Organistations

Back in October I attended a very thought provoking talk titled “Why Agile Transformations Fail (and what you can do to prevent it…)” by Gez Smith at Agile Tour London.  Gez hosts a podcast at WhyAgileTransformationsFail.com which is a collection of interviews exploring the title of the blog.  He has a great cross selection roles impacted by agile transformations from Developers, Agile Coaches to recruitment consultants. If you have time to listen to the interviews, I would recommend downloading the podcast.  The talk at agile tour London was made up of a number of quotes from the podcast that highlight some themes and challenges to implementing agile in organisations.

Episode 6 of the podcast, an interview with Andrew Horn, is particularly interesting for me.  Andrew talks about the failure of organisations and some of the root causes of failure.  He argues that even profitable companies can be on the verge of failure when we consider market disruptors and the impact of organisational rigidity on innovation.  He introduces the Fractal Model for organisations.  You can read more about this model here.  There a number of parallels with Agile ways of working and in particular the moving of delivery responsibility to those closest the customer/user.  I particularly like the example of Traffic Lights and Roundabouts.

This brings me on to a great book that I would highly recommend.  Reinventing Organisation by Frederic Laloux.  Frederic talks about his research into organisations that are structured in quite radical ways.  With many cases having a completely decentralised organisation structure.  He categories these organisations as Teal, you will have to read the book to discover the other colours and their meanings, but I would be very interested to hear your views on which colour you think your company is?   What this book doesn’t give you is a blueprint for this kind of new organisation.  No two organisations implement a wholly comparable system.  However there are common traits to these organisations.  Again there are strong parallels to agile ways of work, in particular - delegated responsibility.  As such a number of commentators in the agile community are referencing ideas from Laloux’s book.  Definitely worth a read.

Definition of Done?

I wrote this blog post back in 2009 on the blog site of the company (iMeta) I was work for at the time.  Just recently I try to find the post to give some context to colleagues, only to find the company no longer had the post on their site.  So I have reposted the blog post here.

 

Running an Agile project presents a different set of issues to a typical Waterfall project.  One of the most typical questions asked is “what constitutes done?”  How do we know when the software is ready?  Well without documenting what we mean by ready, how can we answer the question?  To overcome this issue it is important to define the project’s Definition of Done (DoD).  This enables anyone on the team to have a clear definition when answering questions, especially with stakeholders, about the progress and state of user stories, tasks, sprints, releases etc.

It is important to realise that a valid DoD for one project may not transfer directly to another project.  There is often cross over, but each project’s DoD should be carefully thought through by the team.

Recently I facilitated a session to define the Definition of Done for a client project that I am running as part of my role.  Below is the approach I took to guide the team through the process.  It worked well and we have a clear DoD for the project.  The DoD will evolve as the team experiences the project.

 

Preparation:

In preparation for the DoD meeting I gathered a number of sticky note pads and pens, enough for each attendee to have their own, some Bluetak and a number of large sheets of paper.

Finally I wrote the key objective onto a whiteboard in a prominent position in the meeting room.  This was to be the driving force for the meeting and if we start to go off topic could be used to bring us back on track.  The objective being:

“What do we need to do, as a team, to delivery software to the customer?”

We are now ready to start the workshop.

Part 1 – Brainstorm:

I asked the team to all take a Pen and Sticky Note pad and write on the sticky notes what they believed was part of achieving the objective written on the whiteboard.  Each time they thought of an idea they would write it down, then please the sticky note in the centre of the table and read out aloud their idea.  

In the brainstorming session it is important to empower everyone to contribute.  No idea is to be criticized!

Quickly we had a large number of sticky notes.  We found that after the first 15 minutes we started to struggle for new ideas, so we moved on.

Part 2 – Categories

Next I asked the team what categories should be used to facilitate our DoD.  We soon came up with a list of three categories that we could use to drive different levels of done for the project.

1.       Release

2.       Sprint

3.       User Story

For each of the categories I place a big sheet of white paper on the wall.

