New Year's Resolution: Get Fit Using Agile Workstations

Every New Year, I come up with a New Year's resolution list, and it almost always includes getting in better shape by joining a gym. Unfortunately, I never seem to follow through on it. But how about getting fit at work by using an Agile Workstation?

Recently, Matt, a colleague of mine, setup a make shift standing work station. He stacked some books on top of some boxes to lift up his keyboard and mouse. He also placed his monitor higher up on a shelf. His argument was that this gives him better posture and reduces neck pain and is better for his overall health. Everyday he codes standing up for about 2 to 3 hours and then goes back to a more traditional seated coding position.

This reminded me of a presentation given by Doug Bradbury at Agile 2010 entitled “Walk and Code”. Doug presented data that showed that we sit significantly more and stand significantly less on our work days than on our leisure days. Another study showed that obese individuals were seated on average 2 hours longer per day than lean individuals. Yet another study showed that men and women had a 17% and 37% higher chance of death when sitting more than 6 hours per day as compared to those sitting less than 3 hours per day. When we factor in sitting and not exercising then the numbers jump to an alarming 48% and 95% respectively. So clearly we need to exercise during our work week. But does standing or walking count?

Doug next describes the research done by Dr. James Levine on non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) which is the calories people burn during everyday activities like walking, standing or even fidgeting. Dr. Levine is studying the effect of NEAT on energy expenditure and overall good health. Simply walking at a slow 1 mph can burn an extra 100 cal/hr. Dr. Levine came up with an adjustable treadmill desk where people can walk and work, stand, or sit. He believes this can help in both health and productivity as people stay motivated, alert and focused. However, this adjustable workstation cost $4000+.

So like Matt, Doug setup his own make shift treadmill/desk by buying a used treadmill from ebay and a desk from IKEA. After 22 weeks he had walked 240 miles (average of 11 mi/week) by just walking and coding!

So are you up for it? I found a treadmill desk add-on on amazon for $400. If this all sounds too extreme and expensive then try replacing your chair with an exercise ball or bicycle, or simply take the stairs instead of the elevators, park far from the office, and take a walk at lunch. Good Luck and Happy New Year!

 

To learn more about NEAT check out http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/levine_lab/about.cfm

To find out more on how Dough constructed his workstation, check out his blog http://blog.8thlight.com/articles/2010/2/25/walk-and-code

Here are links to studies referenced in Dough's presentation:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2783690/
 and http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/172/4/419.abstract

The Ultimate Wall Board

What’s on your wall board? Atlassian ran a competition for the ultimate wall board. Ole Højriis Kristensen from the Vodafone web team won the competition by integrating a physical Scrum board with Atlassian’s JIRA/Greenhopper issue tracking/PM tool.

Ole’s solution keeps the physical board in sync with their project management tool. He setup a printer below the scrum board. Whenever a new story is added to JIRA, a card is printed out with a reference to the JIRA ticket number. This receipt is then placed in a plastic card that has an RFID and a magnet and then the card is placed on the board.

Whenever a developer is ready to work on a story, the developer swipes the card and moves it to the next column. They also have avatar cards for each developer that they swipe to indicate who is assigned to the story. Any card movement on the board automatically updates the corresponding story in JIRA. A camera snaps a picture of the developer that is moving the card and it is attached as a comment to the JIRA issue indicating who modified the ticket. The board also kicks off the build/deploy process for stories that are ready for testing and sends out tweets to inform the team and QA. There is also a projector that continuously displays burn down charts and velocity from JIRA data.

Even when an issue is updated directly through JIRA, the board constantly reminds users (via voice prompts) to move the corresponding card to its correct position!

Additional awards were given to a couple of other boards. Check them out at http://ultimatewallboard.com/

Agile Mythbusters

It’s Family Fued meets Myth Busters at an Agile 2010 presentation given by Scott Ambler. Scott explores surveys from Ambysoft and Dr. Dobb’s Journal to expose some myths about agile software development.

