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kanban-for-software-engineering-apr-242.pdf (application/pdf Object) - 0 views

leanandkanban.files.wordpress.com/...ftware-engineering-apr-242.pdf agileblog lean kanban
shared by Yuval Yeret on 31 May 09 - No Cached
  • Yuval Yeret on 31 May 09
     
    Comprehensive write-up of Lean+Kanban. Heavy but worth reading

Go Fragile! - 0 views

gofragile.wordpress.com
shared by Yuval Yeret on 23 May 09 - Cached
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Challenging Why (not if) Scrum Fails | NetObjectives - 0 views

www.netobjectives.com/...questioning-why-scrum-fails
shared by Yuval Yeret on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • I do believe for Scrum to work beyond the team you need more than Scrum
  • what to add to Scrum making it more effective when it won't readily work
  • lack of team agility is not always the major impediment to Enterprise Agility
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • While starting at the team level with Scrum is often good, you often need to start with the product management team - that is, where product enhancements to be worked on are selected
  • Even when Scrum works at the team level, organizations very often report little impact to the bottom line.  While this is better than nothing (if the teams are happier, that's good), it usually doesn't justify a huge investment
  • in many contexts in which Scrum does not work readily, Scrum has no power to improve the context in which it is in.  In other words, the impediments that one must fix are often outside of the scope of what Scrum helps you do.
  • These impediments are often not even seen or if they are, are often viewed as "just the way it is."
  • certain Scrum attitudes often makes things worse
  • Scrum does little to let management to know how the team works or what impact management decisions have on the team
  • There is almost a religious zeal that Scrum tells you little of what to do
  • While SoS works well for certain types of work, it does not work well when the different teams have different motivations. 
  • the high failure rate is due to the fact that Scrum works in certain contexts but has little ability to change the contexts in which it doesn't work wel
  • One needs to pay attention to where to start as well as see how to change the context.  Separating the team from management doesn't help.  Focusing on only the team part of the value stream - giving little guidance both up and downstream of the team also doesn't help.  Lean provides guidance here (meaning Scrum with the aid of Lean could provide insights),
  • look into using Lean as a context for any improvement in your software development organization
  • While Scrum may be an appropriate choice in many circumstances, other methods may be better (e.g., Kanban Software Development).  Scrum's rapid ascension probably has more to do with its success in the places it easily fits.  Now that it is past the early adopter phase, we may see it having even a harder time as people attempt to scale it.
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מנמ"ר משרד המשפטים - לבצע פרויקטים רק בAGILE! - 0 views

it.themarker.com/...6728
shared by Yuval Yeret on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • הניסיון המשפטי שצבר יוכל בוודאי לסייע לניסימיאן בזירה הסבוכה של חוקי המכרזים הממשלתיים, כלפיה יש לו לא מעט טענות. "הרבה פעמים יוצאים במגזר הממשלתי פרויקטים אדירי מימדים של 10-20 שנות אדם בפיתוח. רוב הסיכויים הם שהפרויקטים האלו ייכשלו, גם בגלל שבמהלך פרק הזמן שבו מבוצע הפרויקט הדרישות עצמן אינן מפסיקות להשתנות", הוא מסביר. כך, למשל, הוא מצטט את מכון המחקר גרטנר שציין כי 55% מפרויקטי המחשוב הגדולים נכשלים. "יש מחקרים אחרים שמדברים על 75% כשלון", מציין ניסימיאן. "כשמסתכלים על הפילים הלבנים שקורסים אחד אחרי השני, צריך ללכת בקטן ובאופן מדוד. כמשרד אנחנו מתכוונים לשנות מגמה - לבצע פרויקטים רק בשיטת ה-Agile, בה בכל פעם מציבים יעד תפעולי קצר טווח, עם הוספות תקציב במנות קטנות".
  • שיטה נוספת בה יכול ניסימיאן ליישם את ניסיונו לעבוד בשיטת ה-Agile, היא על ידי פניה למכרז בתי התוכנה הממשלתי, במסגרתו מעסיקים משרדי הממשלה עובדים מחברות ה-IT הגדולות. "בשיטה זו במקום להגדיר מראש תכולה של פרויקט, אנחנו מגדירים את התקציב והזמן לפרויקט כקבועים. במסגרת התקציב והזמן אני כמנמ"ר אמדד על הצלחתי בהבאת פרויקטים", הוא מסביר.
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Tailor your Message To Gain Support for your Agile Initiative | Enabling Agility - 0 views

