Agile Development - Mitch Lacey & Associates, Inc.

In November, 2008 there was a discussion on the Scrum Development yahoo group about how Scrum benefits the individual, and why anyone would want to work on a Scrum team. Here is what was asked:

What does Scrum (or other Agile umbrella method) offer to an individual seeking improvement?

I realize that TDD helps one improve one's skillset and so do some of the other Agile practices.

But, specifically to Scrum, which practices are intended to address individual achievement/improvement?

The reason I ask is because teams have stronger and weaker members and would like to know both what the team can do to help the weaker embers and what the weaker members can do to help themselves. While till attaining/maintaining a high velocity, of course. Preferably with o overtime.

This got me thinking, what are the values and benefits? It turns out it was easier to answer than I thought. I had been saying these things for years, in workshops and on teams. Here they are:

 People who work on Scrum teams will have the opportunity to improve/practice/polish/learn/grow in the following areas

1. Technical skills (any) by working in a collaborative space, hopefully pair programming
2. Interpersonal skills through daily conversation and human interaction
3. Presentation skills by having to show working software every two to four weeks
4. Relationship skills by having to work with people you may or may not especially like
5. Leadership skills by teaching others your unique perspective on how you have solved problems in the past
6. Self confidence by going out of your comfort zone, stretching yourself and growing
7. Self awareness by understanding what actions, or inactions, your decisions have on others and the system you are building
8. Communication skills, both verbal and non-verbal, through daily standup meetings, pair programming, customer demo meetings, sprint planning meetings
9. Estimation skills by having a better understanding of the whole system through the practices of collaborative estimation and collective code ownership
10. Continuous improvement by having the discipline and trust in your team to allow the items above to become a reality

I use this list when I meet with new teams that are adopting Scrum. Try it out and let me know how it goes!

 

 

A big thank you to everyone who attended my talks at the SQE Agile Development 2008 Conference in Orlando, Florida.

You can download the slides on the resources page or you can grab them here:

• Mixing Roles in Scrum: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
• Are We There Yet? Defining Done

Many people ask me about team spaces and how to set them up. Not long ago, colleagues Ade Miller and Ajoy Krishnamoorthy did a walkthrough of the Microsoft patterns & practices space - it is built around agile teams. When watching this video, consider that this team started out in a two person office with 6+ people crammed in it. From there, they began booking conference rooms, one room per team member per day. They were told they could not do this, so they got creative and started booking random times to ensure the conference rooms (aka team space) were always available. This went on for a couple of years before facilities asked what they needed to stop the madness. This video shows you the end result of a team room.

Click here to see the video on MSDN Channel 9.

My colleague Ade Miller at Microsoft just published a paper titled Distrubuted Agile Development at Microsoft patterns & practices. I had a chance to read draft versions of the paper and find it a good read.

You can download the PDF here

Here is the abstract:

Distributed development is a fact of life for many teams. Unfortunately most agile methodologies or approaches assume that the team is located in a single team room. Until recently there has been little guidance about how to apply these approaches with a geographically dispersed team.

Microsoft’s patterns & practices group has been following an agile, distributed development approach for the past five years. During this time teams within the group have experimented extensively with different approaches to best address the challenges of distributed agile development. This paper outlines the challenges faced by geographically distributed agile teams and details some proven practices to address these issues and build successful distributed teams.

I was browsing InfoQ this morning and I came across this newly published paper from Borland that talks about integrating automated tools in agile. It is not bad, and has a few nuggets of goodness provided you can get past the sales pitch for Silk. Pages 4-7 are the best, in my opinion and have some value. It's worth a glance.

the teaser from InfoQ:

"More and more companies are moving to agile software delivery approaches. But agile delivery brings with it a new set of challenges; among them, functional test automation - opinion is divided in the Agile community on the value of automated testing. However the reality is that software teams must manage quality if they are to avoid operational risk. Businesses are encouraged to adopt an agile process that fits their unique needs. Nothing about agile is pre-determined or dictated so it's no surprise that businesses find it challenging to implement agile as a trusted business process – using tools to automate their agile delivery process is yet another variable that complicates the decisions they must make. 

This paper discusses the benefits and offers some guidance on incorporating automated functional testing and testing tools into agile software delivery environments. You will learn about the critical role that automated testing plays in helping companies implement and support an Agile process. The paper discusses aspects of Borland's own transformation to agile practices as a reference point or use case. You'll see how a geographically distributed team overcame challenges and leveraged automated testing and other tools to ensure a successful transition. We'll discuss the lessons learned in our transformation and as a result how Borland's automated tools are being developed to support and enhance Agile delivery methods."

Get the paper here

A very big thank you to Version One for hosting the APLN Atlanta leadership summit. We had a great turnout. I was lucky enough to be invited by Mike Cottmeyer to give a talk. I did "Mixing Roles in Scrum" and it was great. You can find the slides in the resources section available for download.

Also, I am giving a "Mixing Roles" tutorial at the SQE Agile Development conference in Orlando next month. I hope to see you there!