Group Planning Simulation- A game!

Group planning simulation is a game that can be played with any number of participants. On an average this can be played in a group of 8 participants in 30 minutes.

How we play ‘Group Planning simulation’? 

• A real life practical situation is presented to a group of participants.
• The participants are asked to arrive at a plan of action.
• First they are asked to write down their own plan of action. 
• Thereafter they are expected to go over the different views and arrive at a consensus. 

Why Group Planning Simulation?

• This exercise ignites the analytical ability of the participants.
• This also boosts their ability to function in a group.
• Group planning simulation helps participants to appreciate the situation and plan accordingly.
• This activity enhances the group interaction level of each participant.
• This activity also enhances the ability to think constructively and,
• Ability to cooperate/coordinate.
• Contribution towards collective solution.
• Priority setting

We played this game at SFW India a few days back and enjoyed a lot.

The Modelling Team-

The Players-

Let me know in case of more details of this game needed.

Fun and learn- The Product Box game

A few days back we played ‘Product Box’ game in SFW India. The question arises- why we play ‘Product Box’ game?

Thought?

• Every commodity that we buy from the market is wrapped in a box/cover. This box is the primary medium for the company to market and convince others that their product is better than the competition placed alongside.

How to play?

• Divide the participants into multiple teams.
• Provide each team an empty box, stationary items like multicolored sketch pens, post-its, crayons, cartoon stickers etc.
• Ask each team to efficiently utilize the box outer surface to sell/market the product they are currently developing (or planning to develop).
• Time-box the product box creation/decoration activity (approx. 20 minutes).
• Once all product boxes are ready, each team should market the product to the audience (rest of the teams) by explaining all that is illustrated on the box.
• Once each team is finished demonstrating its product box, ask all participants to vote for the best product box excluding their own product box.
• The Product box with the maximum votes wins!

Significance-

• To create an attractive product box, the participants have to burn their neurons to imagine as to what could be the set of features that their product would offer.
• The better the team understands the business value of any product, the comfortable they are in developing that and in coming up with valuable ideas for the same.
• It is a good way of ice-breaking  for new team-members or the members who generally talk less as all team-members demonstrate and talk about their product.
• This game gives a chance to everyone for asking questions and getting the answers.
• This also showcases how programmers and testers (including other roles as Business analyst, UX designer etc.) work jointly towards achieving the goal.
• Once the product box is ready, it can be utilized later in creating user stories for project simulations.

Again its our mindset!

Who Moved My Success Cheese?

There are many flavors of Agile. Based on need to explore and select may take some time by the team(s)/organisation(s) but the top most challenge being faced is having an Agile mindset. Shift towards agility not necessarily starts when someone knows about any of the Agile flavor, it sometimes starts when even one does not know about it. Years back I read one great book (I still enjoy this book) which is quite significant when we talk about Agility- Who Moved My Cheese? Originally published: September 7, 1998 Author: Spencer Johnson

Here I have tried to share a bit of the story.The elements in bold are the elements of agility which I picked-up from the story.

Who Moved My Cheese? is a story of four characters: two mice, "Sniff" and "Scurry," and two little people, miniature humans, "Hem" and "Haw." They live in a maze and look for cheese.

“Cheese” – a metaphor for what we want to have in life.Each of us has our own idea of what Cheese is, and we pursue it because we believe it makes us happy.

Need

Initially without cheese, each group, the mice and humans, paired off and travelled the lengthy corridors searching for cheese. One day both groups happen upon a cheese-filled corridor at "Cheese Station C." Content with their find, the humans establish routines around their daily intake of cheese.

Following a Plan

Every morning, the mice & the little people headed over to Cheese Station C where they found their own kind of cheese. It was a large store of Cheese that Hem & Haw eventually moved their homes to be closer to it & built a social life around it.

Changes happen and Plans do Fail

One morning, Sniff & Scurry arrived at Cheese Station C & discovered there was no cheese.

