Gayatri D Kalyanaraman

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
While speaking to Karen in detail, one of the quick realizations were that she has led many teams but didn\u2019t have experience in setting up brand new Agile teams. And above that was the complexity of managing the transition in a smooth manner (without the traditional metrics) AND a higher proportion of fresh graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While speaking to Karen in detail, one of the quick realizations were that she has led many teams but didn\u2019t have experience in setting up brand new Agile teams. And above that was the complexity of managing the transition in a smooth manner (without the traditional metrics) AND a higher proportion of fresh graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Have you had such experience? How did you deal with it? Was agile the preferred methodology to transfer knowledge as well as run the development team?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While speaking to Karen in detail, one of the quick realizations were that she has led many teams but didn\u2019t have experience in setting up brand new Agile teams. And above that was the complexity of managing the transition in a smooth manner (without the traditional metrics) AND a higher proportion of fresh graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
While team members were hired, many members were fresh out of college or with less than 2 years of experience in the industry. Karens\u2019 past experience in Agile was always with team of well rounded multi-disciplinary team members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had such experience? How did you deal with it? Was agile the preferred methodology to transfer knowledge as well as run the development team?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While speaking to Karen in detail, one of the quick realizations were that she has led many teams but didn\u2019t have experience in setting up brand new Agile teams. And above that was the complexity of managing the transition in a smooth manner (without the traditional metrics) AND a higher proportion of fresh graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

