Assessing Your Learning Needs

There are lots of resources for continuing to learn about agile, the roles, engineering and test practices and adoption approaches, but where do you start and how much of an effort can you expect to invest? Well, it depends. As a rough guide, use the grid below. Chose one item per column that matches your situation, and score yourself according to the following:

First Row: 1 point each

Second Row: 4 points each

Third Row: 10 points each

Experience Level	Likely Future Number of Teams
Advanced	1 - 3 Teams
Intermediate	4 - 9 Teams
Basics\Boot Camp	10+ Teams
Business or Project Environment	Business, Stakeholder Attitude
Basic Environment	Eager, Supportive
Complicated Environment	Listening, Cautious
Complex Environment	Hostile, Contrary

Add up the values you selected for each column. For example, a common situation I see is:

Experience Level	Likely Future Number of Teams
Advanced	1 - 3 Teams
Intermediate	4 - 9 Teams
Basics\Boot Camp	10+ Teams
Business or Project Environment	Business, Stakeholder Attitude
Basic Environment	Eager, Supportive
Complicated Environment	Listening, Cautious
Complex Environment	Hostile, Contrary

This would yield a formula of 10 + 1 + 1 + 4 = 16

For scores below 15, you may only need to drive through the several items from a few learning areas, and then more at your leisure and discernment on what next from items referenced on this blog or lists elsewhere on the web. 

If your score is near 20 or above, you likely need to go through a lot of material of it at a good pace, and those beginners items are critical. Not only that, but you likely need to go through the material with others in your group in some fashion. More on that (Community) later. 

If your score is higher than 25, you need to power through all basic and intermediate material, and cover the advanced topics as soon as you can, with several others in your organization. Education will be instrumental, if not critical, to the success of agile in your company.

I'll provide a list of my recommended materials in a follow-up post.

agile, management, scrum, leadership

Meeting with Executives Key to Growing Agile Success

I just returned from perhaps the most successful short engagement that I have had. It's a story that you, whether you are on the agile teams delivering or a manager, director, or executive management, would want to see lived out in your company.

It mirrors Rally's Flow-Pull-Innovate agile adoption model, but there was a catalyst that distilled what surely would have taken months of meetings and decision making down into just several hours. 

If you have some teams with some success under their belts, consider asking to schedule a meeting with management (as high up as you can) for a meeting where you will share the agile success metrics (of your team and others in the industry) plus a short overview of agile (what problems it solves, how it works, and culture changes/failure modes). Make sure to have the ScrumMasters and Product Owners on those one or two successful teams present to answer real life questions of what went well, not so well, and lessons learned along the way. 

In my case, our meeting ended with all of management: convinced agile works, understanding the road is long and hard, deciding on next logical steps (which projects, what training, etc.).

But lead with the success you and others have had. Executives need to know why they should care and what's in it for them, then tell them more.