Salesforce.com's Success with Agile

Perhaps the best slideshow I have seen on agile implementation\agile adoption in the enterprise.

• How do you roll-out Scrum?
• How do teams learn Scrum?
• Are there metrics or proof that agile works?
• How do you get executives to buy-in?
• What about the problems with Scrum or some saying that Scrum is failing?
• What is the role of agile coaches?
• How many product managers should go to product owner training?
• What does successful agile adoption look like?

From the Scrum Gathering conference of 2008 in Chicago, presented by Salesforce.com, titled "A Year of Living Dangerously".

The Year of Living Dangerously: Extraordinary Results for an Enterprise Agile Revolution

View more presentations from Steve Greene.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, management, saas, web2.0

Offshore Agile Teams

Good webcast on offshore development teams using agile (perhaps Scrum). The image below shows the medicine that must be taken - colocated teams. Although it sounds like a tough sell, companies that have done this report not only good results but positive experiences from team members.

The notes in red are mine, pointing out the fact that most offshore teams that I have worked with or know people involved with are operating in a dysfunctional structure.

Technorati Tags: agile, offshore, Scrum, software development

Example of Team Agreements List

Team agreements recently came up at a conference. I picked them up from another coach as a means to help set-up a baseline of expectations that the team can have of each other. They don't take much time to set-up (almost fun) but pay dividends back to the team throughout the project. We start each Scrum Master certification training with a working agreement of what makes a great class.

[2/27/17] I updated the list with some new items that pertain more to technical practices (per XP, DevOps and covered in the Certified Scrum Developer workshop).

Here's an example of a Team Agreements list:

1.    Tell the truth and be transparent
2.    Treat all team members with respect and value other team member’s time.
3.    Value team members’ thoughts
4.    When in the team room, cell phones on low tone and take calls outside of the room. During meetings, cell phones set to silent.
5.    Formal meetings have an agenda, have focused participation and begin/end on time (unless all agree to change it).
6.    Have one conversation at a time including during phone conferences.
7.    ScrumMaster will maintain a calendar in an Excel spreadsheet that will include planned leave and holidays. This will be reviewed and confirmed at start of sprint planning.
8.    Be present during specified co-location days from Monday through Friday, 1:30 pm to 10:30 pm, except for travel. Remote team members can work 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM on Fridays.
9.    Be available by cell phone when needed.
10.    Daily stand-up meeting 2:15 - 2:30 PM
11.    Daily Scrum of Scrums call with US from 9:45 – 10:00 PM (9:15 PST)
12.    Task estimated hours to completion to be updated in Rally/VersionOne/JIRA/TFS daily by 6 PM
13.    Dinner hour is free time
14.    All new code (or code touched) must have unit tests.
15.    At least one story per sprint must have the acceptance tests automated.
16.    One team member must learn something new (take a story they don't know) per sprint.
17.    Limit the number of stories in progress to the number of team members (keeps QA from getting overloaded). Often referred to as a WIP limit.
18.    We must have a team name. And the team name changes if management changes the team.
19.    Developers must check-in their code [every 2 hours, or 4 hours, or daily].
20.    If a developer broke the build, they must undue their change if they can't fix it within 10 minutes.
21.    We must pair on at least one story per sprint. A similar agreement is "We must have at least one mob programming session per sprint."
22.   Leave the code cleaner than you found it (relentless refactoring).
23.   At least [x] items from the retrospective must be worked on the next sprint (typically between 1 - 3).
24.   At Daily Scrum, only the person with the talking stick/ball/rat can talk.
25.   If anyone is late to the Daily Scrum they: put a dollar in the beer/cake/donuts jars, or have to sing and be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (true), tell a joke. Or, one team reversed it - if everyone was on time, the team got cake/pizza/new car. :-)
26.    HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!
Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, communication, management, teams, projects

Sample Agenda for a Sprint Planning Meeting

Here's a thorough, high-level agenda for a Sprint Planning meeting. Of course, don't use what you don't need...

1. Product Vision and Roadmap [Product Owner]
2. Development status, state of our architecture, results of previous iterations [Team members]
3. Iteration name and theme [ScrumMaster]
4. Velocity in previous iteration(s) [ScrumMaster]
5. Iteration timebox (dates, working days) [ScrumMaster]
6. Team capacity (availability) [Team members]
7. Issues and concerns? [ScrumMaster]
8. Review and update definition of Done [Team members]
9. Stories/items from the backlog to consider [Product Owner]
10. Tasking out [Agile Team]
11. Issues, Dependencies and Assumptions [ScrumMaster]
12 Commit! [Agile Team]Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, sprint, project management, scrummaster, project manager

Iteration vs Release Planning

Saw this simple sprint iteration and releases comparison chart in a Rally training page. I like the line on the difference of focus - release is "what" and iteration is "how." Just keeping that in mind will help guide sprint planning meetings much better. Also, given that the focus of sprint planning is task-estimating, not story-writing, the assumption is that the top of the product backlog (sprint backlog) is well groomed. Taken from Rally's Agile Planning Step-by-Step Guides.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project management

Should ScrumMasters Code?

One of my mentor's believed that ScrumMasters should be programming as part of their general duties. If you're in IT, it's likely you know some piece of the programming being done, and if not, have the ability to learn some small aspect (SQL, scripting, batch files, etc).

As I finish up my first Rails project several months ago, I learned a number of things. In the end, I switched my laptop over to a dual-boot Windows\Ubuntu machine. I'm been using Ubuntu ever since, and only had to use Windows for old specialty apps (and even those now have web-based versions). I'm emailing, exchanging and editing documents, tracking bugs, organizing and prioritizing work all from Ubuntu. The boot time is faster, installing apps is easier, and viewing all my windows greater in Ubuntu.

I went to Ubuntu in order to get the developer's web site up and running on my machine. Along the way, I've learned about Subversion and Git, production vs. dev mode on Rails, and how configurations are saved and published (or held).

On my current project, I've started using soapUI to help do some testing for the QA team members. By reading a few pages of the documentation, I learned how to automate the tests and use XPath to confirm data items in the responses. Just getting that hands-on to know the versions of our WSDLs, the endpoint changes, seeing data and changes in the payload gave me a deeper and stronger understanding of the work (and challenges) of what the team is trying to accomplish.

I have a renewed belief that the agile project manager is much more effective when their hands are in the code at least some small percent of the time.

If you're a ScrumMaster, are you doing any programming? Would it help? If so, how? If no, why not? If you're not a ScrumMaster, but a team member, how would you feel about your ScrumMaster getting involved in this way? What if it meant asking more questions, learning and perhaps even making some mistakes?

Technorati Tags: scrum, project management, agile, scrummaster, programming

Kanban and Scrum, Black Box and White Box

This post is a good description of Scrum vs. Kanban - Scrum is a black box (and I'd add "a closed black box", isolated from the Enterprise, but that's part of why it works) and Kanban is a white box. It seems part of the success of Scrum is it's simplicity - you can cover the process, roles and artifacts in 10 minutes. But my experience is that it works best out of the box in small, flat, focused, and/or aggressive companies and needs adjustments for other environments (not thrown away, just adjusting). I've seen some throw it away because Scrum didn't work immediately and easily. Scrum is not a panacea, but commitment and tailoring when needed (e.g., combined with Kanban) will still bring success.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, kanban
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Improving Retrospectives

For years I've done the classic retrospective at the end of each sprint, asking the team "What worked? What didn't work?" or "More of? Less of? Start? Stop?" But I tried some new techniques recently, and the response was much better.
Most importantly, I used several ideas listed and described in Agile Retrospectives. To start, I asked the team members to choose one of four categories to represent how they felt about being there. This helped to focus and confirm what they hoped to get out of the meeting. I then clarified our values, updating our team agreement with this key, guiding information. The last thing I did was have each of the team members write down 5 idea for improving our scrum. After collecting their papers, I wrote them down on the wall and had the team come up and cast four votes per team member (we had about 20+ ideas).
Throughout the rest of the week of sprint planning, their clarified values and top ideas/problem solutions were referred to again and again, and really helped to shape and guide how the user stories and acceptance criteria were crafted, as well as how the tasks were broken out.
You can also use the "What worked/didn't work" at the end of any recurring meeting in order to improve it the next time.
I highly recommend Larsen's book. The return on investment for improving your retrospectives is significant.

