Bob's Blog
Bob is a prolific blogger who simply enjoys sharing his experiences with colleagues in the Agile Community. Topics revolve around Scrum, XP, Kanban, Project Management, Business Analysis, Testing, Leadership and General Musings.
Check back often as we've always got something to say...
I saw the following question in the Agile and Lean Software Development group on LinkedIn:
As an Agilist, what kind of constraints do you use to ensure quality?
There were quite a few thoughtful comments, for example:
Not that long ago, I received an email from someone in the Northwestern part of the US. They were thinking of moving to agile approaches and they wanted to pick my brain surrounding the logistics of “going Agile”. It was an introduction of sorts, but it was also an assessment.
They were assessing whether I knew what I was talking about and whether they’d allow me to help them. They were also assessing cultural fit. But I was also assessing. Were they “ready” to try agile, were they serious about it, were they self-aware, and would I like to work with them.
It was a great meeting and it led to some interesting follow-up activity. But I remember a conversation distinctly to this day that I wanted to share with you.
This update is from the STP conference I’m attending in Denver the week of November 3, 2014. Software Test Professionals is a conference mostly focused towards testing, so the slant of all of the talks is that lens or perspective. That being said, the agile topics are by definition broader and more whole-team centered.
I just attended a session by Jeff Porter where he was exploring agile practices in a talk entitled: Agile – Where the Rubber Hits the Road.
Now let me start by saying that I liked Jeff’s talk. It was very pragmatic and practical. He simply shared what they were doing at FamilySearch.org. Practitioner reports like this one truly enhance the state of practice in the agile community.
There are several terms used for it within agile contexts. Sometimes you hear:
Sometimes you even hear it repeated, as in: This story isn’t complete until its—“Done…Done…Done”.
Apparently the more “done’s” you have, the more emphasis there is on completeness. Although I don’t think I’ve heard more than four “done” used in a row.
A coaching colleague of mine approached me with some questions for a university class he was asked to do on Product Ownership. I got the impression the lecture was for a Software Engineering class that was being introduced to Agile Methods in general and the Scrum Product Owner role specifically.
Here are the five questions and my answers:
I have mixed feelings about Open Space events and I’m not sure why. My personal experience with them is two-fold. Either they are wonderful and powerful or they are terrible. There is sort of nothing in between.
Sometimes I’ve gone and the Marketplace is hardly populated with any topics. So the cupboard is bare and there is little energy and focus towards the Open Space.
At other times, the energy and collaboration is so compelling that the event can be termed a “defining moment” for the theme and group.
George Lawton, from the ServiceVirtualizaton.com blog asked me for an interview. He was generally interested in KEYS to agile testing maturity. Something Mary Thorn and I have been “yacking” about for quite some time.
I thought it might be interesting to share his questions and my answers. It will even be more interesting to see “what parts” of my answers make it into his blog ;-)
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
My friend Josh Anderson has been studying and following Spotify’s approaches to agile team and organizational structure, both in general and in his leadership role at Dude Solutions. I’ve been interested in what they’re doing as well, but I don’t have the “playground” that Josh has.
I thought I’d consolidate some links to Spotify’s journey here.
To be honest, I’m not as enamored with Spotify as Josh is. It’s not that they aren’t doing really cool things. It’s that quite a few of my peers in the agile community are chasing Spotify’s version of agile scaling and operational dynamics as, dare I say it, a Shiny Object.
There have been 4 mergers in the last few weeks in the agile community that I thought I'd mention:
I thought it was very interesting to see this sort of consolidation in this space. While they're all interesting, the Big Visible + SolutionsIQ move is probably the largest in pure agile coaching and agile training mass.
I’ve written several times on the subject of how coaches and trainers in the Scrum and Agile communities often use “management” as a term implying dysfunction and marginalization. Not always as clearly as that might sound, because they’re often paying the bills, but behind closed doors they’re often complaining about them.
If an agile adoption goes awry, we often blame it on the leadership team –
Clearly our training and coaching of the agile teams was complete. The fact that the adoption is failing or dysfunctional isn’t my problem. It’s those pesky leaders. I tried to invite them to the CSM class…and they didn’t have the time. They only had time for a 1-hour leadership overview and half of them were on their cell phones the entire time.
They keep asking me to do more team training, and I’m doing that. But they really need to get their act together for this agile transformation to work. Sadly, I’m at a loss as to what I can do…
