That’s my status now. Although it’s not really true. My wife and I are keeping our home and someone will be sitting in it for us. Yeah, we might get out somewhere without any public utilities but it won’t be for long in duration and certainly not permanent.
It’s summer time! And the living is easy. Even the phone is shut off for days in a row. We’ve been adventuring around, having just come back from camp. This week we recharge and gear up for a music festival in the mountains over the 4th of July. Immediately following, we’ll be traveling down to party with friends in a multi-day wedding near Sao Paulo, Brazil. We’ll stick around and check out the area, but keep it simple and not try and take in it all for the short time we have. And after that, it’s time to do some serious hanging out in the Colorado area.
None of this has anything to do with Agile. The URL is my name. Regardless of the blog’s title, guess what it’s about? During this time of travel, tweets and posts will be much less frequent, if at all. There’s an intention here, to refocus this as a reflection of what is going on with and around me, that I might find interesting to post. Not always my experiences. Yet current, what is true right now, for me in this moment. When I’m working, there may be more of a slant to that. There might not. We’ll see what comes up. I’m working on becoming one integrated Aaron. Let me know what you may think of this approach.
The following was written by myself and edited by my manager to help define roles in our group. Modifications have consisted of removing any reference to the specific group. This is largely influenced in the writing by David Anderson’s bookAgile Management. Most of the wording for the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master come from the Scrum Alliance, with specific cites on the role’s title. Influences in the editing have a decidedly more traditional feel to the statements, and leaves one feeling they are behind the steering wheel of some analogous car.
Agile Team Members – Roles & Responsibilities
The key to successful team building is creating unity while celebrating the individuality of each team member => Common purpose supported by unique contributions
Team is held responsible for a release, individuals are held accountable to their commitments
Each team member has one or more roles on a project
When a team member has more than one role on a project, potential conflicts may occur. Always think checks & balances before signing up for multiple roles
Program Manager (aka Project Manager, Scrum Master)
Representing multiple TEAMS as a Core Team member
Cannot attend multiple stand ups
Scrum team too large and being split
New teams being formed
One core team member on multiple Scrum teams
Stagger daily stand ups
Attend one stand up and send a proxy to the other
Scrum Of Scrums
Starts ON TIME
Attendees
Core team members
VP of the group
All other VP direct reports
Scrum Master is the Director of Program Management
Product Owner is the Director of Product Management
Program or Project Manager (Scrum Master) for the project answers the following
What was accomplished on the project yesterday?
What is happening today on the project?
What is blocking the project from progressing to deployment?
What are other projects with which this one is being integrated?
A proxy of another core team member who attended the daily stand up can answer if needed
Product Owner provides business and domain answers for clarification of project direction
Side conversations are parked and follow-up meetings arranged
Scrum Master records all blockers and follow-up arrangements
Scrum Master lists out existing blockers and follow-ups made
VP prioritizes blockers
NOTE: Every attempt is made to resolve all blockers in the day they are raised.
Representing multiple ROLES in a Core Team
A core team member might have for example, both the roles of Product Manager and Architect; or a team member may be Scrum Master and Engineering Manager. In some cases, there can be a potential conflict of interest. In the first case, this could be a person with great, wide vision for a product. In the latter, this is a coalescing of authority and responsibility. The person responsible for protecting the team from interrupts with outside work now has great influence to interrupt someone working. Please use due diligence in volunteering for, or assigning people, multiple roles.
Scrum Team consists of:
Scrum Master role – usually Project or Program Manager but can be anyone on the team
Product Owner role – usually Product Manager but can be anyone on the team
The Team of 7 people, +/- 2, Responsible for Task Completion :: Development, QA, Architect, OPS, UED Engineers, etc
Vertical – focus on long and short term product vision of a product line
Represents customer’s interest
Represents the product to the outside world (Customer)
Responsibilities
Responsible for market, business case, and competitive analysis
Responsible for long and short term product vision
Responsible for ROI and Net Profit
Prioritizes features for releases based upon expected ROI
Writes Acceptance Criteria
Writes user stories
Makes tradeoff decisions between scope(value in Expected ROI) and schedule(higher operating expense in longer release cycles)
Challenges
Resisting the temptation to “manage” the team. The team may not self-organize in the way you would expect it to. This is especially challenging if some team members request your intervention with issues the team should sort out for itself.
Resisting the temptation to add more work
Being willing to make hard choices during a planning meeting.
Balancing the interests of competing stakeholders.
Program Manager
Program Managers can perform both Project & Program Manager roles. On a Scrum team, Program Managers usually perform both Program Manager & Scrum Master roles unless another team member is assigned to be Scrum Master.
Role definition
Horizontal (Across the product lines, projects, x-functional teams)
A rational voice to drive the cross-functional core team to solve problems and make decisions
Impartial – not biased to Product, nor to Engineering, nor any other group
Responsibilities
Program Management responsibilities
Manages planning process
Manages overall program schedule
Drives multiple releases/projects
Facilitates Release Planning & Retrospective
Provides access to tools and people
Owns all action items for the project until he/she finds the right owner
Owns reporting on project status, to all directions
Coordinates other release support
Responsible for risk assessment & mitigation
The Role is a peer to the Product Manager and the Engineering Manager on the release/project
Educates/Enforces agreed upon processes & methodology rules
The title was my status on IM until Saturday April 12, which was Yuri’s Night. Erica and I went to the best local place to celebrate, the NASA Ames Research Center. My one regret is that we did not go as early as possible and stay the whole time. Attending an early morning motorcycle Basic RiderCourse prevented that.
One of the best installations for me was that of the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group. One of the scientists had made steel-caged AI balls of about 2.5 feet in diameter. In the middle on a perpendicular axis was a motor. Lights and cameras mounted on the motor as well. Their directive is to find their position as accurately as possible using on board GPS. It allows them to know the location of each other. The system can be overridden with a radio remote, or a program. The inventor was telling us about the choreograph
dances they were doing out in Black Rock City. Many of the inventions looked like they would be at home out there.
The one thing which completely blew me away was a 3D mapping application lecture. It combined data at the lowest level of the earth’s terrain, and added on more layers so that the speaker was able to zoom back from the top of Everest to 2 billion light years out. It showed the constellations above us, and then zoomed back to show the distance of those stars as lines to the earth, like spikes going in every direction. He lit up a sphere of how far radio signals have traveled since the 1930s. Highlighting other solar systems, nebulae, galaxies, the microwave field, and on back. Insane patterns with a fractal image sort of look to them. I want to find the DVD but don’t even know what to search for.
A person known to the Billboard Liberation Front, Paul Addis, was arrested for lighting the man last night. The man burned after the lunar eclipse last night. The charred remains have been removed from the foundation and a new man will be up in time for the scheduled burn on Saturday.
With this year’s theme of the Green Man, it seems appropriate that this is the year someone pulled off the age-old joke of igniting it early. An outlaw working alone, Paul pulled off something which will be remembered for some time. At least he did it early enough in the week to have it rebuilt. This year, people at the event get a 2-for-1 deal with the burn.
That’s my status now. Although it’s not really true. My wife and I are keeping our home and someone will be sitting in it for us. Yeah, we might get out somewhere without any public utilities but it won’t be for long in duration and certainly not permanent. 
