Practicing agile theory

I start this blogpost with a visual illustration of what I had seen and captured in my "then new" Nikon D750 (Full Frame) , as an excellent real-life example of self-organization. Picture credit: "Lightnlens Fotographie" by Jasdev Singh| Web: www.lightnlens.net Self-organization , also called spontaneous order (in the social sciences ), is a process -  where some form of "overall order " arises from local interactions between parts of an "initially disordered " system . The process is spontaneous , NOT needing control by any external agent.  Trigger for self-organization: It's often triggered by random fluctuations , amplified by positive feedback . The resulting organization is wholly decentralized and distributed over all the components of the system. Such an organization is typically robust and is able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation.    “Collective animal behavior ” is a form ...

An analogy - Ever thought of how Agile scrum could very closely be compared with a "road trip" that almost everyone must've taken sometime in their lifetime? In arriving at the destination ( Product ), there's a lot that goes into the journey -  the Scrum Team must have visibility ( Vision, Roadmap ) to start with, along with an awareness of the road conditions ( Project Transparency ).  That said, the team must have an understanding of traffic/driving rules ( Scrum Processes ) and the vehicle chosen for the trip, should be in a good working condition ( Dev Environment ). With those as prerequisites to begin - The driver must have the knowledge of the route/directions to get to the destination ( Knowledge/Expertise/Competence of developers ). In addition, the driver must have enough fuel ( Motivation ) to get the journey started & keep it going until the team has arrived at the destination ( Product ). While the above sounds simple, during the j...

The agile game called "Solve the puzzle" This is a simple game that teams using Agile can play to understand values and principles. Needless to say, the scrum master is the "facilitator" and a keen observer.  Below are some key points I'd like to share about this puzzle game - it takes 5 mins. of preparation for the scrum master game ideally finishes in 15 minutes; it should not take longer than that while the game is played by teams, the scrum master's role is to facilitate, observe and take note of the observations Prep work required: 10 mins. max The SM needs printout of 3 images (color prints would be better but procuring that is a challenge, even black & white prints are just fine). To add to a little complexity in the game, you can choose to use images where the subject is the same - just placed differently. Below is what I used as pictures for the game - If you observe closely, ...

Well, by now I’m sure you must’ve understood about the topic of the post and what it is all about – servant leadership of course! One of the attributes of a scrum master is “being a servant leader”. But what are the attributes/actions that qualify a scrum master to be called a servant leader. Let’s look at some of them below – Serving others and not yourself; in other words, selfless management of team members Being a servant means you do not or should not command others. On a lighter note, does your housecleaner/household help ever give you instructions regarding what to do? No right?   Let go of the command and control that our traditional managers are used to exercise as part of their role, in your journey to become a scrum master.   Leading by example & helping people develop and perform as high as possible Think of the Scrum Master as a personal trainer who helps you stick with an exercise regimen and perform all exercises with the correct fo...

Almost every software development company today is rushing to adopt Agile scrum as their preferred software development methodology. Little attention is paid to the nuances of agile as can be understood from bits of conversations below - “The client wants us to deliver fast and so they want us to do Agile” ... was what I heard from an onsite person visiting the ‘xxx’ offshore office in India. “We are running behind schedule and need to expedite the delivery. Let’s increase the velocity of the team to ensure that we deliver on the date committed to the client” – was what my program manager said for a project for which the product backlog has been ever growing and the goal always looked far off without changing the delivery date. “We are doing agile, right? So why can’t you make this little change … what is the problem? – was what a business stakeholder said in a review meeting to the SOS scrum master. The business requirements were so volatile that they changed many a time...

Part 2 – Perception of points; views of stakeholders & the recommendation As discussed in part1 - " what's the point in a story point " post, product backlog is a collection of product requirements (stories, epics & themes) and delivers “value as a whole”. Scope of the product or size of the product backlog is a sum of the points of all user stories (of all sizes) in the backlog. Completion of backlog for a release is tracked by the key metric called “release burndown”. With time/days on the x-axis and total planned story points for the release on y-axis, the burndown shows the rate at which the team is burning these story points. It’s obvious that the faster the team burns down these story points, the sooner they’ll reach the goal (release goal). But should the focus be purely on burning points to reach the milestone? If the team’s focus is anything but delivering value by burning points and meeting the definition of done, the product/release i...

Part 1: talking of the point Story points are estimates of effort as influenced by the amount of work, complexity, risk and uncertainty ( https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-are-story-points ). When we estimate with story points, we assign a point value to each item. The raw values we assign are unimportant. What matters is the  relative values . A story that is assigned a 2 should be twice as much as a story that is assigned a 1. It should also be two-thirds of a story that is estimated as 3 story points. Not delving into the details of how to estimate and what these numbers should be (linear vs. non-linear series or Fibonacci numbers), the focus of this post is to discuss how these points affect the life of a scrum team (development team, scrum master & product owner). A story adds “value” by delivering functionality that the business has asked for, and can/will use depending on whether the story is a part of potentially...