| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Discussion with CSM Group NYC Feb 28-29

Page history last edited by Joe Little 8 years, 1 month ago

 Discussion area

 

My suggestion is that you start with date, time, person's name.  And then put comments in reverse chrono order.  Like this...

 

****

3/8 6:18 pm Joe Little - Def of Impediment

 

An impediment is anything that decreases the amount of BV delivered in a given period (say, a Sprint).  Since nothing is perfect, everything we do is an impediment.  So the only problem is prioritizing them.

 

All kinds of things can be impediment.

 

3/8 6:14pm Joe Little - Portable Scrum Board

 

Kert Peterson and others used to get a large felt cloth.  Then put sticky stuff on the back of cards, and "stick" the cards on the felt.  The sticky stuff was like velcro.  You can get it at Office Depot in the tape area.

 

If you have magnetic whiteboards (you probably do), my personal favorite is using regular index cards with magnetic stick-pins.  Excellent.  Easy to move things (and you expect things to be moving, right?).  Only problem is the magnetic stick pins are a bit expensive.  But cheap considering the value.

 

 

3/8 5:51pm Joe Little: Several comments

 

Note that I changed things to reverse chrono order, ie, the most recent things at the top.

I have made a number of posts about Business Value at my blog: http://agileconsortium.blogspot.com/  Incliding the most recent post.

Ken Schwaber did the first link that Emmanuel gives below.  I like his ideas, which are basically already embedded in Scrum.

"Earned Value": As some of you know, the PMI has this concept of "Earned Value".  I don't like the idea.  In essence, if you work hard, you "earn" value.  Hooey.  Value is released sometimes with no work, sometimes with minimal work, and sometimes with hard work.  And sometimes you work your butt off and release no value (or minimal value).  IMO.  So the articles that try to reconcile Business Value to EV are mis-dorected IMO. 

 

First, it is hard to quantify BV, particularly at the Story Level.  But I think in general it is useful if you do.  Then you can track 2 sorts of BV: Stories "done" and stories "released" (or the BV numbers associated with each. 

 

I prefer an approach to BV that is similar to planning poker.  I think it is common to have stories (that can fit in a Sprint) that can be a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than other stories.  If so in your project, this is very useful information.  So, you need large numbers at the top end of the scale, since you are dealing with themes, epics, etc in the Prod Bklg.

 

Simple Metrics: In addition to BV, I think it is useful to track velocity in Story Points. It is soooo common to need to have a discussion with a manager about how "this team (car) is only going at 25 mph right now (25 story points)... and it is just magical thinking to believe they will be going at 50 mph in 2 sprints."  AND...knowing the velocity allows the team to identify impediments that will improve it.  And base the benefits on increased velocity, which management can buy into.

 

Metrics Gotcha: Be careful what you measure, because you probably will get it.  So, as shown by The Penny Game, if you set metrics at the Dept level (or any level other than the end-product of what you want), people will sub-optimize the higher-level, more important thing.   (OK to keep some other numbers, but don't take 'em seriously and probbaly get rid of them quickly unless they are clearly useful and have no side-effects.)  I would track bugs and tests completed at first.  Showing how much better Agile is in these areas is a very compelling reason to extend the adoption of agile.  If possible, I would optimize on the delivery of Business Value.

 

Robin Dymond and Deb Hartmann wrote a paper about Business Value.  I think for Agile2006.  Tell me if you can't find it.  Robin probably has some blog posts about this subject. As do others, if you are interested.

 

 

 

3/8 12pm Emmanuel: Business Value at workable story level

While I am working on improving the Business Value calculation for the team Sprint workable stories, I found the following links.

 

 - http://www.controlchaos.com/about/value.php

 - http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/articles/calculating-earned-business-value-for-an-agile-project.html

 - http://www.solutionsiq.com/PDF/Sulaiman-AgileEVM.pdf

 - http://kw-agiledevelopment.blogspot.com/2007/12/measuring-business-value-with-metrics.html

 

Note: workable story means small stories or requirements that teams can commit for a sprint. In contrast, there are Master Stories or Features, which are high level requirments that need to be analysed and split in workable stories.

 

3/7 12pm Emmanuel: Simple Agile Metrics -

I used the classic Burndows, Team and Product velocities, % story completion to help the team to evaluate themselves during Sprints.

In additions we have also Business Value of each Sprints by products (cost by story points...).

We also getting better to get quality metric such as Bugs, Production and Maintenance metrics.

But, after a while, I found the teams bored with those one. I plan to introduce new metrics that I saw recently in a Webcast "Going Agile - Improve your Agile experience with simple metrics."

URL:  "http://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobb

yServlet?target=lobby.jsp&eventid=104139&sessi

onid=1&key=6F5AB6DA8E7351B433481

C798A61C507&eventuserid=14730096"

 

I am interested to any other links regarding "new" simple metrics like those ones if you have any.

Cheers Scrummers :-)

 

3/7 12pm Emmanuel: Portable Sprint Board -

 

If you do not have a Team room or similar where you can have your Team Sprint Board (with post-its, burndowns...), you can build a portable one, using those light, large foam boards.

Issues:

   - you may want to use SuperSticky post-its or extra tapes or pins

   - sometimes you may need 2 boards

   - wherever you put your portable board, it should be stable

   - those boards are good for a Sprint but not for Yearly Strategic or Release Plannings

Have fun

 

3/7 12pm Emmanuel: Agile Team -

Someone asked: who is a team member? does a Product Owner or Engineering Manager is also a Team Member? etc...

I liked the answer: when am I a team member? I can be a team member anytime for anything.

 

3/7 12pm Emmanuel: Impediments

I found that it takes time for us to understand what are impediments. There are multiple definitions of what is an impediment.

The ones I have are:

   - an impediment is anything that stop me to work on my team Sprint stories / tasks. It could be a discussion, a production support issue, a long lunch...

   - there are "positive" impediments: outing company ski trip or training for example :-)

 

Any other definitions?

 

 

 

 

 

 

3/5 8:22am, Joe Little: This is the second comment.

 

3/5 8:21am, Joe Little: This is the first comment.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.