Well, we just had to follow-up this year to see how right (or wrong) we were and to throw out some prognostications for 2012. Enjoy the ScrumCast special episode 2012 Predictions.

Documents Say…

The Agile and Scrum literature, including training classes, recommend a team size of “seven, plus or minus two.”  This means a Scrum team should have 5-9 members as the ideal size.  In Scrum this number includes the Product Owner and ScrumMaster.  There are many reasons for this recommendation:

• A team smaller than five decreases diversity of skills, opinion and background too much, which hurts creative capacity.
• Imagine a retrospective on a team of three people. There is a strong tendency toward either a regular complaint session or mutual admiration society.  Neither of these would lead to productive improvements very often.
• A large team requires too many relationships at once.  For example, every member of a 10-person team has nine relationships to maintain, with a total of 90 relationships in the team.  Add an 11th member and the number of relationships goes up to 110!
• The overhead of coordination grows with team size along with the difficulty in maintaining relevance between the members.

Experience Says…

I was once the ScrumMaster of a seven person team.  We were starting the creation of the base technology for a the company’s next generation of products.  Exciting stuff!  We hired or pulled people from other projects to grow the team as the work progressed.  At around twelve members I began asking about splitting the team, to keep the size reasonable.  We decided against it, that we wanted everyone to be aware of what was happening in this complex work.

And the team continued to grow.  Software engineers, hardware engineers, VHDL (embedded stuff) designers and so on were added.  Soon we had 26 on the team.  Yes, it was big, way too big.  We still held our daily stand-up meetings and kept them to 15 minutes or less most of the time.  We worked hard to keep meetings tight and relevant.  And we failed at keeping the energy up.

Splitting Is Good To Do

After several sprints we finally had consensus to split the team into three.  Let me paraphrase some things people said about their new team size after the first sprint:

• Retrospectives are better because it is easier to write items for “well” and “improve” because didn’t have to worry about boring other members with things they don’t care about.
• Daily meetings were not an interruption of hearing about things I wasn’t working on.  I could work, go to the meeting and go back to work with the same thread of thought.
• My team members are helping me more often now. I guess they didn’t really see when help was needed when we had such a large team.

Large or Small, Watch

Whether your team or teams are large or small, watch what is happening.  Pay attention to the information flowing in meetings and during the work.  Especially give a strong look at what is happening in the retrospectives.  Are things discussed shallow or repetitive?  Is there confusion when clarity was expected?  So some members feel alone in the team?  The size of the team may be something you can change to remove such doldrums and re-energize the communication!

As soon as someone gives analytical minds a number and a way to produce that number, we naturally go to work digging into its meaning. Analysis is fine when it leads to beneficial results. Many times such research leads to wasted time at best and damaging side effects at worst. Some examples:

• Velocity was average last sprint. We know we can do better so let’s push this sprint to get +10 on that number!
• The VP says she’ll take us out to the movies if we can increase our velocity by 25% this iteration.
• Team Tiger completed 30 points last sprint and we only got 23. We need to do better than them!

Before we look at these examples further, let’s take a road trip.

Driving Velocity

I live in the Phoenix, Arizona, USA metro area. Because my wife (especially) and I enjoy a famous rodent’s home in southern California, we’ve often made the 350 mile drive to that neighboring state. We know the route fairly well.  We also know that sometimes traffic, detours or other things might interfere with our usual progress.

When we arrive at the hotel our conversations about the trip never sound like:

• We averaged about 62 miles per hour this time. We know we can do better so let’s push to get +10 on that number on the way back!
• Mom says she’ll buy us extra churros if we can bump our speed average by 25% next time we come.
• My buddy Harvey drives at 80 miles per hour on this same route and we only do around 70. We need to do better than Harvey next time!

Do you talk about velocity like that after a road trip? Why not? Because the velocity is not what we are should be delivering. Let’s read that again.

Velocity is not what we are delivering.

On a road trip we are delivering a destination by a more or less certain time. While driving, velocity is important in the moment of driving, in consideration of safety and to avoid speeding tickets. No one cares if we could have gone 78 miles per hour instead of 74 in the stretch between Tonopah and Quartzite once we are in view of an artificial Matterhorn mountain!

Velocity Used Well

The three bad examples I started with all use past velocity and even some other team’s velocity. They all center the conversation around velocity, as if customers want more and more story points! Customers want working software and everything we do should be in support of delivering working software, not velocity.

I promise, if managers ask teams to deliver velocity, they will.  Most likely by cutting quality or simply increasing the scale of work size estimates, which has little to do with delivering more product.  So use velocity as an indicator, as it is used in driving.

