agile – Page 2

Discussion about hiring developers

Context: A lot of managers, product owners try to solve the problem of hiring only based on some specific skill sets. This is problematic because it shows a control mentality. But what happens when the needed skill sets change? We modify the team based on the skillset or we let them the chance to adapt, learn?(1) Which approach is more agile?

Shu: Hi Ri. There is a thing which puzzles me, regarding the process of hiring developers. Tell me if I am wrong.

Ri: Hi Shu, which thing?

Shu: Very often I see an announcement with the following form: “We need a senior .Net/React/Vue/Java/Angular/… developer”. For sure a certain language/framework matters if it is known, but is not enough – at least not for a senior. Seniority should not be tied to a certain technology only.

Ri: Is it maybe just an unfortunate choice of words? Maybe they want to say a “senior developer with Net/React/Vue/Java/Angular/… skills”

Shu: I do not think this, because of a strange effect I saw. Is about how teams are formed, at least what I have noticed in the past.

Ri: Could you tell me more…

Shu: You have a well functioning team and a new project comes. That project needs a React developer. No one in the current team has worked with React, but they are willing to learn. But it does not matter. A well functioning team will be broken because of that. Is a framework which can be mastered in a week or two by a person who knows things.

Ri: Tell me more about other skills a developer should have.

Shu: Design, analysis, algorithms, architecture, OOP, testing, experience with at least 2 languages and platforms,…

Ri: Why at least 2 languages and platforms?

Shu: Because the elders say so? 🙂

Ri: Why do they say this?

Shu: Maybe because of biases.

Ri: And also, maybe, because a developer who will not have fear approaching multiple languages/technologies she/he will understand what unites them actually. When doing this, in the end maybe, will understand that in order to adapt fast she/he will need a common ground. And this common ground transcends the language/technology.

[Shu is thinking]

Shu: By common ground you mean clean code, architecture, domain analysis, patterns, Liskov principle, algorithms,….

Ri: Yes. So, what you are trying to say is that the problem is about the locus of attention being in a slightly wrong direction?

Shu: Yes…

Ri: There are some things, among others, to consider when hiring:

– Hiring is also about learning. We want those developers, testers to learn when the market/product/needs/conditions will change. We do not want to destroy circle and community of trust(2). “Experience is not a state but a process”(3) ;

– If the focus when forming a team is first on the technology used, then on the available people and only then on the social aspects of the persons in that team and the learning, then it will be problematic and sad.

(1) Strongly influenced by James Coplien in Scrum – Product Owner class discussion [October 2019]

(2) Jeff Sutherland, James O. Coplien, “Circle of trust”, http://www.scrumbook.org/product-organization-pattern-language/development-team/circle-of-trust.html

(3) James Coplien, Scrum – Product Owner class discussion [October 2019]

Scrum Master as a complex dynamical attractor

Context

Some years ago I noticed a strange thing when a new Scrum Master was assigned to a team. That team was already formed and just needed a new Scrum Master. I observed that team before with another Scrum Master. I also observed the new Scrum Master with his former teams. My first reaction was: “How sad. This team will be transformed in selfish team, capable of doing bad things like sabotage. I saw the good part of these people, now I will see the bad part in them “. And indeed, it was like this.

Problem

I was starting to observe certain patterns of influence of people upon groups of other people, with interesting consequences.

At that time I was wondering how I can explain this in a way that it made sense, was coherent, professional and had some bases.

Why this

This was about a Scrum Master, but I think it applies for Product Owners, managers, ….

This story is particularly important in context of Scrum. I say this because there is an important detail in the Scrum Guide, which is: “…Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems…” (1) (emphasis is mine). Here is about complexity theory, it’s deep stuff.

About the word “theory”

We, the IT, have at our disposition an entire body of knowledge from multiple disciplines which can help us a lot. Unfortunately this is, at least in my circles, rather ignored. And we base our ideas, work, actions on some “beliefs” or blindly.

This word “theory” is about science. Some sciences can be very useful in IT: cognitive science, anthropology, complex adaptive systems theory, etc.

We can use practices informed by theory (praxis)(2) in very practical ways in our day to day work. The fact that we know the theory can help us make sound statements/actions about novel and uncertain situations. We can do this because it is about validated knowledge from sciences(2);

In March, this year, I was at the Scrum training held by James Coplien. Everything he said there was not based on beliefs or impressions. He has done his homework regarding the scientific research. He knew how to back up everything of what he said by theory. I hope more Scrum people will follow his example.