Looking Outside for Ideas

As much as people want to "think outside the box", it really is very difficult to think of an idea or a viewpoint that you wouldn't naturally think of.

As recent Wall Street Journal article describes how Campbell Soup is looking outside for ideas (MarketingProf's summary here). This same approach that a gold mining company took is described in detail, including the great results, in Mavericks at Work.

If this is a good, successful idea, how are you doing it? Scenarios could include asking a Scrum Coach to review your work (your product backlog, sprint backlogs, user stories), setting aside time regularly to read on the topics you're involved in at work (Scrum, QA, automation, tools, the business sector you are in), and setting up periodic meeting-of-the-minds, whether trusted colleagues, a conference or seminar.

I have not once regretted the time I have set aside for any of these. There are always new ideas that I never would have considered that were immediately application to situations and challenges that I was facing. Yet I still don't make it the priority that reflects the value it is.

How about you - where do your ideas come from? How do make sure you put things in place that help you at what you do?

Story Card Template

As I was setting up another new project in a tool I use, I reviewed the default template used for the story cards. Although I always only use parts of it depending on the project, I think it's good to review all of it each time to consider what the needs of the new project are, rather then be unthinking somewhat and stick with "what works" in a general sense. The template follows:

Story Card Description

The 2-3 sentence version of what the card is about

Business Context

Why is this valuable to the business? What is the goal?

Scope Exclusions

Call out anything that is explicitly not included in the card that could be inferred.

Prerequisites to Card Development

* Other story cards that need to be played first
* Data requirements

Detailed Story Narrative

Step by step description of the happy path scenario. Can be numbered or bulleted. Alternate flows can be captured in the acceptance criteria.

Validations

Include any special business rules or validations here.

Authorization

Include special security requirements here.

UI

Indicate what views are impacted by the card. If possible, include a reference to a low-fi prototype.

Additional Notes for Developer

Include any additional notes that you would like to include here to help the developer understand the context of the card.

Open Issues

Include any questions or open issues that we don’t know the answer to when writing the initial draft of the card. Often phrasing the issue as a question and following it up with the solution clearly labeled as the ‘Answer’ helps with readability.

Sample:

Should there be any restrictions based upon the party being a minor, a fatality or having legal representation?

Answer: No. At this point in time, the business has asked for this as a convenience feature that will always bring them directly to edit mode. Even when these scenarios occur today, the Contact Tab is filled out and the Contact Notes will indicate details about the contact (i.e. spoke with the parents of this party or the next of kin).

Acceptance Criteria

Things that the BA will verify during card signoff. Will be used as the starting point from which QA will expand when creating their test cases.

Scenario 1: Description of Scenario

1. Step 1 to demonstrate the criteria
   
2. Step 2 to demonstrate the criteria
   
3. Step 3 to demonstrate the criteria …
   

Problems with Mingle Project Management

I like Mingle, but it's not perfect. I've posted a few times about the benefits of using Mingle, so now I'll mention the problems.

We had read of performance issues, but I experienced where the cliff is. We have Mingle running on a virtual server with 4 GB of memory. We created a custom project using one tree and approximately 15 fields in the card. As we approached 1200-1500 cards in the project, performance dropped significantly. Users could count to 10 - 30 before items loaded, especially in grid view. As we neared 2000, grid view failed completely. Users new to Mingle started asking for another tool. Stakeholders in planning meetings would lose their patience waiting on it. My advice is find a way to keep bugs and features separate. Delete old, fixed bugs, and be disciplined to keep the features list (product backlog) short. Why keep low priority items when there are months of highs in the list?

Exporting data is a pain. Cut and paste text into Excel gets you by, but you can't use any filters (WHERE clause) nor choose what fields to include or exclude. You get it all. Massaging it into something useful for management can become hours per week if you have large backlogs.

As far as I can tell, you can't enforce data integrity. I tried without success. And garbage in\garbage out feeds the two items above that can become a monster.

The project templates look wonderful (XP, Scrum, Agile Hybrid), but there's only one thin page of documentation on their site for each one on what comprises each template. Trying to figure out how to use them (what the workflow is, the objects, details) is essentially up to you. Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate these views into how Thoughtworks does agile project management, but as I kept poking around, feeling like I was trying to put together the lifestyle of some ancient race based on artifacts, I kept thinking, "The creator of this template could have taken one day to document it and the whole world would be ready to go." As is, the whole world will play Sherlock Holmes and my guess is many will give up and go to what they know and lose out on a great agile mind-share opportunity.

agile, scrum, xp, extreme programming, project management, mingle

Agile Planning Poker Rules

I posted earlier on planning poker, and since it's a popular post, I thought I'd post again on it.

One item that came up in a recent sprint retrospectives (in the "Where do We Need to Improve?" list) was getting better requirements and estimates. So, after the following planning meeting, where the CEO selected his highest priority items, the team met to review those items.

The meeting seemed to be another poor meeting of nothing definite or different being done - lot's of "Well, I'll need to look at that one more," or "Well, management says it needs to be done by next week, so what does it matter how long I think it will take?". I was ready to call the meeting until Martin asked about the planning poker cards (shwag from Phil Scott at the Agile Panel Discussion at the LA Code Camp). He hadn't used them before so we walked through the instructions:

1. Each team member is given a set of cards.
2. One person read the item to be estimated.
3. The team & customer discuss the item.
4. Each team member privately selects a card representing his/her relative estimate.
5. After all have chosen a card, everyone shows the chosen card.
6. If all estimates match, that item's estimate is complete.
7. If estimates are not the same, the group discusses the differences (focusing on the outlying values).
8. Repeat until consensus is reached.

Few notes on modifications we made to the rules -

• We don't have any business members there, but call in the requester if needed.
• We re-estimate until within one card value of each other, or take the median value if there's a majority.

The team really enjoyed, and benefited from the experience. The secrecy of each persons' pick not only made it fun for them, but it got each person so plugged into the task at hand. There was kidding of those who's estimates were way outside the norm. For outrageously low estimates, we rewarded the low-bidder's confidence by giving them that task, but with an agreement that if they met the estimate, we'd buy them lunch. It was particularly enjoyable to see how much this engaged Jeoff, our only team member with the strength Competition. There was great discussion on all the tasks the team had ahead of them, and we left the meeting with a lot more shared knowledge, both where we're weak and where we're strong.

You can buy planning poker card sets from Mike Cohn's Mountain Goat Software site.Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, project managment, software, team building

Agile Leadership Coaching Quotes

I was at a leadership coaching event and had these quotes as good takeaways. Although the training wasn't specific to agile environments, I think they all apply quite well.

• It's a leader's job to make the goals clear, and the team's to make it work. 
  