• The team velocity now is an indicator of how much work can be done in the next sprint.
• Velocity is an indicator of what will be included within the current series of iterations making up the release.
• Velocity highlights that something is going really well or needs improvement. The improvement doesn’t come by raising velocity, it comes by making the improvement.

Let’s revisit our statements one more time, where velocity plays a part but is not the focus.

• Velocity was average last sprint. Why didn’t our new unit-test framework give us the boost we expected?
• The VP says she’ll take us out to the movies if we can get that video feature done this iteration.
• Team Tiger delivered all their stories last sprint. We need to ask them what is working so well!

There is so much more to say about velocity and how to use it. Please keep in mind the possible negative effects when we take our eyes of the product and start seeking credit for a number. And remember to deliver working software, a product, customer value, not points!

Projects need teams?

It is a very common practice for companies to manage work into projects.  Customers understand this and portfolio management, even management of larger projects, tends to naturally fall into divisions of projects.  The difficulty is that companies naturally extend this into creating a project centric view of all process.  What equipment does the project need?  Which lab facilities are available for the project?  Who are the resources with the right skills?

That last question is about people.  When we think of people as “resources” and “skill sets” we start to see them as interchangeable parts of a machine that will work on a project.  So we take a group of people, many who have never worked together, and assign them to a project and call them a team.  Because, if you are on the same project, you must be a team, right?

Preventing a team

Teams need time to learn how to work together, to figure out likes, dislikes and strengths of each member and time to develop an identity and trust.  These things don’t happen by declaration and don’t happen in one week or even one month.  When these deep interaction attributes solidify, the group of individuals becomes a team.  Great teams can take on whatever you throw at them!

The habit of swapping people in and out of teams is destructive to building these connections and high-bandwidth communication channels.  Ester Derby points out some of these bad effects:

Plucking people off the team or poking people into the team causes a re-set in the team forming process. Mess with the membership often enough, and people will stop trying. When team membership feels like a revolving door, individuals won’t put in the effort to form team bonds. You may get a group that functions reasonably well, but you’ll miss out on the team effect.

It is surprising to me that we fail to see the cost of breaking apart a team.  In the project-centric managing view, a project ends so the team gets split apart on new projects.  And we throw away the investment we made over months of work, choosing instead to pay the cost of re-building a high-performing team.

Teams need projects!

If creating teams around projects is the bad for true teamwork, what do we do with teams and projects?  The Agile Manifesto has an answer in it’s fifth principle:

Build projects around motivated individuals.  Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Once you have a high-performing team, define projects that they can do.  Work with your customers to create a project that your teams have already proven that they can build and impress people doing.  The costs of dividing people and rebuilding trust, communication and capabilities is very high.  And your teams who have learned how to act as one will be happier to know their joint contribution is valued.

By the way, that team who was afraid of breaking up had a happy ending.  We figured out with management and company needs how they could stay together and continue impressing customers. It was a nice beginning to that ending!

I have seen a common thread all through my career.  A problem experienced seemingly everywhere, at all levels, including with myself.  This problem causes all sorts of dysfunctions and symtoms, from frustration and poor quality to wasted effort and missed deadlines.  It’s a hard problem to solve because most of our cultures, individual to large corporations, are counter to the solution.

The problem is trying to do too much.  A solution is limiting work in progress.

Limiting WIP

Some rights reserved by Tim Green aka atoach on Flickr.com

This is a concept usually connected with Lean and Kanban.  The idea is that work in progress (WIP) is a liability, it is “inventory.” As such WIP represents costs expended without yet realizing value.  Therefore limiting the amount of WIP makes sense from a cost perspective.  And it is more than that.

Problems from unlimited WIP

I have a wife, children, work, hobbies, volunteer projects, church, community events, etc. that I like to participate with.  My ability to pay attention and build any one of these areas suffers if I try to do all of them at once.  For example, my wife dislikes my habit of checking my phone during our date night evenings.  And she is right!

Many companies and even clubs or other groups take on too many things.  For example, that $500,000 contract was too good to pass up, but now the $5,000,000 project is late.  Other effects include:

• Employee and personal burn out.
• Expectations of constant over-time by executives and developers.
• High levels of interruption and context-switching.
• Low quality by taking short cuts because there is so much other work to do.
• Stale features, half-developed that clutter code and minds.
• All the requirements are top priority and all must be in the release or product.
• More meetings to coordinate sharing of people between more projects.
• And many other bad things.

Scrum and unlimited WIP

Scrum teams also suffer from situations of unlimited work in progress.  There are, of course, the issues of interruptions from outside the team and Sprint which are an organizational symptom.  Even if such external issues are not present, unlimited WIP in the team can happen:

• Sprint Planning with stories written such that each team member has stories assigned specific to their individual skills.
• Defining stories that take the entire Sprint to complete.
• No one has time to help team mates with difficulties.
• At the end of the Sprint all or most of the stories are started but few are actually done.

