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

The Monster of Cross-Functional Scrum Teams

The question here is- Are we using the right environment to create teams with cross-functional, T-shaped skills?

We see many instances in new Scrum teams in which team members don't work on skill sets other than their own core skills. I have heard such concerns from many ScrumMasters. This is a situation where you will find that it is not easy to create a cross-functional development team with a T-shaped skill set.

If we inspect closely, there are many reasons behind this unwillingness from team members, which need to be addressed prior to attempting the creation of a cross-functional, T-shaped development team.

Let us imagine what the scenarios might have been when you tried this experiment with your team:

• Hey Bob, could you do testing along with Chris, as Maria will be on leave for the next four days?
• Trisia! You're leaving us by next month and Mak will be on this project, and it would be great if you could help David in executing the test cases.
• Brad, you have worked very well in this .net MVC project, but the integration part in php is not doing well. Because you've previously worked in php also, can you please start looking into that? You may devote 60 percent of your time in that module.
• Hey Paul, please work on data migration till other functional requirements are ready to be discussed.

There may be a lot of other scenarios within teams you worked on or might have seen in other teams. (Please add your thoughts in the comment section below.)

What do you think went wrong in scenarios above?

Generally in newly formed teams, we ask a developer for help when someone with that skill set is not available or when it is discovered, at an advanced stage, that more help is needed to complete the sprint tasks. Usually this leads to stretching working hours. I have generally found that in newly formed teams, it works adversely to burden someone in pretext of asking for his or her help.

Sometimes a developer doesn't bring up the fact that he or she doesn't have adequate skills in a required area. Hence it makes sense to indicate that appropriate training will be provided prior to assigning him or her such tasks. Also, we need to assure these developers that their core skills will always be considered when assigning tasks. In mature teams, we rely on task "pulling," but initially in new teams it's task "pushing" in the forming stage.

There is always a fear that working on a different skill set will lead to work on other skills only, and no longer on core skills, especially if there's a scarcity of experience on the team with that needed skill set. However, developers should not have to fear that they'll be spending most of their time on the "other" skill set at the expense of their core skills. This can hamper their ongoing improvement in their core skill set and prove demoralizing.

Often such situations lead to job hopping instead of creating cross-functional teams.

See more at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/march/monster-of-cross-functional-teams

Similarities in cycling and practicing Scrum.

I remember when I first tried riding a bicycle. It was my elder brother’s red colored bicycle. Its color always fascinated me. One day I requested him to allow me to take its ride. First he had a hitch to allow me as he was worried of three things,

•         What if I fell down and get hurt?
•       What if I get hurt and blame goes to him? (For kids this is the most critical moment to face the parentsJ…forget about the wounds!)
•         What if his bicycle gets damage?

But later when I repeatedly requested him, he agreed with barter of some portion of my pocket money and we planned that on next weekend we would go to nearby ground where he will help me to learn riding bicycle.

The D-day came and my elder brother gave me a few instructions such as, how to make balance on bicycle, how to apply brakes, …etc. He kept running behind the bicycle and hold it to prevent me falling down and help me keeping balance while I was riding and after a few such attempts, I learned balancing bicycle!

No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules (I am not referring the traffic rules), no instruction-booklets. It was simple. My brother was my guide, a few rules of cycling as balancing, applying brakes, driving on right side of the ground (road). That’s it!

Why I mentioned it here? Reason is – Practising Scrum is same as riding a bike. No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules, no heavy documentation. If you will keep on planning, you are only going to delay learning Scrum. You need to put Scrum in practice.

The only things needed are:

• A determination for adapting scrum
• Understanding a very few ceremonies (Sprint planning, Backlog refinement, Daily Scrum, Sprint review, Scrum Retrospective)
• Yes, there is a need of one scrum coach during initial weeks and voila! You are scrummified, your team is scrummified.

So what you are waiting for? Go get scrummified.

Hold on Scrum Players, Your Team Still Needs Clarity on Some Game Rules!

Different opinions among Scrum followers sometimes create points of discussion. Recently one such point was, "Who can terminate a sprint?" There were three different opinions, covering all three roles in Scrum (ScrumMaster, product owner, development team). Below are excerpts from Scrum experts that give us insight into the different answers to this question.

In Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber says, "If the Sprint proves to be not viable, the ScrumMaster can abnormally terminate the Sprint and initiate a new Sprint planning meeting to initiate the next Sprint. The ScrumMaster can make this change of his or her own accord or as requested by the Team or the Product Owner."

Kenneth Rubin, in Essential Scrum, writes, "Should the sprint goal become completely invalid, the Scrum team may decide that continuing with the current sprint makes no sense and advise the product owner to abnormally terminate the sprint."

