juli 2016 – Agitma

Monthly Archives: juli 2016

30 Jul 2016

New in the Scrum Guide: Scrum Values

At the begining of the month the new version of the Scrum Guide was introduced. The amount of changes was not big, no surprise there. The Scrum Values themselves were discussed in the webinar and also by Gunther Verheijen, in this post I’ll give a short personal impression on the way the values come into play.

Commitment
Personally I feel the term itself feels a bit unwelcoming, just because of the ‘old’ interpretation of committing to work in a sprint planning. Why reintroduce the term here? I have met several teams who felt uncomfortable committing to anything sometimes. At this point I cannot offer a better word describing the value yet, I am stuck at ‘Willingnes’…..

Focus
At the heart of the Scrum cycle lies the constant focus on the sprint goals. For me I always coach my teams to look beyond the end of the sprint and think about the next release coming up. This helps in understanding the bigger picture and enables the team to make better choices in priorities and approach.

Openness
Openness is the Value equivalent of transparency as one of the pilars of Scrum. For me openness is sharing everything within the team and outside the team. We share the good, the bad and on occasions the ugly. Building up confidence in the idea that sharing and understanding is better than witholding and covering information is key for teams to really connect with the stakeholders.

Respect
As self organizing teams we cannot do without respect for each other. The prime directive used in many retrospectives is clear good example. In my opnion this directive and the Value are the same and are present in the entire sprint and emphasis in the retro is just a small reminder of this value.

Courage
We don’t know or we cannot do something are phrases people are reluctant to use. It is not in our system and often teams stay a bit too close to the things others would like to hear. Yet, we should use them more often to show that we do understand the problems but we just cannot solve them now.

Conclusion

The five values offer an insight in the way we think about transparency and the way the team members collaborate with each other and with stakeholders. So they have value indeed. I do expect a some negative reactions from the people who already miss the real believe in Scrum.

Cheers,
– Sjors Meekels

Contributions & References

[1] Scrum.org Blog: https://blog.scrum.org/updates-scrum-guide-5-scrum-values-take-center-stage
[2] Gunther Verheyen: https://guntherverheyen.com/2013/05/03/theres-value-in-the-scrum-values
[3] Scrum Guide: http://scrumguides.org

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Filled Under: scrum Posted on: 30 July 2016

24 Jul 2016

Scrum Day Europe 2016

In the first week of July the fifth version of the Scrum Day Europe was held, this was Scrum Day Europe’s first anniversary. Again it was hosted in the beautifully located Pakhuis de Zwijger near the center of Amsterdam. As with a lot of conferences you need to make choices because there are more sessions than time permits you to join. Today I’ll give my thoughts on three I joined and end with an overall opinion.

Keynote – Dave West (Scrum.org)
In his keynote Dave West looked a bit back on the progress Scrum has made in the last years and the challenges that are still present. Especially the getting things really “Done” is one of the big topics this edition and after more than 20 years is still relevant. He also gave a glimpse of the ideas concerning Scrum Studio and setting up a separate organization disentangled from the “old slow organization”. In his afternoon session he went into more detail on this topic, but he did gave the most away in the keynote.

“Saying goodbye to command and control for good” – Christian Brath (Movingimage)
Before this session I never heard of the Berlin company Movingimage but after today the impression will last. During the coffee in the morning I already met Christian and his story intrigued me to go and join his presentation. His company Movingimage has re-invented their business models and therefore also their own organization. They went as far as transforming the entire organization in an Agile setup. They iterated in a few steps to their current model. Of course when flattening the hierarchical structure of your organization you are bound to run into questions like “Who is doing the annual appraisals ?” and “How about conflicts between backlog priorities of different team?”.
Christian was very open and said that not everything is already in a well working definitive state. For me this only indicates that such transformations take years Even after years you will come up with the conclusion that the Agile way of working and transformation will never really stop.

“The future present of Scrum – Are we Done yet?” – Gunther Verheyen (Ullizee-Inc)
I have heard Gunther speak before and have read his book “Scrum wegwijzer”. He can always reduce the complexity of Scrum to the core and focus on the most important subject to discuss. Well today that is getting really working Increments after a sprint. It seems that most organizations still struggle with getting actual working software of the belt at the end of the sprint. Interesting to notice that this is still so hard after 20 years of Scrum. He focused on getting to the root of the problems for not getting to Done, is it the Definition or is the delivery process? In the end it does not matter as long as you involve your Scrum Masters and management and get all impeding affairs out of the way.
His weblog and slides can be found here: The-future-present-of-scrum and here scrum-day-europe-2016-the-future-present-of-scrum. So ask yourself the question, how often does your team or organization deliver working increments? And if not every sprint, what is holding them back?