Limit WIP

Simply creating limits on WIP, the number of items allowed to be in process at one time, helps to solve these issues. If I choose my personal projects carefully I can more deeply enjoy the things that really matter. Organizations that discipline themselves to limit work in progress create a culture of focus and urgency.  Teams that “swarm” on stories and make sure Sprint items get done before taking on more work find higher quality, better team cohesion and increased ability to get work done.

How do you sent limits?

Empower yourself and people who you work with to say no.  For example, the VP does not have the right view and information to know if his “little side job” is really as little as imagined nor the knowledge to know how such a diversion will effect the larger projects.  The developer should be allowed to decline and have that answer stick.

Teams need to decide how many stories in a Sprint can be started but not done.  And they need to stick to it, getting things done before starting something new.

Most important, you will find that setting WIP limits will reveal problems.  Stories will not get done and instead of just starting the next story the team will have to figure out and address why current stories in progress are not done.  Organizations will see opportunities go by and will have to figure out which are the most important and what is really needed to support more projects instead of just saying yes and delivering late.  This is all good!

WIP limits are a powerful tool for uncovering places of improvement and finding the correct focus.  Use them, apply them, learn and grow from them.  You really can do more by forcing yourself to do less all at once.

Startup Weekend Chandler

Starting yesterday evening and going on today through tomorrow is the Startup Weekend Chandler event. These events are about learning and networking in an extreme environment to create a company in one weekend. People show up with product ideas, form teams and work on building as much as they can until the weekend is over. Very intense.

I am participating as a mentor to the teams. Last night I was swamped with requests of quick overviews of Scrum and Agile and how it could apply in such a fast paced development run. 10-15 minutes of talking together does not an education make. Still, I think the teams here are applying some of what we talked about. I see team boards and sticky notes all around Gangplank!

Donation-only Agile Training

On Saturday, July 23rd, my friend and superb Agile Coach Bachan Anand will lead a one-day Scrum and Agile training class at Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona. If seen the content, it is great information and a bargain experience for the $195 price. What is special is that Bachan is doing this also on a donation basis. If you are in transition between positions you can pay what you want for the class. Go to the registration page and sign up your whole team! It will be a great experiential learning event.

Meanwhile, In Costa Rica…

I have been invited to speak at the AgileFest conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, July 28-29. The agenda is full of excellent presentations. I’ll be doing two sessions and participating in a third to help people understand different specific aspects of applying Agile to real world work. You are welcome to fly down and join us in a beautiful country!

Finally, Certified ScrumMaster Workshop

Monday and Tuesday, August 1-2 Micheal Vizdos will be in town to offer his unique workshop for a ScrumMaster certification from the Scrum Alliance. I will be co-training with him and enjoying his thoughtful, interactive style. Please sign up right away as the seats are going fast for this popular class.

Look for more posts from me, more often. Neglect of this channel is not good for me. Or you!

Scrum – Ease The Hard Parts

I have participated in this volunteer event in the past and this Saturday is no exception.  I will lead a session at 10:15 AM where we will review the Scrum framework and discuss the places where the framework can be hard to implement.  We will share experiences and techniques for getting through these places for even better performance.

Agile Content Abounds!

Before I list the many sessions about Agile and Scrum, let me remind you of an important point.  Desert Code Camp is free, as in no-cost.  A free opportunity to learn, ask questions and discover gems from practitioners sharing their experience.  Find a session or two or more to take advantage of this community gift!

Here are the sessions related to Agile and Scrum, gleaned from the schedule for you!

• Thinking Agile by Martin Nagel
• Scrum . . And by Ken Ward
• Introduction to Domain Driven Design by Craig Berntson
• Behavior Driven Development From The Trenches by Lee Brandt
• Everyday Extreme Programming (XP) by Clayton Lengel-Zigich
• How To Manage Self-Organizing Teams by Jade Meskill
• User Stories and Release Planning – Difficulties and Nuggets by Perry Reinert

Classes for Kids

There are a number of sessions designed specifically for children to get hands-on experience programming and creating.  Thanks to Gangplank Jr., you can bring your young offspring to learn programming with Scratch, build Lego robots and other things.  Check the schedule for these classes marked with minimum age appropriate notation.

It will be a great Saturday!  If you don’t attend my session, look around for me to say hello before the day is done.

Creative Sparks

They are everywhere!  Right now, near you, is another person.  That person cares about something, cares enough that they could talk about it with enthusiasm, energy and sparks!  And even if you didn’t really care about the subject, their enthusiasm just might rub off on you.

