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!

Gangplank is a place and movement that redirects us to see the people. Where we see the value of tapping the full human, not just functional skills for a corporate machine. My work to bring agile concepts into corporate environments is a similar effort. Gangplank strengthens me in my quests.

Please step over and give the post a read.  If you don’t know about Gangplank, I hope this will provide your first taste of that community.  Lot’s of people there live and breathe the principles of Agile!

It’s December.  Time for gifts and good feelings.  Time for another free class!

As I did in September, I’ll be teaching the four-hour workshop “AGL-101 ntroduction to Agile and SCRUM“ on Saturday, December 18th.  This is a no cost workshop where we will explore the basics of the Agile Manifesto and the Scrum Agile Framework. The class will be held at Gangplank HQ in downtown Chandler, Arizona.

Gangplank Academy

Gangplank is a wonderful dream made real by Derek Neighbors, Jade Meskill and other community minded people.  It is community centered co-working at no cost, and therefore priceless.  Visit their site to learn more about their work.  Especially read the Gangplank Manifesto which, in my opinion, drives Agile values into the realm of community building.

One of the efforts of Gangplank is to provide education opportunities for the community.  They work to provide the infrastructure for people to share expertise and learn from one another.  Regular business and technical “brown bag” sessions happen every week.  Other conferences and events are scheduled regularly.  All of these events together are create The Gangplank Academy where learning on many subjects and for all ages takes place.  This workshop is designated as “AGL-101″ since it is part of the classes of Gangplank Academy.

AGL-101

I am hoping for a great mix of Agile and Scrum knowledge as well as a mix of work focus in this class.  Software projects have traditionally been the focus of Scrum application.  This is logical since it was created from that industry.  However, creators of software product aren’t the only ones who can benefit from Agile values and Scrum.  Management, marketing, operations and other facets of the business of production can be improved by application of high interaction and clear communication.  I encourage you to invite your peers and people “outside” of software and engineering work to spend this bit of time to learn with us.

RSVP

The event is available on Facebook.  Pease RSVP on that page so we can plan for the class size.

One attendee has promised to bring donuts or bagels.  Which do you want?

Gangplank Academy

Gangplank is a wonderful dream made real by Derek Neighbors, Jade Meskill and other community minded people.  It is community centered co-working at no cost, and therefore priceless.  Visit their site to learn more about their work.  Especially read the Gangplank Manifesto which, in my opinion, drives Agile values into the realm of community building.

One of the efforts of Gangplank is to provide education opportunities for the community.  They work to provide the infrastructure for people to share expertise and learn from one another.  Regular business and technical “brown bag” sessions happen every week.  Other conferences and events are scheduled regularly.  All of these events together are create The Gangplank Academy where learning on many subjects and for all ages takes place.  This workshop is designated as “AGL-101″ since it is part of the classes of Gangplank Academy.

AGL-101

I am hoping for a great mix of Agile and Scrum knowledge as well as a mix of work focus in this class.  Software projects have traditionally been the focus of Scrum application.  This is logical since it was created from that industry.  However, creators of software product aren’t the only ones who can benefit from Agile values and Scrum.  Management, marketing, operations and other facets of the business of production can be improved by application of high interaction and clear communication.  I encourage you to invite your peers and people “outside” of software and engineering work to spend this bit of time to learn with us.

RSVP

The event is available on Facebook.  If you would, please RSVP on the page.  This will help us plan for the proper room and tailor the class appropriately.  Comment on the event page too.  All the communication we can get helps us help you!

Last Saturday, May 15th, was the seventh incarnation of Desert Code Camp.  As I briefly announced before, Code Camp is a day of volunteer presenters and attendees bent on learning from each other.  I throughly enjoy these events.

Deeper Into Scrum

My first session was “Going Deeper Into Scrum, An Agile Journey” where the goal was not to teach Scrum but to find places where using the framework is difficult for the attendees, and then talk about those places.