Wrap up

All in all it was an interesting day with some good sessions. Personally I would have expected to see more people from previous editions and some more acquaintances. At the start of the day a short inventory was done and roughly 80% of the audience was there for the first time and after a steep decline only a handful had visited for over 3 times.

A downside of the way this conference is organized is that you can expect a lot of sessions (co-) presented by people from Prowareness. In itself this is not necessarily a bad thing but bit more variance can be a good thing. The up side is that the people who where present were enthusiastic and I have enjoyed a lot of interesting coffee breaks as well. Enough reasons to come back next year.

See you there in 2017, you can already save the date on July 6!

For more detailed information about this years edition and of next years see: www.scrumdayeurope.com
You can check out a part of the presentation here: www.scrumdayeurope.com/sde-2016
Please note that not all slides are currently present.

Cheers,
– Sjors Meekels

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Filled Under: agile,scrum Posted on: 24 July 2016

17 Jul 2016

Scrum – Novice to Ninja

David Green combineert een academische achtergrond in Sociologie en Organisatiekunde met zijn ervaringen in het veld als engineer in het boek Scrum: Novice to Ninja. Het boek is gericht op organisaties die Web- en Mobiele applicaties maken en heeft de professional met relatief weinig ervaring in het gebruik van Scrum op het oog.

Het boek Scrum: Novice to Ninja is tevens het eerste boek wat David Green publiceert. Hij schrijft echter al geruime tijd online artikelen en is een ervaren software engineer. In zijn boek staat de introductie van Scrum centraal en bedient hij de onervaren professional die met Scrum aan de slag wil.

Het verschil met andere boeken die Scrum beschrijven is de specifieke focus op het ontwikkelen van Web en Mobiele applicaties. In hoofdstuk 1 legt Green uit waarom juist deze domeinen zich met uitstek lenen voor de inzet van Scrum. Zo zijn aanpassingen ter ondersteuning van nieuwe browsers of mobiele devices vaak erg urgent. Ook gewenste communicatie-uitingen vragen vaak om ad-hoc werkzaamheden.

De rode draad van het boek is de introductie van Scrum in het fictieve bedrijf WithKittens.com. In hoofdstuk 2 introduceert Green het bedrijf met haar belangrijkste betrokkenen in deze Agile transitie. Vanuit de ogen van bijvoorbeeld een productmanager, een designer of een engineer, laat hij zien wat de huidige motivaties en verwachtingen zijn. Deze persona’s zijn goed gekozen en geven een realistische doorsnede van veel voorkomende teamrollen in organisaties.

Het theoretische kader van Scrum is de boodschap van de hoofdstukken 3, 4 en 5. De beschrijving volgt een logische volgorde van de gedefinieerde rollen, rituelen en gehanteerde artefacten. Wat de beschrijving luchtig houdt, is de speelse manier waarmee het framework in de dagelijkse praktijk wordt gepositioneerd. Concrete dagbeschrijvingen in hoofdstuk 3 geven een informeel en praktisch overzicht van de activiteiten in het leven van een Scrum-practitioner.

In de hoofdstukken 6, 7 en 8 gaat het fictieve bedrijf concreet met Scrum aan de slag en komen de onzekerheden en pijnpunten bij de toepassing aan de orde. Met korte dialogen tussen teamleden en praktische voorbeelden laat Green zien hoe het Scrum spel gespeeld wordt.

Hoofdstuk 9 richt zich op het finetunen en omzeilen van veelvoorkomende problemen. De titel van het hoofdstuk doet vermoeden dat de oplossingen voornamelijk gericht zijn op Web en Mobiele teams. Echter de suggesties en tips zijn in ieder domein van waarde. Welk team is niet gebaat bij ge-timeboxte rituelen of een minimum aan interrupties na de start van een sprint?

Zoals in Scrum retrospectives gebruikelijk is, zo blikt ook Green in hoofdstuk 10 terug. De persona’s, waarmee we eerder kennis hebben gemaakt, kijken terug op hun ervaringen met het gebruik van Scrum. Zij reflecteren op hun eerste reserveringen en geven aan wat zij hebben geleerd. Het meest interessant zijn de overblijvende frustraties en de wijzen hoe de verschillende persona’s hiermee omgaan. Deze zullen voor ervaren Scrum practitioners bekend voorkomen en voor de beginnende professionals een waarschuwing zijn.

