Agile continues

The previous post was agile on it’s own. It was too big so had to split into smaller pieces.

Today we continue around the overal “cerimonies”.

Like all good stories, it always starts with planning. If you have a big list of wishlist items – which you’ve already agreed with your PO that they form part of the MVP. The first step is to have a backlog meeting.

Backlog meeting

Consider this as the house cleaning. You need to clean on a regular basis to ensure there’s no weird dust that went below the carpet. The backlog meeting aims to check what’s on the list, check what needs to be done in 1 or 2 sprints ahead and be sure all the depencies are understood. It aims to ensure you know what the team will be doing next and ensure by the time the new sprint starts you have enough stories “ready” to keep the team going and not loose momentum. Ideally the backlog meeting should happen mid sprint so there’s enough time to clear any dependencies and even for the team members to try to quantity how big the next stories will be and break them down further.

Sprint planning

This is where you look into what you’ve agreed to do and then ensure all the tasks are added so each team member knows what their priorities are. This is an opportunity to look into the work for that given sprint and measure criticality of stories between one and the other. Are there any high value quick wins (big points and low effort)? Then do those first. They will bost the moralle of the troops. It’s about every day improving 1%.

Daily scrum

I wrote about it in the previous post and this is where the magic happens. The daily scrum should happen with or without the scrum master there (at least in my view), it’s about team members to align and discuss any dependencies or blockers among them which can then be raised to the scrum master. If there are multiple scrums / workstreams, then you might need a Scrum of Scrums, so any resource dependencies between workstreams can be discussed and overall priorities assessed.

I really love love love this episode. It explains it a lot better than I did 😀

Retrospective

I know in a lot of places this is about getting the metrics. And yes indeed they are quite important, but even more so it’s to get the team together and look into what went well, discuss if the sprint goal was achieved, what didn’t went so well and what’s the one improvement everyone commits to implement. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Could be as simple as no mettings without an agenda, or that an additional SME is needed for the next few scrums. Whatever the team agrees.

What agile is not

No, it’s not a means of cutting documentation or cutting corners. The shift changes from the PM telling people what to work on or spending a lifetime writing the perfect documentation – be it a requirements document or a design document – to start by doing. Applying marginal gains and moving one step forward and documenting. It’s about a continuous assessment of what’s working well and what’s not and allow the experts in the team to propose where things can improve. As the functionality / product is build so is the documentation (incrementally).

Agile is not about cutting planning, in fact it’s about a new way of planning. One that relies on working closely with the product owner and the team members.

It’s not unstructured. It’s structured diferently around smaller workstreams with a brand new framework.

For further reading check here

Sourced from: https://wiki.cantara.no/display/dev/About+failing+agile+projects

What’s in it for me?

But aren’t you a convert already?

It doesn’t even matter if your team does any software development or not. It’s the whole mindset of breaking something bigger into smaller achievable pieces. It’s about having the priorities clear and cutting the crap. It’s about empowering the team to make decisions around the how to deliver something based on their expertise as well as to measure how big a piece of work is. It’s about understanding any dependencies upfront before commiting to something.

It changes the shift from spending months or years doing something that went presented back to the “requestors” – be it another team in the organisation or your clients – is miles away from what’s needed or you’ve spent so long in development the product / service is no longer relevant.

It’s about spending the minimum time possible from prototype to output and figure out (fast) if something could work or not. Put it up there, in front of a small user base to smash it to pieces and confirm it you are going in the right direction or you need to go back to the drawing board.

Don’t believe this can work for you and your team? Then try it and let me know!

For the agile manifesto check here

Sourced from here: https://sander-dur.medium.com/10-agile-memes-to-lighten-up-your-day-7f577ffbfe89

Let’s talk agile

Agile has been quite a buzzword for the last few years. Initially something you would link to a fancy fast moving startup, but now it’s all around you. Well if it isn’t it should!

Typically agile is linked as a new way of project management especially in the area of software development but I would say it’s way more agile than that (yap I wrote that).

It’s not just about delivering a piece of software but it’s a whole new mindset in which any team, and I mean any team can operate.

Let’s start with some definitions – and again this is just my own simplified view.

The team

Size matters

In this case, a smaller size is the best. An agile team should be composed ideally by 3 to 9 team members, if it’s bigger than that then it should be subdivided in smaller groups with a “scrum of scrums” to check for any conflicts and dependencies between them.

Product owner

Ideally there should be a product owner per scrum to avoid clashes of opinion across them, or even worse, no product owner. If there’s no product owner I would advise to stop there and don’t even bother to start. It can only lead to doom. Yap. The role of the product owner is to define their wish list and articulate it in a way the team understands. Then they also need to drive criticality: What’s more important for them? What’s nice to have and could be done later?