\n
Karen has a mandate to setup a new team in India for a product line. This product line has teams in the US and they are growing to accommodate to build new features as well as maintain the expansive features. With that context, Karen created a transition plan for a period of 6 months through different phases that included knowledge transfer, development using the old team members as shadow support and development by new team members acting independently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While team members were hired, many members were fresh out of college or with less than 2 years of experience in the industry. Karens\u2019 past experience in Agile was always with team of well rounded multi-disciplinary team members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had such experience? How did you deal with it? Was agile the preferred methodology to transfer knowledge as well as run the development team?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While speaking to Karen in detail, one of the quick realizations were that she has led many teams but didn\u2019t have experience in setting up brand new Agile teams. And above that was the complexity of managing the transition in a smooth manner (without the traditional metrics) AND a higher proportion of fresh graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First things in order is to keep these themes separated
New Agile Teams: New Agile team setup is same as any other project team setup. First a basic training is given to all the team members on technical, functional and process side. Process means not just Agile training but also the team norms, DORs and DOD definition layout. Roles and expectations from each member is laid out and clearly understood. Within each sprint, the velocity is signed up to only the extent that would keep the teams for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Managing Transition: Taking one step deeper in the process is an key understanding of knowledge transition and tailoring the process based on the project\/product context.
I have seen agile teams create their process for knowledge transfer in the lines of \u2018knowledge accumulation\u2019, \u2018Minor Change and Validate\u2019, \u2018Change and Validate\u2019 and \u2018Steady state\u2019. Depending on how large the modules are, the teams can iterate over these 4 levels in 2 weeks to 6 months also. In each phase, try finding ways to showcase the teams\u2019 understanding in the width as well as depth.
Its upto the entire team to sign up for such a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fresh graduates: In XP programming, one of the fastest way to bring a new person upto speed in the product area is to pair with that person while solving a production issue or developing\/testing for a user story or deploying the code in a server to test. This gives a clear guidance in an end to end manner. Just like onboarding a new person to the project, fresh graduates would be the same. As an anchor, it would be better to provide a mentor or a go-to person. In addition, one of the effective ways I have seen, co-create a learning plan for the graduate to learn on their own experiments and report back. This will bring a sense of confidence for everyone in the team as well as the new fresh graduate(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you would see, there is really nothing new in the practices followed in onboarding as far as agile is concerned. New generation of team members bring fresh ideas, energy and balance the dynamics for the product development. Remember, with the right guidance, fresh graduates quickly become the vital force for the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What have been your experiences after applying these learnings.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-work-team-freshers","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:16:34","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6199","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7243,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 16:15:10","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:45:10","post_content":"\n
Ved Guru is a seasoned scrum master with multiple projects delivered upto the satisfaction of the product owners and stakeholders including team members. He has recently moved to an organization in the similar domain that\u2019s been following agile practices very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ved for the first time finds himself managing a product in the scrum way with roadmaps defined and multiple scrum teams working towards the program. The earlier scrum master was performing the role of a release manager, business analyst and scrum of scrum master all in one. During the first two weeks of knowledge assimilation, Ved became comfortable with the business nuances of the product delivery, he was finding the communication patterns with his onshore scrum masters harder to appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most decisions for his teams were taken onshore due to historical reasons as well as business proximity. He also observed that the technical lead took up many AdHoc activities that came directly from the senior leadership due to the business criticality. Another area of discomfort was the expectation from his manager that more work can be taken up by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever had such challenges in your stream of work? What are the solutions for such dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to understand the several anti-patterns as a scrum master before we delve into understanding the dilemmas and their solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly there are three large dimensions for identifying the root cause of the anti-patterns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Scrum Team: Some of the common anti-patterns occur in understanding roles and the responsibilities, taking ownership of the deliverable and the, most important, trust among the team members.
Roles and responsibilities continue to evolve as teams mature in their practices and its important to rehash them when the product objective changes or the team members undergo a change. One of the best practice is to rewrite the roles and responsibilities within the team whenever a major change occurs.
Ownership of the deliverable of the scrum teams such as the handshakes within and outside teams, type of deliverables that are given and quality that drives them needs to improve and excel. To some extent, there is a correlation to the trust and ownership of the deliverables
These unsaid worth ethic drives the team performance to improve on a perpetuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Product: Anti-patterns observed while delivering a product is around misalignment in vision, effort spent in articulating short term and long term objectives for the project as well as the product owners understanding of their role as a Champion for the product as well as the Scrum team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Communication: Inter scrum communication is by far the hardest anti-pattern to break while scaling agile practices. By virtue of belonging to different teams, the scrum masters of each of the scrum teams do not get to spend a lot of time and hence limited understanding of each others\u2019 strengths. This turns to become areas of black-holes\/blind spots for communication or indecision for the scrum teams.
For example, one of the teams\u2019 I had observed, weren\u2019t aware of all the duties the other team working for the same product line was doing. They ended up not taking a critical piece of work for almost a week before a decision had to be taken by the senior management. Its important to understand collective ownership doesn\u2019t mean no ownership. Same with decision making as in, decision needs to be taken jointly and on a timely basis.
With these anti-patterns some of the key aspects that Ved Guru went about setting was
\u2013 Started setting up time for all scrum masters to interact more deeply and help everyone understand what decisions who needs to take and time criticality of it
\u2013 Help the technical lead understand her role in the product and create solutions aligned to the product and not necessarily for the short term and pick up adHoc activities