Below is a brief summary of some of the survey results:

Busted:

Myth	Survey Says
Agile teams don’t provide up front estimates.	More than 60% present high level estimates using expert analysis or agile estimation techniques.
Agilists don’t do upfront requirements modeling.	About 80% use documented approaches.
Agile teams just start coding.	On average agile teams take about 4 weeks to warm up.
Agilists don’t do upfront architecture.	About 80% use documented approaches.
Agilists don’t write supporting documentation.	Agilists write user manuals, training materials, system overview, and operations documents.
Traditionalist write better quality documentation.	Quality agilists’ documentation is the same.
Most agile teams are collocated.	42% are collocated while the rest are not and about 30% are distributed by a significant distance.
Traditional work better for distributed teams.	Agile works better for both collocated and distributed teams.
Agile is just for small teams.	Even though the majority of teams doing agile are small, there are large teams doing agile as well.
Traditional works better for large teams.	Agile works better for small, medium, and large teams.
Most Agile teams are doing Greenfield development.	Most teams are working and integrating with legacy systems.
Agile doesn’t apply to regulatory situations.	About 30% reported using agile in regulatory situations like for example, SOX and HIPPA.
Agile works better than iterative (xUP) approaches.	Success rates are the same, but agile may provide greater ROI.

Confirmed:

Myth	Survey says
The majority of organizations are now doing agile	About 70% are doing agile.
Agilist test often and test early	The majority is doing TDD, regression testing, and code reviews.
Agile works better than traditional approaches	Agile provides higher quality, quicker delivery, correct functionality, and greater ROI.

The full survey results are available at http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys.

APLN DC - The Art of Storytelling

Thanks to all that made it out to my presentation on the Art of Storytelling at APLN DC. Below is the slide deck + notes.

Accelerating Your Organization’s Agile Adoption

Bryan Campbell and Robbie Mac Iver gave a talk at Agile 2010 about Agile Adoption. They started out by discussing how acquiring a skill requires time, practice and a mentor. They then defined 7 stages of agile expertise based on the work of Meiler Page-Jones:

• Innocent: unaware of agile techniques
• Aware: aware and seeking to learn more
• Apprentice: ready to apply their skills to a real project
• Practitioner: leap from classroom projects to those of real world complexity
• Journeyman: agile techniques embedded natural way of working
• Master: range of real-world project experiences; ability to teach these techniques to Apprentices
• Researcher: sharing knowledge with a broader community; champion to further extend the benefits of agile techniques

Next they identify the risk and challenges from moving from one stage to the next. Moving from innocent to aware can happen fairly quickly. Moving from apprentice, to practitioner, to journeyman requires more effort and will take longer; however, it is during these stages that you get the greatest increases in productivity. Reaching the master and researcher stage will take even longer and not many companies see value in having employees reach this level. The tipping point is usually when more than 50% of the organization is at the practitioner level and more than 75% is operating at the apprentice level.

Next Bryan and Robbie discuss the J-curve effect where an apprentice struggles in adapting his new skills to real situations and reverts back to old techniques. This causes a dip in the skills progression which results in a decrease of productivity and a risk that crossing to the next level might stall or eventually fail. This is where having access to an experience coach or mentor is crucial to overcome the J curve and achieve a successful agile adoption.

Bryan and Robbie recommend 2 techniques that can help accelerate agile adoption:

• The Breadth approach focuses on developing a solid foundation of best practices and refining them over time. This works best in the move from innocent to aware, or from practitioner to journeyman.
• The Depth approach is focused on a more active engagement/participation of mentors on a real project. It is more of a deep dive and is best for crossing the J-curve from apprentice to practitioner.

They next cover agile leadership guidelines. They recommend

• Addressing culture and values first and then practices will generally follow
• Working in ways that embrace change and adjusting methods to fit the project
• Creating teams of advanced citizens to ensure team dynamics
• Influencing team decisions by setting movable boundaries

Bryan and Robbie wrapped up by presenting each group with different real life scenarios and having each group discuss different ways of resolving them.