They weren’t surprised. Since they had noticed the supply of cheese had been getting smaller every day, they were prepared for the inevitable & knew instinctively what to do. They were quickly off in search of New Cheese.

Later that same day, Hem & Haw arrived. “What! No Cheese? Who moved my Cheese? It’s not fair!”, Hem yelled. They went home that night hungry & discouraged.

Responding to changes

The next day Hem & Haw left their homes, & returned to Cheese Station C. But situation hadn’t changed. Haw asked, “Where are Sniff & Scurry? Do you think they know something we don’t?” Hem scoffed, “What would they know? They’re just simple mice. They just respond to what happens. We’re little people. We’re smarter.”

Haw suggested, “Maybe we should stop analysing the situation so much and just get going & find some New Cheese.Haw decided to leave Cheese Station C while Hem was more comfortable staying in the cheese-less Station C.

Meanwhile, Sniff & Scurry went farther into the maze until they found Cheese Station N. They found what they had been looking for: a great supply of New Cheese. It was the biggest store of cheese the mice had ever seen.

Adapt changes and Continuous Improvement

Haw on the other hand become more anxious & wondered if he really wanted to go out into the Maze.

Haw now realised that the change probably would not have taken him by surprise if he had been watching what was happening all along and if he had anticipated change.

Haw wondered if Hem had moved on, or if he was still paralysed by his own fears. Then, Haw remembered the times when he had felt his best in the Maze. It was when he was moving along.

As Haw started running down the dark corridor, he began to smile. Haw didn’t realise it yet, but he was discovering what nourished his soul. He was letting go & trusting what lay ahead for him, even though he did not know exactly what it was.

To his surprise, Haw started to enjoy himself more & more.

To make things even better, Haw started to paint a picture in his mind again. He saw himself in great realistic detail, sitting in the middle of a pile of all his favourite cheeses-from Cheddar to Brie! He saw himself eating the many cheeses he liked, & he enjoyed what he saw.

The more clearly he saw the image of himself enjoying New Cheese, the more real & believable it became.

Haw wondered why he had always thought that a change would lead to something worse. Now he realised that change could lead to something better.

Being Agile

Then he raced through the Maze with greater strength & agility. Until he found bits of New Cheese. He entered the Cheese Station but it was empty. Someone had already been there.

Haw made his way back to Cheese Station C to offer Hem bits of New Cheese but was turned down. Hem wanted his own Cheese back. Haw just shook his head in disappointment but this does not stop him from finding New Cheese.

Haw realised again, that what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.

He realises it was natural for change to continually occur, whether you expect it or not. Change could surprise you only if you didn’t expect it & weren’t looking for it.

Haw now realised that his new beliefs were encouraging him to behave in a new way. He was behaving differently from the way he had when he had kept returning to the same cheese-less station.

Haw just hoped he was heading in the right direction.

He continued on through the Maze with greater strength & speed. He proceeded along a corridor that was new to him, rounded a corner, & found New Cheese at Cheese Station N where he saw the greatest supply of Cheese he had ever seen.

Retrospection

Haw wrote down a summary of what he had learned on the largest wall of Cheese Station N & smiled as he looked at what he had learned.

To dive-into this maze, go ahead and get a copy of this book. :-)

And yes, if you analyse the story and want to add some more elements, please do. 

Agile Nuggets: Common questions

Last weekend I attended ATA Vadodara Meet 3 at Baroda Management Association. We had very good and interactive sessions on-

• Introduction to Agile - Scrum Development by Mr. Khushru Doctor 
• Introduction to ASP.net core 1.0 by Mr. Afzal Qureshi

As we all know that Technical sessions always grab the attention of developers and the same happened with the session on ASP.net core 1.0. Once again I saw the charm of ‘open source’, this time with APS.net core.

The interesting and most important thing I observed was the great enthusiasm towards Agile practices being followed in software development among all the attendees. The Speaker was very open and patient. This helped attendees to ask lots and lots of queries and to quench their thirst and know more and more about Scrum.