This post is about complex adaptive systems theory. At that time, when I was observing the situation described in the Context section, I was looking at it through the lens of complexity theory, more precisely about attractors.

Atractors

Trajectories that concentrate on regular/normal patterns define the idea of system’s attractors. What is found in the basin of attraction will have its behaviours constrained/directed/channeled by the attractor, this means increasing the chance of going in one direction rather than in another. The behaviour of the system is constrained by the dynamics of the attractor. (3)

Can the attractors be persons? Of course, parental presence in a children’s party represent an attractor. Just imagine a children’s party with no parent(4). The presence of the parents there will influence what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviours.

Conclusion

● How a Scrum Master is chosen should not be based on frivolous reasons. I say this because in complex systems, we deal with social phenomena, when developing projects/products, there will always be unintended consequences. Also in complex systems a small cause does not imply a small effect, not at all.

● Strange attractors are and will be present. The fact that the Scrum Master is a good or bad attractor or not attractor at all, will matter;

● I am so tired of seeing Scrum Masters who are chosen just because:

– is enough that they know how to do reporting;

– the manager choosing the Scrum Master is enticed by the false appearance of words and behaviours of a certain person wanting to be Scrum Master;

– the person is a tester and is cheaper, in outsourcing, to make testers Scrum Masters and not developers;

– that person is very good in platitudes and reproducing the same things which can be put in just 4 A4 pages;

Scrum is not easy to do, is hard and that’s why I saw so many failures with it. I imagine this is because, maybe, lack of knowledge, fear, political games …of course is not a single root cause….

There is a lot more to say, of course. For example, other anomalies can be spotted in the situation described in the Context or in the points listed in how I saw Scrum Masters being chosen. But the intention of this post was to make the connection between 2 things: Scrum Masters and attractors.

(1) “Scrum Guide” , https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html

(2) Dave Snowden, “Of practical wisdom”, http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/of-practical-wisdom

(3) Alicia Juarrero, “Dynamic in Action”, https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Action-Intentional-Behavior-Complex/dp/0262600471

(4) Dave Snowden, “The landscape of management: Creating the context for understanding social complexity”, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228449006_The_landscape_of_management_Creating_the_context_for_understanding_social_complexity

Scrum Master – a view based on my experience as a developer

I am a little disappointed when I look around, and I see that many decisions that involve me, are taken by persons who will not handle the consequences directly, and all of these without asking me for an opinion. Is like I have to drive a car, but another person would position the seat the steering wheel, and the rear view mirrors, without asking me if I reach to the pedals, if I am able to orientate myself in space by looking in the mirrors, etc.. and on top of that, that person would not even be in that car with me, when I will be on the road. I am not talking about the decisions related to what types of electrical wires to be used when the car was designed, or the size of the electrical fuses… but some small details that depend on the context.

A scrum master is a facilitator for an agile development team. There are multiple areas where there are facilitators, even though they are not called Scrum Masters. For example, in the automotive industry, one of the examples might be FMEA Coordinator.

From my point of view, the technical expertise of the Scrum Master is a plus… it can be compensated by viewing the things applied to the context of the team but being technical or willing to understand the technical part would certainly help. My opinion can be influenced by the fact that I am a technical person. But here is why I consider this:

● Having a Scrum Master with Technical Skills doesn’t mean that she/he should be involved in technical decisions, but it might be more comfortable knowing the fact that if needed, she/he can give an advice, or change her role if needed. On one hand it is an advantage to receive a verbal advice, but sometimes, a more involvement by the person who wants to help might do the difference – if that person knows and understands the context, perhaps with his/her experience might directly help in solving the encountered issue / difficulty. The way I see it is like traveling a lot on mountains, during the cold seasons, and having an emergency blanket.

This does not mean that you should use it every time. You can even decide that you won’t buy one, because you don’t see the benefit. But in a lifetime, there might be 1-2 situations where you could have used it (for you or for somebody else) and then having it on you might represent the difference between life and death. Of course, like having a Scrum Master with technical would not 100% solve all of your problems, same with the emergency blanket: It does matter to take it with you – it is not sufficient to buy it and leave it home when you are traveling, or to carry only the emergency blanked.

● I practice ski touring. This allows a person, during the winter season, to follow paths on mountains, for example, uphill and downhill as well. In the safety equipment it is recommended to have with you, among other items, an avalanche transceiver. This is a small device that emits a beep sound on a certain frequency, and the signal becomes stronger as the person who is looking for you is getting closer. It is used, as the name implies, in finding avalanche victims. You carry it with you on emitting signal while you travel, and if you notice an avalanche, you might switch it on search mode, and try to find the victims as fast as you can.