\u2013 Spend more time to take one discussion with each sprint retro and follow through those actions. With such intentional movement to retrospective actions, team started working as one cohesive unit towards the vision of the product<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now with these items sorted, Ved got a different challenge in his hand around handling dynamic relationship with an upstream application that\u2019s driven by a water-fall type deliverables. Oh well, that\u2019s a discussion for another CHOW!<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #27\u2013 Scrum team communication dilemmas","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-27-scrum-team-communication-dilemmas","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:17:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7243","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7392,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-09-19 15:46:09","post_date_gmt":"2016-09-19 10:16:09","post_content":"There are many types of Scaling agile frameworks and organizations that started scaling early on have their own custom scaled frameworks.\n\nThe smallest unit of the developed software is delivered by the team. At this level the scrum or basic agile works beautifully as found by many successful projects. At a team level, the variability, complexity as well as team dynamic $\"picture2\"$ <\/a>s is limited to only that team. Its a misconstrued notion that successful Agile delivery is more suited to smaller projects. Its important to pick the right delivery structure for scaling agile practices.\n\nWhile scaling agile, there are multiple models that are widely spoken about such as LeSS, SAFe, DAD and variations of the same.\u00a0 What is the right framework? Or is there anything like a right framework at all. That\u2019s the question I am trying to answer.\n\nStructure follows Strategy\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>is the prime management theory which talks about how you structure your team would be based on the strategic goal that the organization is moving towards. In the same lines, Conway\u2019s law states\n
Organizations which design systems \u2026 are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the\u00a0communication patterns<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0of these organizations\n\n\u2014\u2009M. Conway<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to scaling agile would totally depend on the organization design and structures in place. Here are some of the well-known organization design patterns and the relevant scaling model that has worked.\n\nScaling a program<\/strong>\n\nThe program (by definition) is having multiple teams moving towards the same goals and has typically constraints around time, scope, market & regulatory conditions. In these cases, high level of cohesion and communication is mandatory. $\"puzzle\"$ <\/a>\n\nIn such scenarios, I have observed using SAFe\u00ae like model followed is successful.\n\nKey aspects while implementing for SAFe \u00ae release train are\n
\n \t
Every scrum team has specific objective with self-organized developers, product owner and scrum master<\/li>\n \t
Program Increment planning done regularly<\/li>\n \t
Scope is defined every 8-12 weeks with Innovation & Adaptation sessions<\/li>\n \t
Common tool such as JIRA\/VersionOne used to capture progress<\/li>\n \t
Steering Committee is setup to take program decisions meeting every week at least<\/li>\n \t
Strong Program manager as an Release Train Engineer (RTE) who acts as a common conduit across teams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product Owners with every team and Analyst in case of PO is not available locally,<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of scrum meetings discuss environment, inter-team dependencies and ,<\/li>\n \t
Joint showcases and business stakeholders attending such demos so that its easier to see the canvas getting built out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nScaling a product:<\/strong>\n\nWhile scaling a product and program have similarities, their differences are the level of communication required once the modules are defined to a certain degree. Each product line while in inception phase, would work as a program for agile to be successful. Once a cadence is setup, scaling the product would require different types of principles\n\nSome of the key aspects that are required are\n
\n \t
Having a strong engineering practice; It\u2019s critical to have the same principles and proper dependency injections<\/li>\n \t
$\"picture1\"$ <\/a>Having a common and current roadmap with rolling window for features<\/li>\n \t
Strong DevOps practices to manage frequent releases<\/li>\n \t
Local Product owner for each agile team to work efficiently<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBest Practices that I have seen which works towards success are:\n
\n \t
Product council with all the product owners to ensure that features are prioritized on a timely basis<\/li>\n \t
Engineering huddles between teams with objective of aligned\u00a0architecture<\/li>\n \t
Scrum of Scrum meetings with focus on common framework elements, environments and discuss new improvements<\/li>\n \t
Similar\u00a0to scaling a program having joint showcases\/demo for looking at progress as well as common retrospectives would be helpful to learn from each other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLoose coupling within modules but critical to have high coupling with respect to principles, feature road-mapping and engineering practices. In case of product its\n\nScaling a\u00a0strategic initiative:<\/strong>\n\nWe have seen many strategic initiatives such as automation, CI\/CD setup work very well during the pilot phase. While scaling initiatives, there are no silver bullets.\n\nSome of the examples from our experience are\n
\n \t
BOT(Build, Own and Transfer) Way: Creating a Center of Excellence team that forms the core group that does the initial change to happen and as and when the relevant team is ready to take ownership of the initiative, transfer the same.<\/li>\n \t
Playground Way: Common training is given for all the team members and coaching is given individually for each team to move towards the initiative. This will help ownership for the initiative rest with the teams.<\/li>\n \t
KPI Way: Adding an initiative in a senior executives\u2019 KPI and expect that the roll down of initiative across the enterprise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe have seen the BOT way is the easier to implement and success rate is higher. However, need to watch for handover signals well. Some drawback is that original team gets the excellence in the initiative and the team that needs to own the initiative continues to be dependent or drops it completely.\n\nScaling as a product line: Vertical\/Horizontal integration<\/strong>\n\nLarge engineering enterprise as an example that depends on upstream and downstream system. This includes large and hairy problems where the agreements are setup every 8-12 weeks.\n\nKey agreements need to be in the Tools, agile processes, engineering practices for the benefit of movement of team members and achieve scaling only.\n\nBest Practices while scaling Agile Delivery<\/strong><\/em>\n
\n \t
Regular Roadshows after milestones are complete<\/li>\n \t
Innovation days where the team work only on areas that they choose<\/li>\n \t
Inter-team collaboration by way of invitation to participate in other teams\u2019 release planning<\/li>\n \t
Communities of Practices setup across teams within the location<\/li>\n \t
Leadership buy-in for providing safety net for experimentation and innovation<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nEach and every organization brings a set of core strengths to keep the momentum upwards and onwards. Agile delivery scaling needs to amplify those strengths and customize the communication patterns in the areas of processes, engineering and management to make the agile journey smooth and successful.","post_title":"Agile Pipeline \u2013 How to scale agile delivery","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-pipeline-scale-agile-delivery","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:49:14","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:19:14","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7392","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7231,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-06-03 15:58:40","post_date_gmt":"2016-06-03 10:28:40","post_content":"\n