I have listed a few topics discussed here so these could reach to other Agile practitioners who could not attend this session.

1. What should be optimum length of a Sprint?

2. Why some teams use modified Fibonacci sequence?

3. How much Buffer should we keep during estimation of stories?

4. From where we can get Planning Poker cards?

5. Can we have changes in Definition of Done?

What should be optimum length of a Sprint?
Though most of the teams in agile world (more than 70%) opt for two week long Sprints but it depends on the nature of the project. Recently two of my teams opted for one week long sprints. These teams felt that there were lot of uncertainties and ‘Fail fast’ would be more helpful for the team.

There is a misconception that in a one week long sprint the sprint ceremonies like planning, review, retrospective etc. consumes time as team has to go every week for these ceremonies. But as we all know that the duration of ceremonies are directly proportionate to the length of the sprint.

Why some teams use modified Fibonacci sequence?
The idea of story points is not to bind the thought (size verses hours) during estimation of stories. The sizing should not be so precise that it becomes hindrance during estimation.

     Excerpt from Mike Cohn’s Blog-Why do the cards deviate slightly from the Fibonacci sequence?

We’re anal software people, too. We know that the Fibonacci sequence should go from 8 to 13 to 21. We use 20, though, instead of 21. Of course we used 21 in the early days, but dropped it after meeting with a product owner who looked at the 21 and said, “Oh, a 21. You must be very confident to give such a precise estimate. Most people would have called it 20 or 25, but you called it 21.” We replied that we used the Fibonacci sequence. The product owner said, “The Fibo-what?” After which, we decided that deviating from the Fibonacci sequence would be better because the numbers started to imply a very high level of precision that just wasn’t there.

The 1/2 is included because after awhile some teams decide they want some room in between “free” (a zero) and one. Using 1/2 isn’t something a team should do a lot, but it’s a nice option to have in some cases. More on- http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/pages/faqs

How much Buffer should we keep during estimation of stories?
I would strongly say, NOT at all. When we go for estimation we follow sizing. This may be Story points with Poker planning, T-Shirt sizing, Animal sizing etc. Clearly we see there are slots for sizing and these are not distributed even. For example if a story is larger than 8 point which may be of 10 or 11 point but the next number in series is 13. This helps to avoid preciseness during estimation. One important point to note is that keeping buffer will lead team to be underutilized and will slow down the velocity. Also, team will lose the essence of planning and discussion over estimated points by other team-members. Team-members will agree with the largest estimation as everybody will start thinking to have buffer.

From where we can get Planning Poker cards?

Many places for example,

• leanpitch.com/playscrum-cards/ (Pune)
• store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/
• Amazon.com
• …..many other stores
• In addition, there are lots of Planning poker apps, can be downloaded from Play stores.
• For distributed teams we can use online poker planning. Please refer PlanningPoker.com .
• Even we can download printable Planning poker from internet and get it printed.

Can we have changes in Definition of Done?
Yes, we can have changes in DOD. After all continuous improvement is the success mantra for Agile teams. We inspect and adapt!

     Excerpt from Mike Cohn’s Blog-




          Excerpt from Kenneth S. Rubin’s book- Essential Scrum:


I hope you have enjoyed this post. If any reader has any question, please feel free to ask. I would also look forward to suggestions from readers as I could be wrong at places explaining these points.

Agile Nuggets: Few common dysfunctions during software development.

A few weeks back we examined - ‘Stakeholders made the things complicated than they need to be.’

Today let us continue the next – Gluttony

• Gluttony –ScrumMaster

Facilitating multiple teams simultaneously- This leads ScrumMaster losing ‘focus’ from his teams hence results being unjust with them. Generally having a team of size 5 to 9 demands a full time ScrumMaster.

• Gluttony –Product Owner

Pushing team to take-up more and more stories in one sprint- This creates unwanted pressure of delivering stories and mostly ends up with technical debt. Also team never finds time to repay any technical debt which was taken in past.