• In a dynamic environment, it's more important to have strategic positioning than strategic planning. 
  
• The fix for bad leadership isn't teams or teamwork, it's good leadership. 
  
• You don't know what you're capable of. 
  
• There's often a gap between information and application. 
  
• What are your growth hashmarks? Because speed acclimates and it will be hard to tell if you are growing as a leader or not.
  
• The ideal situation is the right job [or role] + the right mindset.
  

Agile Project Management Tools - Mingle, Rally, or...?

I previously posted on comparing different agile project management tools: Mingle, ScrumWorks and an Excel file with dates, hours and a burn down chart. After hearing several agile consultants at Code Camp, I thought I should pass on their (better?) response. 

The question on a tool recommendation came from an audience member who said they had been using Rally, and end the end required one person full time just to manage the tool and data. KenKolcheir, who works for ThoughtWorks, obviously recommended Mingle, with a laugh, but I heartily agree it is a great, easy to use tool. Denise Phillips recommended VersionOne.

But the consensus from all the panelists was to keep it as simple as you can. If you can get by with cards on Post-Its stuck to a wall, do it. Also, this method provides a ready "information radiator" that helps visibility, communication and focus for those nearby or come and go interacting with the team. If you choose to use a the tools from ThoughtWorks, Rally, VersionOne, or Microsoft's Team System 2008, it would be very helpful to have a large monitor or fatscreen on the wall with your cards or a dashboard (with burndown, etc) as the information radiator.

I tried Post-Its, but switched to Mingle so our CEO could access the product and sprint backlogs from his computer and be more directly involved. This is what we needed and has been a key to the success of the organization really getting behind scrum.

USC SoCal Code Camp Presentation Docs

Below are the handouts used for the presentations at the SoCal Code Camp at USC. 

Session 1 - Leading a Team and Developing Team Members - Currently or hopefully leading a small team, managing a project, or over a department? We reviewed the research from several top management experts including Jim Collin's Good to Great, Marcus Buckingham's First Break All the Rules, and Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager. Using agile as our team context, we reviewed leadership, management, the difference, and what is the role of management today when agile teams are self-managing - the Agile Manager and organizational change. The handout is here. 

Session 2 - Agile Scrum Method with Strength-Based Teams - This session was an overview of the Scrum agile process, tools I've used such as cards and Mingle, and highlights a strengths-based approach which takes advantage of using team members for tasks and roles where they are more likely to excel. Scrum is simple (but not easy) and a tremendous help to achieving success in projects. Agile environments are designed to capitalize on each individual's unique strengths, but there's not much guidance out there on how to do this. This workshop reviewed the different approaches and levels I've used with a strengths-based approach on my Scrum teams. The handout is here.

Session 3 - Discovering Your Strengths - What are you naturally best at? How can you leverage that to become world class? It might be innovation, bringing out the best in others, or knocking out task after task. Many of us don't know our strengths, much less how to build our work day and careers around these natural talents. Instead, guided by our managers and others, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to address these "areas for improvement", while our strengths lie dormant. We review some of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 and watched the first of six videos from Marcus Buckingham's strengths video series. We covered how to leverage your strengths and how to continue to develop them. The handout is coming...

Session 4 - Agile Panel Discussion with Phil Scott - Neudesic, Denise Phillips, Paul Hodgetts - AgileLogic  and Ken Kolchier - ThoughtWorks. No notes yet but I will try to collect the questions and answers. 

Code Camp Connections

If you are coming to the SoCal Code Camp, you can stay connected to others through the SoCal Code Camp group on LinkedIn. Click here to join and connect with others who are a part of it. Also, you get get real time updates and join the code camp conversation on Twitter. Click here and then click Follow.

Agile and New Ideas for the Enterprise

In a previous post, I commented on what to do after successful implementation of agile to an IT team. What I found from others was that the next step is to move towards the agile enterprise, and I pointed to looking at the P & L and what drives ROI. A complement to this "what" is "how", and a great book on how to introduce this agile growth, and other new ideas, is Fearless Change by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising. It is a book of very practical and comprehensive patterns to use to get support and buy-in, and it is the sum of collected experiences from many professionals.

Despite my best efforts, I often see problems and opportunities through my lens and not through the lens of those I work with. The book references work by E.M. Rogers which breaks down people into groups of Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. While I and others in IT, web 2.0, or project management might be Innovators or Early Adopters, two thirds of the world around us are Early Majority or Late Majority. These groups need to see others successful with an idea first, or are naturally cautious or skeptical (they could have the theme Deliberative). Moving a new idea such as Agile Enterprise, with all the visibility and accountability, is a paradigm shift, foreign and likely scary for some of the very people that will not only benefit most from it, but also whom you vitally need their support. From my initial reading of Fearless Change, I believe this book will be a significant help in getting you there. Also, understanding the strengths of these stakeholders will help you speak their language and motivate them.

Book Review - Agile Software Development w Scrum

ASDS is a very good book, but only for the few who want to be Scrum experts. The material is thorough, and not necessarily easy to get through, in part because the Schwaber and Beedle walk through every part of Scrum in detail, as well as cover situations that likely don't apply to most, and they even go through philosophical views that some may care little about.

To be sure, there are gems in the book, and I learned a few important points, but I have been to ScrumMaster certification training, read two other agile books, and been mentored by a CSM/PMP. I feel the book only moved me from 80% comfort level with Scrum to 85%.

If you are a consultant managing projects, or you want to teach, coach or train in this area, read the book. If you a internal project manager,product manager, or IT manager, I recommend you get Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide and read the section on Scrum. It's simpler, cleaner, and the rest of the book gives good background to agile and options you may want to consider.

If you are a team or development lead, or the senior developer, get Agile Project Management with Scrum. It's an even easier read, focused solely on Scrum and gives lots of enjoyable stories of real situations the author went through, good and bad.

After Scrum, the Agile Enterprise

The other day, Joseph Little (blog here) posted to the Scrum Development board on Yahoo! asking for input on what to include in an advanced course that he and Jeff Sutherland were leading (Agile 201). One item I raised was "What do you do when your agile project efforts are going well? What's the next step to capitalize on successful to move agile into the enterprise?"

Well, I came across a great post on exactly that - Agile Leaders - The Next Hurdle from Steve Garnett. Simply put, the next step is Lean Thinking & Financial Understanding

"It's alright being bloody great at Agile, and knowing how to deliver software and create self-organizing teams, but always remember that the engine for change, the real way to effect change, is control of the P&L."

Agile2008 Conference Submission

Agile2008 released the conference track recently here.One presentation that won't be there is my submission. Though it had some positive feedback, it didn't make the cut.

As the presentation was unique among the others I reviewed, I thought I would post it for others. I submitted it under the Leadership and Teams track. Despite the let down that I wasn't selected, I had a career highlight in getting very positive feedback from Jim Highsmith. :-)


Agile Strengths-Based Teams - How to Coach and Lead According to Strengths

This workshop will review the different approaches and levels I’ve used with a strengths-based approach on my Scrum teams. We will discuss my experiences at the individual level, listing team members’ specific strengths (with descriptions) and how I created new team roles tailored to allow each member to play to their strengths, involving the team in the way they work, and fostering improved communication and interdependency. Also, group discussion could cover hypothetical roles and situations, or run through a simplified strengths assessment for attendess and then walk through how they could make adjustments to leverage those strengths more on their team and with stakeholders and customers.