www.enagility.com/r-your-message-to-gain-support tailor agility agile adoption transformation
shared by Yuval Yeret on 21 May 09 - Cached
  • Connect Agile’s Benefits to your Company’s Priorities
  • aying that Agile is “better, faster, cheaper” may not be enough to cause a company to be willing to go through the often-painful process of cultural and process change.  You could implement Agile, but you could also try Six Sigma or Lean.  Saying that Agile is a general get-better remedy puts it in line with many other get-better methods.
  • f they don’t see a meaningful update from us, at least once a quarter, we’re going to get kicked out of the game.  We’ve all acknowledged that as we’ve gotten bigger, our processes have become more cumbersome and now is the time to do something about it.  Agile will give us the ability to regain that rapid pace of delivering innovations to market that we were know for in our early days.”
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • ur last two releases have looked like me-too updates, where we are just barely keeping up with our competitors
  • We’ve been losing market share
  • If you can refer to a specific business issue and show the linkage, you are much more likely to get a receptive audience.  Here’s an example.
  • The CFO, developer and QA manager have different roles in the organization and their needs are different.  If you want to enlist their support, be sure you know who you are talking to and what they value.
  • Use Focused Messages for Key Individuals or Groups
  • certain volume of people who are enrolled in the idea of Agile before you’ll see adoption start to accelerate,
  • People have specific needs in their role and they want to understand how Agile will affect and benefit them directly.  
  • Developers, on the other hand, probably wants to know if they will have interesting work, the opportunity to learn new things and the ability to make an impact on the company’s products.
  • a QA manager is probably interested in hearing how Agile helps enrich the QA profession.
  • The focus isn’t on Agile, its on business, as it should be.
  • The easiest way to find out what interests someone is to ask them.  When you meet, leave plenty of time for talk.  Motoring through a well-rehearsed Agile presentation usually doesn’t work.  A lot of times I’ll have slides with me, but they are a backdrop for the conversation.  I’ll refer to slides when it helps move the conversation along, but otherwise don’t use them.  You might want to forget slides altogether and just draw things on a whiteboard as necessary.  This technique is particularly useful with an individual or a small group.  
  • Take it One Step Further: Collect Data to Gain Insight
  • you’ll be most effective tailoring your message if you invest some time conducting data through a series of structured interviews. 
  • First, you’ll need a small set of questions prepared for the interviews.  Here are some examples. What is working with our current methodology? What’s not working with our current methodology? How do you think Agile would help our organization? What concerns do you have about Agile?
  • Interview a wide range of people: developers, testers, business analysts, managers, product managers, senior management, project managers and someone from finance. 
  • When you conduct the interviews, it is good to have one interviewer who has the primary responsibility for talking and the other person who has the primary job of taking notes.  You can switch off roles each interview so no one person gets stuck in either role.  Here’s how I typically start off.  
  • stories that people tell about the organization and make sure you write them down
  • I put all of the information we’d gathered into a mind-mapping program (Mindjet) and grouped like things together.
  • Make sure you keep interesting stories intact.  Specifics will help you make your cases
  • When there’s numerical data, people engage with a presentation in an entirely different way than they do when there are stories.  I find stories more effective, but do what works for you.
  • As an Agile evangelist, you job is to get Agile deployed effectively.  Along the way there are many people will be willing to go out of their way to help if you effectively speak to their interests and concerns.
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performance appraisals == waste? - 0 views

www.estherderby.com/...king-survey-results-about.html
shared by Yuval Yeret on 21 May 09 - Cached
  • In a famous Leadership IQ study, we surveyed 48,012 CEOs, Managers & Employees about their performance appraisals. Here's the shocking results: Only 13% of Managers & Employees thought their performance appraisals were effective. And only 6% of CEOs thought their appraisals were effective. We also discovered that only 14% of employees say their performance appraisal conversation offered meaningful and relevant feedback.
  • Shocking Survey Results about Performance Appraisal
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InfoQ: Comparing Kanban To Scrum - 1 views

www.infoq.com/...kniberg-kanban-v-scrum agile scrum kanban
shared by Yuval Yeret on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • Scrum in a nutshell Split your organization into small, cross-functional, self-organizing teams. Split your work into a list of small, concrete deliverables. Assign someone to be responsible for that list and to sort the list by priority. The implementation team estimates the relative size of each item. Split time into short fixed-length iterations (usually 1 – 4 weeks), with potentially shippable code demonstrated after each iteration. Optimize the release plan and update priorities in collaboration with the customer, based on insights gained by inspecting the release after each iteration. Optimize the process by having a retrospective after each iteration. For more details check out “Scrum and XP from the Trenches”. The book is a free read online. I know the author, he’s a nice guy :o) http://www.crisp.se/ScrumAndXpFromTheTrenches.html Kanban in a nutshell Visualize the workflow Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and put on the wall Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in the workflow Limit WIP (work in progress) – assign explicit limits to how many items may be in progress at each workflow state. Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes called “cycle time”), optimize the process to make lead time as small and predictable as possible.
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CIO Perspectives: A Conversation on Agile Transformation, Part 2 - 0 views