• Gluttony –Development Team

Gold Plating- Sometimes some developer puts his time adding unnecessary things, for example too much of documentation. This does not add any value to product and results in waste.

There are multiple such points but I took one point for each. Readers can share their experiences/observations.

This Sprint Future-O-Spective with Santa Claus!

Here’s the festive season again and Santa Claus is coming to town. We need to take care of the balloons during the party so they shouldn't look awful.

What may be the impediments which need to be taken care?

•       During freezing weather, balloons shrink up terribly
•       Balloons should be retained for longer period of time
•       Safeguard balloons from our pet parrot with curved beak which is keen of pricking balloons

Our futuristic actions-

• We shall use good quality latex balloons
• Coat hi-float* on the balloons
• User Cold helium or nitrogen
• Keep our naughty parrot in the cage till the party gets over.

*Hi-Float: is a gummy resin that you apply to latex balloons to allow them to retain helium for longer periods of time.

Now team can identify how to keep balloons (forthcoming Stories of the project) safe from the identified impediments by effective utilization of resources available, or by acquiring the needed resources.

Special thanks to Bhavin Shah for drawing this wonderful drawing board.

Agile Nuggets: Simplicity!

I have seen many software projects suffering from few common dysfunctions. A few dysfunctions are mentioned below:

• Stakeholders made the things complicated than they need to be
• The real customer requirement was based on a business need and was something very simple but there was a communications gap between business analyst and programmers
• Gluttony -Product Owner
• Gluttony -ScrumMaster
• Gluttony -Development team
• Habit of taking Debts (Technical/Non-technical)
• Tight coupling of features and functions
• 
  

• A few more…

Today let us see the first one- ‘Stakeholders made the things complicated than they need to be.’

A few years back I read a very interesting analogy presented by Scott Davis,U.S. Below are the excerpts I would like to share with readers.

[My microwave oven only has one button: “add a minute.” To boil a cup of water for my coffee, I press the button three times. To melt cheese on my crackers, one click. To warm up a flour tortilla, I press “add a minute” and then open the door after 15 seconds.

Would a one-button microwave oven ever make it out of the planning committee?

Probably not. I can tell by the (never used) features on my microwave that the committee favored complexity over simplicity. Of course, they probably cloaked “complexity” in the euphemism “feature-rich.” No one ever starts out with the goal of making a product that is unnecessarily complex. The complexity comes along accidentally.

Suppose that I have a slice of cold pizza that I want to warm up. According to the manufacturer’s directions, I should press the “menu” button. 

I am now faced with the options “speedcook” or “reheat.” (Um, “reheat,” I guess, although I’m kind of hungry. I wonder if speedcook will be any faster than reheat?) 

“Beverage,” “pasta,” “pizza,” “plate of food,” “sauce,” or “soup”? (I choose “pizza,” although it does have sauce on it, and it is on a plate.)

“Deli/Fresh” or “Frozen”? (Neither, actually—it’s leftover delivery pizza. I’ll choose “Deli/Fresh,” I guess.) “1 slice,” “2 slices,” “3 slices,” or “4 slices”?

I have no idea how much longer this interrogation will last, so I press Cancel and then the “add a minute” button.

Amazon.com only has one button: “one-click purchase.” Oh, sure, I had to type in my address and my credit card number the first time I visited, but now I am one click away from my impulse buy.]

The well-known 80:20 rule in software says that 80% of users only use 20% of features.

• 45% of features were never used;
• 19% used rarely;
• 16% sometimes;
• Only 20% were used frequently or always.

However the focus on making the product “feature-rich” sometime makes it unnecessarily complex. 

The other example of such feature-rich products I see is my Mobile phone. :-) 
I am not sure how many times I used the fascinating features like 'Gesture Recognizer' it offers.

There are many ways Product owner/Stakeholders can decide the priority of the features needed. One of those I have explained in my other post.

We will keep on discussing the other dysfunctions in forthcoming Agile nuggets, stay tuned!

Improvements through Scrum Ceremonies...

We all know Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation are the three pillars of empirical process in Agile development.