I’ve told you about this, because I see a parallel in Scrum framework as well.

It is very good for a Scrum Master to know and understand her role very well, and all the needed steps described, but sometimes I think that these should be applied according to the context. For example, a transceiver would not be very useful if you are alone in the mountains and you are caught by an avalanche. So, if you are in a similar situation, you should pay attention to avoid as much as possible a disaster. What I mean is that you might be 100% covered by the book and definitions, if the context is not favorable for you, then you should adapt and not only rely on what you’ve read / experienced / known before. In a team context, applying for example Scrum Guide ad-literam, might bring frustrations and stress among the team members.

A scrum master with technical skills can cooperate easier with the product owner and expressing him/herself from the point of view of a scrum master, but also considering the technical part and intervene in order to prevent some things that can go wrong in that project.

The main purpose of a development team is to build a software product that meets its users’ expectations, in the minimum amount of time, and with very few or none defects – of course, this is the ideal solution. The main purpose is not to write automatic checks… or to decide to use story points when estimating stories / epics / tasks that are centralized in a tool; – these decisions should be taken considering the team’s opinions, and adjust them according to the needs, without abusing them, and of course to be applied on the context.

It is nice to have a sprint planning / retrospective / daily meeting (and useful sometimes), but not necessarily when you have a team of 1 person for example. Or even a team formed by 2-3 persons that can communicate and coordinate so that there is no need to have some of those meetings.

I have worked with Scrum Masters that were technical and Scrum Masters that were not technical and had positive and negative experiences with both. But, in my opinion, the issues were because some were operating by the letter of the law instead of operating in the spirit of the law:

● In most situations where the development team is too deeply involved in finding a solution for something that does not work, just talking with someone else would help a lot in unblocking the situation.

If we talk with a person who is not 100% involved in the development of the product, we might find alternative solutions, that as a team we somehow missed, guided by not looking at the problem from a critical point of view.

By not being involved 100% I mean that has some knowledge over the project, but it does not specifically work to develop / test it as a daily basis. That person could be for example, the Scrum Master. If she/he has some technical background, already knows the product, and some of the issues that we already encountered as the time passed by.

● There are some parts of the management of a project that might be easier to be aligned, accomplished, and applied when the Scrum Master is a technical person, because she/he knows some things from both domains. She/he does not need to be an expert but can help a lot if she/he has some ideas.

A technical scrum master can cooperate easier with the product owner and expressing him/herself from the point of view of a scrum master, but also considering the technical part.

● A big minus is that by at least not trying to understand the process, to discuss it with the team members, and instead doing things by the book, can lead to uncooperative environment, and doing some things for the sake of being done. We are not robots, so we can think freely, depending on our previous experiences, of course. There is a saying: « beware of single source people who do not have an open mind. « Ok, you may know exactly the words that describe a process, if you are not able to adjust it according to a context, then It might be better not to apply it at all or to ask for support.

Perhaps this might be one of the scrum master’s role – to defer / avoid using things that do not make sense for the entire team. Maybe I’m wrong… but by not doing this, it might bring some frustrations among the team members, sometime this can reflect in management and in the overall result as well.

A flexibility can be part of the solution and apply things not blindly but depending on the context. In order of this to happen, a lot of experience is needed along with an open mind and courage to stand out of the crowd and work for the company / product / client / colleague’s benefit.

How testers can provide value for developers

On the Rapid Software Testing slack Channel(1), one month ago, an interesting question was put by David Högberg:

“Here is an interesting story and question from my friend in another Slack-group:

(translated from Swedish)

”Today was the last day of a sprint in one of the teams I coach at….

A backend developer has been very productive this sprint, he has pulled in more tickets than planned and finished those. Instead of pulling in another ticket on the last day he took the initiative to work on the unit test coverage and integration test coverage in our most important repository.

Now we have 100% code coverage for both unit and integration (API) and a branch coverage above 90%.

Besides this he always tests his own code, with both wide and deep understanding of the requirements. He always ask for feedback regarding his own testing, wants critical code reviews and practises risk-based exploratory testing.

This is what QA-coaches and testers will have to work with in the future. How do we create value for these future developers?”

….What are your thoughts regarding my friend’s question? How can testers provide value to developers who deeply care about code quality and at the same time are good at testing themselves?” (2)

The point raised by David Högberg is important and should not be ignored. Also, I saw that some testers were somehow speechless regarding this, like there was nothing to say/do/challenge/help.

