Agile Learning Labs

The Business Case For Agile - BayXP Slides

I recently presented The Business Case for Agile for the BayXP group. Here are the slides.

Cheers,

Chris

What Makes Agile Projects Succeed? - BayAPLN

I recently facilitated What makes agile projects succeed (or Fail)? for the BayAPLN, the Bay Area chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network. There were 63 participants, even more than at the Chicago Scum Gathering. Using the Group Wisdom Without Groupthink technique, the group generated, discussed, and ranked 65 ideas. We managed to do all of this in less than 90 minutes!

Here are the top-ranked ideas for what makes agile projects succeed.

Tier One
Retrospectives

Tier Two
Clear definition of done

Tier Three
Have fun
Trusting environment
Discipline

Tier Four
Know the business goal
Don't be afraid to kill the project
Good user stories
Tell the truth & support truth telling

Tier Five
Big visual displays of information
Good charter
Metrics for code and other aspects
Vertical slices of functionality
Standardized story estimating technique

Tier Six
Pairing
Co-location of the team
Empower the team
Reduce build time
Tolerance for ambiguity
Add a scrum coach!
Continuous process improvement

Tier Seven
Regular participation by business owners
Team over individual (especially metrics)
Buy-in from everyone
Flexible roles
Repeatable regression tests
Fail early & learn
Maximize work not done: Be lean
Insist on open & collaborative workspace
No new scope inside the sprint
Individual responsibility
Decisive and strong product owner

You may also be interested in seeing the results from groups that have considered the same question.
Chicago Scrum Gathering
P-Camp 2008
Code Camp 2007
Agile Open California 2007

Amy Lightholder took notes during the event, and they can be found here.

Cheers,

Chris

Meeting Agenda Template

Looking for a good starting place for the agenda for your next meeting? Here is an Excel file that you can use. There is more here than you will likely need for any given meeting, so just remove the extras that you don't use.

At the top you will find:

Goal
The most important thing to know about your meeting: what do you hope to achieve?

Location, Date, and Start Time
OK, pretty obvious.

End Time
This gets calculated auto-magically for you.

Owner
Who is calling this meeting?

Facilitator
If this meeting will have a facilitator (a very good idea), who are they?

Scribe and Time Keeper
Other roles that may be helpful

The bottom of the agenda is where you put your agenda items. There are six columns:

What
Well, what is the agenda item anyway? Give it a short description.

How
What process will the group use for this item? Possibilities include: brainstorming, discussion, voting, or perhaps group wisdom without groupthink.

Goal
Why are you discussing this anyway?

Who
Who will own this agenda item?

Time Allocated
This column is useful when creating the agenda, as it lets you figure out how much time you will need.

Start Time
This value calculates automatically based on the start time of the meeting and the length of all of the agenda items before this agenda item. This is really useful to have during the meeting, so that you can tell if you are running on time.

Download it now!

Leave a comment to let me know if you find it useful, or to share any suggestions or tips.

Cheers,

Chris

Great Meetings are on the Agenda - Wednesday

A great engineering manager knows how to run effective meetings. A written agenda is the road map that these meetings follow to success. When your meeting invite includes a well-crafted agenda, the participants are more likely to arrive on time and well prepared. Your meeting is set to move quickly to a successful outcome, and it might even end early!

Come out to the May Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group and learn how to create agendas that lead to successful meetings. As always, the meeting will also include a facilitated discussion where participants can share challenges that they are facing as engineering leaders, and get feedback, ideas, and support from the group. The event is free, open to the public, and we'll feed you good Thai food.

Where
Rearden Commerce World Headquarters
1051 E. Hillsdale Blvd. - 6th Floor
Foster City, CA

When
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

6:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Networking and Thai food
Katie will be in the lobby to ferry folks up. If she's not there when you arrive, you can hail her at: 650.619.7562.

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Great meetings are on the agenda.

8:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Round-table discussion of your engineering management issues
Bring your questions and get ideas and feedback from your fellow engineering managers.

Our sponsors:
The Technical Management Institute
Rearden Commerce

Details and RSVP here

Cheers,

Chris

What Makes Agile Projects Succeed - BayAPLN

This Tuesday evening I'll be facilitating What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)? at the BayAPLN meeting. This is the Bay Area chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network. The event is free and open to the public, but you must RSVP.

Cheers,

Chris

Presentation Tips and Tricks

Photo courtesy of markhillary

At the April meeting of the Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group, I did a presentation on doing presentations. Here are the slides. You might also want to checkout these past posts about presenting.

Cheers,

Chris

From Tester to Leader

On April 23rd, I had the pleasure of facilitating a 1/2 day workshop: From Tester to Leader, at the Targeting Quality conference in Waterloo, Ontario. To get things rolling, we examined what it means, and what it takes to be a leader in the context of a QA group. We used the Group Wisdom Without Groupthink process to list the qualities of the best leaders that the participants had worked with.

The group generated over 50 ideas, and then ranked them. Here are the ones that the group felt where most important.

Tier One
Honest

Tier Two
Developing team members
Responsible and accountable
Stand up for the team

Tier Three
Respect
Show appreciation
No micro-management
Positive and enthusiastic

Tier Four
Flexible work life balance
Set Reasonable expectations
Motivator
Communication skills

Tier Five
Solution-focused, not blame-focuses
Ethical
Lead by example
Always has time for staff
Knowing where I stand
Trusting team members

You might find it interesting to compare these results with those from some similar exercises:
IEEE Group Answers: "What makes an engineering manager great?"
The Most Important Qualities for an Engineering Manager to Possess
Retaining Key Contributors

The second half of the conference, I got to participate in some of the other sessions. I really loved the premise of Taming The Toddlers, which was about dealing with difficult people in the workplace. Next, I went to a panel discussion on Developing Employee Skills. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. I already knew and respected one of the panelists, Selena Delesie, whom I had met at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference. She, and her fellow panelists didn't disappoint. The discussion was wide-ranging and full of real-world tips and tricks.

Over all, I was impressed with how well organized, and well executed the conference was. Kudos to Rob Bowyer, and the rest of the organizers.

Cheers,

Chris

BayXP - The Simple Business Case for Agile

Have you struggled to convince the 'powers that be' that your organization should make the move to agile? While the benefits seem obvious to 'us', it often seems like 'they' just don't get it. Are our business leaders stupid? Usually, the answer is no. They simply have a different perspective, language, and set of values.

Tonight I'll be presenting "The Simple Business Case for Agile" for BayXP. This presentation invites you see the world through eyes of a businessperson, and then explains how to talk about agile in terms that a businessperson will understand and value: the top line, the bottom line, ROI, risk, and cash flow.

The event is free and open to the public.

When:
Tonight! 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Where:
Rearden Commerce World Headquarters
1051E Hillsdale Blvd, 6th Floor
Foster City, CA 94404

Agenda:
6:30 - 7:00 Doors open
7:00 - 7:10 Sponsor introduction
7:10 - 8:30 Presentation
8:30 - 9:00 Free form discussion