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!

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?

I learned some interesting things that I’ll try to pass on here.

Where You Are

The attendees of the workshop were a diverse group:  A CEO of a web development firm, a web application developer, a project manager and a high-level manager of development for an insurance company.  Each of them had important and different views of Scrum and Agile. Best of all, each of them were highly engaged in learning.

As we discussed, I saw the each of them being open and honest about their experience and knowledge around Scrum.  They were speaking from “where they were” in their own Agile journeys.  This empowered the rest of us to give them what they needed most out of the class.  Early expression of truth brought about meaningful discussion and value.

We all should do this in all our interactions, whether they be daily meetings, planning or talking with our kids.  Where you are is not known to those around you.  If you help them see that place more clearly, the interaction will be far more valuable for them and you.

Experience Is Not Quite Everything

None of us in the room were new to Scrum.  We all had experience with the terms and the practice.  What do you do in a workshop on the Scrum framework with people who already know Scrum?  Mike masterfully structured the class to use the Scrum framework content as a framework for discussion.

Only reading books, watching videos or attending classes is shallow learning.  Agile is all about action and learning from that action.  And remember, combining learning with experience is powerful for building the next leap in action!

Application Teaches

The workshop was filled with interactive activities, from writing Product Backlog Items on cards to shuffling cards and folding boats.  The long-time practitioners on the team consistently expressed delight at the value of studying a concept and then applying it, even in a “contrived” environment.

Action is where the lesson is learned, just as it is in developing a product.

Keep Applying

Lastly I personally learned that continuous application of principles is needed in my own Agile practice.  It is easy to forget the basic little things that make all the difference.  Powerful things, like honesty, direct but polite disagreement and small pieces of a big vision can be more important than we know.  I promise to keep applying them if you will!

On Wednesday and Thursday, November 17-18 I will be co-teaching a Certified ScrumMaster Workshop.  I am not a Certified Scrum Trainer so Michael Vizdos will lead this workshop.  Participants will be ready to receive their ScrumMaster certification from the Scrum Alliance.  I’ll be his humble assistant as we help people improve their understanding of Scrum over those two days.

Mike Vizdos is known for his experience and thoughtful teaching style. He brings a great perspective of long experience and humor to the learning process. There is much to learn through the cartoons at his Implementing Scrum web site.  Several years ago Mike was the trainer for my own ScrumMaster certification.  He has since been a mentor for me, answering questions and continuing to be a guide through the difficult part of my Agile journey.  I am very excited for the opportunity to work with him in the classroom.

Register for the course with this link for $300 off the usual fee.

The course will be held in a modern classroom in historic downtown Chandler, Arizona.  Chandler is an easy 20 minute drive from central Phoenix.  The city is just finishing a series of downtown improvements with wide sidewalks and wonderful restaurants along the way.

Let me know if you are coming!

The first session is scheduled for 11:30 AM: Going Deeper Into Scrum, An Agile Journey.  Lunch follows so we have some incentive to end on time!

The next session is right after lunch at 1:00 PM: The Agile Manifesto – What it means to the code and the coder.  I promise to make the conversation interesting so we won’t fall into food sleepiness!

Even if you can’t attend my sessions, please come out to the camp to learn and interact with our great technical community.  Desert Code Camp is always no cost to everyone.  And we will get a free lunch to boot!

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!

Last week I conducted a workshop centered on the Product Backlog.  The focus was to help engineering understand the purpose, position and power of a properly groomed Product Backlog.  In attendance was about 20 people from engineering, engineering management to the VP level and from marketing.  The session went well, with several good conversations sparked during and after the meeting.

And, I learned something.

It’s hard to have a Product Backlog discussion without talking about estimating the stories.  I was using slides from one of Mike Cohn’s excellent “Agile Estimation and Planning” presentations.  The presentation includes a discussion of story points.  From previous conversations, I knew the group might have a hard time understanding the concept and value of story points.  They are used to trying estimates of real time.  Going into the discussion, I was not sure how to show them the value of story points.

We had a break just before the section on story points.  Knowing a slide for estimating in “Zoo Points” was coming up, I wrote a chart on the easel in anticipation.  The first column I headed with “Animal.”  I then solicited volunteers from the early arrivals and put their names on four additional columns.  They laughingly questioned what the animal heading was about.  I told them to wait and see.

We discussed the concept of a story point and hit the “Zoo Points” slide.  Asking everyone to quietly estimate each animal, I wrote the animal list down the first column.  Immediately questions were raised as to the scale or criteria that should be used to estimate the animals.  I reminded them, while writing the animal list, that story points don’t have units.  Some were quite puzzled.

The resulting "Zoo Points" table

I asked each of the four volunteers to tell me their estimation numbers in turn.  All but one provided reasonable numbers of less than ten, even though I had not told them what scale to use.  The fourth volunteer gave them all a five, claiming to not understand.  That was fine.  In discussion, we noted that the scale used and many of the values correlated, even without knowing what each person was using for criteria.  I then asked each volunteer what criteria they used, writing their answers at the bottom of their columns.  Size, danger, strength, etc. were among the answers.

As I wrote the different criteria, my epiphany occurred.  I excitedly stated it to the group as it had formed in my mind:

Unit-less story points allow multiple criteria to be included in the estimate without excluding ANY possible criteria.

If we had started out with a defined list of criteria, the list tends to exclude all other criteria.  It narrows and shuts out possibly important input.  For example, suppose the Product Owner were to state that estimation must take into account story size, difficulty and performance.  A team member will tend to naturally drop other criteria, such as maintainability, domain knowledge, architecture impacts and so on.  Unit-less story points make it easier to obtain all the criteria that concern all members of the team.

A secondary epiphany came quickly:

Unit-less story points allow these multiple criteria to be considered and included very efficiently.

The team can discuss all the criteria used by each team member to come up with their estimate.  But they don’t have to.  Each member could be thinking about completely different concerns, but if they all estimate a “five,” for example, discussion of the concerns is not needed.  All the criteria are built into the number without requiring discussion and argument about which concerns are more important.

Combining these values of story points with the efficiency of planning poker, the team can move on to getting more work done.  Maybe I should have seen these powerful aspects of story points before.  But I didn’t until standing in front of a powerful group, teaching and looking at story points in a new way.

The learning goes on!