Blog
August 25, 2010
Use Game Theory to understand and improve the context of your Agile Adoption.
There are many factors outside of the team and outside of Scrum which affect the success of any Scrum project, and ultimately place a ceiling on how much value your organization will be able to realize from their Agile or Scrum adoption.
There often seems to be an “invisible hand” guiding people’s actions for better or worse, and far too often this is put down merely to “luck” or “attitudes”.
The reality of the situation is however, that this invisible hand was created deliberately.
In this all day session we will explore the two most common and virulent barriers to Scrum success (outside of just doing it wrong) - the mechanisms by which team members are remunerated and the manner in which Agile Contracts are put together.
In the morning we’ll start by exploring the original Incentive Trap simulation where multiple Scrum teams all strive towards the same goal, but under different incentive schemes. A thorough debrief guides participants through exploring and understanding the root causes behind individual behaviors and team dynamics and then guides them towards related these outcomes to real world employee incentive schemes.
In the afternoon, we’ll discover how Incentives work at the macro level by using established Game Theory and behavioral economics to uncover what’s really going on when two or more organizations contract to have a project delivered in an Agile fashion.
The Incentive Trap is a highly interactive and introspective day and is based on a blend of science and experience, and is a great resource for anybody tackling organizational impediments to hyper-productivity.
August 12, 2010
Registered delegates for the South Africa Scrum Gathering are now able to book their place online for their Deep Dive workshop of choice. An email notification has been sent to all registered delegates today. If you did not receive yours, please check your spam folder!
The workshop registration facility is integrated into the South Africa Scrum User Group web site. It provides real-time registration and visibility into the capacity and current bookings for all ten deep-dive workshops. A system of physical tokens (kanban) will be used to manage access to the workshops. Delegates will collect their tokens on arrival at the Gathering. If you have not yet registered for the Gathering then do so before your workshop of choice fills up!
August 12, 2010
Peter Beck and I contemplated about a suitable session for the Scrum Gathering in South Africa. When we came to our mutual experiences, we found a lot about release planning and management for Web applications we would like to share and discuss. Since product development for Web applications is a particular topic, and its implications differ from business automation or COTS products, we wanted to dedicate this deep dive session to our special domain of interest.
Most Web development undertakings are project driven. A vast number of product and project managers determine various aspects of a portal, gaming or news site. Organization and integration are left to the IT department. Web developments for clients requires particular attention to change. We would daresay that development for the Web is a natural realm of agility, yet it is prone to chaos and confusion as well.
We have encountered:
- Disorganized product management organizations with no clear distinction of responsibilities
- Project centered development with no actual product view of the whole site
- Component teams with no or low-bandwitdh communication between each other
- Three struggling tribes: business, development and operations
- Flexibility mistaken for agility, technical debt and death by maintenance developments
- Extremely short Sprint lengths with incomplete output
Sometimes, we have been able to resolve those issues with our clients, sometimes not. This deep dive workshop deals with the various release planning and management aspects of getting Web services and products confidently out of the door, including but not limited to:
- Basics: Release planning with story point estimates, priority categories and frequent changes
- Good to know: Initial release plan involving acceptance / staging / operations / shipment activities
- Experience: Release planning for different versions and variations of a product
- The "release story": How teams can manage roll out activities
- The "integration story": How teams can deal with external deliveries
Whether you are working for a portal provider or creating Web solutions for external customers, you are welcome to attend our Scrum Gathering deep dive session!
Peter and Andreas
August 4, 2010
What is Open Space? You can think of it as a self organising conference. People decide what they want to talk about, and when and where they will do so.
We've held a few at SUGSA meetings in Cape Town. But at the Orlando Scrum Gathering, I attended a full day of Open Space facilitated by Harrison Owen. It was a different experience for me, and I think I'm starting to get what this open space thing is about. Hopefully this blog post can help to spread the idea, because more open space is a good thing in my book.
The opening circle
It all starts with the opening circle. Everyone sits in a circle, so that they can see every other participant. The circle is powerful. It reminds us that we are all equal. The facilitator sets the scene and introduces the over arching theme for the open space.