Our team works in a transparent way, processes are transparent and even practices are transparent. But how our team inspects and adapts?

Certainly there are well defined processes for Inspect and Adapt.

Daily Scrum: In this 15 minutes timeboxed activity, all the team members inspect progress toward the sprint goal in the form of answers of the three questions provided by each team member of development team.

• What I did since the last daily scrum?
• What I plan to complete by the next daily scrum?
• What are the obstacles or impediments preventing me from making progress? 

Based on the answers team synchronizes and adapts the plan for the work till next Daily Scrum.

Sprint review: Sprint review helps the Scrum team to inspect and adapt the product. During review team gets feedback from various stakeholders and based on that adapts what to do next.

Sprint retrospective: Sprint retrospective helps the team to inspect the processes/practices being followed and adapt accordingly. There may be something to continue, to stop or to start.

Backlog refinement: Generally teams do not count this ceremony as a inspect and adapt activity but I strongly believe that due to this ceremony, Product owner gets chance to prioritize the stories and gets to know the clarifications development team may need during next sprint planning.

So all set with the Inspect and Adapt activities! Now I need few answers from the readers.

•          If any impediment comes after the daily scrum, do we need to wait till the next daily scrum?
•          During development, for example some suggestion comes up during some implementation, should we wait till Sprint review?
•          During sprint if any team member comes across with a very effective open source tool which can save a lot of efforts and time, should he/she wait till the Sprint retrospective? And yes we should bear in mind that some teams follow 4 week sprint.
•          The Product owner senses the heat of the market and wants to add/remove some stories from the backlog, should he wait till next sprint?

You said it right! Inspect and Adapt are not dependent on any ceremonies. And that’s how we achieve “CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT” because we do not wait for ceremonies to take place first and then go for any improvement/adaptation.

I know enthusiastic team members want to see their great ideas start working in their sprints as soon as any such idea tickles in their mindJ. But sometimes other team members want to analyse and make sure that the point(s) suggested for improvement is valid/authentic for the team and the work being done. They want to take some time for a quick discussion on that. 

I suggest that the member who got the idea, should make a note, may be write that on a sticky note and place that on the team's board. (Sticky with a different colour works great to grab the attention of the team.) If there are distributed teams, the point can be sent to all for consideration. Team can have a quick discussion on that during some short break and sometime may ask Proof Of Concept from the team member suggesting the point. Once accepted by all, that point can be considered for the sprints as an improvement.

We do not need Product Owner in our Sprint Retrospective...seriously?

Whenever we start a new project there is always a chance of having a few new faces in our scrum development team. Also, there is a big chance of having a new client or at least a new Product Owner in our team. In a nutshell we can say that there is always a possibility of changed team composition when we start a new project. 

The biggest challenge I see (sometimes I embrace it as an opportunity to learn) is, the jelling of new member with the team or the team accepting the new member quickly. And that’s not a big surprise because the reasons are obvious. 

Some of such reasons I experienced are- 
1. Cultural variances 
2. Doubt of efficiently coping up by the new members with the rest of team 
3. Lack of skill sets required to be a Scrum player 
4. New/Immature to Agile culture 
5. … 

Yes, you got it correct! A very effective way to overcome this situation is to break the ice (3Cs…this time a bit different…communicate communicate and communicate) with openness and transparency. 

But surprisingly I have observed that sometimes a few teams tend to miss such opportunities which come in the form of Scrum ceremonies. One of such ceremonies which I experienced that teams try not to include Product Owner is Sprint Retrospective. 

I ask only one question (humbly) to team that let me know a single reason to not inviting Product Owner in Sprint Retrospective. You might think that there would be NO answer. But there always exists at least one. Team- “We would like to discuss this between development team as there are few things we want to discuss and keep within development team”. 

How does this sound? Team wants to keep something hidden from Product Owner? This seems odd. There is something seriously wrong happening with team and certainly a lack of trust and transparency? 

