Agile Complexification Inverter

Sprint length - a fun debate. What is the best practice - a funny question. There is no best practice for sprint length.  But what factors should go into the decision? The team's ability to become predictable within the sprint duration. The Product Owner's ability to plan and to commit to the unknown of not changing the plan for the sprint's duration. The frequency of needed feedback on the direction the team is making toward the release goal. The ability of the team to create their sustainable pace. Many team's I've worked with have trouble defining their sustainable pace .  I've argued that this pace that allows the team to deliver both working software that is potentially shippable each sprint and to have high quality deliverables along with team learning is quite a bit below the teams typical sprint velocity. When teams are under extreme pressure to deliver they typically forget one of the 7 habits of effective people - to sharpen the saw .  S...

What do the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays do to your teams tempo and cadence? For most US teams this holiday period from mid November to after the first of January is hectic and disruptive in various ways.  This calls for a Holiday Stratagem.  A trick to allow the team to have some semblance of continuity and flow during these times. The Sontaran Stratagem - Doctor Who To discuss this stratagem let's first define some terms: Tempo - the rate of workdays to calendar days Cadence - the beat of the sprint events to fall upon the same calendar day of the week Sprint duration -  in work days (in this example I'll use 10 work days) Sprint length - the length of calendar days between two sprints (14 days for the example 2 week sprint) What do you value more?  The ability to deliver more work in the short term -or- the ability to predict long term the capability of the team to deliver that work?  Or perhaps something else, like teaching a new te...

Just bought the Craig Larman agile library collection on Amazon for our lending library at work . I first feel in love with Agile by reading Larman's Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide.   The organizational context that sets the stage for comparing and contrasting various agile (and non-agile) methods of software development is a powerful framework.  I find few managers choosing a method understand these concepts enough to make an informed choice.  Only a few hours with this book would raise their awareness to a much improved state. Here how I started a mini-movement... one email... I find an empty book shelf to be an aberration.  So I’m filling it up with techie books and some not so techie books.  Feel free to BORROW a book for a few weeks then bring it back for someone else to borrow.  Bring in those dusty books you found interesting and join me in creating a Tech Dev Lending Library.   Connector Breakout Lounge 5...

Leadership desires - Info Radiators  What are the individual elements that make a Scrum task board effective for the team and the leadership of the team?  There are a few basic elements that are quite obvious when you have seen a few good Scrum boards... but there are some other elements that appear to elude even the most servant of leaders of Scrum teams. Team desires - Info Radiators In general I'm referring to a physical Scrum board.  Although software applications will replicated may of the elements of a good Scrum board there will be affordances that are not easily replicated.  And software applications offer features not easily implemented in the physical domain also. Scrum Info Radiator Checklist (PDF) Basic Elements Board Framework  - columns and rows laid out in bold colors (blue tape works well)      Attributes :  space for the total number of stickies that will need to belong in each cell of the m...

Velocity Calculus  -- by David A. Koontz In the practice of Scrum many people appear to have their favorite method of calculating the team's velocity.  For many this exercise appears very academic.  Yet when you get three people and ask them you will invariability get more answers than you have belly-buttons.  That in its self is an interesting phenomenon, worthy of a blog post.  But this is not it. Calculus is the mathematical study of change. This video is a photo journal simulation describing how to calculate a Scrum sprint velocity.  It explains the calculus for one of the most difficult decision a team faces.  What to do with that first unfinished story.

Are your teams having difficulty understanding the relative nature of story points?  Try an analogy ... maybe one that is already well know... yet so often used that they have forgotten just how easy it is to use relative measures.  I'll bet they use it every day, multiple times per day.  That kind of practice makes usage very easy.  That is how easy story points will become for a team that practices. Here's your analogy - in less than 10 seconds.  But you might need to repeat it about 14 times... YouTube channel:  Minute Physics Don't mistake preception of temperature and the measurement of temperature.... see Derek's Veritasum experiment: Misconception About Temperature . Now... relate the misconception about temperature back to the topic of relative points...

Is this a trend in the industry?  Perhaps some of the first movers in the work-from-anywhere movement have had a chance to see the ROI on this policy. Perhaps they have some indicators that collaboration is a skill best practiced in person.  Practiced with full-body awareness, in sense-around environments with many of our more than 20 senses - rather than just a select few - online. How many people must practice the same behavior, concurrently for there to be a true movement?  Do you want to be on the front end of the last movement in your industry or the bleeding edge of this movement? Yahoo sees the ROI from canceling the work from home policy. There is definitely merit to the idea, however, that bringing its agile programming teams together in the same place at the same time can have a small but crucial impact on performance. In his book People Analytics, MIT visiting scientist Ben Waber discusses the role of dependencies for programmers, that teams must coo...

