Last night at the BayAPLN, Jean Tabaka from Rally Software gave a presentation about the typical failure modes of Agile. This is distilled from her observations and being asked from people who have heard the hype, what are the real problems with adopting an Agile approach?
Which is your current favorite?
Checkbook commitment doesn’t support organizational change management. CEOs create within the company their own personal family dysfunction.
Culture doesn’t support change. Reward plan, and a static and prescriptive standard of work. Try to keep cross-organizational uniformity and use PMO as enforcers.
Do not have retrospectives, or they are bad. Actions which come out get ignored or written off.
In a race to finish features, the infrastructure gets worse and architecture becomes unstable. Distributed teams make this worse.
Lack of collaboration in planning. Like having the whole team for release planning.
None or too many Product Owners. Both cases look the same. Agile is yet another hat to wear and the person is already too busy. They check out and ask the team to just do Agile. Can’t get past the ‘this sucks’ phase of adoption if the business is not bought in.
Bad Scrum Master which uses a command and control style with the team to look faster, yet in reality slows things down. Low morale lowers IQ. Take decisions away and it actually makes people stupider!
No on-site evangelist. If the teams are distributed, need one at every site. Can’t reap the benefits of Agile or offshore without an on-site coach at each location.
No solid team. Actually missed this one, inferred. Empowered teams amplify learning.
Traditional performance appraisals. Individual heroics rewarded, glad you’re not a team player!
Revert to traditional. Change is hard. Hit the threshold where this sucks. Revert back to old ways of doing business.
Jean then challenged the group to choose the one issue they would like to see changed at their work and come up with an action plan right now to change it. In a month, retrospect on how well it went. Perhaps that would be an interesting open space subject in a couple of meetings for the BayAPLN?
I’m an only child. Some people ask if I feel like I missed out. I don’t know what they mean.
I shake the hand of any people who tell me they are a native of Colorado as well.
Consuming adult beverages is enjoyable, and I have a low tolerance so it’s easy for me to get a light buzz. Dangerous for me to consume in quantity and so I merely sip.
The pinnacle of existence for me is enjoying a day of deep, untracked powder.
I don’t like ’stuff’ and tend to give away or get rid of many things.
Some people think I am quiet and reserved. I wonder how they got that impression.
Experiences delight me and I seek out new ones all the time.
I like to turn a light on before turning the previous light off as I walk through the house. Sometimes it means I walk in serial laps.
Actually, I prefer to leave the lights off and let my eyes and other senses adjust.
I called a meeting with my principal to explain why I should move from 4th to 6th grade, she let me. It just seemed to me like 12+ years in formal education a lot of my life. More than I had lived at the time.
My first crush was on Kristy McNichol in ‘Family’ and established my penchant to fall for the tom-boy.
My second crush was on Blondie and established my penchant to fall for wild women.
Around this time I insisted people call me Tim. Nobody did.
I had surgery on my left foot due to a 1 in a million condition. If it had failed, I would hardly be able to walk now. Instead, it just merely hurts.
I went to Spain to visit a friend, and lost my appendix. Good thing I had my bi-lingual friend who grew up in the area to help me.
There are 7-year-olds who have more drawing talent than me. Do not choose me for Pictionary.
Having change in my pocket drives me crazy.
I’ve never worn a watch.
People compliment me on my touching eulogies. It’s melancholic to be a good speaker for the dead.
I’m myopically prescient. What I see, happens about 3 seconds later.
Sometimes I become aware that I am dreaming and even more rarely I can start actively creating it.
Alaska is the only state I’ve not seen, and I’ve never been to Mexico.
I am not, and never have been, a note taker.
Working for a paycheck always seemed to get in the way of life. What I am doing now and the compensation fits my lifestyle much better.
My wit may be esoteric and therefore I appear to be just strange to some.
Sounding boards are my friends and family which offer their permission for me to test their reaction to a statement or feeling of mine. Through discussion with knowledge experts and researching their work, I look to the informed opinions of those with solid facts, or experience with my problem domain. Awareness of the present moment is enhanced for me through meditation and physical activity; such as hiking, dancing, drawing or snowboarding. Moving in and out of the present keeps me in tune with my body, thoughts, feelings and intuition when pondering questions and come to a realization of how to proceed.
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
Last night at the BayAPLN, Jean Tabaka from Rally Software gave a presentation about the typical failure modes of Agile. This is distilled from her observations and being asked from people who have heard the hype, what are the real problems with adopting an Agile approach?