Ok, now you as a ScrumMaster tried to find out the root cause to know what development team wants to hide from Product owner and you find that during planning team over committed and they took some kind of debt (Not necessarily technical debt). Team thinks that it is better to hide this from Product owner and repay it in next sprints. After all development team want to see Happy Product Owner and listen “Bravo!”. 

Cool… So now team will hide this debt from Product owner and will be in a catch 22 situation. Will team repay the Debt or will it keep on increasing? Let us keep finger crossed and watch Spectre with some awesome actions by Daniel Craig :-|. 

On the contrary when you involve Product Owner in your retrospective and update him about the debt team has taken during the sprint and the plan to repay in next/subsequent sprints, there are full chances that your Product owner will understand this and you will get some user story in your backlog. Even if he doesn't appreciate you but one thing he will establish and that is your honesty, that’s the first step you took for trust building. 

And yes, team is tired after the sprint done and everyone needs a break. So there are two chances, either some of the team members will try to escape from retrospective or if they participate for the sake of ceremony then it will be boring and the outcome will be not as expected. So why not mix some fun in your Sprint retrospectives? Play some game (different with the one you played in past) for your retrospective and see the difference.

Don't forget to share your experience with your Funtrospective.

Enhance iterative development with Mikado Method...

Let us start today with Boy Scout rule.

Boy Scout rule says that- “Always leave the camp-ground cleaner than you found it.”

If you find a mess on the ground, you clean it up regardless of who might have made

the mess. You intentionally improve the environment for the next group of campers.

Bob Martin (and others) nicely explained why Boy Scout rule applies to product development

and technical debt (Martin 2008).

And that’s what we follow during software code implementation/development.

Recently I found a very interesting method Mikado Method which is companion to Boy Scout rule. Let us have a high view of Mikado Method. (I might be coming up with more details later!)

Mikado Method is very helpful while repaying Technical Debts. This method is also a very effective way to morph an existing system into a desired new shape. This is, when we try to customise existing system with the client specific modifications. Most of the time it seems to be very simple and less time/efforts consuming but most of the time it turns out to be a nightmare. 

Mikado Method works very well with Extreme Programming, Scrum, and Kanban. It has four simple concepts.

• Set a goal
• This can be in the shape of a user story.
• Experiment
• Make an experiment without analyzing the consequences too much.
• Visualize
• Verify the impediments and find out errors
• Find out the solution to fix the errors/impediments (without over analysis)
• The found solution for fixing the errors will be now the new prerequisites for the goal. This needs to be drawn somewhere, may be on team’s whiteboard.
• Undo
• Revert the code to the initial state where the errors were encountered.
• Fulfill the prerequisites.
• Perform the process of reverting and fulfilling the pre-requisites for all the errors/prerequisites till goal becomes error free.

When goal is error free, Check-in the code. Verify once and Voila! You are done.

(All suggestions are welcome!)

Searching for a New Agile School to learn collaborating with Offshore Teams?

Cultural ignorance and mushrooming Agile schools are creating strange team dynamics

Offshore resources have been an important part of the software development industry and always will be. They have been part of the process since the traditional software development method was starting to blossom. However, in this era, when Agile methods have an edge over traditional ones, offshore development needs more attention and a smoother collaboration among teams.

A few questions to consider:

• Are you a self-proclaimed Agile coach on the verge of opening a new Agile school?
• Do you find it difficult managing or working with distributed teams?
• Do you fear that offshore development is going to result in failure, and you may not be able to control the outcome?
• Are you lucky enough to easily recruit cross-functional professionals with T-shaped skills for any development team that can co-locate?

This article is not for you if you can answer "Yes" to all of the above questions.

Does this sound like you?

• You have worked on Scrum projects for quite some time and found that Scrum fit well in the distributed environment, with good collaboration among Scrum teams.
• You have some knowledge of Scrum of Scrums.
• You do not completely agree with the three Don’ts for the development team (i.e., large, multi-site, and offshore). I overheard these don't in a webinar :-)

This piece is definitely for you if you answered "Yes" to any of the above statements.

