Agile Software

I'm in Munich again visiting my major new agile enablement client. Today we discussed the most likely candidate for a pilot project, the makeup of the team (4 developers, 1 tester, the customer, the ScrumMaster and myself as coach and mentor) and Sprint 0 activities. These will include training the team, establishing the development and test environment and preparation of the initial product backlog etc.

Over the next few months, we're going to have to solve some tough issues concerning how to integrate the agile team into the wider organisation. Today showed that key people are really committed to making this a success and I'm very much looking forward to working with this team. Sprint 0 will kick-off in January.

As part of this engagement, I'll be facilitating a Scrum quick start, something that I've facilitated for several teams recently. This combination of customised training and facilitation is a very effective means for helping a Scrum team go from zero to starting their first Sprint, and hence starting to deliver business value, within days. I'm combining the quick start with ongoing coaching and mentoring which means that I'm there to support the team and other stakeholders when needed. I have some capacity free - please contact me if interested.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, Scrum quick start

The demand for agile method consultancy seems to be growing. I've secured two new clients during the last two weeks: one in Stevenage, UK and the other one in Munich, Germany.

This week I'm with the UK client, doing a Scrum Quick Start. Last week I introduced agile to some of the key stakeholders. Today, I've taught Scrum to the project team (two sessions of about 15 people each, with a mixture of business and developers). Definitely a good bunch of people and I think that they have an excellent chance of making this a success.

Tomorrow, I'll be facilitating their first Sprint planning meetings and on Wednesday the teams will be starting their first Sprint. A Scrum of Scrums approach will be used to help coordinate the activities of the four Scrum teams. I'll be supporting the teams with regular visits over the next few weeks. It should be an interesting engagement.

I'm also gearing up for my Munich engagement. Over several months I'll be helping a household name select a pilot project and then transition to agile (again Scrum based).

The Dysfunctional Scrum exercise normally goes down very well as part of agile training. It’s great fun but, more importantly, lets participants experience the World’s worst Daily Scrum. The exercise can lead to a useful discussion on how to deal with common Scrum smells.

Read more here.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum

Emily Chung: "... Think of agile design as user interface design strategy meets agile programming methodologies.' In addition to mental mapping, task flow analysis, and user testing, we’re seeing the importance of a new type of agile process.' In design, just as in development, ‘agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.' Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.’

In this new process, we suggest that the core values and principles of agile design closely match those of agile development as a whole.' While we imagine that this list will certainly grow and need refinement, there are some major concepts that have already been experienced our clients with great success. ..."

It's been a while (a couple of years) since I've looked at JSPWiki. It seems to have really grown up - either that or it has a lot of bells and whistles that I had forgotten about. I've been looking at JSPWiki together with some colleagues as part of setting up a new agile project.

Impressive things that I've noticed so far:

• Really easy installation. Just:

1. Drop JSPWiki.jar into Tomcat's webapps directory
2. Unpack the provided sample pages zip file into the directory where you want to store the Wiki's pages
3. Run the installation procedure (e.g. http://myhost:8080/JSPWiki/Install.jsp and answer the small set of questions. That's it!
   

• Built-in RSS feeds on a per-page basis. The feeds are not enabled by default and it does not seem to support some of the latest standards like RSS 2.0, but it just the thing for project news pages. You can ask your team members to subscribe to the project news feed in their agregator to provide a really good means of making sure that even remote team members are kept up to date.
• An Excel viewer plugin. This is not built-in, is a little bit fiddly to install but once installed performs well. It renders Excel spreadsheets as HTML using XSLT. The output, although basic, is good for making those documents that are best maintained as spreadsheets (such as prioritised sets of requirements) viewable on the Wiki.
  
• Attachments. Many Wikis support attachments these days but JSPWiki's approach is straight-forward and just works. It enables those useful Excel and Powerpoint files that every project tends to accumulate to be easily accessed by everyone on the project.
• Includes plug-ins for simple weblog functionality.

Improvements that I'd like to see:

• RSS 2.0 with enclosures support. With that added, JSPWiki could even be used for podcasting!
• Currently the Excel viewer plug-in needs Excel files to be placed on the file system and referenced via their absolute path. It would be really good if the plug-in could be integrated with the Wiki's attachment facility so that Excel files can simply be attached and then made available via the Excel viewer.
  

tags: agile wiki

Marc's Voice: Dave's Back: "Us crazy old folks love to hang together. But we ship code. We don't sit around and talk about it. And it's the code that matters. And delivering compelling experiences to our end-users."

Boy can I relate to that. Information technology projects should be about shipping working code and systems. In the UK at least, so much energy is wasted in playing petty politics rather than getting working systems out that actually do what the users want and need. I really hope that Dave's travels bring him to London soon. There's a lot of overlap between his ideas on developers engaging users and the agile approach.

tag: winer

Today I was on a business trip to Leeds (Northern England).

I started very early (getting up at 03:30 local time) in Berlin. Flew from Berlin to Manchester with Air Berlin (Boeing 737-800), arriving at around 07:00 local time.

I then took the TransPennine Express train from Manchester Airport to Leeds. The train had a buffet trolly which enabled me to breakfast on coffee and an "all day breakfast" sandwich.

Lovely hilly scenary, which I could have seen better if the windows had been cleaned recently. Hills speckled with many small towns, with plenty of evidence of the industrial revolution still visible. Cotton mill buildings were very prominent, surrounded by rows of terraced houses.

I had a good set of meetings with a prospective client (initially with a consultancy firm and subsequently with their client). On the way back to the airport on the train I got a call to say that they would like to engage me. This should be an interesting assignment with plenty of scope for me to make a difference by helping them to introduce appropriate process into their software development effort and to move towards a more agile approach.

I took the train back to Manchester Airport in the afternoon, returning to Berlin on a British Airways flight (Embraer ERJ 145) at 17:10. The Embraer is a very narrow but rather charming aircraft. Quite cramped but not too noisy. I was spoilt by flying business class on the return flight (at the client's expense!). Really excellent service and food. Recently I've been flying a lot with EasyJet (which is budget, no-frills and friendly). It was nice to be pampered for a change.

It's going to be difficult commuting between Berlin and Leeds for this assignment - the outward flights are early (take off at 06:00) which means getting up far too early. The return flights are in the early evening (17:10) which is going to mean leaving very early on Friday afternoons. I need to investigate alternative routes.

A few thoughts on Personality preference and agile software development.