The Marketplace
After the opening, we get started with a marketplace. Imagine a large blank wall, a large group of people, and a facilitator with a cowboy hat and a microphone. Okay the cowboy hat is optional, but Harrison makes it look good! Anyone with a topic they want to talk about comes up to the mic, introduces themselves, and announces the topic they want to talk about. You don't need to be an expert to raise a topic, you can raise it even if you know nothing about it but want to find out more. All you are doing is committing to convening a session about it. After announcing it, you place a piece of paper with your topic on the marketplace wall. You also grab a sticky note which gives you a time and location slot and stick that up next to your topic.
The Wall of Topics
After topics have started to emerge, people can gather around the wall, to take a look at which sessions they would like to attend. If 2 sessions seem similar you could ask the conveners to combine them. If 2 different sessions are at the same time and you really want to go to both, you can ask one of the conveners to move to a later slot. This is self organisation at it's best. In an amazingly short period of time, an agenda is decided. There are several sessions for each time slot (usually an hour each), all in different locations (although often in different corners of the same room), and people who've got a rough idea of which sessions they are interested.The market place is not fixed. People can add sessions throughout the day as they think of more things.
Butterflies
The Sessions
After the market place, the sessions begin. There is no announcement or remind of what's starting when and where. You read the wall, decide when and where you'll be and off you go. Or you can just wander around and see what takes your fancy. The sessions are small groups, where everyone can contribute. This is not a lecture, it's a discussion. Everyone can contribute.
The News Room
Each convener commits to ensuring their session has a scribe, and the scribe commits to taking notes of the salient points and providing them either in hand written or typed format as soon as possible after their session. All these notes are then published on a news room wall, so that the outcome of each session is transparent to all. Also all the attendees should have access to these notes when they leave.
Bumblebees
The Principles
There are only a few principles of Open Space. They really highlight the idea of accepting the present for what it is and not wishing for anything different.
- Whoever comes is the right people
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
- When it's over, it's over
The Law of Two Feet
The law of two feet is simple. If you are neither contributing nor learning in any situation, you use your two feet to walk somewhere new. It is not a reflection on the convener, the topic or the group. It's about what's right for you. The law of two feet gives rise to two different specieis which can be observed at Open Space. The Bumblebees and the Butterflies. Bumblebees move from group to group in the same timeslot, and pick up just a bit from each conversation, they might then interject something in the next group. The provide cross-pollenisation. Butterflies do what butterflies do best. They look beautiful. At some point you might decide you need a break, so you sit in the lobby and drink a martini with Harrison:) That's okay too. You are being a butterfly. Butterflies mean that interesting conversations even if you aren't in a session from the market place.
The closing circle
At the end everyone gathers together again for the closing. Again we used a circle so that everyone is equal. People might share a few words of how they havve experienced the event. At Orlando I was overwhelmed by the positivity that was expressed in the closing circle. It was truely moving.
That about sums it up. I hope you are now keen to participate in Open Space. If you are in South Africa, there is a full day of Open Space coming up at the South African Scrum Gathering in September.
August 3, 2010
I'm still in the thinking stage in preparation for my deep dive on "Modeling out loud".
What motivated me that I think it's worth diving into? For a while now, I've been thinking that, as a coach coder, I sure as hell spend a lot of time coaching product owners on crafting BDD style stories. I also spend a lot of time with developers in interpreting BDD stories and taking a story and getting it to code. I think I know why. Because a BDD story is not a regular story. It is a model of how the software should behave under certain conditions. Note that I said it is a model !! And it genuinely is, it just happens to be in natural language.
So, as a coder I think in models and I find it is easier for me to use a new language (haha!) to craft a model. I also think that developers that are accustomed to creating models struggle with receiving BDD stories because the model has already been created. On the other hand, product owners struggle with creating BDD stories because they are, perhaps, not so accustomed to creating software models.
Where's the overlap? The only thing that a product owner should really focus on is the actor (As a) and the value statement (So that). This is what is shared, nothing else. Developers discuss intentions with product owners but they don't necessarily collaboratively model with product owners. Instead, developers need to collaborate with subject matter experts and surface multiple models, pick one for the sprint and adapt it in every scrum or even switch models mid-sprint. What's your appetite for agility?
