Exercises: Agile methodologies and teamwork

Explain in your own words what an Agile methodology is and how it differs from traditional waterfall development (analysis → design → build → test, all in closed phases). Give an example of a school project where each approach would be most suitable.

In a Scrum team, the following three functions appear: (a) decides what is built and prioritises the product backlog, (b) removes obstacles and ensures the framework is respected, (c) builds the product in each sprint. State which role (Product Owner, Scrum Master or development team) corresponds to each function and justify your choice.

The team of a recipe app uses the Kanban board shown in the figure. A card has just passed code review and is waiting to be placed. State which column it should be moved to and which Kanban rule must be checked before moving it.

Explain what a sprint is and what having a fixed duration ("timeboxing") means. What is the advantage of committing to not changing the scope of a sprint once it has started?

Define what a minimum viable product (MVP) is and explain why it is advisable to launch it early even if it is incomplete. Give an example of an MVP for a school shared notes app.

Explain what the velocity of an Agile team is and how it is used in planning: if a team completed $20$, $24$ and $22$ story points in its last three sprints, what is its average velocity and how many points at most should it commit to in the next sprint?

Why do Agile methodologies insist on making the task board visible to the entire team (and often to the client as well)? Explain what communication problems this transparency avoids.

Explain the difference between "done" (according to the team's definition of done) and "almost done". Reason why in Scrum only fully completed work counts as progress and what problem accumulates from having tasks "90% done".

A group of four students is developing a library book loan management app for their school over one term, with a functional demo every two weeks for the librarian. Explain whether Scrum or Kanban seems more suitable for this project and justify your answer with at least two arguments.

A group of four students is developing a school library loan management app. Write two user stories using the format "As a [role], I want [feature], so that [benefit]" and add a specific acceptance criterion to each one to determine whether it is completed.

These events of a Scrum sprint are out of order: (a) retrospective, (b) sprint planning, (c) daily stand-up meeting, (d) increment review with the client. Put them in order, explain what is done in each one and who takes part.

A team estimates its stories in points rather than hours. Explain what point estimation measures (relative effort, complexity and uncertainty) and why it is more robust than promising hours when the team does not yet know each other well.

The graph in the figure shows the burndown chart of a ten-day sprint with $40$ committed points: the ideal line and the actual work remaining each day. Interpret the graph: in which section is the team behind schedule?, what might have happened between days 4 and 6?, will they reach the end of the sprint with the work completed if they maintain the pace of the last few days?

In a team's daily meeting, each member answers three fixed questions. State them and write the answers that would be given by a developer who finished the registration screen yesterday, will start the profile screen today, and is blocked because the test server is not responding. Explain how the Scrum Master should act regarding this blocker.

Define "technical debt" and explain with an example how it accumulates (shortcuts to deliver earlier, lack of testing, duplicated code). Why does a team that never spends time reducing it end up slowing down, even if they work the same number of hours?

Three Agile teams are simultaneously developing the same platform (mobile app, web and server). Analyse what coordination problems arise (inter-team dependencies, integration, differing priorities) and propose two mechanisms to manage them without reverting to rigid waterfall planning.

A company commissioned a studio for the "turnkey" development of its online store under a waterfall contract with fixed requirements. After eight months, when the first complete delivery took place, the market had shifted and 50% of the features were no longer competitive.

1. a) Technically justify the causes of the project's failure, relying on the concept of the feedback loop and the cost of change curve over time.
2. b) Design a proposal for a complete reorganization of the project under the Scrum framework: define the scope of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the first month, determine the role and involvement of the client in business decisions, and explain the mechanism that would allow pivoting development if market priorities change.

Your class is organising the school tech fair: the stands, signage, registration website and talk schedule need to be designed in eight weeks. Design the Kanban board for the project: columns, work in progress limit for each, an explicit "done" policy, and how you would display blocked tasks.

A developer delivers a module without technical documentation and refuses to estimate tasks, claiming: "The Agile Manifesto states that working software replaces documentation and that responding to change is incompatible with following preset plans."