Hoofdstuk indeling:
1. Introductie van Scrum
2. Ontmoet het Team
3. Scrum Rollen
4. Scrum Rituelen
5. Scrum Artefacten
6. Het Scrum Contract
7. De levenscyclus van een Story
8. Werken met Scrum
9. Scrum voor Web en Mobile Team
10. Aanpassen aan Scrum

Green hanteert een ruime interpretatie van de officiële Scrum Guides en geeft er zijn eigen twist aan.
Een tekenend voorbeeld is het verschil in terminologie en zijn beschrijving van de Demo’s de Sprint Review in hoofdstuk 4. Is dat erg? Nee, zeker niet. Het geeft de lezer gewoonweg inzicht in de ervaringen en ideeën van de auteur. Het boek is hierdoor wel minder geschikt voor diegenen die zich willen voorbereiden op certificering als Scrum Master.

Conclusie: Scrum – Novice to Ninja is in toegankelijk Engels geschreven en geschikt voor iedereen met weinig ervaring met Scrum en zodoende een prima startpunt. De voorbeelden die de auteur projecteert op de medewerkers van WithKittens.com zijn uit de praktijk gegrepen en heb ik zelf bijna zonder uitzondering ervaren. Met 10 beknopte hoofdstukken in 160 bladzijden is het een prima boek om rustig in een weekend door te nemen.

Over deze recensie
Deze boekrecensie is tevens verschenen op www.managementboek.nl. Aangezien het betreffende boek in het Engels is, is een Engelse recensie wellicht passender. Bij voldoende tijd zal ik hem alsnog vertalen.

Cheers,
– Sjors Meekels

Note in English

This book review is in Dutch and is also published on www.managementboek.nl. The book is in English so it would make sense to write an English review. Again, when I do have some spare time I will make a translation

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Filled Under: agile,book review,scrum,software development Posted on: 17 July 2016

10 Jul 2016

Dilbert saves the Agile day

It is amazing to see some of the comics made by Scott Adams are already more than a decade old and are still spot-on. Today I will use 4 of them and connect them with real live challenges that are happening in our daily routines creating software.

‘One Dilbert says more than a thousand words.’

Silver bullets don’t exist. The same holds true for best – or good – practices embraced in Agile software development. Be aware if you are in a transforming organization and senior management pushes Agile forward to solve all kinds of problems. A few examples in which Agile or Scrum will not make your existing problems go away:
– The engineering workforce is not equipped for new projects and techniques.
– Management is not involved in your most relevant projects and is not managing or leading.
– There is no clear view on the product vision and roadmap or priorities.

Yes, often Agile working processes can help in solving these problems. Agile itself however, is not the solution to all existing problems.

For organizations to become successful in their Agile adoption, it is good to perceive the roles of business representatives and Product Owners carefully. In my opinion the most underestimated role in Agile & Scrum is that of the Product Owner. Early adopters often appointed an experienced user or analyst as the Product Owner and focused most attention on the Development Team. Sometimes this pattern can still be seen today. In a few cases it worked fine. However, often the skills needed to be a good Product Owner are much harder to find than with a quick look around. The impact a good Product Owner has on the team’s productivity and in the end the value delivered for the organization is huge. So invest in training and coaching newbies or hiring experienced Product Owners.

A lot of organizations have been in an Agile transformation for some years now. Probably a large part of those organizations claim they “Are Agile”. I guess it is more a question of perception than exact definition. In adopting a lot of Agile practices and converting existing teams into Scrum teams – or Kanban – it is easy to make that statement. But a genuine Agile organization is never ready, never stops learning and never stops adjusting. Do these organizations keep challenging their teams and product managers? Do they adapt their tools and engineering skills to new features and insights? Or have they adopted some practices and do they now keep using these for the next couple of years? A true answer might give the first sparkle to being Agile.

It is funny how some misinterpretations continue to happen. More productive teams may indeed be one of the results of a good Agile implementation. However, this does not imply that making the transition will get you there right away. No, transitioning to Agile means hard work and dedication. As in all transitions it is about two steps forward and one step back. There is not a general blueprint suitable for all organizations. So come up with a plan, skilled people and a lot of positive energy to start your company’s transformation.

5. Bermuda triangle of Agile
The last cartoon is not an original Dilbert comic but originated from Luca Minudel in 2011: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucaminudel/6059269914/

Not all experienced project managers or hiring executives truly grasp the notion of Agile. Don’t let them fool you. One-way or the other, you cannot fix all attributes within an Agile project. At least part of the project needs to have a flexible angel, in either time, costs or preferably features. Yes, quality is in most projects not variable. For part of the features that are well understood and technically straightforward, it is okay to go for a fixed setup. Don’t get Bermudad all the way!

Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to replace expensive managerial courses with just a good selection of these comics and start some honest reflection…..

[edit 2019] See Dilbert still struggles with Agile for new challenges and insights.
Or dive into the evolutiong of DevOps in DevOps: understanding the evolution.

Cheers,
– Sjors Meekels