Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Distributed ScrumMasters

At the August DC Scrum user group meeting, David Bland gave an Agile2010 preview presentation on Distributed Scrum and the Art of Digital Facilitation. David recommends trying to use light weight tools even in distributed environments and emphasizes concentrating on the process as opposed to the tool. He also recommends video conferencing over phone/email/IM.

One very interesting point that David discusses is dealing with the Daily Stand up across different time zones. David mentions that the 3 questions have to be re-phrased when working across major differences in time zones so that

1. What did you do yesterday?

2. What will you do today?

3. What’s in your way?

becomes:

1. What did you do today?

2. What will you do tomorrow?

3. What’s in your way?

So due to the difference in time zones, one team (A) is talking about what they will do today where as the other team (B) is about to go home and is talking about what they already did today. David emphasizes that the product owner and scrum owner must quickly address any issues that team B bring up, otherwise, team B will come in the next morning without clear guidance on the stories or priorities and with impediments still blocking progress. Team B will have to wait almost the entire day before the next Daily stand up and before getting any updated guidance from the product owner. Having the product owner address any issues while team B is asleep ensures that team B will be productive first thing in the morning.

You can follow David on his blog http://www.scrumology.net and view the presentation slide deck at http://www.slideshare.net/7thpixel/distributed-scrum-masters-d-bland-agile2010.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The Waterfall Manifesto

In a recent blog entry entitled Beyond the Manifesto, I discussed the different agile related manifestos that came out after the Agile Manifesto. Today, I found one that I had missed entitled the Waterfall Manifesto by the Waterfall Alliance!

It states:

Our experience has taught us to value:
  • Processes and tools over individuals and interactions
  • Comprehensive documentation over quality software
  • Contract negotiation over customer collaboration
  • Following THE initial plan over responding to change
Check it out at http://www.waterfallmanifesto.org/

Monday, July 5, 2010

Defect Reduction Cocktail

The Art of Agile Development
In a recent presentation, James Shore introduced the Defect Reduction Cocktail to continuously produce quality software. The equal parts of the cocktail address 4 types of errors:
  • Programming Errors: Test driven development, pair programming, energized work.
  • Requirements Errors: On site customers, customer examples, Bring testers forward, customer reviews.
  • Design Errors: Slack, simple design, incremental design, refactoring, fix bugs promptly.
  • Process errors: root cause analysis, fix your process, exploratory testing.
Find out more at
http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Alternatives-to-Acceptance-Testing.html
http://jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/no_bugs.html