There are lots of things testers can do. Testers must/can challenge things and there is a lot to challenge. So, for example:

1. The fact that what the developer does are unit checks , integration checks not tests.(3)

2. He said that he reached 100% code coverage for unit checks and integration checks. Actually code coverage is a measure and number for programers only. This is because it helps the developer to see areas not covered at all, not how well that area of code is covered. So, this number should not be exposed to management, because you can have 100% code coverage without code actually being covered. From the moment when you hear that code coverage number is exposed, there might be trouble – I know it sounds strange, but for me is a sign of exaggerated confidence. Maybe I am wrong, but for me is a heuristic for looking with care, because of the things which can’t be articulated in simple boolean confirmation statements.

I have to say that each time when I discuss with managers I try to do my best to convince them to ignore the code coverage number and the fact that it means nothing.

By the way, when I have the occasion I ask programers this simple question: So you are so confident with the unit checks? If the answer yes, then I ask: Good, are you ready to bet you salary for 3 months that I’ll not find any problems? Usually, I perceive hesitation.

A good technique to verify the actual lines/conditions, in terms of coverage, is mutation checking(4). Even with this technique, I have in my mind the difference between testing and checking! (3)

3. As a tester you can help the developer with the sampling, the data she/he is choosing. And, as you know, this is not a skill which can be learned in a day or two. Sampling at the unit and at the integration level is important and I saw a lot of times unit checks and integration checks which repeat themselves.

I do not mention that testers, need to know very well about cognitive biases, critical thinking.

4. The developer said that he/she made unit checks? Perfect. Challenge that. Take a look at this brilliant article by James Coplien: Why Most Unit Testing is Waste . You’ll notice that this article is not so easy to digest, is deep – it speaks about the theory of information, also it does not follow the current dominant thinking about unit tests. I’m sure it will help you to make that developer think. Maybe negative reactions can take place, but is OK, we want fruitful disagreements.

5. The developer said he/she is doing TDD? TDD does not help at big architecture and OOP. It helps, maybe, at the micro level, but for sure not macro. This means architecture, OOP is fully exposed in a big and nasty ways. Maybe integration checks can help to see that the parts are fitting together, but are not helping to see that they are ok built. What this means? Well… nasty things are hidden at the integration boundaries. Developers don’t do OOP, but Class Oriented Programming. OOP would mean to reflect the mental model of users, which this does not happen. All the work is split between a lot of classes and functions. I think you can imagine the dangers.

Regarding TDD, I noticed that some persons begun to make some research about it and it is interesting: A Comparative Case Study on the Impact of Test-Driven Development on Program Design and Test Coverage or Does Test-Driven Development Improve the Program Code? Alarming Results from a Comparative Case Study

By the way, I also liked this post: TDD is dead. Long live testing

So, please, go and see the research, I doubt a lot of programmers do that…

6. Unit checks and integration checks is also code, this means that is prone affected by things like: bugs, maintenance, design, analysis, architecture.

7. I love the article of Max Boisot with the patterns(5). For example: for 10 dots there are 45 possible links and 3.5 trillion possible patterns. I’m sure in applications there are more than 10 connected dots. Is not possible for a developer, no matter how smart he/she is, to be sure he/she covered all the possible patterns and also to be aware which pattern is more important than other(s).

8. Regarding “A backend developer has been very productive this sprint, he has pulled in more tickets than planned and finished those.” Maybe I’m interpreting this in a wrong way, but sorry… I’m not interested in the productivity of the developer. This is a very nasty stuff. For me is important that the team and the whole work to be ok. When I read productivity of individual, I begun to doubt the good functioning of the team and this is bloody dangerous. Is like measuring tester for the bugs introduced, sorry, but no. Were there any other members actually working on stuff? If yes, why he did not took care to help finish that? – I’m deducing this from the text, maybe I’m wrong. In Scrum the team works on a single PBI at a time.

Still the list is short. I would have added about cognitive dissonance, of how the team structure affects the code structure, but you got the idea…

Conclusion: So how testers might create value for these kind of developers? I think that when a tester will put this question then is a good sign because learning/helping continues.

