Agile Learning Labs

R.I.P. Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, famous for his Last Lecture, amoung other things, has passed away.

He would probably like to be rememberd through donations made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Agile Quotes of the Day

For me, the final session of Dr. Dobb's Architecture and Design World was 'SOA Challenges: An Open Source Case Study' by Sonya Lowry and Evan Deaubl. Evan talked about the technical challenges. Sonya talked about the leadership challenges on the project, and how she used agile methods to over come them. Sonya shared these:

"It's agile, not ad-hoc!"

"You need to make agile fit your team, not make your team fit an agile book."

Indeed.

Cheers,

Chris

What Makes Agile Projects Succeed at Dr. Dobb’s

Monday evening more that 40 people turned up at a ‘Birds of a Feather’ gathering to consider “What makes agile projects succeed (or Fail)?” as part of Dr. Dobb’s Architecture and Design World in Chicago. In 90 minutes the group generated, discussed, and ranked about 40 different answers to this question, while enjoying some pizza and beverages.

Below, I’m listing all of the ideas as ranked by the group. I’ll elaborate on a few of the ideas that the group focused on. I’ll also provide links to the results from other groups who have considered the same question.

Tier One
* Discipline and leadership
A successful team will take a disciplined approach to implementing agile practices. The group felt that a key to this actually happening was the presence of leadership.

* Good communication
The group felt that this was vital to the success of any project, and that agile methods fostered better communication. Even so, a key differentiator between agile projects that succeeded and those that didn’t, was how easily and honestly information flowed between people on the project.

* The right people
There was a fair amount of discussion about what ‘right’ meant. Ultimately, the group felt that it includes: technical skills, communication skills, interest in doing agile, motivation, and ‘fit’. After the workshop I noticed that there is overlap with the item ‘Team-oriented team members’. If these items had been combined, this would certainly have been the top item.

Tier Two
* Stakeholder buy-in
* Team-oriented team members
* Dedicated resources

Tier Three
* Experienced agile champion on the team
The group talked about the advantages of having an experienced agile practitioner on the team full-time, as well as available to do evangelizing and coaching within the organization.

* Customer participation
* Test Driven Development
* Lack of design (-)
* The right tools
* Good use cases
* Good relationship with customer
* Rapid Prototyping
* Small team size
* Vertical stories

Tier Four
* Planning for refactoring
* Small project size
* Requirements-based testing
* Not needing lots of documentation
* Realizing that agile is no silver bullet
* Open work environment
* Adaptable requirement
* Inexperience (-)
* Data planning
* Flexible customer
* Know your data
* Flexible project size
* Compact stories
* Good product owner
* Appropriate contract

Tier Five
* Avoiding schedule slip-n-slide
* Story completion
* Good interface between agile team and rest of organization
* Short timeline
* Agile stakeholder experience
* Excessive changing requirements (-)
* Embedded architect on the team

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

Cheers,

Chris

Self-Organizing Orchestra

The traditional roles on a scrum team are: Product Owner, Developer, and Scrum Master. Noticeably absent is the role of Team Leader; the team is expected to self-organize. Similarly, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has dispensed entirely with the role of conductor in favor of a process where leadership is shared and decisions are made by the team. The result has been to create one of the world's most renowned chamber orchestras. Along the way, they have learned lessons and ways of working together that any Scrum team can benefit from.

Read the full story here.

Cheers,

Chris

Agile Coach Camp on InfoQ

Greetings,

InfoQ just published this article, which I wrote about AgileCoachCamp.

Cheers,

Chris

The Power of Self-Organizing Teams

Greetings,

A lot of attention has been focused on the power of self-organizing agile teams. This power is the foundation upon which Scrum, the most widely adopted agile methodology, is built. Is it hype or is there something there? This month, the Bay Area Engineering Managers Suport Group will experience how a group can self-organize into a team, and how such a team can evolve ever-better ways of working together. Come out and join the fun, now in Santa Clara.

6:30 - 7:00
Networking and food
Judy and Angie will be greeting people. If you need assistance finding us you can call them at 408.733.2374.

7:00 - 8:00
The Power of a Self-Organizing Team

8:00 - 9:00
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
Albin Engineering Services

Get all the details here.

Cheers,

Chris

Intro to Extreme Programming

Photo courtesy of akindemir

This past Wednesday, I presented a 45-minute introduction to Extreme Programming (XP) to the Project Management and Program Management Special Interest Group, who meet every week Cupertino. The group was lively and full of questions. I especially enjoyed the chance to discuss XP, as that is where I got my start doing agile software development, back around the turn of the century.

Contrary to popular belief, Extreme Programming (XP) is not writing code while kiteboarding. Extreme Programming is an agile software development methodology created by Kent Beck in the mid nineties, while he was the leader of a large software project at Chrysler. The true genius of XP was selecting a set of 'best practices' that compliment each other and form the foundation for extreme productivity, extreme adaptability, extreme quality, and extreme satisfaction for every stakeholder in the software project.

Here are the slides, and here are some links:
A Gentle Introduction to Extreme Programming
Wikipedia on XP
The original home of XP on the Portland Pattern Repository
A set of XP links, including tools

Makings of a Great Manager - at EUSF

Greetings,

Today I had the pleasure of facillitating The Makings of a Great Manager for a group of ambitious job seekers at Experience Unlimited, a program of the San Francisco Chapter Employment Development Division.

Each member of the group considered what attributes, practices, or skills set the best managers that they had worked for, apart from the rest. The group had diverse experience, and the discussions were interesting. We chose a label for each idea, and then we ranked them, based on the collective experience of the group.

Here is the list of 'idea labels' as ranked by the group.

Top Tier
Encourage and inspire
Compassionate leadership

Second Tier
Management by leadership (vs. by administration)
Appreciative

Third Tier
Creates a sense of mission
Friendly, Fair, and Firm
Promotes personal growth
Room for mistakes
Positive reinforcement

Fourth Tier
Innovator
Gives benefit of the doubt
Honest
Happy
Kind
Chemistry
Team oriented
Competence in the area managed

Fifth Tier
Conflict resolution
Stays calm
Good networking
Open door
Having self together
Authority matches responsibility
Work - life balance
"We need YOUR help"
Celebrates anniversary of joining company
Workload management
Firm
Entrepenuerial
Well-groomed
Remembers birthdays

You may be interested to compare these results with those of other groups:
IEEE Technology Management Council
Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group (plus 'Group X')

These results on retaining key employees seem relevant as well.

Cheers,

Chris

XP for Project and Program Management SIG

Greetings,

Tomorrow morning I'll be giving an 'Intro to Extreme Programming' talk for the Project Management and Program Management Special Interest Group in Cupertino. The event is open to the public, and group asks for a $2 donation from each participant. We will be giving away a copy of "Planning Extreme Programming" by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler.

When:
July 9
7:30 AM - 8:00 AM Informal Networking
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Presentation

Where:
UCSC Extension
10420 Bub Road
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 861-3700

Cheers,

Chris

Published on InfoQ Again

Greetings,

InfoQ just published a story I wrote about this year's State of Agile Development survey.

Cheers,

Chris