What's your experience coaching teams toward being Agile?
I am a development manager of a small java development team. I was a developer for 8 years before making the shift over to management. I've been practicing agile (xp, scrum and home blends) for over 6 years. The team is comprised of business analysts and developers who are responsible for the entire development process. We are part of a larger custom development organization. Several people tried to introduce various agile practices to this organization over time unfortunately will little success. When we reorganized and became a smaller team, I took advantage of that and made adopting an agile process my professional objective. As a team we researched various agile practices and eventually decided that Scrum fit the bill. We've been practicing Scrum for exactly 1 year. Throughout the process I've done my best to coach and mentor the team on general agile development practices and the fundamental concents of the Scrum framework. My primary observation with coaching Scrum teams is that although the framework is straight forward and simple, it is a fundamental change to how most internal IT software professionals work. It's very structured and visible. No one can hide behind the confusing 30 page project plan anymore. However, with the wrong intentions, the sprint backlog can become a tool for "command and control" types to use as a beating stick versus a communication tool. Another observation is that it depends heavily on team members who are accountable and dedicated to the team. Performance problems that are often tucked away in a long running water fall project are glaringly obvious, and cause immediate delivery and team carma issues.
What do you plan to learn /explore at this conference?
I'm most interested in learning from others. Because the scrum framework is simple, there's plenty of room for interpretation. Areas I'm most curious about are how others handle:
How do you plan to contribute?
Well, I love to talk! I'm anxious to learn from others and have no secrets, so I'm willing to share my experiences as well. Hopefully, I can help others just by sharing in the way I'm hoping to learn from them. I'm also willing to facilitate sessions if volunteers are needed. I would absolutely love to host a session on sprint backlog usage - How much is too much
I am a development manager of a small java development team. I was a developer for 8 years before making the shift over to management. I've been practicing agile (xp, scrum and home blends) for over 6 years. The team is comprised of business analysts and developers who are responsible for the entire development process. We are part of a larger custom development organization. Several people tried to introduce various agile practices to this organization over time unfortunately will little success. When we reorganized and became a smaller team, I took advantage of that and made adopting an agile process my professional objective. As a team we researched various agile practices and eventually decided that Scrum fit the bill. We've been practicing Scrum for exactly 1 year. Throughout the process I've done my best to coach and mentor the team on general agile development practices and the fundamental concents of the Scrum framework. My primary observation with coaching Scrum teams is that although the framework is straight forward and simple, it is a fundamental change to how most internal IT software professionals work. It's very structured and visible. No one can hide behind the confusing 30 page project plan anymore. However, with the wrong intentions, the sprint backlog can become a tool for "command and control" types to use as a beating stick versus a communication tool. Another observation is that it depends heavily on team members who are accountable and dedicated to the team. Performance problems that are often tucked away in a long running water fall project are glaringly obvious, and cause immediate delivery and team carma issues.
What do you plan to learn /explore at this conference?
I'm most interested in learning from others. Because the scrum framework is simple, there's plenty of room for interpretation. Areas I'm most curious about are how others handle:
- production promotions - If at the end of a sprint, the product owner would like the product delivered or promoted to production. How are teams handling this from a sprint backlog perspective. I realize this isn't cut and dry. Some companies may have a more "pre-production" environments than others, larger or smaller teams, etc. If there isn't a designated production support team, the team members may or may not have to allocate time for defect resolution and/or customer support.
- when you can't get a single product owners - too many contributors, no one willing to carry the torch. Scrum says - one product owner. In many cases the work we do are enhancements that affect multiple business units. It's our corporate culture that we speak with represenatives from each. It's very difficult to get ONE person from the business side to take ownership as the product owner. I honestly don't believe it has affected us significantly, but with Scrum emphasizing it so much...it has me curious what others are thinking.
- sprint backlog usage - basically how are people using it? Scheduled vacation time and training throws off the burn down chart. From a management perspective, I like the Keep It Simple approach. However, when dealing with 3 week increments and estimates the team likes to make sure ALL time is accounted for. Because they want to keep so much detail, I don't object. However, I believe an outsider looking in would thinking our sprint backlogs are WAY, WAY, WAY too detailed. I also worry that capturing so much detail is taking us in the wrong direction - meaning unnecessary over documentation.
How do you plan to contribute?
Well, I love to talk! I'm anxious to learn from others and have no secrets, so I'm willing to share my experiences as well. Hopefully, I can help others just by sharing in the way I'm hoping to learn from them. I'm also willing to facilitate sessions if volunteers are needed. I would absolutely love to host a session on sprint backlog usage - How much is too much