And in Succeeding with Agile, Mike Cohn writes, "Let's consider the case of the product owner discovering some important new requirement that she says needs to be done instead of the work the team is engaged in. Sometimes this will happen. When it does I suggest making the change in sprint goal visible. Scrum does this by having the team announce an abnormal termination to the sprint . . . "

What I want to make clear here, as is made clear in the quotes above, is the importance of context. Without understanding the context of the situation, one should not get carried away with one's own opinion. One must consider the scenario leading to the termination of the sprint. Though sprint termination is rare, sometimes compelling reasons indicate its need. Whatever the case is, due to transparency in Scrum practices, reasons will be visible to all. The Scrum team has to act according to the situation. Sprint termination is not a decision taken without the consensus of the team, and the Scrum team is comprised of all three roles: product owner + ScrumMaster + development team.

Originally published at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/february/hold-on-scrum-players-your-team-still-need-clarity

Who Am I?

I am Waterfall. You must have read a lot about me and have probably used or may still be using my method in your projects. I have lived a very fascinating life. I and my followers have tasted success in most projects with my well-defined processes. Sometimes there have been failures and slippages during deliveries. . . . OK, OK, I admit that many times there were slippages. But it was neither my fault nor that of my processes. Even the people involved were following the processes well. Everything was in place. The whole blame goes to the clients, as they never stuck to the initially defined requirements and kept on asking for changes, even in the advanced stages when such changes were too expensive. And the most daunting thing was that the demand for these changes was always urgent.

I sometimes see that teams are in the process of making plans for the requested changes and are near to finishing detailed documents, and suddenly clients change their minds and come up with new changes/functionalities. Even worse situations happen when products go for user acceptance and they find that the functionalities incorporated are not as intended.

Furthermore, the complexity of projects is at a peak these days. There was a time when clients were patient enough to wait for products. They used to provide each and every small detail, and based on that we prepared precise documents and contracts. But now every client wants early ROI (return on investment) and every requirement is urgent, due to competitiveness in the market.

Nonetheless, things were working by and large -- until I met my cousin, Agile.

She is younger than I and seems very dynamic. I came to know that she also has a few frameworks/methods -- Scrum, XP, BDD, TDD. She advocates iterative deliveries with the collaboration of customers/clients. I thought I should analyze those Agile methods to find out why they were going viral.

Very soon I encountered Scrum. He has some weird activities, such as the Daily Scrum, sprints, review and retro, backlogs, etc. I started comparing these ceremonies with my practices, and I found that most of my followers were doing such activities as and when required. However, the significant difference was the timeboxing.

Then I remembered the "Cone of Uncertainty" in software development.



The "Cone of Uncertainty" graph was initially discussed by Barry Boehm (Boehm, 1981) and later called the Cone of Uncertainty by Steve McConnell (Mc Connell, 1997).
And to my surprise, the uncertainty is being handled very well in Agile/Scrum. The reason is those small sprints and fail-fast strategies. The fail-fast strategy means trying some task, getting quick feedback, and then inspecting and adapting as per the feedback received.

I started liking these small yet effective measures. But I still had one more thing to consider. The Iron Triangle. . . .



I always give the example of the Iron Triangle. And this is the fact, that one has to keep a balance among scope, schedule, and resources while maintaining quality. How was Scrum was handling that? What I found was that Scrum also maintains the triangle but has some flexibility. If clients choose the fix date, Scrum accommodates only those features that are feasible to deliver by that date, keeping a focus on prioritized features. And if scope is fixed, then the schedule is planned accordingly. The most striking part is the involvement of the client/product owner from start to finish during product delivery.

Scrum also has a Manifesto for Agile Software Development:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

There were a lot of other such practices in Scrum that amazed me. I felt transformed by this upstart project development practice. I felt energized. And why not? I and my cousin were both from the same family -- Project Management -- and the sole purpose of my existence was to help the people managing projects.

I advised my followers to learn to apply Agile practices, to embrace agility for organizational change. There were a few questions from a few managers about their existence. They feared losing control of team management. They were concerned about their role in self-organized teams. And certainly their questions needed to be answered to mitigate their anxieties.

This was quite challenging to me, guiding them toward agility. But I was determined, so I explained them the following:

Self-organization does not mean that workers instead of managers engineer an organization design. It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to do. It means that management commits to guiding the evolution of behaviors that emerge from the interaction of independent agents instead of specifying in advance what effective behavior is. -- Philip Anderson, The Biology of Business

Although project teams are largely on their own, they are not uncontrolled. Management establishes enough checkpoints to prevent instability, ambiguity, and tension from turning into chaos. At the same time, management avoids the kind of rigid control that impairs creativity and spontaneity. -- Takeuchi and Nonaka, "The New New Product Development Game"

So do you think that I got defeated by my cousin Agile? No, I have not been defeated. I have given way to Agile for advancement of project management as per the current fluctuating and complex projects. I will still exist by transforming myself according to the specific needs of organizations. Many of my good practices can be blended with Agile/Lean/other practices.

The word water in my name reveals that I can change my shape per the needed vessel. If you are using my method, you still can tailor me by blending agility as per your specific needs and moving further toward agility.

Who am I? I am Waterfall. . . .

 Originally appeared at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/january/who-am-i-a-biography