How Does Strengths Relate to Agile?
Jim Highsmith writes, “Agile Software Development Ecosystems are designed to capitalize on each individual’s and each team’s unique strengths.” and also that “developing each individual’s capabilities” is a key contribution to project success. In the spirit of agile, working with others according to their strengths is part of valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools. And adding the strengths paradigm to agile project management addresses several key points from the Agile Project Leaders Network Wiki of Knowledge, such as:

• Individual Leadership Style - Involving the team in determining the way they work
• Handling Team Dynamics - Encouraging individuals to self select tasks
• How to generate an open environment where people feel safe to express themselves.

Aren’t We Already Doing This?
Agile leaders should use a strengths-based approach as a tool, but don’t often do. Most people don’t know how to identify their strengths at a granularity that is practical and helpful. Those that do most likely don’t know how to make changes in how they work that enables them to capitalize on those strengths.

Strengths Is Not a Silver Bullet, But an Agile Accelerator Tool
In terms of in terms of productivity, profitability and employee retention, managers using a strengths approach had a 86% greater success rate than other managers. Strengths-based teams performed 44% better. But the most powerful benefit of the strengths movement is when agile leaders use it.

NOTE: Depending on group consensus, have a separate short session or workshop where the group takes Gallup's StrengthsFinder assessment. The results could be discussed, and attendees could then come to this workshop knowing their strenths profile.

Process/Mechanics
Facilitated a discussion on my experiences of introducing a strengths-based approach within a Scrum team at the individual level, listing team members’ specific strengths (with descriptions) and creation of new team roles tailored to allow each member to play to their strengths.

I. Samples of My Agile Strengths Implementation Experience

1. Team Member A has Strengths of ‘Focus’, ‘Deliberative’ and ‘Competitive’
2. Team Member B Goes From Impractical Complainer to Responsible, Driving Junior ScrumMaster
3. Team Finally Understands Team Member C, Because of Her Strengths

II. Review how to leverage strengths for better performance from ourselves and our teams. We would discuss:

1. Strengths themes vs. granular strengths
2. How to grow your strengths week by week
3. Ways to leverage the power of the agile + strengths combination
4. What if there is lots of overlap or gaps?

Finally, discuss how my efforts and experience coaching and influencing the organization in both agile and strengths, and the parallels of improved communication and collaboration.

Leadership is Simple, But Not Easy

As posted on the Mavericks at Work blog, leadership is simple but not easy. Same with agile. In the end, all you can continually do without being fueled by results is to be the change you want to be.

What makes Southwest Airlines successful has been studied, written about and public knowledge for years, as mentioned in the Mavericks blog here and here. But companies still don't (or can't) do what Southwest does.

The success of agile has been studied, written about and public knowledge for years, but companies, and even teams, still don't (or culturally can't) do it. The barriers I've seen are mainly letting go of control and trusting others.

Agile Worldview Quotes - Scattering Seeds

I just read in Mike Beedle and Ken Schwaber's Agile Software Development with Scrum that "Scrum represents a competing worldview when compared to the many other styles of software development or business organization." I've never heard the term "worldview" associated with anything in software development, but I fully agree.

Agile isn't just about how a team of developers builds something, it's reaches into the business - how the team works with the other departments, how the business must have a single voice and must prioritize requests.

Something I've found useful is to include in all of my email random quotes I've saved which reflect this worldview. The program I use is Qliner Quotes, and its free.

Here is a sample of some of the quotes:

I'm going to make mistakes, but I've got to be able to look myself in the mirror and say to myself that I believed in that decision and mistakes are okay. And once I make those mistakes I can adapt and change. - Frank Addante interview on Venture Voice

Companies with the most values based critiques of their industries often turn out to be the savviest and most aggressive competitors. - Taylor and LaBarre, Mavericks at Work

Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.  - Bob Sutton, Professor of Management Science at Stanford University

Core values are not something people "buy in" to. Executives often ask me, "How do we get people to share our core values?" You don't. Instead, the task is to find people who are already predisposed to sharing your core values. You must attract and then retain these people and let those who aren't predisposed to sharing your core values go elsewhere. - Jim Collins, Good to Great

Courage in Scrum isn't a visible, tangible thing. It is not some kind or romantic heroism. Instead, it is having the guts, the determination, to do the best you can. It's the stubbornness not to give up, but to figure out how to meet commitments. This type of courage is gritty, not glorious. - Mike Beedle, Agile Software Development with Scrum

Harmony itself is good, I suppose, if it comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it's a bad thing.  - Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team

When I'm building a team, I look for people who love to win. If I can't find those, I look for people who hate to lose. I want people around me who have passion. - Mark Beeson

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. - General George S. Patton

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change. - Tom Peters

A manager must be able to do four activities extremely well: select a person, set expectations, motivate the person, develop the person. The manager role is the catalyst role. - Marcus Buckingham and Curt W. Coffman, First Break All the Rules

In the world according to great managers, the employee is the star.  The manager is the agent.  And, as in the world of performing arts, the agent expects a great deal from his stars. - Marcus Buckingham and Curt W. Coffman, First Break All the Rules

Are you going to take the risk to be different? Because no one is drawn to ordinary or average. And if you're willing to be different, be warned. Leaders are always controversial. Followers fit in. - T.D. Jakes

To succeed, a project relies on information from very different people: on one side are customers; on the other side is the technical team. If either side dominates these communications, the project loses. - Mike Cohn

A key role servant leaders often play is facilitating necessary changes. As a result, it's imperative that these leaders recognize there are four levels of change that vary in degrees of difficulty and time: knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and organizational change. The last one is the most difficult, because now you're attempting to influence the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of multiple people. - Ken Blanchard

"The record for successful software projects is dismal indeed, but there's a new kid on the block: agile programming. Agile principles include flexibility, teamwork, trust, and reflection. But sadly, these environments are few and far between." - CIO.com

Changes in Online Advertising

I was training a new project team member on how the advertising works on my company's website, all as part of a project to migrate the site to a new content management system. He wasn't aware of the business behind the banner ads that our users see when the visit our site.

Just this year, Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6 billion. AOL buys Quigo for $340 million. Why such big purchases? In part because internet advertising is expected to top $27 billion this year, and there are a lot of people and companies who would like to make advertising money from all the advertisers. But picture the stock market and other financial markets. I might want to invest some savings I have, but I wouldn't do it myself. The most cost-efficient (and time-efficient) is to work with a broker who will make the transaction. Ad networks act the same as the broker - taking the money to be invested by the advertiser and spending where it will have returns most likely to make the advertiser happy.

In my broker analogy, I might want my money to go into options, or environmentally friendly companies only. The broker would then be limited to some markets (Chicago Board of Options Exchange) or need to know companies in several markets that represent a given sector. In the same way, some ad networks only provide a certain format of advertising (video on VideoEgg, or text links through Google's AdSense), while some ad networks specialize on demographic (Hispanic sites and visitors through HispanoClick).

In my experience with DoubleClick's DART for Publishers, we focus on where we want ads to be displayed on our site. You can add ad networks (which provides the ads themselves) through DART, as well as schedule and manage the ad campaigns.

To implement online ads, we first define how many ads will be on a given page, and what dimensions the ads will be. We give each of these ad slots an ID, and then place the same number of code\tags, each with its own ID, into our webpage (see the nice overview on Google's Ad Manager here). Now when we load our webpage, the tags call out to the ad server, which returns an ad. The ad server also tracks which ads where server where and when, and which were clicked.