The room was full and quiet, too quiet at first.  We soon got things going with a definition of the Scrum framework.  I drew the flow, cerimonies and artifacts on the board, answering a few questions as we went.  I then invited the attendees to write on the sticky notes distributed around the room.  They wrote one point or item of difficulty with Scrum on each note.  They were invited to the front of the room to place their notes on or near the part of Scrum effected by the note.

The resulting board was awesome!

I then did my best to bring out the issues on the sticky notes, grouping them or pulling them into the discussion as the conversation flowed.  Several of the attendees were very helpful with questions and answers as we shared possible corrections to the difficulties.  I’m sure we did not address all the notes in the remaining time for our hour.  I do hope people learned and shared some gems of help that they can apply to becoming more Agile with Scrum.

Lunch Time

30 minutes was set aside for lunch time.  This started directly after my first session.  Due to the nature of such a conference, scheduling is done as best the volunteers can with the knowledge they have.  In my case, the second session I was teaching immediately followed lunch.  By the time I finished excellent after class one-on-one discussions and clean-up, it was time to setup the next class in a different room.  Lunch for me would have to wait!  (Thank goodness for granola bars!)

Agile Manifesto and Code

I encountered a difficulty with this session because of the classroom layout.  My plan was to use slides with the four values and twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto and use the marker board for supporting discussion visuals.  The projection screen covered the marker board.  I opted to use the slides, since the Agile Manifesto was the text and writing out all of it would kill the flow

The title of the presentation was “The Agile Manifesto – What it means to the code and the coder.”  We approached this by defining each value and principle of the manifesto and then discussing what the code would look like and the coder would be doing if they follow the manifesto.

The discussion resulted in many mentions of continuous integration, TDD, paring, refactoring and many other development practices.  There were also questions around supporting the manifesto in different business environments such as large vs. small projects.  I enjoyed the banter and peer education that was going on.

Community

A large thanks to:

• DeVry University for providing their campus and classrooms for the event.
• Joseph Guadagno, Camp Director, and all the other volunteers I didn’t see but must have been helping.
• The people in the sessions I led.  There are many people in the Phoenix area working to improve and learn.  They have many questions.  They are bravely working on many impediments.  They are awesome!

That is a hard question to answer.  Not for a lack of information, but because there is so much out there.  A great problem!

To answer the question I just sat down and started typing a flow of information.  Below is the email I sent to the him, largely unchanged.  Eventually I should turn this into a polished document.  I hope you find it valuable and get a starting point that works for you!

Learning

First, I have a few Agile learning philosophy tips.  I’m sure you have your own learning style and I don’t want to pre-empt that, just give you a frame of mind.

Focus on “academic” (pure) knowledge before you dive into “useful” (applied) knowledge.  But, remember that full understanding doesn’t come without application.

There are many things about Agile that are so different in thinking to traditional project and people management that we may want to reject some parts and pieces right off the bat.  Suppress this reaction by seeking to first academically understand the concepts and practices. Like you are just taking a class in college that is a general education requirement with no thought of actually applying it after the final exam.  But you do need to get an “A” on the final, so learn the topic.

Work through the application stages of knowledge.  A concept pulled into Agile from marshal arts is “Shu-Ha-Ri”

• Shu - You learn and do the basics, sometimes without knowing why, because the masters say so.
• Ha - You begin to mix your own experience into the basics, learning where your knowledge can enhance the new knowledge.
• Ri - You are a master and the basics are just part of what you do, are now part of your experience.

Individuals, teams and enterprises go through these stages all the time.  The hardest is to accept the Shu stage because we have to unlearn other habits and trust the new knowledge.

It’s about people

As I stated in my presentation, Agile is about people.  Yes, eXtreme Programming (XP) is a set of Agile practices that tell developers to pair program and other specific things.  Yes, Scrum is a definition of certain meetings, documents etc. that help a team work in a more Agile fashion.  But these and other Agile frameworks are designed the way they are because it is the best way for people to communicate and work together.  Don’t let the practices become more important than the people.

