The Agile Pocket Guide

A Quick Start to Making Your Business Agile Using Scrum and Beyond

Peter Saddington

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118461808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Agile Pocket Guide explains how to develop products, services, and software quickly and efficiently, without losing the main components of the framework so effective in streamlining the creating of these products and for making positive change within a company. It includes

• The basic tennets of the Scrum framework
• How to apply the processes and steps required to become agile
• The dynamics of a successful agile environment
• The very basics of Scrum and how to employ them quickly
• Practical questions to ask the Team Leader as well as the Team
• How to build an environment of communication and collaboration for the entire organization

Chapter 1

Servant Leadership

You have been chosen to be the next leader of the Agile Team simply because you embody three basic attributes that any successful leader needs: servant leadership, trust-building skills, and an awesome ability to communicate and facilitate. Your ability to lead and coach others springs from your humility and accommodating attitude. You are willing not only to do what it takes to be the best but also to take the low road and serve others through your work. People know they can count on you, and your ability to hold and regain people's trust enables you to build a team of trust, transparency, and accountability. You are a great communicator and protector of the team. Your ability to resolve conflicts among team members as well as business folk allows you to command an audience that trusts your judgment and relies on your ability to protect the team's work from outside influences, filtering only that which is beneficial and helpful to the work at hand. You are an educator in that you coach and teach the business people and product owners how to supply your team with the right amount of information and feedback. You are not haughty, nor are you overbearing. You are the right person for this job.

Your job is to:

• Remove obstacles or resolve dependencies between team members and teams.
• Remind the team of mission/value statements for each project.
• Ensure that the team adheres to the defined rules of Scrum or processes accepted by the team.
• Protect the team and filter nonessential information and meetings.
• Give updates and information regarding enterprise releases or project updates.
• Set the example for the team and for the business.

A wise person once said, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” As the leader you hold the true mission and vision of the business in your hands. Your knowledge of how your team's work directly impacts the overall business is crucial to making sure that anything your team accomplishes falls in line with your business's model for success. Your team will look to you for that direction. They will look to you for example. They will trust your decisions. They will follow your lead.

 

Leader Questions

Every chapter in this book ends with a set of three questions you will want to ask your team.

1. Who do we need to meet with or connect with to help with that task?

2. Is there anything we've missed or not considered?

3. What do you need from me, and what can I do to help?

Chapter 2

What the Business Wants from You—Managing Requirements

The jungle is perilous, fraught with danger, and always in a state of change. In your jungle, the business comprises many different tribes, teams, or departments. Each of these units within this business has its own personality and history. Even though the business is one major unit, the factions give rise to warring with one another and fighting for the same resources—namely, your Agile Team.

The jungle is not a safe place for even trade. The leaders of each tribe try to work with one another to find a common ground, and they work with you as they give rise to half-baked parchments of work (requirements). The marketing tribe to the sales tribe, the finance tribe to the customer service tribe—all need to utilize your team in order to get what they need done. Unfortunately, they don't always know what “done” is, and they often give you incomplete or nebulous requirements. The tribes have heard that your new Agile Team is taking a new approach to development that is agile, flexible, transparent, and adaptable. How will you communicate to the business that your tribe and Agile practices will knock their socks off? How can you convince them that taking an Agile approach is far better than the mystical waterfall processes and approaches?

So why are Agile requirement processes and change management good for the tribes?

1. Stakeholders and interested parties get to work together to build the right requirements.

2. Stakeholders get constant daily feedback on updates.

3. Stakeholders have control over the scope: they can change requirements and priorities, add new requirements, and modify the product backlog.

4. Stakeholders have control over the schedule (they can fund the project iterations as long as they want).

5. Stakeholders have control over the budget.

The other tribes or business units are excited to hear that they can heavily participate in many aspects of the predevelopment process, but it is your job to remind them that they are responsible for making decisions and providing information and requirements to your team in a timely manner. From here, your team will be able to communicate your time constraints, requirements, questions, and/or needs to the business in a timely manner as well. At the end of the day, the business must own the prioritization of the requirements.

 

Leader Questions

1. Do you currently have a clear understanding of the product landscape or have a product strategy map or product portfolio defined?

2. Which features or projects does your business want first?

3. Which features or projects will provide the most measurable business value?

Chapter 3

Your Agile Team

Your Agile Team is successful because of the unique individuals who make up the team. These members are the heart and soul of your success. Some things to encourage your team with are the continuing autonomy and freedom you give them to do great work. This self-organization is a principle that brings the team together in unity, in that they are generalists and specialists at the same time. The team has the right to take requirements and specifications and build pieces of the total system in the way that they see fit.

There are two ways to approach managing your Agile Team: task-oriented and relation-oriented. Your success as a team Leader hinges on the help you can give to team members as they learn to relate to each other, not just on the help you provide for tasks you assign. The amount of support you give your team and the communication methods you use are just as crucial to your team's success as improving the lack of collaboration and feedback that they probably endure in a non-Agile environment. One of the most important but often forgotten steps is the need to actively listen to your team. As a Leader, you should plan to learn from your team, and one of the best ways to learn is to listen to what they have to say. The best teams are small in size, five to nine cross-functional members work together like a charm!

