Software the Agile Way....

When I first read the Agile values and principles, I found it really easy to understand as it talks really the basic things. And I thought this is already there in me and i know really well. But I was wrong. There is a deep meaning of each and every values and principles and understanding and implementing it, is a difficult job. But I took up the challenge and started learning about these and started implementing when I was just a software engineer. I volunteered for the role of Scrum Master and started applying these concepts. I learned during the implementation phase that before helping other understand and influence, I need to convince myself why this is helpful and how it is benefiting me. For example, instead of sending a formal email to my test engineer, I started going to his desk and started having the better interaction. This saved a lot of my time as I don't have to explain in email and i can close that issue quickly by having a quick interaction. This helped me to...

Whenever we set a goal, we or people who are concerned always ask when this goal going to be achieved. Basically, we start by setting a goal which is expected to deliver some value. How do we determine if this goal will actually result value.What is the measurement criteria of a goal. Consider an example, lets say your goal is to learn Python Programming language so that you can build professional websites and work for companies part time to provide solution in Python. How will you measure value. First of all this is a individual goal which means no one is affected by this goal, however if this goal is set by the employer then concerned people will be your manager who would like to consider you in the python projects. So how will you determine the size of this goal and duration it will take to achieve. And the way to achieve the determine is through planning ! There are 3 ways you may go ahead planning for this goal: Over- Planning   - In this case you will just identify e...

Even though  Scrum Guide   clearly defines the roles and responsibility of Scrum Master despite this in practical situations there are multiple activities where a Scrum Master need to get involved. This sometimes makes things difficult for a Scrum Master. This means Scrum master has to deal with all types of situations if the team is not self organized and not practiced Scrum for a long time. Some of them are: Behavioral issues,  Not having enough backlog for coming sprints,  dependencies with external teams Required people not available during a scrum events leading to reschedule of the scrum event Skill set issue ( from PO or Team) leading to spill over Conflicts within the team members action items follow up Blockers like environment down Scrum Master managing 2-3 scrum teams (which are not self organized) will have to face these issues quite frequently which may lead to scrum master's backlog becoming too big which ultimately will be unorganized a...

There are number of articles written on Scrum Master role and responsibilities. Most of the articles talks about the behavioral  aspects which is definitely expected in a Scrum Master. As this is a Leadership role, people skills are needed to help coach the team. While these skills are needed, I want to talk about the technical skills which a Scrum master should have which can further grow a Scrum Master. If these technical skills  are known to Scrum Master, then it will help in better understanding the problem which your team is facing and this can also help in resolving any blocker that your team may have. This does not mean SM will debug and start resolving the issues on his own. SM with these tech skills will ask questions which can uncover the unknown areas and can lead to solution. here's the top technical skills which I strongly recommend a SM to have: Tech stack- Be aware of the tech stack your team is using. Your team may be using Java /python/.NET for the ba...

The first is the number of defects found after development.  An  XP  team should have dramatically fewer defects in its first deployment and make rapid progress from there. Some  XP  teams that have been on the path of improvement for several years see only a handful of defects per year. No defect is acceptable; each is an opportunity for the team to learn and improve. The second metric is the time lag between the beginning of investment in an idea and when the idea first generates revenue.   Even small organizations typically find they take more than a year from investment to return. Gradually reducing the time from investment to return increases the amount and timeliness of feedback available to the whole team. Both post-development defects and investment-to-return are indicators of team effectiveness much as a speedometer is an indicator of speed. You don't make a car go faster by grabbing the speedometer needle and moving it over. If you wan...

“You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.” H Jackson Brown Jr Why sense of Urgency: In a complex product development especially which is just not an enhancement but development from the scratch, a sense of urgency is very much needed.  In today's fast changing world, if there is no sense of urgency then there is a high possibility that customer will leave you soon.  Who builds the sense of urgency: Leadership team need to build this and this is done by communicating the vision and value the product development will give. if the core team who is in charge of development do not know why they are building and what is the motivation then there is a high possibility that your development team will lose focus in building a world class product. How does Scrum/Agile helps: Product owner /Scrum Master in a typical Scrum model work in a aggressive mode especially with the dependent s...

This post will help to organization who has decided to adopt Agile but don't know where to start.The first thing that the organization leadership team need to brainstorm is what problems, issues they are facing now due to which they need change and adopt Agile. Identifying issues/problems with the current delivery framework would help defining a goal that they want to achieve with the new Agile framework. Some of the common issues that leadership often feels are in my opinion are: Though they have huge talent pool still they are delivering very less features to market and clients.  Though somehow the delivery happens with the current framework, the quality and satisfaction from customer is very less. They see a lot of issues in the product. Managing people and  aligning them to deliver a really complex and big project is getting difficult and as the current delivery framework has created a lot of chaos. Difficult to measure the value added by the current deliver...

Agile manifesto clearly says give more value to Individuals and Interaction than to process and tools. This means there can be occasions while building product/feature we come across change sometimes small enough (Remember, in a software development phase it is very much possible to get changes) that could be easily absorbed in a sprint but if team says we need to prioritize this in next sprint as this is a change and should be followed as a process then we really need to rethink on this. Scrum is a lightweight framework and this clearly means we should try to avoid too much of process. This "we" includes  Product owner,Team. When a change need to be accommodated within the sprint then team should see if this impacts overall plan for the sprint, if yes just talk to PO and negotiate with some low priority work. if no then they should just implement instead of wasting efforts in following process. And at the same Product owner should try to think through the solu...