Proposal 1: Volunteer Tiger Teams

[Comment: Title is important to get the new reader oriented toward the main idea.]

Proposal 1: Full-On Agile using 2 Volunteer Independent Teams as Pilot

Many agile practices:

·                Release Planning Using Stories & points

·                Project Backlog, emerging

·                Velocity in points (key metric, we will watch for improvement)

·                Pairing (~50% of time; 100% of new code)

·                2-week Fixed Iterations

·                Iteration Planning Mtg (time-boxed to 3 hrs)

·                Iteration Backlog, with Tasks in Hours

·                Iteration Burndown Chart

·                TDD

·        Strong Configuration Management

·        Automated testing at multiple levels

·        Frequent Builds (x times daily)

·        Frequent “regression” Testing (x times daily)

·        Define and build tests first; then pass the tests

·                Daily Standups, 15 mins max.

·                Small Team (~ 7 +/- 1)

·                Team Room; all team members collocated there

·                Integrated team, 100% dedicated to this team's work

·        Business Lead

·        Analysts

·        Developers

·        Testers

·                Sustainable pace

·                Visual information radiators (Burndown chart plus others) in Team Room

·                Team able to demo working software at end of each Iteration

·                Iteration Review Mtg (with small demo given); time-boxed

·                Retrospective Mtg, giving actions for improvement

Lean practices:

o        Pull & Flow within Short iterations

o        Value stream ideas:

§         Reduce Waits/delays

§         Minimize Inventory

§         Reduce Waste (too much documentation, etc)

o        Measure progress & make continuous improvements, especially from one iteration to the next

o        Management commitment to remove the highest priority blocks that impede these two teams (if only on a pilot basis)  (Team itself will remove blocks that it can remove by itself.)

Coaching/training for all roles and activities:

·                Business

·                Analysts

·                Developers (all code must be written using pairing; anyone can modify any code [if using good sense])

·                Testers

·                Project Mgr, who is 100% dedicated and actively doing some "real" team work also

The team will also have a (recent) Certified ScrumMaster, who will be actively coaching the team. 

Some of the players on the team will be mentor/practitioners, who will be coaching others on the same to play agile better. The Certified ScrumMaster and the mentor/practitioners will be actively supported by one Agile Coach who will be 100% dedicated to a team for 4 iterations, and then 50% dedicated to that team.  The Agile Coach is the key person facilitating this team, although the ScrumMaster will MC the Agile meetings and have other important duties.

In addition, we will get coaching and support for doing the following in an Agile context:

o        Configuration (cruise control, ant, etc)

o        Architecture & Design Skills (emerging architecture and design)

Rollout plan

·                Apprenticeship program: The Certified ScrumMaster will be an apprentice Agile Coach, so we need some basics of the apprenticeship program in place.  More details on the program can evolve later.

·                Training: We (the client firm) need to find and bring on people who can coach on some of the above topics.  We may already have some.  We need to find and bring on a few mentor practitioners.

·                Splitting/starting up other teams [Shane, not clear to me what you were getting at here.  ??]

·                Internal Managers:  From the start, we will be training internal managers to take on a coaching role in some of the areas ("specialist agile coach" in one area, such as testing).  These people are completely not up to the job (from an Agile perspective) as we start, but we will cross-train them to start doing these new coaching activiies, while at the same time training the people in the teams.  Then they will help role it out to other teams, and to their peer managers to take on these coaching duties.