The biggest challenge faced during offshore development is the cultural variance. To better understand the implications, let us look at Agile veteran Mike Cohn’s views on cultural variances. In his book Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, Cohn explains well how to work with offshore teams.

Excerpts from the book:
Hofstede identified five key dimensions along which cultures varied.

Power Distance index (PDI) - The extent to which less powerful members of a culture accept that power is unequally distributed.

Individualism (IDV) - The extent to which individuals prefer to function as individuals rather than as part of a group.

Achievement Orientation (ACH) - The extent to which the culture is oriented toward achievement, such as earnings, visible signs of success, and possessions.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) - The extent to which the culture is tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) - The extent to which the culture favors long-term considerations over immediate physical and financial benefits.

You can use the data in a table like this by finding the row for your country and seeing how your country compares to others on the project. For example, if I were about to start a project with team members in China, I would compare the United States and China rows. I find that China has a much higher PDI score (80 compared to 40 for the United States). This tells me that my Chinese colleagues will be less likely to challenge authority than I am used to. If I am in a role of real or perceived authority (e.g., ScrumMaster or senior developer), I will put extra effort into making sure that team members in China engage me in open discussion.

Looking next at the individualism scores (20 for China, 91 for the United States), I learn that my team members in China will be more interested in team unity than I am used to. They will be less likely to want to be singled out, even for praise.

The excerpt clearly shows different cultural variances and tells us that we need to adopt different approaches to bridge the cultural gap. Although the statistics in the table are outdated and might have changed a bit, globalization and working with Agile teams have already bridged part of the gap. However, more efforts are needed to completely eliminate it.

So the question is: As a product owner or ScrumMaster, why should I choose an offshore team? Below are a few of the reasons:

Reduced cost (for skilled development team or infrastructure)

Easy availability (availability of skilled developers is higher)

Impossibility of always getting cross-functional, T-shaped-skilled people for colocated development teams

To be Agile and collaborative, and to understand cultural variance, each product owner or ScrumMaster must come out of his or her comfort zone. After all, success depends on all three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

In addition, a positive attitude works wonders. Try it!

"Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you." -- Walt Whitman 

Non Violent Communication and Emotions during sprints

A few weeks back I attended a session on ‘Non Violent Communication’ delivered by one of my colleagues in my organization. The session was extraordinary and was something in line with what I always make as a point while guiding agile teams. (Special thanks to Adam for the session!)

This session led me to relate the emotions and the Non Violent Communication of team members and the combined impact on the day to day team activities. Before moving forward, let us see what veteran agile coach Lyssa Adkin says for emotions.

Lyssa says in her book- Coaching Agile Teams, -‘We practice mastering ourselves in the moment so that we can better open ourselves to being a servant leader and to harness our emotions and choose what to do with our reactions. Yet we’re human. We react.’

Lyssa further explains-‘Sometimes, the team needs you to remain unfiltered—to see your reaction as a reflection of what just happened. More often, though, your reaction is about you and has no place in the coaching. Notice your reaction and consciously choose whether to act on it. This is the practiced skill.’

So this gives Agile coaches a sense of their emotional state. Now I come to emotional state of team members. Emotions play a vital role, for ScrumMaster/Facilitator and for agile team members as well. When I say about emotional state of team members, it may be individual’s emotions or team’s emotions collectively depending upon the situations.

Emotions can be reflected directly or indirectly. There are many factors which controls emotions. For example- Matter being discussed, Religious beliefs, Cultural differences etc and most importantly communication (if not following the Non Violent Communication). If an agile team is not adopting Non Violent Communication, sometimes team members get hurt by the way communications take place. Violent communications not only demotivate people but also hinder transparency and collaboration. This creates problem for smooth functioning of a team.  A good emotional state of individuals creates a positive impact on team’s deliveries (sprint). 

