Gain insights into applying Agile methods in large projects and teams. Explore challenges, best practices, and strategies to secure organizational buy-in for successful implementation.

Agile methods allow us to handle rapidly changing requirements, typical in most software projects. These methods are conventionally used for small teams and software projects. However, in this course, you will learn how to effectively apply Agile methods to large software projects and large teams.

You’ll start with a recap of the Agile Manifesto, followed by a description of the common challenges associated with Agile methods in the context of large software projects. You’ll learn how Agile approaches have been applied to build responsibility. Next, you’ll learn about approaches to apply Agile methods in the processes. You will then learn best practices for applying Agile methods such as software testing, and software architecture. 

This course provides insights into successful and unsuccessful approaches to introducing agility to teams, processes, and technology aspects of large projects. It also teaches strategies to secure organizational buy-in for agility in the context of large projects and teams.

Applying Agile Methods to Large Teams and Projects

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Because of departmental organization, people in large companies are often not used to having complete responsibility for any particular task. There is almost always somebody higher up the hierarchy with ultimate responsibility for the task. This is especially true for developers. They often consider themselves the ones who only do whatever somebody else tells them. When someone makes them responsible for a specific task, developers may feel uncertain because they are not used to having responsibility.

## Responsibility in agile
Agile processes require that everybody be responsible for their task and for the effects that task might have on the whole project. In addition to those tasks, there is also shared responsibility for the ultimate performance of the entire system, project, and even the process that will lead to the development. Therefore, each team member is responsible for every task, even those assigned to other team members.

## Collective ownership in Extreme Programming
Extreme Programming has a practice called **collective ownership**, which refers to a shared responsibility for all things: the code, the integration, the process, and so on. The best known among these shared responsibilities is probably collective code ownership, which enables and obliges everybody on the team to improve every piece of code, regardless of whether he or she is the code's original author.

With collective ownership, every team member bears the same responsibility for all aspects of the project. Allowing everybody to steer the project simultaneously is a challenge and, some fear, a big burden. For example, every developer might want to have a hand in shaping their development environment. But on the other hand, this increased responsibility is also likely to increase the developers' fear of making the wrong decisions.





Get an overview of how we distribute the responsibility in a large team.

Introduction to the Course

Agility and Largeness

Dealing with Large Teams

Dealing with the Process

Dealing with the Technology

Dealing with the Company

Putting It All Together: A Project Report (Case Study)

Final Thoughts

People: Responsibility

Responsibility in agile

Collective ownership in Extreme Programming