Friday, August 3, 2012
Being Agile
Doing Agile: Going through the motions
Being Agile: Practicing the values and principles
Going to stand-up and answering three questions doesn’t make you an Agile Practitioner any more than standing in a garage and making “vroom” noises makes you a car.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
It Takes Practice: Self-Organization
Practicing the Agile Principle of Self-Organization.
From the Agile Manifesto: “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.”
How do you foster an environment of self-organization? Self-organization means that team members hold themselves, and each other, accountable. This doesn’t mean that processes and decisions just naturally happen. It takes Courage (an XP value) for someone to speak up, a little training, and some practice.
Flex your self-organizing muscles with something as simple as Stand-up. I’ve found that many teams expect Stand-up to be facilitated and wait for Scrum Masters to start but on mature teams, no one “runs” Stand-up. Look for ways to have Stand-up without waiting for anyone. Here’s how:
Who is responsible for starting? Everyone. At first, it may be up to you to stand up and say, “Stand-up time.” After a week or two when the team is comfortable starting on-time and without everyone, try letting it go for a 2-3 minutes and see if someone else speaks up first. After a while, the team should be at a place where everyone is comfortable saying, “Let’s go. Stand-up.”
Don’t let logistics get in the way of being self-organizing. Decide up-front on who will be responsible for booking conference rooms or conference lines. Try your hardest to not let this be the Scrum Master. This is a team task and someone on the team should sign up for it.
Watch out for late-comers. They should not disrupt Stand-up. Keep going on your agreed-upon rotation and come back to them at the end. If they miss Stand-up completely and ask, “Are we going to do Stand-up?” Say, “Already did it.” They need to be accountable and take responsibility for following-up on what was discussed. Just don’t be passive-aggressive about it. If you really needed them at Stand-up, then say so. “We already did Stand-up and I really needed you there because I needed an update on [x].” Handle it in the moment but tardiness is a prime and common topic addressed in Retrospectives and Retrospectives are key to a maturing self-organizing team.
From the Agile Manifesto: “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.”
How do you foster an environment of self-organization? Self-organization means that team members hold themselves, and each other, accountable. This doesn’t mean that processes and decisions just naturally happen. It takes Courage (an XP value) for someone to speak up, a little training, and some practice.
Flex your self-organizing muscles with something as simple as Stand-up. I’ve found that many teams expect Stand-up to be facilitated and wait for Scrum Masters to start but on mature teams, no one “runs” Stand-up. Look for ways to have Stand-up without waiting for anyone. Here’s how:
- Find agreement with the team that Stand-up with start on-time, every time
- Find agreement that Stand-up with start regardless of attendance (people or how many)
- Decide on a place and time for Stand-up, including any conference lines that may be needed
- Decide on a starting order for Stand-up (e.g., person closest to the door, alphabetically by first name)
- Decide on a rotation (e.g., clockwise in room then phone attendees)
- Optional: Find agreement on punishment for being late or absent (e.g., responsible for bringing cookies the next day or to retrospective)
- Go
Who is responsible for starting? Everyone. At first, it may be up to you to stand up and say, “Stand-up time.” After a week or two when the team is comfortable starting on-time and without everyone, try letting it go for a 2-3 minutes and see if someone else speaks up first. After a while, the team should be at a place where everyone is comfortable saying, “Let’s go. Stand-up.”
Don’t let logistics get in the way of being self-organizing. Decide up-front on who will be responsible for booking conference rooms or conference lines. Try your hardest to not let this be the Scrum Master. This is a team task and someone on the team should sign up for it.
Watch out for late-comers. They should not disrupt Stand-up. Keep going on your agreed-upon rotation and come back to them at the end. If they miss Stand-up completely and ask, “Are we going to do Stand-up?” Say, “Already did it.” They need to be accountable and take responsibility for following-up on what was discussed. Just don’t be passive-aggressive about it. If you really needed them at Stand-up, then say so. “We already did Stand-up and I really needed you there because I needed an update on [x].” Handle it in the moment but tardiness is a prime and common topic addressed in Retrospectives and Retrospectives are key to a maturing self-organizing team.
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