Scrum Master

See this role as a kind of a PM whose main focus is to resolve dependencies, either internal or external to the scrum. Also it should drive the sprint ceremonies (I’ll get to them shortly). I also see the role of the scrum master as an internal coach who raised the right question to both the PO (aka product owner) and team members. Where a lot of people struggle with agile is that it’s no longer the role of the “PM” to tell people what to do and how long it takes.

Team members

It’s the role of the team members to define their tasks – how to deliver what the product owner. This is very important as it’s with the feedback of the team members that a “story” can be defined or even broken down into smaller pieces if it’s too big to achieve in the space of say 2 weeks. It’s also the role of the team members to raise any dependencies that a particular delivery requires before it can be completed. If it’s blocked there’s no point in starting until the dependency has been cleared. It puts team members on the spot (but I would say in a good way) as they own their tasks.

What are we doing?

The PO has a big wishlist, it’s the role of PO, Team members and scrum master to get together and define what are the really critical functionality and which features are nice to have. The concept of what’s critical forms the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Everyone needs to understand the “what is” in the team.

How do we get there?

Now that we know this big thing that needs to be achieved, how do we get there? Well, chop it into pieces. Agile is about breaking down smaller and smaller so it seems you have something that you individually can achieve and contribute on any given day. That is encouraging!

First we divide into “features”, big functionality pieces that are to be delivered. From features then we move into stories. A story needs to be achieved in a sprint (whatever that sprint is, 2 or 3 weeks). A lot of people struggle with the concept of “story” because they get stuck into the features. I have described this before as building a house. The house is your MVP. Things like the garden or the shed can be seen as nice to haves (for most people at least). Once you have the first MVP completed you can tackle those. Then you can think of each division of the house a “feature”. It’s the builder that can then articulate how you build the foundation of the house and then each division. A story in this context could be: prepare the land – to start building. This is a dependency that needs to be cleared before anything else can start. Then you can get the baseline building, then you can get multiple stories in parallel for the building of each room. Then another story to add the plumbing and electricals and so on.

Each user story needs to have a tangible output at the end of it. Let’s take building the kitchen as an example. Even to add all the internal walls and baseline foundations for the kitchen will take a few days, so this is where the tasks come into play. Every day the team must know what they are doing. The team members, using their expertise must break that output which is the foundation for the kitchen and define the tasks for each day. Ideally a task should be between 1h to 8h, if it’s more than that then it needs to be broken down further. It needs to take into consideration the sequence of events from the start to the final outcome. Ultimately the story is considered “done” when the PO has seen a demo – in this case goes and checks if the sizing is as expected, if there’s space for the windows as per spec and so on. If all is good, the PO will say great job and the team can move into the next story, which could be all about furniture and electricals.

Is the story ready to start?

This is where things fail miserably. Before a piece of work can start, it should be clear to all team members what it is that is to be achieved. If there’s any vagueness in the what, then I would suggest PO and team members to sit down and refine further. Let’s go back to the kitchen, so say the PO only said that he wanted a kitchen. It will be subject to the interpretation of the team members. The kitchen could end up being tiny or not have enough light. It might be that there’s even a user story to define what are the requirements for the kitchen with a series of drawings on paper until everyone understands what’s the ask.

Managing progress – meet the daily scrum

This is where I see agile being applied to anything and any team really. As opposed to having team meetings without a clear purpose, the scrum has one goal, measure the progress of the day in relation to the sprint goal. In each daily scrum, each team member will provide a brief of what was achieved the day before, what they are working on that specific day (e.g. referring to the tasks) and if there are any blockers / impediments they found which the scrum master will need to resolve. It cuts the crap in essence and retains the focus on what’s really important. I have seen “business as usual” teams applying this to their day to day work and it works! If you have access to some agile tools then even better. (I can probably write a post on tools another day).

The beauty of agile

I seriously feel like tattooing this mantra

Fail fast, learn faster

This is what agile is ultimately about. As you try to have an output as part of each sprint and get the product owner to work with the team directly to measure how close we are (or not) to the ultimate goal (the MVP), the team will have the chance to learn what went wrong and change tactics. I will write another post about the scrum ceremonies as a lot can be said in this space.

The root of all evil

If there’s anything the past few events – from covid to war – have shown us is we can’t be dependent on a specific country for strategic goods / services. Why did it take a war for the rest of the world to realise they can’t rely on countries like Russia for their gas & oil I seriously don’t know. Where do they think a lot of the wars are financed from? Cut the money flow, cut the war. Yes, it’s that simple.

Disclaimer: This blog is by no means a political blog, it’s just a very opinionated space. However, I do believe that all the bad decisions from the past are biting us big time. Every single one of us.