Part 3 – Categorise

Now I asked the team to take the sticky notes from the table and place them into the categories.   By placing the sticky notes onto the sheets of paper on the wall.

Part 4 – Sorting:

Next we started to look at the detail of the ideas.  If we believed that two or more ideas where similar or overlapped.  We overlap the sticky notes.  If any ideas where duplicates we placed them on top of each other.

Where ideas no longer seem valid, had lost their context or simply made no sense we moved these to another area outside of the categories.

Part 5 – Review:

We reviewed each of the sticky notes to analyse the meaning.  Importantly to query if the idea was required to be done?  Was it in the correct category?

This review resulted in a lot of discussion with sticky notes moving around the categories, the definitions being rewritten and consolidated. 

Finally the team settled on good set of definitions.

Part 6 – Document:

The finally part of the session was for me to document the DoD.  We placed the resultant document in a prominent place on the project wiki.  You could place a printed version in the team work space.

Below is our project’s version of a Definition of Done:

MoSCow and the Release Planning Burndown Chart

 

Just recently I have been the ScrumMaster on an interesting project to create a new tool for the agile and scrum development community.    More details of this will be published in the near future.  In the meantime I thought I would share a new take on the release burndown chart.

On this project we conducted a lot of release planning to determine the product owner’s priorities for the functionality.  When doing our release planning we came across a problem with the sheer size of our product backlog and projecting delivery dates.  The total story points was in excess of 700.  Our project sponsors asked numerous difficult and challenging questions about what we could deliver and when.  The simple response of it is the Product Owner’s responsibility to determine the priority and when we can ship just didn’t wash.  We needed a level of confidence about a ballpark timescale and the usability of the product.

To overcome this issue I proceeded to create a variation on the release burndown chart.  We had already invested a lot of time in establishing the MoSCoW priorities for the complete Product Backlog.  In doing so we had created a list of acceptable functionality that needed to be shipped as part of the first release of the tool.  These were our Must haves.  The revised burndown mapped the various MoSCoW totals onto the burndown.  This indicated to us in which sprint the product would be shippable with the level of functionality acceptable to the Product Owner.

We continued to use the burndown to track our progress to against the Must haves deliverable.  Reflecting increases and decreases in the total estimate, as estimates for the stories changed, new stories are added as the Product Owner’s vision changed.

The fundamental underpinning that made the information on the burndown valuable was to always address the Must haves above all other stories.  In our case this was simple as the top of the product backlog was populated with Must haves.

Here is an example of the burndown we used:

Post writing this blog I came across a similar approach detailed in Mike Cohn blog here.

BDD Talk at the next Agile South Coast

 

The next Agile South Coast meeting is coming soon.  The 8th March 2010 to be exact.  Howard van Rooijen will be doing a talk on BDD.  You can find more details on the Agile South Coast website:

www.agilesouthcoast.org.uk

or

Direct Link to the Event

I look forward to seeing you there.

Agile South Coast – New Website

Since my last post the Agile South Coast website has started to take shape.  We have moved away from using Linkedin for organising the group.  The Linkedin group still has it’s place, but the new website gives us a lot more flexibility to deliver content that is relevant and interesting to the group. 

Join this new and exciting group on the below link.  Or just have a browse to see what we are all about.

http://agilesouthcoast.ning.com/

WSUG – Retrospective – 8th Feb 2010 (Agile South Coast)

 

We had an excellent WSUG meeting at the offices of iMeta on 8^th February 2010.  At the end of the meeting we had a little retrospective about the meeting and the group.  Below is a summary of the discussion.

What is holding back attendance of group?

-          “Wessex” name is not helping the group to be recognised.  Most of the group did not associate themselves with the Wessex area.

-          Lack of a website is missing an advertising opportunity. 

-          Reliance of Linkedin could be limiting our audience.

-          The aim of the group is not immediately available.

-          Need more blogs/twitter etc to communicate the activities of the group.

