Software the Agile Way....

It has been always asked what is a typical day look like for Scrum Master and I would say it is not the same every day. Here's why: Lets say it is 2 weeks sprint then during the first day SM is busy facilitating the Sprint planning and ensuring the team members have committed the stories which they find it fully confident. 2nd day onwards, SM is talking to PO to ensure the for the coming backlog refinement/grooming meeting there is clear requirement defined with clear expectations. SM is lucky if he/she has knowledgeable PO who not only understands the Scrum but also understand why it is so important to have clear requirement defined. This can give SM to sit relaxed, however if this is not the case then SM's most of the time goes in coaching PO and impractical world it is dependent on the person who is playing the PO's role. lets say during backlog grooming meeting, we discussed some requirement which is understood and some which have gaps identified by team then ...

These days Agile word is quite popular  and many companies are adopting the principles of Agile however there are companies who start well but soon find difficulty in implementing scrum. There can be many reasons to it 1) Top management feels that team is taking advantage of Scrum process and not delivering the business value which is expected. Team may be questioning a lot in terms of priority and clear product backlog. And for some top management everything is MUST and they feel that why cant team work on all the priority items and deliver the maximum productivity. 2) Another reason could be that Top management do not have enough resource (RIGHT people) to play the scrum roles hence they expect people to play multiple roles which in turn creates a lot of other issues which top management does not realize. 3) finally top management think they are losing control over team and they need to follow what team says. They can't direct team and push them to do what they want. W...

Daily Stand-up Meeting- Are team members committed to the goal of the Sprint ? This should be verified by showing the taskboard to team possibly a Kanban board and let the team team provide their opinion on where they stand. Additionally, show them the burndown chart trend on the daily basis in the meeting, if the chart is deviating from ideal graph. Sprint Planning Meeting           2.  Are the team members doing some pre-planning and preparing themselves for the planning meeting. This should be verified by checking that team is very sure about the user stories and they know what stories to be delivered and how. Sprint Refinement/Grooming Meeting     3.  Are the user stories are prepared well prior to this meeting? Are the user stories understood to PO before explaining to team? This  can be verified by ensuring that sizing of the stories are happening for the planned stories for this meeting. Sprint Review ...

DO Say  what  needs to get done. Challenge the team Get interested in building a high-performance team. Practice business-value-driven thinking. Protect the team from outside noise. Incorporate change between sprints. Don’t Say  how  to do it or  how much  it will take. Bully the team Focus on the short-term deliveries only. Stick to the original scope and approach  “no matter what.” Worry the team with changes that might happen, until they become real. Allow change to creep into sprints. Advise from  Lyssa Adkins

C ommunication - Most desirable is face–to–face communication where we can talk, respond, gesture and draw on a whiteboard. Less desirable are written documents. XP stresses communication through practices such as pair programming. S implicity - This is a value of XP teams because it keeps their focus on creating a solution to the problem faced today, not the problem anticipated tomorrow.They remain constantly focused on doing the simplest thing that could possibly work. F eedback - XP teams value feedback, and the more immediate the feedback the better. This is achieved by Pair programming, Continuous Integration,Automated Testing and from customers. C ourage - XP teams value courage. For example, they have courage to refactor their code (because they have automated tests to back up that courage).They will use a metaphor and maintain a simple design through refactoring and test driven development.

S mall releases -  By the end of each iteration( 2 to 3 weeks long)  the team is responsible for delivering working, tested code that can immediately be put to use. The p lanning game -  Prior to the start of each iteration, the team and customer plan the iteration. This involves selecting the highest priority stories that can be completed in the iteration and then identifying the specific tasks necessary to complete the story . R efactoring -  Refactoring (Fowler 1999; Wake 2003) refers to the restructuring or rewriting  of code so as to improve the code without changing its external behavior.Refactoring is one of technique used by XP to replace upfront design. T esting -  XP puts the tests right up front in a practice called test-driven development (Beck 2003; Astels 2003). On an XP project the developers write automated unit tests and the customers write acceptance tests, which are often automated either by the customers themselves or ...

Technical proficiency -  automation can free the time of testers to do more exploration, which allows discovery.   Investigative curiosity Observational skills Communication skills Writing skills and bug advocacy Domain knowledge Willingness to learn Social skills Humor Practice "Testing is questioning a product in order to evaluate it . Software testing is about revealing the unknown." Source-  http://www.ebaytechblog.com/2013/01/31/becoming-a-world-class-tester/#.VTNlhNKeDGd http://java.dzone.com/articles/3-technical-skills-every

Listen deeply. " Consider what it feels like when you’re trying to convey something important to a person who has many things on his mind. Contrast that familiar experience with the more luxurious and deeply validating one of communicating with someone who is completely focused on you and actively listening to what you have to say with an open mind and an open heart." Ask, don’t tell.- " Open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching. You succeed as a coach by helping your team members articulate their goals and challenges and find their own answers. " Create and sustain a developmental alliance. " Follow-up is critical to build trust and to make your coaching more effective. The more you follow through on supporting your employees’ developmental plans, the more productive your coaching becomes, the greater your employees’ trust in you, and the more engaged you all become. It’s a virtuous cycle." Focus on moving forward positively....