Part of the business opportunity is that these ad networks take a cut of the money coming from the source (advertiser) to the destination (publisher site where ad displayed). Part of the business problem is that publisher want the best paying ads, but aren't in control of which ads come trough and their pay rate. Ideally, publishers would cut out the middle man, but managing and serving ads is challenging, while calling all the advertisers and lining up the deals is time consuming.

If we want to try and manage the ad serving with a tool, there are free ad management solutions (Google's Ad Manager for one). There are also now meta ad servers that sit between the publisher and the ad network. These applications work with many ad networks, while gathering statistics on ad performance and even making recommendations (see The Rubicon Project for an example).

Comparing Mingle and ScrumWorks Agile Scrum Project Management Software

Thanks to a recommendation, I'm now using Mingle. I've found it easier to use than ScrumWorks and Excel for managing the product backlog, sprints, user stories, and tasks. My favorite feature is the ability to group stories and tasks by sprint, each card color coded to reflect status, and you can drag the cards into other sprints.

One draw back is that it's hard to beat the visibility and energy of Post-It cards on the wall in status swimlanes, but you also can't export the Post-Its into an Excel sheet to send to management for a quick status report.

Each project management tool I've tried has it's drawbacks.

1. The Excel worksheet with stories, tasks and burndown was labor intensive to set-up or change very much, and often confused newcomers to the team.
2. ScrumWorks is not intuitive, and couldn't show burndown on partially complete stories and tasks.
3. The Post-Its can't be mass-updated, reported on, nor accessed remotely.
4. Mingle doesn't have a burn-down (that I found, although rel 1.1 is said to have one), and performance is pretty bad.

Right now, the customer likes to see the project overview, and Mingle provides that at-a-glance better than the others, so I'll be sticking with Mingle for now.

Office Developer Conference - ODC 2008

Some notes from the Microsoft Office Developer Conference (ODC 2008) in San Jose -

I was most impressed with InfoPath 2007. It allows for simple creation of forms for data entry or lookup without code, while allowing access to workflow and .net object model for coding if required. I also read how designers and developers are using it for prototyping user experience (UX) on new sites, applications and features. This sounds good, given that you can build a page in a couple minutes that accesses and displays real data.

InfoPath and SharePoint, and any custom programming, can use Windows Workflow to automate emails, task or list creation, and follow-up actions. The assignee of an IT Ticket can have a task created and assigned to them, as well as sent follow-up emails including escalation until the ticket is completed. Also, you can publish InfoPath forms to SharePoint to be accessed as webpages. No need for InfoPath on every desktop.

Visual Studio 2008 is geared to leverage SharePoint for .Net developers, both with access to workflow, workflow templates, tools to simplify building and deploying new features. SharePoint Service Pack 1.1 just came out, and it’s loaded – almost a Service Pack 2.0 release.

A new XML standard allows sharing data across the Office applications, and allows customization of the ribbon in those apps. Microsoft recommends keeping office workers in the applications they are familiar with, rather than go to other, separate apps to do parts of their job. Examples include the AdSage add-in, and the Xobni Outlook plug-in (http://www.xobni.com/learnmore/). Lot's of talk of the user experience as "contextual" or "immersed". For example, if most the the information a user (typically an information worker) is doing is in, they shouldn't have to leave Outlook to use another application to get related information or do a related task, such check the status of a task specified in an email or send a fax of a document attached to an email.

SharePoint has been used to build applications for a New Hire Process, a Project Management app for cross-functional (matrix) organization, a network sppt and monitoring solution, and Sales Generator. These rough apps were each built overnight by teams of three .Net developers trained for only one day in SharePoint.

CRM Live, at $60 per user, might be a good option for sales force automation (SFA) needs of most small to medium sized businesses. See http://crm.dynamics.com/ for more information.

Gartner recently announced MS BI Platform is now in the "magic quadrant" of being an industry leader. It is matching up well against big players like IBM/Cognos and Oracle. Microsoft's strong recommendation is to use Excel and Excel Services as the end-users BI tool. Report Services can be difficult to implement due to multiple security layers. For the first BI project, put all software and data on one machine and go for the smallest data domain possible.

Speakers recommended a number of tools, templates and helper applications on CodePlex. CodePlex was likened to SourceForge for Microsoft apps. See http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?ProjectSearchText=moss for an example of user contributions for WSS and MOSS SharePoint development. Most teams should first review what's out there before building any new applications.

What companies can do with these new tools and functionality depends on their company's priorities. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and actions items could be:
1. Increase revenue - Leverage the AdSage\AdCenter Excel Plugin for keyword and campaign analysis. See http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/addin-demos .
2. Control spend - Automate and simplify expense reports
3. Gain customers - Flow customer feedback to site and Customer Service into key performance indicators and analytics
4. Retain existing customers - Automate reports on customer email, comments or other Customer Service data capture of feedback
5. Increase productivity for Sales, Operations, SEO, Editorial, Customer Service and IT
6. Streamline 3rd party interaction and interfaces
7. Automate and simplify business reporting with scorecards and key performance indicators
8. Allow drill-down and trend analysis of business data

The 2007/2008 toolset allows a greater ability to deliver on all of these items.

Resources from Code Camp Presentations

Below are links from my presentations this winter at Code Camp.

The outline for the presentation Improve Your Management and Leadership is located here.

The books referenced in the presentation are:

• Marcus Buckingham's First, Break All the Rules,
• Now, Discover Your Strengths, and
• The One Thing You Need to Know.
• Jim Collin's Good to Great,
• Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager and
• Andy Standley's Making Vision Stick.

I also referenced Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

All of these authors have spoken at The Leadership Summit and their presentations may be available through that store.

I also briefly mentioned a book on metrics. My blog post on that is here, and the book is Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management.

The outline for Sunday's presentation Combine Agile with Your Strengths is located here and the slideshow is shared over the web on SlideShare here. The books mentioned include First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths, linked above, as well as StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Go, Put Your Strengths To Work (on Google Books, so you can read parts of it).

I previously wrote a fairly thorough summary (certainly not an elevator speech) of the business value of using a strengths-based approach here.

Don't Know What You Got ('Til It's Gone)

I've recently had the opportunity to see what's lost when a team goes from Scrum to...something hard to define - general milestones and high level requests to get things done. I'll list the pain points.

What's Lost:

1. Visibility. The primary stakeholder doesn't really know where the project is. That's why he's having to ask several people throughout the day what their status is. But what good is asking them how it's going? It's very difficult to be objective, and their attempts are relative. "It's going well." Compared to...where you were yesterday? The non-existent schedule? The estimates before all the late changes came in, or after? Missing the deadline by a mile, and now thankfully looks only by weeks? Scrum records status and progress daily and more importantly the use of burn down charts track the trend!
2. Clarity. Are the people asked normally optimistic or pessimistic? Good estimators or bad? Ones who include code dept, deployment time, or just unit test and throw it over the wall? Our Scrum estimates were hammered out by group conscience (via planning poker) and we defined and standardized "done" via a "done is" checklist.
3. Teamwork. The team is now divided and fighting against themselves due to individual developers getting pulled by different business owners for different projects. Developers either don't help each other, or if they do, are chided for not exclusively working on some other "priority" project. The real problem isn't the developers. Scrum provides a framework to help the business in defining THE priorities in sequence, as well as defining who the one product owner is whom can dictate where the resources (developer hours) should go.
4. Motivation. All these issues combine to undermine motivation (a classic mistake, per Steve McConnell). Working towards a difficult deadline, without milestone deliveries to celebrate and foster hope, without real teamwork and interdependency, and without laser-like focus on the goal, motivation dries up. And then work becomes a grind, negatively breeds and a downward spiral of self-fulfilling prediction of an unreachable goal takes root and grows. Left alone, the business reaps nothing but failure for their investment, and the hours and days and weeks of people's lives are wasted on a harvest of the bitter fruit of failure.

