Risks and Side Effects of Scrum

Yesterday evening, Alain Guilieri, Ralph Jocham & I had the privilege of speaking at the SwissICT Event 'Risks and Side Effects of Lean, Agile & Scrum.'

I talked about the challenges of changing an organization. Ralph focused on what can go wrong, in particular the important difference between an Certified ScrumMaster a Certified Scrum Practitioner (the latter in a meaningful certification) and the importance of top engineering practices. And Alain provided the Voice of the Customer: A department head in a Financial Institution who introduced Scrum two years ago and reported on his challenges, solutions and successes.

Some 60 people attended and many asked for the presentations. You can download them all here, Presentations from 'Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Lean Agile und Scrum'.

Scrum Breakfast in Zürich: Breaking Through Corporate Gridlock

Everyone who works in a large organization knows that such organizations can become inflexible and unresponsive. Rules and regulations dominate, office politics are more important than common sense in making decisions, and sacred cows are not to be touched.

How do we break through this problem? In December, the Scrum Breakfast will address this challenge with the most interactive Scrum Breakfast ever. Structured as an Open Space, led by internationally known coach Deborah Hartmann Preuss, and driven by the questions and expertise of you, the participants, this event promises be a unique effective investigation into the challenge of making change happen where you work.

We particularly want to invite to Mid-Level Managers, Scrum Masters and anyone else who is trying to make their organizations more flexible and responsive.

When: December 2, 2009
Where: SwissICT, Vulkanstrasse 120 8048 Zürich
Registration: SwissICT

Time: Doors open at 8am for coffee and registration, we start at 8.35. As an open space event, the law of two feet applies, so you can stay as long as you feel appropriate. We'll finish by 11.00

I want it all! I want it now!

If only Santa Clause would deliver software. Life would be so much easier. Unfortunately he doesn't, and delivering working software which meets business needs is still a difficult challenge. According to a just published survey by OOSE, nearly 60% of all "classic" projects and even 1/3 of all agile projects do not succeed. How do you make sure, your project is not one of them?

Today I am giving a talk and the SAQ Software Tester Forum, From Wish List to Running System: How to Get What You Want. You can't get everything you want, but you can get what you really need. Here are the slides to my talk.

Experience with Lean Software Development

Scrum Breakfast in November

The Challenge: Raise your release tempo from 2 to 4 releases per year, with out changing the quantity of functionality. The applications remain complex. Modifications and renovations must still be possible. This was the challenge faced by Swisscom Wholesale AG. The Solution: Introduce Lean Software Development.

What consequences did this decision have on the existing organization and their productivity? Which agile approaches were selected? Roland Grieder, former Department Manager for Software Development at Swisscom Wholesale will answer these and other questions.

The talk is in German.

There is still space available: Info, Registration
When: 04. November 2009
Where: SwissICT, Vulkanstrasse 120 in Zürich-Altstetten

P.S. I will be giving a talk on 'Getting What You Want: From Mandate to Acceptance' on the same day at the SAQ Agile Testing Day. Fredi Schmidli will moderate Wednesday's Scrum Breakfast.

Managers, Impediments, Responsibility. Oh my!

Here's the situation: a department with 5 development teams, several of which are starting to do Scrum. The Scrum Masters have a problem. They couldn't fix impediments. Not being part of management, they weren't taken seriously by the rest of the organization. Escalating every second impediment to management wasn't working either. When impediments don't get fixed, Scrum doesn't work and everybody gets demotivated. Here's a shot at solving the problem...

One: Identify an Escalation Team (ET) who will be responsible for handling issues when the ScrumMasters get stuck. This consists of the Department Manager and his immediate reports. One of the ScrumMasters is also ScrumMaster for this group.

Two, following Karl Scotland's description of Kanban, embark on a four step process:

1. Map the value stream
   
2. Visualize the process with a Kanban board
3. Limit WIP to achieve focus and flow
4. Establish Cadence
   

The value stream for impediments is pretty simple:

• Step 1 ScrumMaster attempts to solve problem. S/he may succeed -> go directly to done
• Step 2 ET attempts to solve problem (and may fail)
• Done, with a successful or unsuccessful resolution
  

Three: Find a strategically located spot for the Kanban board, ideally someplace where every, especially management will see it. This creates visibility for the problems (and for those trying to solve them).

Four: Working with the board. Every significant impediment gets put on the central Impediments board. Every day that a ticket is on the board, tick mark goes on the card. When the ticket is done, it gets green dot if the team is happy with the result, and a red dot if not (i.e. management said, "sorry we cannot fix this problem.") The goal is to resolve impediments as quickly as possible and to have as high a percentage of green dots (= team happy) as possible.

My team hasn't looked at limiting WIP or establishing Cadence yet. It's tempting to put up a scoreboard, counting how many impediments got to done (with a red or green stamp) within one day, 2 days, 3 days, etc. A natural extension would be to set up a paralell board for improvements coming out of the retrospectives. This would give the ET a natural two week rhythm.

This approach creates a feedback loop between Management and operational staff. It gives immediate visibility to the problems and reminds people who might not want to cooperate with a lowly, powerless ScrumMaster that management is watching. It might even offer a metric for evaluating how effectively management is supporting its teams.

How do you get management integrated into the Scrum process? How do you make management responsible for making the process work?

Training / Improvements for 2010

At the Scrum Gathering, Andreas Schliep, Peter Beck and I joined together to form Das Scrum Team. Our goal is to provide the best Scrum training in Central Europe. We're still working on the details, so watch this space. Next year, I will make a number of changes to my program:

• Public Jumpstart and PPO Courses will be upgraded to certification course (CSM / CSPO). I will be offering co-training with my Partners in Das Scrum Team. 
• Andy, Peter & I will continue to offer a CSM for Advanced Users 
• Due to the strong interest in Scrum in Bern, public courses will alternate between Zürich and Bern.
• Effective December 1, courses will start at 9.00 and continue to 17.00 (a shift of 1/2 hour) so that people traveling to the venue from afar can travel on the same day. 
• I will offer a Scrum Jumpstart (non-CSM) in Geneva, in French. The first course will take place on January 14 & 15. 

I haven't updated the web yet, but will be posting the schedule for 2010 and other changes shortly.

Scrum Gathering and Scrum Breakfast Presentations

I am terribly behind publishing presentations and announcements on the blog, so here are various presentations that I have promised to publish:

From the Scrum Gathering in Munich:

• Making Change Happen - How to get the ball rolling in your company or community
• 10 Contracts for Your Next Agile Project - some thoughts about various contract forms and how they impact the execution of the project.

Jean Pierre König presented a fascinating concept at the last Scrum Breakfast in Zürich: Developing an application in just 3 days. The ultimate Agile project. His slides are also online.