But I will say the problem is way wider than just an energy one – which I hope by now the so called energy companies realise they are in the energy business and not just oil!

The problem started years ago with the so-called promise of globalisation. The world is your oyster. We took it to extremes, let’s send everything where it’s really cheap, including strategic resources like chips….

I would say this issue was even fueled by Western “xenophobic views” – “These third world countries can never deliver good quality products on their own”. Fast forward 20 years and oh yeah they’ve learnt. They can copy any products they want, make them better and release them to the market for a lot cheaper. They have the know-how, they have the economies of scale, they have the raw materials. Was it a clever move? No!

I can’t and will never comprehend any government or company that encourages sending EVERYTHING away. Look at the labels of everything you own in your house. Yap. Even things like agriculture. I was reading that basic goods like flour were increasing by the day (with daily rates) and inflation around 30%. Yes, exactly, 30%. After covid it’s exactly what we needed.

But let’s go back to the basics. This impacts every single company out there across all industries, from automotive to health care. While our technology advances are slowing down other countries are laughing on the face of evil. While the younger generations spend hours on tik tok in the other side of the world they are attending the best universities, cracking CFA and feeding themselves with science.

I do not understand why there are not factories across each continent. Aside from niche specific products which would benefit from full blown globalisation, anything strategic should be controlled in that region. You want to release a product to the market, you are stuck by components you can’t access. Even basic product assembly? All done away.

I wonder what’s the true cost of globalisation. It’s not cheap, not quite sure who’s benefiting from it. Access to cheaper products? Yes, for a short term, only to find that was contributing to global warming caused by excessive consumption.

I’m a firm believer that ALL companies should work with their local universities and ensure that any research is in line with what’s needed in the market (or what the market will need in the future) as well as having factories for any strategic components close enough. I don’t understand why everything I need, needs to travel the world more than I ever will in a lifetime.

Every country should be able to produce basic products and agriculture. But if we let governments alone make the decisions we will move nowhere. So it’s up to each individual company to make the right R&D decisions and find the right partnerships to move things forward. Together then they can influence the right governments (e.g. tax benefits) and move in the right direction.

As an employee, I would be more inclined to work for a company that ‘s trying to support the local economies. I would feel proud to work in a country that tries as much as possible to produce things in the region. I almost hugged my coffee machine when I saw that it was made in Italy. What a blessing! Not only does it provide me every morning with my most precious liquid but it was assembled in Europe. I even remember trying to buy a robot vacuum and reading all about brands to then find a germany company that had something.

Globalisation should be used as a means of attracting the best talent and learning from each other, or where niche products are required. It should not be exaggerated to the point that if one country decides to go la la land the whole economy goes down. If you think that’s silly, well it’s what’s happening right now.

So it’s time to wake up and try to make every small difference we can, as individuals, as companies, as leaders. If we don’t, we’ll always be up to our knees not knowing what will hit us next.

Return to the office – An update

I guess I wrote back about the return to the office last year before everything went pear shape again with Omicron. So here’s an updated view after returning on a weekly basis.

Disclaimer: I am fortunate enough that I can return at a more smoother pace (e.g. once a week) and don’t have a rule (yet!) that I need to be there X number of days like other areas of the business.

So here’s how a day looks like

Wake up at 05h30 – not used to that anymore. I struggle to open my eyes and comprehend which planet I’m on. I realize it must be Monday and indeed I have to get up (a good 5 or 10m later).

Leave the house at 06h20 for a 20m walk to the station. Fortunately the sunrise is earlier and I feel less afraid to walk in the dark so early in the morning. I rarely see a soul.

The train commute is pretty nice. I manage to read on the train – a part I quite miss from the old days.

I reach the office at around 07h20 (1h after I left home). It is very quiet and I really enjoy that. I have time to eat my breakfast at my desk, reply to a few emails and prepare my day ahead before I go into meetings and more meetings.

At 08h30 I call home so I can speak to my daughter. I feel sad I can’t take her to school. This was quite a big change for all of us, where I can now be part of the daily routines around my daughter and take her or get her from school. I rarely had the chance to do that before given the commute times to / from home.

From 09h onwards it’s meeting crazy but I can say it felt so nice to have the team meetings in person. We were just so happy to see each other in person or having a quick lunch together. We are social “animals” after all. We develop in a pack, by working together. This is at the source of our evolution, so even the most introverts will miss some sort of face to face interactions.

We’ve all agreed that if we could teleport to the office we would go more often.

One item I find myself doing quite badly in the office, is barely drinking any water as the ladies room is too far from my desk and not something you can go quickly and come back while in a meeting. So it’s not uncommon to leave with headache.