(1) Michael Bolton, “RST Slack Channel”, https://www.developsense.com/blog/2017/10/rst-slack-channel/

(2) Text used with permission, thx David Högberg

(3) James Bach, Michael Bolton,”Testing and Checking Refined”, https://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/856

(4) Robert C. Martin, “Mutation Testing”, https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2016/06/10/MutationTesting.html

(5) “The problem of connecting the dots”, https://sensing-ontologies.com/the-problem-of-connecting-the-dots/

Discussion on caring about teams and people

At the apparent level it seems it’s a vague discussion, but it is about Shu’s internal fight, on how to choose between people. People that are so important to Shu. And actually, even with all scenarios, Shu will lose on some level.

Ri: What is happening?

Shu: <<a sight>> I am not good in having a team.

Ri: In having a team?

Shu: Yes. You know..as Scrum master or ….whatever…. You choose the title…

Ri: Why?

Shu: It hurts a lot when the members of the team are no longer near me.

Ri: Hmmm. Why do you say that?

Shu: I can’t handle it when I loose a team, or members of a team. It hurts like hell. If I would know they are ok, then it would be ok – it’s hurting only because of my ,let’s call it, “selfishness” :(.

Ri: For those who are ok, you can’t and you shouldn’t do anything… just to accept it…,but it’s ok to miss them.

Shu: Yes

Ri: And for the other ones, what are you going to do about them?

Shu: You know…if I wouldn’t have known that you care about me, I would have told you to f..k off with that question.

Ri: Hmm. I suppose you’ve heard it asked in pervert ways too many times.

Shu: Yes. Along with a lot of other questions/remarks…

Ri: So….?

Shu: I feel I should fight for them. But I will most probably lose.

Ri: Will it hurt?

Shu: Yes, it will hurt like hell. You cannot imagine, because there are other people, dear to me, who need me and I care about them a lot too.

Ri: Do you think you can do something which is correct also for the others and for the team, but not for you?

Shu: Yes, but I think, it will hurt me really bad and I will lose.

Ri: Hmmm. Then, I think, you know what you have to do. But you’ll suffer.

Shu: Hmmm. Yes.

Ri: Good then :)), at least you’ll have something to share, when you will be older. But you forgot something…

Shu: What?

Ri: What if you would have chosen the other people, who need you, and the result wouldn’t have been ok either? And by ok I mean that it wouldn’t turn out the way you desired it to?

Shu: <<is sad…he/she did not think about this>>

Ri: It seems it’s not about the fact that it’s easy to have a whatever team. It’s about the fact that it’s a big deal to have a team, a real one.

Scrum master – a sad story

Shu: I want to become a Scrum Master.

Ri: Why?

Shu: Because it’s easy, look at them, at their daily work: organize some meetings, make some reports and that’s it. Oh I forgot about motivation, pardon, pseudo-motivation.

Ri: Do you think that’s what a Scrum Master has to do ?

Shu: I’m not saying that this is what they should be doing, but what I have seen them doing, in the companies that I worked for.

Ri: No Shu, if you want to be a Scrum Master, you need to be a good one. Why would you want to be like that?

Shu: Because it’s easier, and because this is what most companies want, good reports. You have to have good Excel skills(or other similar tools), to present the stats of the project, and you will be the best Scrum Master for that company.

Ri: It’s not like that…

Shu: I saw Scrum Masters who encourage the team members to put working hours on tasks, which look good on reports, no matter if those hours tell the truth about the work to be done. It’s all about a nice burndown graphic.

Ri: Really?

Shu: Yes. I can give you an example, something that happened to me once: in a daily meeting the Scrum Master asked me how long it takes to finish that user story. I told him that I need 16 hours to finish. Can you imagine what the answer was?

Ri: No…

Shu: He puts 8 hours down and told me: there are 8 hours until the sprint is done, you have to manage with that.

Ri: That’s strange.

Shu: Yes, it is, but they want to send nice reports to management. But in some cases the management is surprised to see that the project fails, even if they received good reports all along. Unfortunately, this kind of situations, don’t raise a flag and, that in my opinion is sad.

Ri : I understand what you are saying, but if you see this and don’t like it, and don’t agree with it, why do you want to be like them?

Shu: Anger

Ri: Hey… You said that you don’t agree with the image that those Scrum Masters have, about their work, right?

Shu: Yes….

Ri: So….?

Shu: I know…I don’t have to act like them, and this applies no matter the position you have in the team: scrum master, developer, tester…

Ri: And…?

Shu: If I want to be a Scrum Master, I’ll have to act based on what I know a great Scrum Master should do. I don’t have to do things that I don’t agree with, only to have that position. But this would also mean that, maybe, for that company, I am not a good Scrum Master.