To control impact of emotions on day to day life is not an easy task and when it comes to team’s emotion, a facilitator cannot steer it however he or she could help to understand the reasons effecting the emotions. If there are some points which could be taken-care by facilitator to refrain negative emotions, he/she can make efforts to control it. Sometimes people just need to know that their concerns have been heard. However as I stated, it is not so easy task and needs a careful effort otherwise can lead to more complications.

Each ceremony of scrum reflects emotional state of team yet Sprint Retrospective is the ceremony where team can look back to whole sprint and share their emotions during that sprint. These are the emotions which drive what went good, what went wrong and what needs to be improved. So facilitator must focus on understanding these emotions. If needed the results of retrospectives may be forwarded to Enterprise Transition team/Project Management Office.

One important aspect of getting true value out of Sprint Retrospectives is the games being played in Retrospectives. I have seen many teams which do not invest time in such games and sometimes lead to dry and monotonous retrospectives. In my next piece, I will come with such games which make the retrospectives livelier. Till then keep me posting your views on EMOTIONS.

Fix bid (Agile) project. Are you ready?

What is a fix bid (Agile) project?

This is a general understanding that fix bid project means fix price, fix time, fix scope and obviously with quality. This requires detailed and accurate requirements. ‘The IRON TRIANGLE’…

However a ‘Fix bid AGILE project’ is bit different from the above understanding. How? We will see it in the later part.

Now let us understand why customers ask for fix bid project?

·         Many customers do not have significant idea, what agile means. They think that from an agile project they will get iterative deliveries hence more control on project and less surprises at later stages.

·         Customers do not want to take any financial risk.

·         Customers (generally government institutions) need to choose between bids. They have to stick with fix bid project which also needs to be agile.

·         Lack of trust between Clients and Contractor. And this is obvious as every time the projects are not from the same clients or from the clients which know enough about contractor prior to the project.

What benefits a contractor may anticipate from fix bid project?

Not all the time but at times contractor also gets benefited from fix bid agile projects.

·         A contractor can predict his cost and benefits.

·         Planning in a fixed price project is easier. As cost and benefits are predicted in advance, the other planning as scheduling and resourcing becomes easier. Contractor can focus on other projects easily as fix bid projects scope and timelines also are fixed.

·         Generally this happens when the domain is well known to contractor. If the contractor is selling its product then the expertise is already with contractor. Say, if we are selling our own product (company’s product) then we already have enough expertise and SMEs with us. We know almost all features/functions in advance. Yes, there may be a few customization needed as per the client’s requirement. If planned well, we can go ahead with fix bid agile projects.

What should be the way of collaboration between client and contractor?

·         First of all client should know what Agile means and how an agile project will be developed and delivered.

·         Preferably a Product owner from client should be available, if not, contractor may provide agile training to a SME (Subject Matter Expert) - a representative from client. If this is not possible, offer client a proxy Product owner.

Fix bid AGILE project

In most of the cases client is more focused on TIME (Deadlines) and BUDGET. So the only option left flexible is SCOPE. Though clients forces for fix SCOPE also but in Agile project the scope is drilled down from VISION to Stories (even more up to tasks). So once we discuss about the scope, we could provide client a range of Stories expected to be covered in the Fix Time and Fix Budget. Sometimes stories may still be in form of EPIC (Big story).

It had been debated many times that Product owner from client asks for inclusion of more and more stories in sprints. In such cases ScrumMater and the team can guide Product owner about the team’s capacity. In my opinion if the team (Product owner, ScrumMaster, Development team) is working in collaboration such things could be tackled easily. After all Product owner also works for success of product/project and he/she responsible for the same. :-)

How to deal with Change requests

Change is inevitable. Agile welcomes Changes and that is the essence of Agile. However in Fix bid it creates confusion.  Change is inevitable but BUDGET is fix :-).

The best way to deal with Change request is to drop comparatively less important user stories (equal story points which the change request have). Having fix bid project, it becomes tough to convince clients. If you could do that, go-ahead, get some more bucks from client.

More on how to judge importance of a user story can be found at:

https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/january/product-backlog-refinement-and-prioritization-with