Guest post by: Tracy Gibson  ( tracy@gibson.name ) "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living." ~ Gail Shelly Long-term results are the impact of coaching. We all want to improve our life in an area of career and work, money and wealth, people and relationships, health and wellbeing, and/or learning and growing. Yet how often have we vowed to change and sooner or later, the resolve that we have to start has waned or the methods chosen seem too hard. That wavering moment is where coaching steps in and strengthens our resolve. A good coach is someone who is an expert at helping others create positive change in their lives. For some clients, the positive change they most want may be focused on personal goals such as relationships, time management, work-life balance, stress reduction, simplification, health, etc., but other clients may be more interested in professional or business goals such as leadership, getting a pr...

A fractal flower pattern I find Scrum practices to be very self-similar at various scales of granularity. For example the Sprint appears to start with a planning sessions. Yet within the flow of a sprinting team the planning sessions actually starts with a Sprint Review and Process Retrospective and only then do we look into the future. So in the big picture, planning starts with review. Just like in the Scrum Standup meeting - the 3 questions - it starts with a review. What did you get done (past tense)? Next, what will you do (future tense)? And last, what impedes your progress (current tense)? The Scrum Standup meeting has a flow of past, future, now. When laid out end to end sprints have a similar pattern: Review & Retro (past), followed by Planning (future), followed by sprinting or doing the work (every day, the now). This self similar pattern can be found in many of the Scrum practices. Practices that mature agile teams use to deliver working tested product increments...

I was in a CMMI adoption process meeting today and I might have argued that the Scrum Retrospective activity (process step) is more important than the Scrum Planning activity.  Yet, know-one took the bait.  What would be a better piece of bait? We were discussing what process steps we should define to meet CMMI something something... and the list on the board look like: Sprint planning backlog grooming release planning project planning risk mitigation planning [note - only one is a Scrum activity] I was trying to point out that as a subset of Scrum practices this list is interesting, yet not sufficient. I believe that planning is way less important that the activity of reflection (learning).  I could refer you to some wonderful quotes by US Army Generals about the uselessness of plans .  But let me skip that meme and jump to the assertion that Retrospectives are more important that planning activities. WHY? Because with just that one practice, Retr...

Ever wonder about the usability testing that all those inventions of Q in the 007 movies must go through? Well, so did Ben Judy and he presented his finding at the Big(D)esign conference this year.   Watch the video:   http://www.bondusability.com

How do you want to learn about Agile/Scrum?  This question is a 21st century problem.  Only a few years ago (last century) there was practically one way to learn a new skill or domain of knowledge - study via the printed page, e.g. buy a book.  But today we have alternative ways.  And yes they very well may be better at teaching than books.  Heck, I know a woman that learned English by watching cartoon network in Poland. So when people want to learn about Scrum (or Agile - they are not the same thing) I typically ask how they would like to learn.  Do you want a book, or a google search term, or perhaps a video?  Most people are responding to the question with a request for a video. Scrum Training Series (dot-com) Here's my best resource:   http://scrumtrainingseries.com .  The Scrum Training Series is 6 video cartoons that follow a new team into the daily activities and learning of a newly forming team with a Scrum Trainer (facilitato...

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.  I agree, every countries nuclear weapons are for peaceful purpose.  The Soviet Unions stock pile were to offset the US stock pile and look at the peace that has existed for 70 years.  The Iranian weapons may lead to the middle east version of detente - a peaceful purpose - through the capability of force, to offset the Israelis undeclared nuclear stock pile. The problem I have with this cognitive dissonance is that no one will speak of it.  The politicians will not look at the history and acknowledge the facts, nor the intent of policies, nor that actions that were taken by countries.  The press never questions the rhetoric "for peaceful purposes."   Take a look at the facts.  The US, the only nations to use nuclear weapons in war, used only 2 warheads in it's whole history for non-peaceful purposes.  And of its 7,700 warheads produced gives it a stunning batting average of 999...

Avast ye land lubbers... I not be taking a knock on me nogging.  It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, September 19th. So hoist up yer sails and join in da FUNIN. http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howto.html The five A's - Pirate Lesson - all the talkin a pirate needs. Mango Language Lessons

What philosophy do you use when hiring new members for the team? The tendency for many teams is to create an interview hazing process.  Requiring interviewees to run a gauntlet of silly questions, riddles, etc.  Is it not obvious that this will result in a poor hiring decision? If you ask an experienced, knowledgable HR person they can tell you how poor the hiring process really is.  Ask a researcher and they will tell you that it is one of the poorest business process for producing the desired results.  Yet almost every organization continues this tried, but not true process. Google, being a big data company has done it's own research on the topic.  Read the results. In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss There are many reasons people choose to leave a company, here is one top three list: Disengaged with organizational mission Lack of respect for co-workers A terrible boss Google found...