At 16h00 I shut down everything to catch the train home so at around 17h10 I’m back home for any final meetings and close any outstanding work. In the past I would leave at 17h30 and that was it, no more working after, but I struggle with that. Also I guess I’m not mentally ready to commute into rush hour. Not yet.

By 21h00 I don’t know again which planet I’m on and I struggle to stay awake.

Future of working

I wrote about it a few times and I will say I have not changed my point of view at all. The future needs to be flexible. I don’t believe there is one size that fits all. We all have our own needs and we all achieve efficiency and productivity in different ways. Some people say they are more efficient in the office because they get less distractions (e.g. chores to do or kids), I am less efficient in the office because I find myself wanting to interact to people and loose more time move round and about plus the commuting back.

The technology is out there, the whole covid situation has shown to the most sceptical of the leaders that teams can work remotely. Yes there is a lot you develop while working physically together. Going to the office needs to be an experience on its own that helps to drive a very specific purpose than the nature of the work done at home.

I do believe that companies that do not embrace flexible working – and come on, flexible working is not the odd day working from home – will fail to attract the best talent or retain those that they have.

Companies that offer flexibility will get flexibility in return and an increase in productivity. Also if people work from different environments, that will encourage diverse ways of tackling new situations and challenges.

So cheers to flexibility, we all need it. If you don’t trust your employees, look yourself in the mirror.

1 step backwards 2 steps forward

It is no surprise that careers today are no longer linear, nor the climbing ladder that they used to be. In the past you would expect that after a certain number of years you would go up and level and so on until you would eventually retire. It was an expected pattern.

Nowadays if we know anything it is not to expect anything at all.

Careers go all over the place, sometimes up, other times you move horizontally and even backwards to then continue ahead again.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/life-never-linear-my-career-visualized-neil-patwardhan/

Why is that?

• The nature of the job has changed in itself. Even from the moment you accept a new role and it’s job description, by the time you leave the role itself would have changed. You have the freedom – to a certain extent – to change and control what you do, to explore the boundaries and interact with different stakeholders, assume more functions, etc. In fact this is totally expected out of you. You need to be adaptable and flex to the business needs. If you don’t adapt you are simply obsolete and soon enough you will be left in a corner. This is valid for people and organisations alike. The next new thing might be outdated by the time it gets out to the market. Adaptability is key.
• The new generations need meaning and fulfilling roles. It’s not enough to have a title, it’s not enough to have a job description, they expect continuous learning and to feel part of “something” that links with their values. They need to feel energised and they welcome change. We could even say change is their middle name. Don’t forget they (we!) grew up without any certainties. We never know when the new crisis will strike us or war. We know we can’t feel secure anywhere so there is a huge focus on building our skill set so it’s as fungible as possible. We take Darwin to a whole new level. You can never feel comfortable in your seat. Most of us will be itching to find what’s next.

What’s the impact for the organisation?

In a short and sweet version, I would say it’s amazing.

• If the very fabric of the organisation is embedded in the fact it will continue to change, it will be a lot easier to adapt to the next big thing, either business disruption, covid, whatever it is. You need all employees to be ready to change what they do and be ready to drop a few activities in prol of learn new things or do more of something the next day. I find a job description almost irrelevant these days. The moment you start it’s no longer relevant. I would say as opposed to a job description I would include an expected skill set and level of expertise within that skillset.

• If your employees are more demanding, you need to ensure every single voice can be heard within their own groups. It’s up to each leader in the organisation to ensure the whole team / department is learning and feel they can contribute to the company’s growth. Let’s face it, we’ll have to work until we die. It’s a lot more for us than just a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills. It’s part of our identity. If we don’t feel connected to the company mission, if we don’t understand it we might leave to a company where we feel more connected. Don’t be single minded in thinking that all that moves us is money. Yes, money is a big motivational factor, but it’s not the only thing.

• If we are to work 10, 12h a day we need to feel connected, we need to feel our work is valued and we are contributing. We need to “click” with our colleagues and especially with our line manager. If we feel we need to keep silent and just follow orders like dogmas that you must accept and just do without understanding the why, people will just leave. Especially now that the workforce is going more global and it’s a lot easier to work from anywhere in the world. There will be a point where even the whole taxing system will align to this new reality and not only will it become more common to have people all over the world but it will be the new norm. Oh brave new world. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

And what’s in it for the employee?

Well you need to be comfortable so that you will be uncomfortable. And that feeling (a little bit) uncomfortable about doing something means you are facing something challenging, something that will lead you to growth. The more you are willing to drop the hierarchy and focus on what you can learn and in return contribute to where you’re working, the more in demand your skillset will be. Accept that everything is changing all the time and we all have something to learn every day, including from people who are fresh out of uni. You can also be sure there’s no 2 days the same and hence you will never find yourself bored. If you are, well, then it’s time for a change.