Ri:….<<a sigh>>…

Shu: hmm…, to be a good Scrum Master is hard as hell. So, actually, the fact that a Scrum Master is acting as they should, might be the reason why she/he might not be a good fit for the company.

Ri: When you want to solve problems, things get messy, really messy. It’s not about fluffy bunnies. I hope you’ll not be that kind of Scrum Master who in retrospectives, or in talks with their managers, does not have the gut to call things by their name, and instead be full of platitudes.

Shu: ….<<a sigh>>…

Stories, Story points and Velocity

This topic keeps appearing constantly in my current contexts, but also on LinkedIn. But why?

Below I’ll try to mention some possible reasons why this is happening. Although I’ll mention them separately maybe they are not fully separated – there might be some connection between them. In a way, I would like to emphasize that, in a certain moment and context, one predominates.So:

The desire to learn about these (stories(1), story points(2), velocity(3)) :It might happen that someone might want to learn about these concepts because of her/his own discoveries/investigations/curiosity and trying to make a sense of the reality, which might be contradictory – though I have doubts that there are lot of people asking this without being influenced by the points I will specify bellow.
Dominant thinking: now this is the trend. Try to speak with someone and do a planning without using the notion of story, story points and velocity. For example look at FDD, you can do this without those notions. In FDD, this is articulated in a different way. For Scrum actually these(stories, story points, velocity), as Alistair Cockburn rightly said, are barnacles(3) (look at Scrum Guide, but also Scrum Plop). Sometimes, it seems, is dangerous not to go with the dominant thinking, if applicable.
Trainings : Here I do not speak about the trainings made by the best in the industry (by best I mean Uncle Bob, Jim Coplien, James Bach, Michael Bolton, Alistair Cockburn, Ron Jeffries, Ward Cunningham, Dave Snowden, etc. I could mention more, but you get the idea). I want to emphasize those trainings made by some people which only know some phrases and that’s it. That kind of people, that are not capable to express and teach their students the bounded applicability of those techniques – for them is best practice to follow and that’s it. So: bad trainings;
Target(s) : I think this is the most dangerous reason. Is about the Goodhart’s law: ”Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes”(4). I am amazed of how many anomalies are generated by this. So, some people want to learn more, but they do not understand, I think, that those things((stories, story points, velocity)) are used in a perverted/wrong way, or maybe they understand, but they need an ammunition to attack the targets.
Tools(jira, redmine) : There are tools which entice managers to ask for things because they can generate beautiful graphics with them. I would say that, in a way the tool (or bad manager who thinks only linearly) dictates how things gets done, not people. I think these kind of managers equate agility with these tools …, which is sad. Just think about aggressive/subtitle micro management or think about handling a project just by using estimations and nothing else or that desire for predictivity – well these tools offer “support” for this and many other things. So: bad using of tools.

Conclusion: If I would have had to give a short and fast answer, probably I would have said about the possibility of anomalous/pervert/not ok context. I’m well aware that is possible that I’m influenced by certain biases I have.

(1) Ron Jeffries, “Essential XP: Card, Conversation, Confirmation”, https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/

(2) Ron Jeffries, Google group conversation about why story points were invented, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/scrumalliance/ag8W8xtKQs8/4cOpyt8Jgr0J

(3) Martin Fowler, “XpVelocity” , https://martinfowler.com/bliki/XpVelocity.html

(4) Alistair Cockburn,“Core scrum, barnacles, rumors and hearsay, improved version”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUadPoi35M

(5) Dave Snowden, “The Strathern variation”, http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/the-strathern-variation/

How to make people hate the idea of estimations

Once in awhile the topic of estimations pops out in my activity. I said once in awhile because I am thinking to a special kind of way to do estimations or better said how the idea of estimation is put on the scene in some contexts. This topic I have had it in my mind for a long time, which became obvious again these days.

So:

1. Usually, when you ask people whether certain items can be made in a sprint ,people can say, maybe, also after some calibration, a clear answer like: “Yes, we think is ok for this sprint to do these” or “Yes, it makes sense to have those items for this sprint”. This means that although not explicitly, but implicitly, an estimation is being made.

Notes:

– Let’s suppose that some unknowns were already clarified because of some spikes/investigations done a priori;

– “calibration” is an important word[1];

But, and maybe I am wrong, the same people when asked in detail(hours/points in the sprint) they will not feel comfortable with the estimation and with the meeting(s), because of doing this. I think this happens also because humans are messy[2] and is ok.