One of the things that helps create a high performing team is diversity of opinion, personal culture and points of view.  Make sure you help team members give each other the gift of passion.  Hold learning events to present about hobbies.  Ask for book reviews or presentations on some new technology.  Heck, go bowling.  Do things that expose your people to new ideas.  One day those “unrelated” creative sparks will trigger your next market-winning innovation!

Check out more inspiring presentations at the Ignite Phoenix YouTube Channel.  What will they inspire you and your team to do?

Business Value

The organizers suggested a presentation that would “show how Agile practices provided business value.”  Well, that’s certainly something that I promote and believe!  I used my year old presentation from a Brown Bag at Gangplank as a base to something better:

Answering Questions

The event was very well attended.  The number of people looking, doing, implementing Agile practices in Phoenix is definitely on the rise!  The 15 minute question time after my presentation was filled with insightful discussion that showed experience.  Just before lunch, each vendor presenter and myself continued to answer questions as a panel.  We could have gone on and on I think, except lunch was ready.

I’m excited by what I saw at the event.  Many people working to improve, figuring out how Agile practices can benefit them and their work.  I hope they find the success they need, with me helping or not!

Context

If Agile is about people, it’s surely about communication.  Let’s start by looking at a few things we know about communication:

• Some say human communication is only 7% words while the remaining 93% is verbal and visual (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian).  While some might argue the exact ratio, I agree that face-to-face communication is by far the best way to share information and create.
• The ability to grasp abstract subjects and invent is severely damaged by context switches and distractions.
• Understanding the history and context of a subject increases the ability to be productive in that subject.
• Any change in the membership of a group (team) will disrupt the relationships and communication paths of the group.  It will take time to reestablish the previous levels of efficiency.
• Any person highly experienced in a general skill area will need to learn the basics of any specific situation before they can be fully productive in that specific situation.

Almost anyone would find the above statements as reasonable, even intuitive.  And yet, point by point, common real life situations continue every day:

• Work environments are designed such that the use of anything more than email, instant messaging and documents very difficult, if not impossible.  IT policies and work requirements force dependency on only words and eliminate the rich audio and visual channels we naturally know.
• Day after day we are required to change projects, product focus and attention.  Some engineers I know have as many as 12 or more projects to keep in the air.  Details are lost in the context switches.
• Developers and other workers are thrown into projects with no information about the purpose of the work, the roles of the people involved or the value of the product.  Instead of listening and building the confusion of purpose reigns.
• Individuals are “resources” to be plugged in and out of “teams” at will and whim.  Long term relationships with shared experiences building high communication connections never happen.
• Questions about basic information are met with chastisements from peers and managers.  For some reason people are expected to know already without any training or orientation.  People learn to not ask questions.

Innovation Sabotage

Pushing people into situations of poor communication, severing communication paths and obfuscating information will not produce real innovation.  Working harder and longer will not make up for the damage.

I’ve attended meetings where top executives tout technology and projects that will propel the company to new heights of profitability.  They point out the places in the plan where differentiating innovation will be created.  Difficult problems will be solved to create the products and success that will come.

And, the company does not allow the use of internet video conferencing.  And defines projects based on “resource” skills without regard to geographic location.  And has key projects running with no defined structure or governance models.  And considers “fire fighting” just the way the industry works.  And requires heavy sign off processes by people who don’t know what they are approving.

Many times the disconnect is both huge and invisible to the executives and even the people working under fog and confusion.

Agile Means Transparency

To be Agile means communication about everything.  Finding ways to easily share everything such that when data is needed, it is readily discovered.

• Don’t eliminate up to 93% of human communication capability, enhance it.  Put teams in their own rooms, not cubes or offices.  Design product development structures to support co-location instead of distribution of people.
• Give teams goals that don’t change all the time and members that are dedicated to the team, not split multiple ways.
• Explicitly define and publish team structures.  Allow new people to be trained on products and processes before they are required to be fully productive.  Organize the information in radiators that passively keep people in the know. Give people time to learn them.
• Projects and products come and go.  Teams should not.  Allow deep relationships to form and cultivate over time from project to project.  Soon you’ll have teams that can do anything you throw at them.
• Basic questions should be welcomed and the answers immediately available.

People Problem, People Solution

Every problem is a people problem.  Every single one.  Ask people to solve the problems.  If you are a manager, business owner, vice president, you are the creator of the work environment.  Don’t forget the people and people attributes.  The power of people allowed to communicate fully is far beyond any technology or process.  ”Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” is not just some feel-good mantra.  It is what we need to solve our problems and innovate!