The group agreed to:

-          Change name of group to “Agile South Coast”

-          Create a specific twitter account for the group

-          Attendees will try to bring at least one more person to the next meeting

-          Howard to consider doing a talk at the next meeting in March.

-          Blog about the this meeting and the next meeting

-          Set-up a Ning Network for the Group.

-          Research local companies using Agile/Scrum to enlist more attendees to the group

 

Agile South Coast is a group of likeminded individuals that meeting every second Monday of the month to talk about Agile/Scrum/Lean for the improvement of the attendees and the wider community.  The group normally meets in the Southampton area with easy access from Portsmouth, Winchester, Bournemouth, Poole, Salisbury, Hampshire, Dorset, West Sussex, Wiltshire and beyond.

Charging Problems with iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS in Speaker Docks

 

It appears that Apple have removed one of the ways to charge iPods and iPhone in the latest generation (3GS iPhone and 3rd Gen iPod Touch).  Previous version have allowed charging through either the USB (5V) or Firewire (12V) connections in the standard 30 Pin cable.  Now only USB is supported.

The result is that any device that uses the Firewire to charge will no longer charge.  This includes Speaker Docks, In Car Adapters and Mains Chargers.

I have personal experience of speaker docks (Klipsch) that are advertised as supporting charging on all 30 Pin connectors that do not charge, obviously attempting to charge over Firewire!

There is a solution available from Apple.  It is called a Scosche Passport.  There are various available to fit different applications (Docks, In Car).

The Power of Body over Mind!

 

An excellent trick that Jon Salinsky showed us at the Agile Coaches Gathering is how to use your body to control the state of your mind.  If you are feeling nervous or apprehensive before a presentation you can use your body to overcome that feeling.  Try this.  Hold your head a little higher.  Hold your head still.  Hopefully this will lift your shoulders a little.  This will have the effect of changing your overall stance.  You will be holding your body in a more confident position.  Your mental state will be naturally more confident and the people around will be receptive to “status”.  Your body has had a positive impact on your mental state.

 

Try it.  This technique really works.

Improvisation for Agile Coaches Event Autumn 2009

 

On Saturday 21^st November 2009 I attended the Agile Coaches Improv session in London.  This event was truly excellent.  Those who know me, you would expect that an event involving Improv would be a challenge.  Acting or being impromptu in front of a group of peers on topics that I am not comfortable or confident with is outside my comfort zone.  It was a challenge in such a positive and rewarding way.  The child in me was released and I felt free to explore Improv.

So a big thanks to Mike Sutton and David Harvey for organising the event.  Most importantly a huge thanks to Tom Salinsky ( of the Spontaneity Shop)  for facilitating and teaching in a truly engaging and accessible way.  I cannot stress enough how liberating and open Tom’s approach is.  He is an excellent teacher, coach and facilitator.  Finally thanks to all the attendees for making the event a success.

On the train home Plamen Balkanski and I tried to summarise all that Tom had covered during the day.  There was so much.  He really made us work.  Below is a summary of the “games” we did throughout the day.  This list is not comprehensive and I may well blog a summary of the game details at a later date.  I am sure we have forgotten some of the games!  The game names are mine not Tom’s.

Word Games – Speak out when pointing to an object.

Pair Responses Games – Positive offer and partner response.

Explore Status Games – Explore the extremes of status.

Group Status Games – Further exploring extremes of status as a group.

Picture Pair – Drawing pictures in pairs.

Letter Pair – Writing letters (Dear John ....) in pairs.

Hat Games – Pluck the Hat from your opponent.  (Thanks to Plamen for almost knocking me out whilst playing this one!)

Discussion Tag Games – Just like Wrestling tag team, but with conversation!

Mime Games – Mime talking whilst someone talks for me!

Avoid the “s” – Talk using words without an “s” in.

The 3 Word Game – Talk in sentences of 3 words.

New Choice Game – My conversation isn’t good enough try again.