Teams organize work and tasks among themselves using the following qualities and/or skills:

• Accountability: Team members are held accountable for their work and are reviewed by each team member.
• Teamwork: Team members can work together to utilize their own talents in any project or activity.
• Adaptability: Team members are able to make better decisions based on their own skills and are able to adapt to changes more quickly.
• Collaboration: Team members can circulate knowledge and experience more expediently and make decisions together.
• Communication: Team members who work closely together can communicate and collaborate on work more efficiently.

This culture of empowerment enables team members to look at their responsibilities as more than just a defined role. Each team member can draw from personal experiences, motivations, and passions. With this empowerment comes the ability for each member to have control over how he or she works and to have a purpose of aligning individual aspirations not only with the company goals but also with personal goals and personal growth strategies. One way to elicit this type of information is to sit down individually with each member and ask a few questions. These questions require you to go beyond the call of duty. It takes time and dedication to know your team and determine how individual skills or passions could be matched with business opportunities. To get to the heart of your team culture, you must know your team. (See Chapter 17 for more information on how to understand your team's culture quickly and efficiently.)

 

Agile Team Questions

1. What are your roles and responsibilities, and how comfortable are you in them?

2. What works and what does not work with your team?

3. What are other areas that you are interested in helping with or learning about?

Chapter 4

The High-Performance Team

Having a supportive and caring environment to work in may sound simplistic, but whether you're in preschool or a Fortune 500 company, it makes sense. One thing you continually need to communicate to your team is that you and your management care about the relationships within the team. Not only do you care, but you also have high expectations for the team given that the correct structure and guidance are in place. This is also an environment that gives opportunities for meaningful participation in any project and gives recognition to those who do well.

In this context one word comes to mind: differentiation. Some people may cringe at the sound of it, but the process it embodies is exactly what will move a team from underperforming (or keeping the status quo) to doing great work and excelling at any project that comes its way. As a proponent of differentiation, I allow the team members to establish themselves in roles that uniquely fit their strengths. (See Chapter 17 for more information on how to build and assemble a high-performance team.) This takes a ton of work from you: you must recognize that there are men and women who keep the lights on and there are those who need to be moved or released back into the jungle. You must be able to spend the time necessary to tap into each team member's potential. People want to flourish and they want to succeed, and to accomplish that, a leader must separate the wheat from the chaff and retain the best talent within a team. Team members will also appreciate your willingness to help them become more productive and valuable to the business, because if you foster an environment of community, collaboration, and caring, you enable members to give feedback on what is working and what is not working, as well as on who is working out and who needs to move on.

High-performance teams are a community. A community environment:

• Breeds group interdependence, which in turn increases the success of individuals as opposed to relying on authoritarian control (top-down management or command-and-control management).
• Enables the team to set goals and solve problems together.
• Continually monitors and assesses work progress.
• Celebrates achievements and rewards individuals.
• Decreases managing overhead by the Leader, thereby enabling the Leader to focus on road-mapping work and giving specialized help as needed.
• Encourages training members as a group, which promotes a higher work ethic and increased productivity.
• Produces measurably great results over time.
• Differentiates roles that people are uniquely fit to fill (see Chapter 17 for more information).
• Coaches the team to give candid feedback and support to other team members.
• Keeps the best talent, moving or removing unproductive members of the team.

A high-performance team is one that embraces the Toyota way of kaizen, which means “continuous improvement.” Your Agile Team will be one that has members who continually communicate with one another, continually improve themselves, the team, the processes, and the business. Most of all, your team, through its success and transparency, will honor its...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Team Tribes: A Story
• Chapter 1: Servant Leadership
• Chapter 2: What the Business Wants from You—Managing Requirements
• Chapter 3: Your Agile Team
• Chapter 4: The High-Performance Team
• Chapter 5: Everyone around the Campfire
• Chapter 6: Daily Stand-Up, or Daily Scrum
• Chapter 7: Introducing the Product Owner, or Value Driver
• Chapter 8: Discoveries from the Product Backlog
• Chapter 9: The Sprint Backlog and Release Planning
• Chapter 10: Sprint Planning Meeting
• Chapter 11: User Stories and Estimation
• Chapter 12: Timeboxed Sprints (Iterations) and the Meaning of Done
• Chapter 13: Tracking Flow and Information Radiators
• Chapter 14: Demonstration of the Product
• Chapter 15: The Retrospective
• Chapter 16: Wash, Rinse, Repeat, Win!
• Chapter 17: Team and Business Cultural Dynamics—Team Science™
• Chapter 18: Scrum of Scrums
• Chapter 19: Thirty-Second Scrum Elevator Pitch
• chapter 20: Understanding Requirements
• Chapter 21: Paired Programming—Team Kaizen
• Chapter 22: Measuring a Working Product
• Chapter 23: Technical Debt Is a Progress Killer!
• Chapter 24: Oh Kanban!
• Chapter 25: Personal Kaizen—More on Servant Leadership
• Chapter 26: Team Kaizen—Practicing Agile
• Chapter 27: Product Kaizen—The Value Driver for Your Product
• Chapter 28: Cultural Kaizen—Leadership in Dynamic Team Cultures
• Chapter 29: Conclusion
• Index