www.borland.com/...cio-perspectives-part-two.html agile transformation
shared by Yuval Yeret on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • Part 2
  • The thinking is that IT is mission-critical, so let's not change things without giving it a lot of thought and a lot of consideration
  • The really hard part is around the people transformation - getting developers to work side-by-side with testers and users is a completely foreign concept.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The reason there's been so much turnover of CIOs in the last ten years is because the end users – the CEOs, the CFOs and the division heads – are unhappy with the results. When IT professionals realize this, and realize that something like Agile gives them the opportunity to create better value for their businesses, then they're going to be a lot more willing to adopt it. I hope that development organizations are starting to see around that corner.
  • We WANT to go Agile. How do we overcome the skepticism at the CXO level?"
  • My recommendation would be "try it." Agile doesn't equal risk, but changing development methods does equal some risk
  • t can be a big deal to say: "I'm going to change our development methodology." It makes people sit up and want to dive into deep detail before getting on board. The question comes in the form of the old development methodology: "Let me see the high level plan and what the change will be in the deliverables and methodology over the next two years." This is exactly what you're trying to avoid by going to an Agile method.
  • try Agile on a few small projects, measure the results, talk to users about their satisfaction, and then readdress
  • nitiate the shift in the most change-prone areas first, and then work it backwards through the rest of the organization
  • It doesn't happen everywhere at all times, and it doesn't work in all areas. It's good to recognize that up front – that software development projects adapt to this easily, but an infrastructure project would have challenges with this approach. So, select a few areas that would naturally lend themselves to Agile, such as application development, gradually introduce it to these areas that need it most, and then measure results.
  • Again I'd say: "Try it." Agile transition is absolutely about organizational change. To win executive support we need to speak in terms of risk management, measurement and the bottom line.
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Creating an Agile Culture to Drive Organizational Change - 1 views

www.borland.com/...creating-an-agile-culture.html agile enterprise adoption culture
shared by Yuval Yeret on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • It is critical that everyone has the same understanding of, and commitment to, the desired outcome: a business that is reliable through predictable technology processes that deliver business agility. To do this, there needs to be a management commitment to develop a focused, on-going practice around the pursuit of organizational maturity. As part of this, gaps in skills and capabilities should be identified and positive action – training, coaching, process improvement and tools deployment – taken in order to close the gap
  • the work force needs to understand the business drivers for Agility. They need to be challenged to improve their quality, improve their cycle times, to improve the frequency of releases and the value they deliver to the customer. They need to know how these things fit within the bigger picture and why improvement is their responsibility.
  • To change a culture it's important to recognize that every knowledge worker makes decisions and takes actions that affect the performance of the business. The culture in the organization is the reflection of those decisions and actions.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • all the people understand and internalize the concepts and ideals behind the Agile movement
  • translated into concepts that can be widely applied to the many day-to-day decisions each of them will make
  • internalize and live three principles: making progress with imperfect information; existing in a high trust, high social capital culture; and shortening cycle times. These ideas need to be infused into the workforce at every opportunity.
  • it should spread virally. It can start with just one manager, who educates his immediate direct reports on the concepts and then takes the time to reflect and show how each decision is aligned the principles
  • work-in-progress as a liability rather than an asset.
  • Delivering quickly can provide immediate value while delay can result in obviated functionality of little value or missing a more lucrative opportunity while completing existing work-in-progress
  • The Agile Decision Filter
  • . Every member of the team should be educated to understand it, and to be capable of demonstrating how their decisions and actions are concomitant with it. The Decision Filter is
  • Are we making progress with imperfect information? Or are we trying to be perfect before we start? Does this decision add or maintain trust in our organization and with our partners? Or does it remove trust and breed fear? Are we treating work-in-progress as it if were a liability? Or are we treating it like an asset?
  • the team can start to modify their practices one decision at a time and drive towards a goal of business agility
  • The "transition" to Agile will happen slowly, and supporting the change will require training, coaching and tools – but change will be real and long-lasting.
  • By changing your culture using the simple principles captured in The Agile Decision Filter, teams will adopt Agile. Give it a little time and magic will happen. They will voluntarily change their behaviors and adopt Agile practices. They will behave in a fashion aligned with the principles and values behind The Agile Manifesto. They will not resist because they had a say in the changes, which are tailored specifically to their environment and their needs.
  • this approach may seem less prescriptive and straightforward than an "Agile Change Initiative" project plan. And yes, taking on a management-led Agile Transition Initiative looks faster and cheaper,
  • However, it is all wishful thinking, and the only way to get the payoff is to invest the time and show the courage to lead true Agile change. True Agile change requires you to change the culture. To change the culture, teach all your people how to use the Agile Decision Filter and hold them accountable for every decision they make.
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