The Bop Games – Someone in the circle trying to get out.  For those who attended - Pair Programming J

Taken at face value the content presented was engaging, funny and well thought through.  But what is the value to an Agile Coach?  Well for me Tom showed us some excellent techniques for breaking down the barriers in a team.  To engender a relaxed and happy team who are more at ease with each other.  Tom also highlighted the concept of status and how our approach to status can have positive and negative influences.  This knowledge can be used in our day to day understanding of our teams and the individual interactions in the team to assist in the coaching of the team to higher levels of continuous improvement.

I found the day truly enlightening and I cannot recommend enough that you attend once of Tom’s workshops.

Twitter Tools

Over the last few month or so I have been enjoy using twitter.   You can follow me twitter.com/cliveskipper.

Well as with many users I quickly found the Twitter web UI difficult to use.  So in my investigating the tools that surround Twitter I found a number of useful tools that I thought I would share.

TweekDeck is my current tool of choice for reading and tweeting.  I love the facility to group the people you are following.  It has some quirks, but in my view the tool is much better than many of the competition.

Wefollow is another great tool for understanding the use of hash tags.  It can offer a interesting insight into the hash tags in use and the ranking of individuals with those tags.

tweeteffect has the potential to be a great tool, if you are looking to analyse you tweets and the impact they have on your following.

WSUG – Wessex Scrum User Group August Meeting – Geoff Watts

We are planning for Geoff Watts to attend the August Wessex SUG meeting (24/08/2009). The topic is the "fear associated with an agile transformation"

Given that this is in the middle of the holiday season, we need to know if it will be worthwhile asking Geoff to come to the meeting. If you are interested in coming along, please respond to teh discussion on LinkedIn.  We can then gauge numbers and arrange the event if enough people are interested.

Brighton ScrumFest July 2009 – Quick Review

Well I had a great time at the first ever UK ScrumFest in Brighton.  Thanks to the organisers (Plamen, Ollie and Mike) for making the event happen.

The first part of the event was to create a product backlog of ideas for the Open Space sessions.  Some really interesting sessions where suggested including:

• Scaling Scrum for an Enterprise
• Using Scrum for competitive advantage
• Scrum 101
• Group Cohesion
• Managing your family with Scrum.
• Child birth as a Scrum Project

The group then moved onto a Live Scrum project to create a number of fashion items from old stock of clothes.  In the first sprint my team tried to create a sarong.  With our combined experience (read none) we attempted sewing etc.    We failed to complete the objective of the sprint. :-(  We even had a Scrum trainer on our team, so we shouldn’t have had any excuses!

On the second day we split the day into Open Space and Goldfish bowl sessions. 

• OpenSpace sessions #1
• Goldfish Bowl: Life as a Product Owner
• OpenSpace sessions #2
• GoldFish Bowl: The Scrum Development Team
• OpenSpace sessions #3
• Goldfish Bowl: The Effective Scrum Master
• OpenSpace sessions #4
• Retrospective

Nigel Baker did a particularly interesting OpenSpace session on introducing Scrum.   I enjoyed the way in which Nigel explained the principle without the need to explicitly note software project examples.  At the same time keeping the concept closely aligned to development project process.

I also enjoyed the OpenSpace session that Cesar Idrovo did on Group Cohesion where he presented research that has been conducted into the elements that create a highly productive team.  I believe that Cesar will be officially presenting the findings at one of the coming Scrum events.  Keep your eyes open for that one!

The goldfish bowl that created the most interest was the Product Owner session.  This is not surprising as this role is at the very heart of any project.  There was a very health debate about whether a Product Owner should be present at the Retrospective.   The attendees debated for some time between two positions:  1) Absolutely not and 2) it depends, but mostly yes.  I personally feel that the product owner should be part of the meeting.  Without the PO in attendance you are creating a barrier, a them and us situation.  The PO is part of the team and there is not need to hide information from him/her.  If you feel you can not invite the PO then you have a dysfunctional team and this needs to be resolved.