Krithiga is the development manager for a functional unit in Financial services organization. She\u2019s responsible for two scrum teams from the India development centre. Within the functional unit another scrum team works from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Till end of last year, the two scrum teams have always under promised and over delivered. Hence there has been lot of promises and expectations from the Business for the team to deliver. At the start of the year, to provide a better bang for the buck, one of the scrum teams were called to do a rescue project for another functional unit. This provided Krithiga a lot of great exposure. And the scrum team that was staying with the parent functional unit, subdivided into multiple streams to cater to the technical, functional and prototype like requirements as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All had been going well for the first two quarters of the year. But slowly what had started as a murmur, started becoming louder \u2013 that functional and compliance related requirements have been slow to deliver. The requirements that was in the backlog in the beginning of the year continue to remain in the backlog and were not being prioritized. New & urgent requirements were worked upon and backlog continues to be backlog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the past 2 quarters delivery, she realised that the teams have been consistently delivering around 35 story points per iteration (2 weeks) similar to last year. The team size has been the same as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is going on? Have you had such a situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suggested solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few areas of observation that needs to be improved<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Krithiga analysed the team work for the past few months, the velocity was fairly constant. However, when she started analysing the stories that were carried over to the next iteration(s) as well as the scope creep within an iteration, she realised couple of symptoms<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
There was plenty of stops and starts that the team were doing. As the team size had reduced, the same team was responsible for multiple initiatives. With different requirements that came into a sprint, there were times where the team had to leave stories half way and re-start later. This came as a tip of the iceberg from the team as under-utilized.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Another finding that she found was that due to the number of streams that the team had to take up, there were silos that were forming in the team. Clearly she had agreed for the same to start with to bring in efficiency. However, the effectiveness to function as a team was lost in the process<\/em>. There were deeper pockets of knowledge in different modules rather than overall systems thinking improving<\/li>\n\n\n\n
Due to the streams that had formed, the actual value that needs to be delivered consistently was not present. For e.g. the story that had \u2018database development\u2019 was complete well before the \u2018consuming services\u2019. This was not reflected when the velocity as a metric was analysed. However, when the value stream mapping exercise<\/em> was done for a functional feature, there were many areas where teams were working on their respective streams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Now armed with this information, she realised that the team was hard working and it was more of a systemic problem that has been created and needs to have the team start seeing it the way she\u2019s seeing. She shared this information in the next retrospective and asked the team what their opinion was. After a level of deliberation between the team, development manager, product owner and the application sponsor, they decided to take up 3 actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A. Self correcting team<\/strong>: Team needs to be self-organised and self correcting based on the goals. They would decided that they have to hold each other accountable using a structured retrospective. <\/strong> Gaps were identified and solutions were brain stormed with action items and owners clearly taken up with a timeline<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B. Release Planning<\/strong>: While the team could only correct and organize themselves so much while there is too much chaos outside. The Product manager called for a release planning exercise to provide a vision, features expected so that an adaptable plan that was balanced across functional, technical and experimental features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the key elements from the Agile constructs is to establish release planning along with the team so that there is a clear and transparent plan<\/strong> in place for the product line. It is important to have a just enough detailing in the plan so that there is flexibility built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C. Product Backlog<\/strong>: Product owner along with the team continue to curate the backlog and spend time in the process of backlog refinement<\/strong> from the functional, futuristic as well as technical side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With these three important constructs the teams are in the process of overcoming the challenges in delivery.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #20 \u2013 How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-20-i-handle-bottomless-scope-pit-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:20:12","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7231","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":6208,"post_author":"11","post_date":"2016-03-28 17:06:21","post_date_gmt":"2016-03-28 11:36:21","post_content":"\n
Rekha is a seasoned project manager in a large services firm. She has executed a few projects successfully using Agile\/Scrum processes. She has also transitioned from Doing Agile to Being Agile after the execution of the last project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been tasked to complete the third phase of the project for \u2018eTransferNow\u2019 in a fixed price contract model to avoid the risk of over running the budget. She had a high level understanding of the vision and features that the third phase of the project. This is a very strategic project and its important to keep the stakeholder in the client comfortable. At the same time, the challenge of executing an agile project in a fixed price seemed like a conundrum for Rekha. She has always executed Agile projects in a T&M contract structure only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assume that you are in the shoes of Rekha, what would you do? Assume that 70% of the team members involved in the first two phases of the project along with the Technical lead are continuing the third phase also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile follows the inverted pyramid approach with timeline and quality are fixed. With the price fixed, the main lever to use is to contain the scope of delivery. Once the financial constraint is set, more often than not it gets down the defining the scope to the last \u2019T\u2019 and thus defeating the purpose of following the agile development process. The famous Tamil saying of \u2018Soodu Kanda Poonai\u2019 which talks of taking extra precautions based on experience. In the agile context, fixing the price is not the right way to deal with the contract as with the price many old practices also comes hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution to such a predicament is to in two stages. First stage is prior to the contract negotiations and second during the project execution. Have an agreement on what a story point is with a few examples. With the high level features that need to be implemented have a conversation of # of story points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the past velocity, create the staffing and release plan. For example, if we needed 2 members to deliver 20 story points in 2 weeks, this can be the basis to arrive at the staffing, release plan and hence the financial cost to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the contract negotiation, have an agreement based on the number of story points that would be delivered under the high level features. In case the price is higher, the number of story points need to reduced accordingly. During Execution Iteration 0 should be spent in creating high level functional stories within each feature. This would turn to become the Master Story List (MSL)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Master story list forms the baseline for the delivery\/iteration plan. All other processes of scrum planning, demo, story grooming should follow the same model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the backlog grooming when additional details presents additional scope, then diligence needs to be paid by the Client Point of Contact (CPOC) and the Iteration manager (IM) to prioritise and take the appropriate action. With this solution the following are apparent Financial constraint projects can follow a pure agile project. Additional diligence needs to be paid to the MSL by the client team and service provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is very important not to fall in the oft traveled path of creating upfront documentation, design and hence the waterfall model to satisfy contractual obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contract writing is an art and should be drawn out with a clear understanding of the end goal.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"fixed-price-agile-project-oxymoron","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 14:22:02","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6208","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":4},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