Agile Manifesto

The definition of “Agile” may be ambiguous to you.  It also takes some abuse in companies who claim to be Agile but really only have some of the outward practices without following the true spirit of the movement.  To remove this confusion, go to the Agile Manifesto website, read, study and learn the statements and the principles.  If you are working to follow these ideals, you are becoming Agile.

Frameworks

The Agile Manifesto was created by smart people who had already developed one development framework or another, realized they had some common foundation and got together to define that foundation.  So, one of the best was to start being Agile is by learning and using a framework. The more popular frameworks (sometimes called methodologies) are, in my view:

• Scrum – The one with the most traction and widest use.  It is a project management level framework that focuses on the development team.  It is simple to understand the basics and get started but that makes it simple to do the motions without being Agile.  I started with this framework.
• eXtreme Programming – XP is also well known but not widely implemented.  It has some of the same elements of Scrum but emphasizes engineering practices where Scrum does not.  Pair programming is the most well known element of XP and probably the reason many reject it. XP and Scrum work very well together.
• Kanban – This one is currently gaining in popularity and originated out of lean manufacturing ideas.  It concentrates on work flow, making the flow very visible, thereby exposing bottle necks and waste that should be corrected.

I found Scrum the easiest to personally pick up and to evangelize into the enterprise.  Practicing it for three years now, I have much still to learn and am seeking wider Agile knowledge.

Online Resources

The internet is FULL of great resources about Agile.  Videos, presentations, blogs and email lists abound.  And it is just as good as what you find in books.  So don’t be afraid to go searching for things.  You will find treasures!  Let me give you some starting points.

• http://mountaingoatsoftware.com – This is Mike Cohn’s website.  He has written excellent books on Agile like “Agile Estimating and Planning” The site is full of good ideas and, I think, the slides of every presentation he has ever given.  A gold mine for learning.
• http://implementingscrum.com – This is Micheal Vizdos’s website, a Certified Scrum Trainer.  He uses cartoons to poke fun and knowledge about Scrum.  He was my ScrumMaster trainer and still helps me today. His training style is thoughtful and active.  If you want to take a course, he’d be a good trainer to pick.
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment/ – The email group for discussions of all things Scrum.  All the Agile luminaries, it seems, show up here and answer questions.  Troll the archive for great practical advise.  If I could never buy another book about Scrum, I’m not worried because this group has all the authors brain’s wired!
• http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7230144396191025011 – This is a video of Ken Schweber speaking a Google about Scrum.  This was the first video that hooked me into learning about Agile.  It’s worth the time even though Ken is a bit dry.
• If video is a good learning mode for you, check here: http://agileroots2009.confreaks.com/ for videos of all the session of the Agile Roots 2009 conference.  Great stuff there!
• http://phxsug.org – This is the Phoenix Scrum Users Group website that I mentioned at the end of my presentation.  We have monthly meetings on the 3rd Thrusday of the month.  We focus on Scrum but other frameworks come up from time to time.

Books

• Anything by Mike Cohn.
• “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” is awesome for doing this key element of team building practices.
• If you are introducing these practices into a workplace, you need to be a great change agent.  The book “Fearless Change” is indispensable knowledge for such an effort.

There are many more great books out there.

Try it!

The best way to learn is by doing.  Apply some of the principles and framework pieces as you can.  Try a retrospective or make a task board.  Use it, inspect how you did, adapt and improve.  That’s how it works.

Training

Education is compressed experience and a good class can jump start your improvement efforts.  If you don’t feel up to pushing change in you organization, hiring an Agile coach is a good investment.

Ask Questions

Find a community, site or friend.  Ask questions of them and yourself.  Ask here if you like since I like to answer!

Slides

This presentation is the first I have posted to SlideShare, an interesting experiment of itself.  Please have a look:

Questions

At the end of the presentation and after the presentation time, two smart people had some interesting questions.