What Is SharePoint?

Microsoft provides a set of functionality called Windows SharePoint Services, now on version 3.0, within Windows Server 2003 that is free to use. This free group of services provides document collaboration, information-sharing, list creation, Web page creation and related services. It is very useful for workgroups, departments and other small groups of users to work together on a set of documents, share information and otherwise collaborate.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the new version of SharePoint Portal Server (combinging Microsoft Content Management Server) and provides additional functionality for business intelligence, business process integration, enterprise search, enterprise content management, and personalization.

The most common uses of SharePoint that I've seen are:

1. Creating team sites where only certain project team or department members can login, see, edit and add information and documents
2. Creating lists of information that can be easily customized by adding new columns, value lists and multiple filters
3. Setting alerts on information or document areas so that all team site users receive an email notice of information added or notified.
4. Using issue lists that email the assignee of the issue of any change with a before and after summary of the change, as well as keeping a history of comments on the issue.
5. Using document libraries (lists) that allow version histories of the documents, including checking in and out, creation of folders for organizing groups of files, and an Explorer-type view that supports drag-and-drop.

The types of business uses I've seen include:

1. Tracking employee hours, including using a lookup of tasks to choose from so that information is always correct.
2. Data entry of metric data that drives other graphical reports
3. Letting teams have their own designated and central area for their documents and other information
4. Creating a business process of several required steps
5. Using the discussion functional to capture a conversation thread of multiple users on a document posted to the team site.
6. Using a modified issue list to categorize, prioritize, track, assign and drive issues on a project, as well as quickly export the list to Excel and send to additional outside users.

There are Microsoft partners that run SharePoint Services as a hosted service, lowering the barriers of complexity and effort for small and medium business to try out the functionality and see if there a good return for the money.

Agile Project Estimation w Scrum Planning Poker

I learned this week that planning poker is a big return for the small investment. I could not find planning poker cards in stock anywhere in the world, until Mike Cohn just made them available again (http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/products/cards).

Besides all the great benefits outlined in Mike's great book on Agile Planning and Estimation, I found that the team interaction was good. There were great alternative views and just an overall good feeling of everybody's opinion counting.

The Leadership Summit - Session 1 - A Vision to Die For

The Leadership Summit
Notes from Session 1 - A Vision to Die For, Bill Hybels

Vision must be owned. Ownership is the most powerful weapon in casting and maintaining vision for your organization. It's the painting of the picture that brings passion out of people. It ties into purpose – a sense of destiny beyond to 9 to 5.

Hybels referenced the book of John – Being an owner vs. just a hired hand.

"I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He's only in it for the money. The sheep don't matter to him." - John 10:11-13

Hybels challenged us to ask ourselves, "At my current workplace, am I the owner of the vision, or the hired hand?" Do I pray for it, protect it, volunteer for it. Owners of the vision will sacrifice deeply. They will be high capacity workers.

Hybels then referenced a group that was an owner of a vision. On March 7, 1965, a group of civil rights marches left Selma, Alabama for Birmingham. They made it as far as the Edmund Pettis Bridge. There they faced state troopers and county sheriffs armed with billy clubs tear gas and bullwhips. The lawmen attacked the peaceful protesters and drove them back to Selma. This event became known as Bloody Sunday. Owners of a vision will be willing to die for the cause.

Out vision is so important. It should be bold, faithful, honorable, and clear. But vision needs to be owned by the people in our organization.

How do we do this? For some Type-A leaders who live on blazing a trail and calling back to everyone to follow their lead, it's a four letter word: P-R-O-C-E-S-S. Without process, we defeat every one left out (which is everyone but the leader).

There are three steps in the process for vision ownership:
1. Vision Formation
There is the top-down approach (bad), or the team approach (good). The top down approach is so often taken because it is quick, but doesn't take, doesn't hold.

The recommendation on the team approach was to have an offsite, with the focus being the question "What should our organization look like in five years?" It may feel slow or inefficient, and to some quick-acting leaders like "swimming in peanut butter." But this builds community, value and more likelihood of ownership. The team members may not always have their way, but they at least need to know their ideas have been considered.

2. Vision Refinement
Make a first draft of the vision. This crystallizes it, even in draft form. Take this draft to the groups at the next level out, trying to get different types of groups, feedback. Ask what's clear, what's confusing, what excites you, what scares you. The goal is to come away with a crystal clear, compelling vision.

3. Vision Declaration

Introduce the vision in front of leaders first, asking if it is clear and compelling. The declaration is not a solo effort, but a team activity.

Great leaders know that more time in the vision casting process increases ownership. Vision leaks, but don't berate the workers for this. Use any tactics to keep refilling the vision. And remember to celebrate progress.

Meeting Rules for Daily Stand-Up / Daily Scrum

For the team:

1. Arrive on time or early.
   
2. Be ready to say what you did yesterday and what you plan to do today.
   
3. Keep your report specific, precise and short in order to help the meeting end within 15 minutes.
   
4. Listen to other team member's status in case it might relate to your tasks or impact you.
   
5. Don't interrupt people when they are talking.
   
6. Don't agree to decisions or action you don't understand. Ask questions and insist on answers when you need clarification.
   
7. Note the tasks or action items you volunteer for.
   
8. If you raise an issue or question that can't be resolved in a minute, ask to discuss with the parties involved after the meeting.
   
9. For those calling in, be sure to start your report with "This is [your name]."
   

   
    

   For ScrumMasters:
   

10. Be sure to have (or have access to) your relevant information (the sprint or product backlogs, the software being developed, or the project, requirements or design documents and code)
    
11. Be sure to have (or have access to) the phone numbers of any team members who you are conferencing in.
    
12. Be sure to have scheduled the recurring meeting and invited all appropriate people
    
13. Be sure that the invitation includes the relevant information, such as meeting location, project site URL, and conference number.
    
14. Be sure the invitation subject line is specific (for those involved in multiple projects).
    
15. It is your job to keep the meeting focused and starting and ending on-time.
    
16. It is your job to know why and how scrum works. Look for teachable moments in the daily scrum.

Why Scrum Works

Just finished the book Project Management with Scrum, and it is excellent.

Here a great overview quote from the forward:

"Gary Convis notes that Toyota's sustainable success comes from an 'inter-locking set of three underlying elements: the philosophical underpinnings, the managerial culture an the technical tools. The philosophical underpinnings include a joint [worker] , customer first focus, an emphasis on people first, a commitment to continuous improvement...The managerial culture...is rooted in several factors, including developing and sustaining a sense of trust, a commitment to involving those affected by first, teamwork, equal and fair treatment for all, an finally, fact-based decision making and long-term thinking.'


Scrum works for all the same reasons. Its philosophical underpinnings focus on empowering the development team and satisfying customers. Its managerial culture is rooted in helping others achieve their goals. Its technical tools are focused on making fact-based decisions through a learning process. When all of the factors are in place, it's hard for Scrum not to succeed. - Mary Poppendieck"


From Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional).

Summary of Marcus Buckingham's Strengths Movement and its Value to Business

A few months back, I wrote a summary of the strengths movement – personal strengths, or employee strengths if you're a manager, according to the work done by Gallup and Marcus Buckingham (previously misspelled Markus Buckingham on my blog).