What is not so ok, I think, is why to ask more specific estimation detail, for a sprint, when already the team said those things can be made in the sprint, and of course with the information they have for now is the maximum of work they can accept as a team?

There are some possible answers I can think of:

– maybe someone wants control in the sprint( maybe the managers of the manager of the project impose on him , or lack of trust, or outsourcing context where client paying by day involuntary triggers this need or because he/she knows that the setup of the team is not ok(let’s say the competency of team members)).

– I saw how tools like Jira entice some managers to ask these things;

– they do not understand why sprints/iterations were created;

2. Then are those estimations when getting a project and it has to be finished in, let’s say, 6 months. And the estimations “must be ok, they must not be wrong”. So, we have an initial “must be ok” estimation. But then after 4 sprints again a new estimation is done – of course I imagine people joy to do that because the estimation wanted to be done, strangely, must be “ok”…

So that kind of project is being managed in a way by the “must be ok” estimations, if I can say so – just to make me clear: I am speaking about ( and I am influenced by Alicia Juarrero[3] ) using estimations as a placid background, like an equilibrium structure, like an indication of stability( small deviations around equilibrium).

Note: I am assuming that a project is not in an obvious state, it can be also in complex situations.

Conclusion:

Estimations – in a way or the other – we use them. We use them implicitly or explicitly or deduced and in various forms( relative, time, distributions…) and it makes sense as a concept.

I think that the estimations, more often, are being used by managers in a wrong way, for example like a pressure consciously/unconsciously/unknowingly. And this is actually the problem. Maybe this is happening because of the mechanistic way of their thinking or lack of knowledge or … They choose the wrong metaphor, they do not deal with a refinery/factory, but with an ecology. Also, probably at least what I saw, most of them do not take a look at what psychology, neuroscience have to say about this and adapt their actions.

I do not think is ok to encourage the dichotomy ProEstimate and No Estimate, I think here is a continuum between them.

(1) Adrian Lander, “Linked In discussion”, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6426405267491164160

(2) Dave Snowden, “Humans are messy”, http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/humans-are-messy/

(3) Alicia Juarrero, “Safe-Fail, NOT Fail-Safe ”, https://vimeo.com/95646156

Forming a team, an agile perspective

I’m seriously concerned about this topic because I see the disastrous effects of its bad handling every day. It’s not enough to put some people together and ask them, usually in a perverse, detached and manipulative way, that no matter the difficulties encountered, they should make it work because this is what professionals do – in a way this is like an abdication of the job a manager should do rigorously. I know it’s hard, damn hard, I made my share of mistakes …

I wrote about this topic before.

But this time I would like to recall two important perspectives, from the agile world, that unfortunately seem to be ignored:

1. Early this year a nice interview(1) with Jerry Weinberg was published. In it, he described one method to form a team:

“…We put together teams. What I recommend is people put together their agile teams by what I call incremental consensus. You start with one person who you feel has the personal qualities. Stop emphasizing very soon with what I read about is people emphasizing: you got to have the most skilled coder and you can put all the best coders together and then you have an agile team. Now you find someone who has got these personal qualities: they know how to communicate , they’re willing to communicate, they’re willing to admit their mistakes and learn. And you start with that person. And you say: okay now among all the people we have available to us who would you like most to team up with to do a good job; you understand the agile principles. And they choose of course… it’s one person so it’s a consensus and the person has to want to be on it … Now you have two people. Now you say to them: okay now come to an agreement on who else you’d like to have. If you started with the right person the process goes on and they put together a team that really does well; and they take awhile to learn but they can learn the skills, technical skills, more easily than they can learn the personal skills, the people’s skills as we call them…”

In 2016, after a horrible month of solving some issues, with a delicate suite of products, I realized that this is the time when the core problem could be solved. It could be solved because the key persons were prepared to allow the kind of work I had in my mind for almost 2 years. In that terrible month, I have worked with some wonderful people to fix the problems. I knew that the kind of work I wanted to do needed special people. Even before I spoke with the management, I spoke with each of them separately. I told them what I had in mind and the persons I wanted to do the work with. I needed their green light regarding the work that needs to be done, their future colleagues and if they were willing to join the team. I left them time to reflect on all those things. In this time I talked with no one else. After several days we spoke again, separately, and each of them gave the green light. Then I spoke with management and it was hard…but I was determined, if one of them could not join the new setup, I would not take in charge that new project/product. I wanted from each of the future team members their consensus. And as Jerry Weinberg said, it was not only about the technical skills of these people, it was much much more. Please watch the Jerry Weinberg interview.