1. a) Critically refute this stance by analyzing the exact wording and meaning of the four values of the Agile Manifesto (what it means to value one item "over" another).
2. b) Justify which planning artifacts and what minimum technical documentation a Scrum team must maintain to prevent technical debt and allow the project to be maintainable over time without betraying agility.

A client approaches your tech company demanding the development of an application with a fixed catalog of 25 complex features, an immovable deadline of four months, and a fixed budget of €10 000.

1. a) Using the project management iron triangle (scope, time, and cost), predict what critical risks to software quality and team sustainability would arise from accepting the contract by rigidly fixing all three vertices at the same time.
2. b) Design a technical negotiation proposal based on agile principles to convince the client to make the scope flexible without losing the contract: justify how you would prioritize requirements by business value and how you would guarantee functional deliveries at each payment milestone.

A Kanban team notes that its last ten tasks took, from entering "In progress" to "Done": $2$, $3$, $3$, $4$, $5$, $5$, $6$, $7$, $8$ and $12$ days. a) Calculate the mean cycle time and the median. b) Reason what the $12$-day task reveals and what two hypotheses would explain it. c) Explain why the median is more useful here than the mean for committing to deadlines.

Analyze the following extract from an audit of a team claiming to work with Scrum:

"The team rigorously conducts 15-minute daily meetings in front of the board. The Product Owner individually assigns each developer the tasks they must complete in the sprint according to the fixed contract signed with management last year. At the end of the sprint, the team holds an internal demonstration exclusively with technical staff to validate the code, and action plans are omitted in the retrospectives to avoid altering already standardized processes."

1. a) Diagnose four systemic dysfunctions present in this workflow and justify which agile principle or value each one violates.
2. b) Explain why this situation constitutes "fake agility" (Zombie Scrum or disguised waterfall) and predict what consequences it will have on the product if user needs change halfway through the project.

A software development team finishes a quarter with critical overload and unanimous complaints about having spent three months "putting out fires" instead of advancing on the planned product.

1. a) Design the pre-retrospective phase: select and justify at least three objective workflow metrics you should measure prior to the meeting to identify the root causes of the overload without relying on subjective opinions.
2. b) Design the dynamics of the meeting, structuring it into phases (setting the stage, gathering data, generating insights, and deciding what to do).
3. c) Formulate an action plan for the next quarter in the format of a measurable Kaizen experiment (change hypothesis, success metric, and review deadline).

Compare the suitability of applying agile methodologies versus a traditional waterfall model in two engineering projects: the development of a web platform for managing library loans and the construction of a reinforced concrete bridge.

1. a) Justify, by analyzing the cost of change curve over time and the possibility of generating usable increments, why software allows for agile iterations while the physical structure of the bridge requires an exhaustive predictive design prior to execution.
2. b) Propose a methodological transfer: reason which agile management practices (in communication, visual tracking, or supplier coordination) are indeed feasible and beneficial during civil engineering execution, and which others would be infeasible or jeopardize infrastructure safety.

Unit challenge. Imagine that you lead a technical team that must design a digital solution to optimize domestic electricity consumption. You will apply Scrum and Kanban to manage this project agilely from home:

1. Product Backlog and estimation: Write four user stories in LibreOffice Writer focused on energy savings for a family. Assign to each its relative effort estimation using the Fibonacci scale ($1, 2, 3, 5$).

2. Real data sprint: Check the voluntary price for small consumers (PVPC in $€/\text{MWh}$) from the previous day on the Red Eléctrica de España (REE / ESIOS) website. Download the data, import them into LibreOffice Calc, calculate the average tariff for the day, and identify the cheapest consecutive $3$-hour window.

3. Kanban board and Retrospective: Create a visual board (columns: To do, In progress, Done) reflecting the lifecycle of the completed tasks. Write a brief retrospective report analyzing the workflow, the bottlenecks detected, and propose two continuous improvement dynamics to coordinate the team in the next sprint.

Evaluation criteria:

• Correct formulation of user stories with acceptance criteria and agile estimation.

• Accuracy in obtaining and processing hourly REE data using LibreOffice Calc.

• Appropriate representation of the Kanban flow and thoughtful quality of the teamwork-oriented retrospective.