Several years ago I went to an agile conference, actually the annual agile conference put on by the Agile Alliance. One of the sessions was a 90-minute workshop put on by an incredibly experienced agile practitioner. In fact he was one of the original 17 signatories of the Agile Manifesto.
I got to his session early and I’m glad I did. The room became packed, with every seat take about 15 minutes before the session was scheduled to start. Then the floor started to fill up. By the time he arrived, the room was over capacity and the anticipation was electric.
I’m often quite wordy in my blogs. I’ll pose an initial question in the title, throw out a thousand words or so, and then present a conclusion. I’m not going to do that here. Instead I’ll be much more succinct.
Is forecasting evil in agile portfolios?
YES!
The context for this conclusion and subsequent discussion is three-fold:
- Forecasting when you are just building your agile teams OR are in the early stages of an agile transformation;
- And, when you’ve been doing agile for awhile, and you’ve become overconfident with your capacity awareness;
- And forecasting in this sense is anyone determining how large or how long something will take and NOT fully engaging their team in the estimation, planning and forecasting.
Derek Heuther, in a blog post on the LeadingAgile blog, took the position of replacing traditional Backlog Grooming with something else. The blog post can be read here.
There are two “parts” to Derek’s post.
First he provides a brief history of the practice of “grooming” and a sample of references – including a Scrum Guide reference.
Then he explores what he calls a Progression Workshop. Here’s the core of what he says about the workshop:
This has been an ongoing debate for a number of years. There are essentially three groups of Project Managers:
- Traditional Project Managers – they’ve typically operated in Waterfall environments and frequently reference the PMBOK. They often follow best practices, templates, and models for effectively “managing” projects. Usually they view success to be plan-driven.
- Agile Project Managers – who are normally quite different than their traditional counterparts. They focus on the team and are more facilitators and coaches than project managers. They also consider success to be team-driven.
- Then there are Traditional Project Managers who want to play in agile environments, so they start looking for specific tools and techniques that they can “borrow” from the agile approaches. They take more of a hybrid approach to project management, and this group seems to be increasing as agile approaches have become mainstream. Often these folks have acquired PMI-ACP certification, but they have little else in the way of real world agile experience.
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:
- Definition of and adherence to a – Definition-of-Done
- Collaboration and pairing
- Unit, integration, and regression testing
- Sustainable pace
- Measuring defect and process “escapes”
- Appropriate testing as EARLY as possible
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.
Introduction
There are several terms used for it within agile contexts. Sometimes you hear:
- Done
- Definition-of-Done or DoD
- Done-Ness Criteria
- Acceptance Criteria
- Release Criteria
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.