The goldfish bowl sessions have been recorded so keep visiting the ScrumFest website, as they will be published in the near future.

ScrumFest July 2009 in Brighton

Well I am really looking forward to going to ScrumFest later on today.  I know there are some very interesting and well respected attendees.  So I am hopeful that I will gain further in depth understand of Scrum from the experts.  It will definitely be a learning experience for me.  Every day is a school day!

My intention is that my next blog post will be a reflection on some interesting observations from Scrumfest on Scrum and leading software development teams.

Whilst I am at Scrumfest I will be updating twitter with the occasional tweet of interesting titbits.  You can follow me here:  http://twitter.com/cliveskipper

South UK Scrum User Group (Wessex) – 22nd June 2009

Well it was great to see a number of familiar faces at the South Scrum User Group meeting on the 22nd June 2009.  As always we had a very interesting discussion.

 

We covered a number of items before starting the main discussion.  Firstly the name of the group.  Plamen has been in discussion with the Scrum Alliance (SA) to have the groups details included in the SA website.  SA had suggested that the title of South UK was too broad ranging and we should adopt a more local title.  The discussion ensued on what name would be appropriate for a group that covers Southampton, Bournemouth, Poole, Salisbury and beyond.  We decided that the group we be renamed Wessex Scrum User Group.  After the meeting Plamen has arranged for the group to be visible on the SA website here.

 

Plamen has also arranged for Geoff Watts to come to the group in the near future.  Watch the group’s linkedin group for more information.

 

The main topic of the meeting was “Continuous Integration – How Far Do You Go?”.   Again we used a Mind Map approach to documenting the discussion and thoughts from the group.  Below is the resulting Mind Map.  Interestingly the topic is not necessarily a Scrum topic, but we were very careful to tie back Agile principles to the concept that were discussed.

 

South UK Scrum User Group 22nd June 2009

Just a quick reminder that the next South UK Scrum User Group will be held on Monday 22nd June 2009 at the Inn on the Furlong, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK. The event is free! So please come along.

For more information please go to the Linkedin Group here.

Videos – Toyota Production System, Just In Time (JIT) and Kanban

I am current doing a lot of research and reading around the whole application of Lean Principles and Kanban to software development.  At the moment this is a hot topic in the software development arena.

As a result I came across some very interesting videos on the Toyota website explaining the Just In Time and Kanban card process.  These have certainly added some context to my understanding, so I thought I would post a link here in the hope it will be of use to my blog readers.

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/vision/production_system/video.html

South UK Scrum User Group – 27 May 2009

On Wednesday 27 May 2009 evening eight like minded individuals gathered at the Inn on the Furlong for the South UK Scrum User Group.  The topic of discussion for this month’s meeting was “Planning”.  To facilitate the discussion we used a mind map.  The resulting mind map is below.

 

South UK Scrum User Group – How to achieve a workable Definition of Done.

Last Monday (27th April 2009) the Inn on the Furlong, Ringwood was the host for the first meeting of the South UK Scrum User Group. 8 scrum enthusiasts gathered to talk about “How to achieve a workable Definition of Done.” We had a very interesting discussion led by Mike Williams who had kindly prepared the topic.

Mike outlined his 4 sections for the definition of done – Task, User Story, Sprint and Release. Within each sections Mike had details a number of generic areas that covered the Definition of Done specific commitments for the team. These include commitments like the obvious CI build must pass all the Unit Tests to the less obvious of having all the marketing collateral in place.

A very healthy debate ensued around each of the sections of the Definition of Done. From which we all gain knowledge, understand and different perspectives. As always we had individually implemented some interesting and innovative solutions to unique challenges for our teams.

The diagram below is a record of both Mike’s initial thoughts as well as the combined learning from the discussion at the meeting.



Thanks to Mike for letting me have a copy of his diagram.

The next meeting of the group is being held on 27th May 2009. You are welcome to come along. For more information on the group please go to the Linkedin group.