What's this nonsense about "out loud"? When you model, you want instant feedback. That's why we prefer to talk and listen rather than writing and reading. The latency is so low. Instant feedback increase my opportunity to be agile. That's why I model out loud, at every opportunity.
What will we do in this crazy deep dive? I don't know yet, but I am imagining something like this:
A small group of us (3+) are sitting in a circle
I ask "So, who's got a story for us - a real one that's bugging you, not that shopping cart stuff".
So, we got us a story, and the volunteer has inadvertently become our subject matter expert :-)
Now one of two things happen: either everyone goes deathly quiet, or there is utter animated confused conversation
Both are good. And we end up doing the same thing - we start working the story, finding it's intention and discovering multiple solutions.
Soon enough, we get to a point where one person is writing up BDD scenarios on a board and another drawing pictorial models of the scenario as it unfolds. Just so that we can see the implications of story writing as a modeling tool.
Then someone starts writing a test case for the scenario as it is unfolding. Just so we can see the implications of story writing on code.
So that's half the session done, we've dived deep enough and it's time to come up for air
Now, we're itchy and we get some more stories on the board.
Deep breath, dive!
As we swim, some new insights and lessons appear out of the depths.
We pass by big fat stories that should be split up, but how? Maybe it's all in the modeling.
We find some stories that look similar to others. Hmm, we consider combining them, and we almost drown.
We find something that was pretending to be story, and we wasted so much energy modeling. We wonder "What could we have done sooner?"
We eventually surface, drink tea, hug, shake hands or whatever else feels appropriate.
And if there is no small group, then the one other person and I will disband the session and talk over many things in the cafeteria, including modeling out loud.
See you soon!
-- Aslam
August 2, 2010
Registrations for the South Africa Scrum Gathering 2010 have topped 150 during the "early bird" phase, which closed on 31 July. With a month to go there are fewer than 100 places open and these are still going at a rate of 10 per day.
Scrum Alliance conference organiser Cynde Stouffer expressed satisfaction with the pace of registrations. "The Scrum Alliance is working hard with the local organising committee to make this event a huge success". Local Scrum user group spokesperson Karen Greaves said: "We're seeing a broad range of people signing up, from Scrum enthusiasts to newbies. Everyone is excited at the prospect of interacting face to face with so many international Scrum practitioners. It's going to be an awesome event!"
August 2, 2010
The SUGSA committee, in conjunction with the Scrum Alliance, is proud to be organising this year’s Scrum Gathering taking place in Cape Town in September. The committee is meeting regularly to ensure the event is a great success and we hope that you will come away with fresh ideas on how to improve your scrum practices and tackle any problems you may be experiencing.
For those of you who are not familiar with the committee, we are as follows:
(from left) Karen Greaves, Carlo Kruger, Karen van Vlaanderen, Marius de Beer and Peter Hundermark. Absent: Kevin Fourie, Alwyn van Wyk.
If you have any queries regarding the Scrum Gathering, please do not hesitate to contact us on gathering@scrum.org.za.
July 27, 2010
We can help!
Having a hard time convincing your boss to send you to the Scrum
Gathering on September 1&2? Download the handy 1-page summary below
and send it to them.
(download)
July 22, 2010
We are aware that some people have experienced issues with the Regonline site when trying to register. As a result, we have extended the early bird price until 31 July to make sure technical problems don't prevent you from securing your place at the discount rate. So sign up now, space is limited.
Please note, if you require an invoice or would like to pay in South African Rands, please complete the registration, choosing the "Wire Transfer" payment option.
If you are unable to complete registration, please contact us at: gathering@scrum.org.za
July 19, 2010
This is for those who are drooling over the programme and the list of presenters and facilitators who will be part of SG10Z and who have a brand they'd like to link to this cool event.
It's easy: become a sponsor. For a partly few (thousand) ZAR or USD you can become a visible part of the event.Find out all the details on the sponsorship page.
