，大規模的敏捷開發是困難的，公開的案例研究很少。現在，惠普的三位敏捷先驅者將以坦率的方式，從頭到尾地介紹他們在公司最關鍵的軟件環境中（HP LaserJet打印機的韌體）如何成功應用敏捷方法論。

這本書講述了一個非凡的實驗和旅程的故事。敏捷原則能應用於重新架構龐大的遺留代碼庫嗎？敏捷能同時實現及時交付和持續創新嗎？它真的能應用於分佈在四個州、三個大陸和四個業務單位的400多名開發人員嗎？它能超越提供增量收益，實現10倍開發人員生產力提升的目標嗎？

它能夠，而且確實做到了，但要實現這一點並不容易。

作者為管理者和技術人員寫作，他們坦率地討論了自己的成功和失敗，為其他開發組織提供可行的教訓，以及在惠普具有挑戰性環境中反復證明有效的方法。他們不僅闡明了敏捷在大規模開發中的潛在好處，還系統地展示了如何實現這些好處。

內容包括：
• 將敏捷方法和企業架構與業務目標緊密聯繫
• 將敏捷實踐集中在最困難的開發痛點上，以獲得最大的效益
• 放棄在最大規模上不起作用的傳統敏捷方法
• 使用敏捷方法建立新的架構
• 使用指標作為敏捷流程改進的“對話開始者”
• 利用持續集成和質量系統降低成本，加快進度，自動化交付流程
• 通過“輕觸式”敏捷計劃和輕量級長期預測來控制計劃
• 在大型敏捷項目中實施有效的項目管理，確保責任制
• 管理與組織結構相關的權衡
• 克服可能使離岸開發複雜化的美國/印度文化差異
• 選擇支持組織生產力大幅提升的工具
• 使用變革管理方法支持更大的企業敏捷性