Gayatri D Kalyanaraman

Chow

CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?

by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman
October 17, 2016

Chow

CHOW #27– Scrum team communication dilemmas

by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman
September 19, 2016

Agile

Agile Pipeline – How to scale agile delivery

by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman
September 19, 2016

Chow

CHOW #20 – How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?

by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman
June 3, 2016

Chow

CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?

by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman
March 28, 2016

Page 4 of 4 Previous 1 … 3 4

PM Power Consulting helps organizations achieve agility in design and delivery of software and services.

Our Offerings

Execution Excellence

Leadership Development

Organizational Excellence

About Us

Blog

Podcasts

Contact

Experts

© 2025

PM Power Consulting

Linkedin Facebook Youtube

Search for:

CHOW #31- Does Agile work for a team of freshers?

CHOW #27– Scrum team communication dilemmas

Agile Pipeline – How to scale agile delivery

CHOW #20 – How do I handle the bottomless (scope) pit in Agile?

CHOW #10- Is fixed price agile project an oxymoron?

PM Power Consulting helps organizations achieve agility in design and delivery of software and services.

Our Offerings

Execution Excellence

Leadership Development

Organizational Excellence

Large-Scale Transformation To Agile

Starting & Scaling Agile Transformation

Fully Automated Analytics Platform

ehancing project management capabilities

Enterprise Wide Digital Transformation

Books

Videos

SPS Podcast

FSL Podcast

Blogs

Challenge Of the Week