I've since found myself forwarding this email numerous times to others to give them a quick overview or primer with a focus on the value to the company. This post is the same content and formatting for easier reference.

Overview- Why and How

"Our people are our greatest asset." Correction - your people's talents are your greatest asset, or more precisely "Aligning our people's talents to their tasks so that they play to their strengths the majority of each day is our greatest asset."

The premise of strengths-based teams is that the most effective method for motivating people is to build on their strengths rather than correcting their weaknesses. People don't change that much, and the effort to remediate their weaknesses is much effort for minimal return. Researchers at the Gallup Organization have analyzed results of interviews of over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries. Less than 20 percent of employees stated that they were using their strengths every day. And there is no relation to type of work, skilled or unskilled, industry or even within company. In fact, more disparity existed within companies than outside, showing that there is no such thing as "great companies," only great teams within those companies.

One must purchase a book (noted later in this post) in order to get access to the test which reveals their strengths. Once they learn their profile, a manager can begin a process of how to capitalize upon each person's unique traits, aligning them with the goals of their team and the company, resulting in better performance and employee satisfaction.

Summary of Strengths Books by Buckingham and Gallup

For background, here's a summary of the related books. In "First, Break All the Rules," strengths are mentioned as one of the levers that great managers can use to get the most out of their employees. In fact, it trumps all the other tools a manager can use. Then, in "Now, Discover Your Strengths," aimed at management and business, the authors focused on solely on strengths (because it is the greatest single lever to increase team performance), listed all 34 strength types, and gave cases studies and examples. The book includes a code to take the strengths profile test. The new "StrengthFinder 2.0" book is geared more for the individual, and contains a slightly newer version of the test with a bit more guidance on the next steps of how to apply your strengths. Finally, in the new "Go Put Your Strengths to Work," Buckingham explains (and gives great, practical tools) on how to take personal responsibility in turning knowledge into action, because just knowing your strengths alone doesn't change a person into someone who leverages their strengths the majority of the day.

Supporting Facts

Here's an edited down snippet from a Gallup white paper on the results of their strengths study:

Definitions of performance vary, but typically include indices such as productivity (revenue in business), profitability, employee retention, customer loyalty, and safety. Substantial predictive validities have been established between structured interview measures of manager "talents" and future manager performance (Schmidt & Rader, 1999). In a recent study of more than 2,000 managers in the Gallup database, Gallup researchers studied the responses of managers to open- ended questions related to management of individual talents versus weaknesses. In comparison to poor-performing managers, top-performing managers (based on composite performance) were more likely to indicate that they spend time with high producers, match talents to tasks, and emphasize individual strengths versus seniority in making personnel decisions. Success was 86 percent greater for managers with a "strengths versus non- strengths " approach (Gallup Organization, 2002). Managers with a strengths-based approach nearly double their likelihood of success.

The ROI of Employee Engagement

The employees who say they "have the opportunity to do what they do best every day" have substantially higher performance. In a study of 308,798 employees in 51 companies, teams scoring above the median on this statement have 44 percent higher probability of success on customer loyalty and employee retention, and 38 percent higher probability of success on productivity measures (Harter & Schmidt, 2002). "Success" is defined as exceeding the median performance within one's own company, across work units. Managers who create environments in which employees have a chance to use their talents have more productive work units with less employee turnover.

The ROI of Strengths Development

Gallup researchers has performed studies of talent identification, feedback, and strengths development activities with a "study group" and a "control group" who were administered the "StrengthsFinder" assessment and given feedback, both individually and in group sessions, with follow-up. Post-intervention measurements of employee engagement in productivity were conducted six months later. Results indicated that the study group productivity grew by 50 percent more than the control group did.

Taken from http://media.gallup.com/DOCUMENTS/whitePaper--InvestingInStrengths.pdf

Other links:

Gallup's StrengthFinder Center: http://gmj.gallup.com/book_center/strengthsfinder/default.aspx

Marcus Buckingham's site: http://www.marcusbuckingham.com/

Do We Need to Manage People?

Going through Good to Great again, and was struck by Jim Collin's statement that the best companies hire self-disciplined people who don't need to be managed, and the leadership manages the system, not the people.

One of Scrum's principles is that the teams are self-managing. But I can see now that that principle depends on having the right people on the team – disciplined people. Just because I'm running scrum doesn't mean that someone on the team who wasn't previously self-managing or disciplined suddenly becomes disciplined. The opportunity is there for them, and hopefully peers around them to model after, but the brutal facts might be that there are team members who will never become self-managing, self-disciplined. Perhaps the team manages these people off their team, but if the team and process doesn't gel immediately (average of several sprints before typically gelled and consistent), then it is likely the ScrumMaster may be the first to deal with whether a person is right for the team.

David Maister on Passion, People and Principles

David Maister is so straight on with his post on Passion, People and Principles (posted here).

Over and again on projects and teams and in companies, I see these truths and consequences lived out. Throw in embracing a paradigm of servant leadership and an understanding of strengths, management and leadership, and I believe every person who wants to be successful, can be. But from what I've seen, many people aren't willing to give up what they want, even for better long term, or if it hurts the company, themselves or others. Like the monkey who can't get his hand out of the jar because he won't let go of the banana inside, these people get what they want but trap themselves in the end.

Agile, Operations and Strategy

From a management point of view, you want to know that you are getting the top return on investment for all of your IT efforts. Scrum makes this clear, visible and in the control of the product owner, who is often funding the effort.

But what about all of the other time and effort by IT personnel whom are not on agile projects, those who are most often "putting out fires" or working on short-notice market-driven system changes? Without a lightweight method to track these efforts, funding could be misspent and neither CIO's nor CEO's would know. Worse than money wasted on effort not making a difference, it is money that could have been spent on something that would have improved the company and\or IT.

This IT request tracking should give visibility to requests, timeframes, the requestor, estimated effort and status. It should be visible to all IT and company management and proactively alert key stakeholders, and also provide summary reports of effort so that management can regularly easily see a high-level view of all effort and knows how money is being spent.

Notes from Sprint Planning Observation

Watched a veteran ScrumMaster do sprint planning for a team's 16^th sprint. Below are some practical notes.

1. This team of 10+ found that 2 week sprints worked best.
   
2. A 'Done Is' list (unit tested, checked in, code debt noted, integrated into staging environment, smoke tested, etc) was handed out at the beginning of the meeting. Later, when estimates were given, the ScrumMaster would ask "Does that estimate include everything from the Done List?
   
3. They have a theme for each sprint. For this sprint it was roughly "Major focus is on user experience and usability issues."
   
4. Ramp-up time for new team members or members taking on new roles was noted, but not explicitly assigned hours. Instead, the weight of ramp was factored in to any given related task.
   
5. The sprint tool was Excel, and the estimated line items were grouped (using Excel's grouping functionality) by Feature or Activity.
   
6. Each feature had a team member assigned as Lead (noted in Lead column) who was responsible for 'cracking the whip' if need be.
   
7. Each task still had a specific assignee.
   
8. Meetings had line items for each person that was scheduled to be in the meeting with planned meeting length assigned.

Applying Your Strengths Where You Are

After attending Yelo, I had a chance to ask a question of Erwin McManus that has been on my mind for a while. I know my strengths, but what is the next step in moving toward working in my strengths more of each day as well as developing those strengths putting them to work right where I am? When we are not working in our strengths, work is harder, draining and we are less successful.