The scenarios can be found at http://www.robbiemaciver.com/documents/presentations/A2010-Agile%20Maturity%20-%20Problem%20Scenarios.pdf

The presentation slides are available at http://www.robbiemaciver.com/documents/presentations/A2010-Agile%20Maturity%20-%20Presentation.pdf

The Curious, Present, and Empathetic Agile Coach

At Agile 2010, David Spann and Gil Broza gave a workshop on agile coaching. The workshop involved several exercises to stress the importance of presence, curiosity and empathy.
They started out by emphasizing the importance of good posture when engaging a client. Posture subconsciously sends message of energy and others will check in or check out based on that. When standing, stand in with right foot in and always feel your toes. When sitting, sit up straight and also feel your toes. If things are not going your way, know your presence and adjust accordingly. They also reminded us that standing up is a power high energy position. It means you are involved.
Next, David and Gil define empathy as repeating in your own words what was said, mirroring hand gestures, and not trying to pass judgment at the moment of interaction.
Finally, curiosity involves asking questions and figuring out the context. They wrap up by recommending several books:
Presence Based Coaching
Leadership Dojo
Coaching with NLP

Look Before You Leap - Agile Readiness Assessments Done Right

At Agile 2010, Gerry Kirk and Michael Sahota led a workshop on Agile assessments. The format was more like an open space discussion where Gerry and Michael started out by asking the group to come up with some objectives for having an assessment:

• Tuning of training according to needs
• Maximizing value and effectiveness of training
• Revealing constraints, building trust
• Finding out motivations for going agile
• Figuring out pain points
• Deciding where to focus
• Understanding fears smell
• Understanding the state across of the organization
• Defining success
• Figuring out where the organization is currently at and their current practices
• Setting the right expectations
• Making the transition owned internally

Next Gerry and Michael suggested a format for the assessment and define 4 parts: Preparation, Data collection, Analysis, and Recommendation and next steps. They suggested that each group brainstorms and comes up with ideas for all the parts. They started us out with the following examples:

• Prepare: 12 question survey from break all the rules
• Data analysis: Lean value stream mapping with x-functional work group to show process and lead time
• Analysis: From interviews write stickies for culture, technology, product, people, process
• Recommendation and next step: Meet with key decision makers and workers to create a transition backlog

Next, each of the groups tried to come up with their own ideas but non where as detailed as the ones provided by Gerry and Michael. Below is a summary of what the teams came up with

Prepare:

• Prepare checklist for us and the client
• Conduct outside research on organization
• Learn the organizational structure
• Identify sponsors and stakeholders
• Find a champion
• Prepare non attribution statement
• Present readiness and process group
• Establish point of contacts for all logistics
• Conduct survey to figure out current process
• Conduct Schneider culture survey
• Conduct a survey to gauge urgency for change and current company health
• Compile a list of various articles, videos on agile introductory topics
• Present a related experience report
• Get organization aware of agile through training

Data collection:

• Meet the team and the leaders
• Observe the team at work and identify the different roles
• Identify and document current agile practices
• Identify and document current agile non practices
• Document the current approach for managing and organizing work
• Document the goals of the movement to agile from execs to team members
• Create a baseline metric

Analysis:

• Determine waste in value stream map
• Perform Kano analysis on techniques
• Try to identify potential pilot project and pilot team
• Look for feelings by team
• Look for variation in perspective
• Distill interview into mindmaps
• Look for often mentioned bottle necks
• Perform futurespective (innovation game)

Recommendations and next step:

• Create statement of work on improvement goals
• Create cross functional transition team and backlog
• Establish target metrics
• Create training plans
• Create transition timeline with goals
• Have a workshop for executives to share findings
• Establish ground rules and agreement
• Perform retrospective to improve future assessments

This is all very much a work in progress and Gerry and Michael are going to continue to gather ideas and eventually publish an assessment guideline.