Question 1 – When the client is expecting to know when it will be done and how much it will cost, how does a provider using Agile respond?

Dallin Harris of Skyhook Internet Marketing brought up this difficult topic.  Agile practitioners everywhere work at the difficult balancing act of providing the information the customer wants and educating them to understand the benefits of Agile iterations or sprints.

We discussed the finer points of productivity, such as always working on the currently most important feature, delivering finished parts as they are done at each sprint end and the ability to stop before every possible feature is created if the current version is enough.  We also found a direction point to the Product Backlog and how it feeds a release plan for the client to interact through.  I pointed him toward Mike Cohn’s excellent material around estimating and planning.

Question 2 – How do we get team cohesion if the Program Managers are assigning tasks?

David asked this question about a common problem in an organization transitioning from a more traditional structure.

The short answer: In such an environment, cohesion on the team is not possible.  Or, at least, it’s very hard!  When people in authority direct individuals on the team, the team cannot self-organize.  And, it’s not Agile.

We discussed how David needs to help the Program Managers direct desired work per team instead of per individual.  This has many benefits to the team, the Program Managers and the company.

• The team has a chance to become self-organizing.
• The team members are not wondering what they will be doing next, as they have a full sprint to work the plan.
• The Program Managers will see completed work sooner.
• The Program Managers will drive the company to ensure it is working on the most valuable features and projects first, providing focus.

These are the things David and I discussed.  I wish him well in his quest to increase agility where he works.

Twitterings

After the event I finally had a chance to look at my phone.  The mentions on Twitter had exploded!  That was very gratifying and I thank you all for the attention.  In particular, Bold Avenue was in the audience and live tweeting many of my significant points.  (Thank you, Stephanie!)

A great experience.  I learned a great deal and hope the community enjoyed my small contribution.

The True Measure of Agile

I’m passionate about Agile and the power it brings to the people who apply it as intended.  I’m also frustrated by strong evidence that many who speak the words of Agile development are only wrapping the same old practices in buzz.  This is very bad for Agile and developers everywhere.  So many times I’ve talked to engineers who “did Agile” or “did Scrum” and then proceed to describe a broken and painful experience of micro-management or loosely controlled chaos to failure.  Coaching someone back from such a false agile implementation is often harder than pulling them out of waterfall.

The goal of my presentation was to point people back to the Agile Manifesto, to consider that there are meanings and values behind those words.  Pick a framework, like Scrum or XP.  Combine with practices like TDD and continuous integration.  Do your “stand-up” meeting sitting down if you want.  But make sure you check against the Agile Manifesto to keep driving to what Agile really means.  That if those values are promoted by what you are doing, whatever it is, you are on the “true Agile” path.

My slides are available below for download and reuse.  Because the Ignite format allows only 15 seconds per non-stop slide, there are few words, if any, on most of them.  Perhaps you will find better words than mine to fill in!  Let me know what you think of the message you get from them.  The video will be posted soon at the event web page.  Then you can compare what you thought to what I said.

• Download presentation as an ODP. (Open Document Presentation format, as with OpenOffice.org Impress)
• Download presentation as a PDF.

What I Learned

All of the presentations were great! A few points that stood out for me were:

• Tomasz Stechly (@tstechly) introduced me to the concept and benefits of immutable code.  I’m now sorry to say it’s not a technique I have looked into very much.
• Derek Neighbors (@dneighbors) highlighted that we have too much information to slog through every day and that geo-location is one of the ways we can filter the flood to get at what is relevant where we are standing right now.
• Leo Godin (@leogodin217) re-enforced many of the things I read about getting to done and giving what the customer wants, a solution.
• Clayton Lengel-Zigich (@claytonlz) told 10 fables from Aesop and applied each of them to software development, including pair programming and TDD!

All of the presentations were great! I said that already and I’ll say it again, if anyone asks.  Such talent in the Phoenix area!

Thank You

I give thanks to everyone who sponsored, organized, promoted and spoke.  Especially I thank the audience for an awesome experience!