It was explained by both Erwin and, later on, another strengths coach that applying our strengths where we are is a matter of viewing the same tasks from a the perspective of our strengths.

At times I am overwhelmed with the details of numerous project management tasks. I am not by nature a detailed person or driver (Achiever, Command). But rather than look for other roles to apply my strengths of Strategic, Maximizer, Input, Relator or Connectedness (see below for definitions), I can view these same tasks through the lens of my strengths.

What I've done this week is:

1. Step outside myself and view my role and situation as an objective Maximizer. My immediate response is "We've got to clean these projects up: close the open items, push through the obstacles, provide clarity and direction for all those involved." What was stressful and exhausting when sitting in the office chair now becomes energizing and empowering while sitting in the Director's chair, even though the only actor on the set is myself.
2. Also, previously I viewed most of my team and task efforts as moving things forward for the sake of 'closing' them, but 'closed' didn't always mean that a task's destination was the best. Often it was good enough, or a customer-requested compromise of functionality and cost. Now from the Maximizer perspective, I can see that these task and project destinations truly are the best that I could do from the customer and my PMO's point of view (which should be my point of view as well) - that's what they're asking for. Now I'm driven to move these customer and organization requests from good to great.
3. Seeing my tasks and daily to-do's from the viewpoint of Strategic. When I did this, I felt a sudden, strong drive to get control of my day-to-day worklife because I was sure there were opportunities, inefficiencies, and broken processes all around but I couldn't see them because of the overgrown brush and weeds of business, overload and living in reaction mode. I could smell opportunity like Yukon Cornelius could smell gold, and I desperately wanted to clear out this overgrowth in order to get to the real treasure - strategic opportunity.
4. Considering, as someone who has the Input strength, all the valuable information that I'm not collecting because I'm too hurried. I was more motivated to get my projects and tasks under control so that I can not only collect data and information for the sake of proving useful at some later date, but also the opportunity that this information might provide in making more connections with people, projects, and initiatives.

These were the strongest results I had from trying to apply my strengths right where I was in my current role and responsibilities.


Definition of Strengths Referenced

• Strategic
  People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
• Maximizer
  People strong in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.
• Input
  People strong in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.
• Connectedness
  People strong in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason.
• Relator
  People who are strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

Reasons Vision Doesn't Stick - Success

I was listening again to Andy Stanley's presentation from The Leadership Summit 2003, and was struck by this statement:

Vision doesn't stick when you're successful because when you are successful, you have options and if you have too many options you get unfocussed...You wake up one day in a large organization and the largeness has made it complex, and complex organizations are stupid organizations. The smartest [my organization] has ever been - unbelievably efficient - was when there was just six of us.

But as you are successful, you become complex, and complexity is the enemy of efficiency and complexity is the enemy of vision. It could be that you're in a successful organization, but the vision hasn't stuck. Everybody's busy, but you've lost the connection.

Resources from Code Camp Presentation

Below are the resources related to accelerating your career by focusing on strengths.

Both Gallup's work and the MBS strengths are mentioned elsewhere in this blog.

Sweet Spots
If you don't find meaning in your work--or you're one of the 80 percent who don't believe their talents are used, what can you do? Finding your "sweet spot" is part of the Cure for the Common Life.

MBS Strengths (colors):
www.Strengths.com
My MBS profile
How to Work with Scott
MBS Profile Comparison

Gallup's Strengths:
www.strengthsfinder.com
http://www.marcusbuckingham.com
http://technorati.com/tag/strengthsfinder
My Signature Themes
My Strengths Guide

Private Victory:
Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Firt Things First are the first three of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
FranklinCovey's training and resources website

ScrumMaster Training

Just completed ScrumMaster training through Danube, with Tobias Mayer. First off, Tobias is incredibly gifted in bringing understanding of business drivers, software challenges, and the spectrum of people's strengths and idiosyncracies all into a blend of guidance and assurance of how to really make this work.

My biggest take-away is that Scrum is simple, but it's not easy. And it's better to jump into rough water and try it than to wait for an ideal time and circumstance. From what I could tell from those who had been praacticing it, Scrum takes some courage (absense of self for the sake of the cause) to lead through it.

It is easier to do command-and-control waterfall projects, knowing they're more likely to fail, because the structure makes blaming others for project failure to easy (and often incorrectly) because of visibility on silo'd efforts. When effort in that specific task fails, the owner is more likely blamed because it appeared that required requisite steps were 'completed' and done so correctly (or else the project wouldn't have moved on).

In a scrum, all requirements, programming, project management and QA efforts are occurring simultaneously and you know the outcome in 30 days or less. So, who would you blame in the event of a failure? The whole team was involved. So one would have to look deeper into the causes, and that is always the right thing to do. Also, how severe would the consequences be on, at worst, losing a month's worth of work on a Scrum sprint versus three, six or more months on a waterfall project?

As far as learning Scrum, here are two additional links: The Agile Toolkit podcasts and a list on Amazon called The Scrum Master's Bookshelf.

Time Tracking for Team Member Accountability

As much as I feel strongly about employee motivation and appreciation, I see the accountability and extra effort that comes from employees who have to account for every hour of the day via timesheets (I should add how important that these timesheets are actually reviewed).

I have seen exponentially more effectiveness when an employee realizes that they have to not only account for where their time goes each day, but that there is accountability for how much time is taken for each task and some responsibility for whether that task was the appropriate priority. If there is no consequence for not working, not working hard, or not working on the right things, then what is the motivation to work diligently on the right things? Generally there is no more consequence than “you should have asked me: for more work/if that was the priority/how long I expected that task to take.” If so, every day spent doing what the employee would rather do is its own reward.

I’m seeing now that new employees generally work quite hard in the first week or two, not because the want to impress, but more often they are concerned about consequences for not working hard at the right things. Once they are sure there are none, they quickly adjust to the acceptable (palatable) pace of those around them.

Think of the additional gains of a time tracking system: real time actual costs of projects, estimates-to-actuals by project, team size, team members, real bell curves of resource usage in order to intelligently schedule overlapping projects.

Project Areas and Team Member Proximity

I’ve seen significant increase in information sharing on project teams due simply to having daily scrums (agile status meetings). I’ve wondered how much more would communication (and therefore team performance) improve if I had the team members moved to cubes in the same area. The evidence from Tom Peters, below, is significant. Note how close teammates need to sit for optimal interaction.

“…if you and I are separated by 5 yards or less, the odds of us communicating at least once a week are nearly 100%. At 10 yards of separation, the odds plummet to about 9%; and said odds are almost constant at 3% if we're 30 to 100 yards apart.”

Quote referenced from Tom Peters’ weblog here.

Proactive with Dependencies

I use the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In from NetCentrics (http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/learn/ ) for time management and I depend on it for project management because it allows me to set email reminders for follow-up email interactions with other team members I require a response from, especially the sometimes goal-disconnected client team members because they are not in our office.

A tool I would like to have in order to be proactive about dependencies is a network resource monitor. In consulting, too often we have tasks that we get tripped up because someone changed something on us without notifying us. When it comes time to perform the task, we find that we have lost privileges to the client’s VPN, or SQL Admin rights to a database or local machine admin privileges on a test server. The delay in getting these resolved can impact deadlines.

If I could set up a monitor app to check these resources, using accounts the client has given us, I could know immediately when access has changed. I could then quickly put in a request to resolve it, and have the problem worked in parallel and fixed before it impacts project deadlines down the line.

If anyone knows of an application that can do this, please let me know.