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

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