2. Scrum Plop(2) – I am amazed that so many Scrum people, from my circles, are not aware of this. It’s about patterns that show and help on how to implement Scrum. If Scrum guide seems abstract and hard to be decoded, well these patterns help a lot in making sense on how to implement Scrum. There is a pattern called Stable Teams(3) which accurately articulates the problem and also gives a solution:

“…Keep teams stable and avoid shuffling people around between teams. Stable teams tend to get to know their capacity, which makes it possible for the business to have some predictability. Dedicate team members to a single team whenever possible. Members of Stable Teams get to know each other. The team members experience each other’s work style and learn how much work they can do together. A Stable Team grows in familiarity and consistency of meeting mutual expectations and starts developing a Community of Trust…. what is often forgotten when measuring a team’s velocity is that the only way that a team can get to know their velocity is by having the same team members over a longer period of time…”

Trust is a key/serious/important word. Trust takes time because is arising from people interactions over a certain period of time. You cannot create a roadmap or a checklist on how to build trust within a team.

Since I mentioned Scrum above, it is important to also mention 2 important related details about it:

– an important detail, also applicable to teams, is about competence(4)/skill/mastery/expertise. Although this is an aspect that is not explicitly specified in the Scrum guide, it is a sine qua non condition for Scrum to work;

– management plays an important role when forming the team. Not an easy thing to do. But after they’ve formed the team, they should trust them and let them accomplish their mission(5).

Conclusion:

Every time I think about this subject, I think about families. Look at families, at how delicate things can get sometimes, because family members can’t get along with each other. And it’s not like this problem can be easily solved by a parent, for example, by just saying: “hey, you are brothers, you are supposed to get along”. Some will say, when speaking about team members, that it’s not about friends or family members. And I say “Exactly. It’s even harder and it’s not that easy to impose things”. So, I imagine that for some managers it’s easier to pretend that they don’t know things/techniques on forming a team, and then use some fancy words and clichés to “solve it”, thus tossing the effort they should have done onto the shoulders of other people. But the reality has its own style to deny certain approaches/ideas/opinions.

What was a surprise for me is that it can be really really dangerous to desire having a Stable Team. The surprise was even bigger that the danger came from people which actually, at least declaratively, supports and promotes Scrum and agility.

(1) Jerry Weinberg, “Agile for Humans #26: Agile Impressions and Errors with Jerry Weinberg”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_AOoSnhE-8

(2) Scrum Pattern Community, Jim Coplien – Product Owner for the Scrum Patterns effort, http://www.scrumplop.org/

(3) Stable Teams Pattern, https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/development-team/stable-teams

(4) Jim Coplien, “Ten things scrummers do wrong”, https://vimeo.com/42772592

(5) Alistair Cockburn, “Core scrum, barnacles, rumors and hearsay, improved version”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUadPoi35M

Crystal (Clear) – Part 3

This is the third part of this series and is about the seven properties of Crystal(1)(2) applied in our context narrated by one of the team members, Alexandra Vasile, so:

“After working in the context of this project I realized that for sure the context on which I worked before, which claimed to be agile/scrum, was out of track. They reversed individuals and interactions with processes and tools.

Our work was to create a tool which helped all the other teams. We needed to move fast, to respond prompt to the unplanned things that appeared, take care not to disturb the others work.

Crystal has the following seven properties. I will come across them and discuss each related to this specific situation:

Frequent Delivery – our work was delivered everyday in the test platform, and was tested by us and by the other teams which used that code. Every month, our code was included in the production delivery. This helped us to have a quick feedback regarding our work and in case of problems we could respond fast. At the begining of the month we did not have the whole picture of what was going to be delivered, at the detail level, we only had the direction of the changes. In a way, problems which occurred on production helped us a lot because it aid more to rafinate our decisions, priorities and daily work. Almost each time a bug appeared everything stopped and we tried to fix it. There are rare the occasions when we postpone one bug for more than a month.

Reflective Improvement – This thought exercise did not happened because a protocol was in place. If it was a protocol, for sure, I did not felt it. Is like common sense prevailed also here. It just happened without too much hassle. We stayed and reflected on 2 occasions: when a bug appeared in production or when the monthly release was done to production. Everytime a problem occurs, we all discussed, sometimes very nervous, tried to find a solution/way to improve and not to make the same mistake again.

If I think better and try to make associations with past work, we had dailys when we took the coffee, but for sure were not those kind of dailys were reporting was done.

Osmotic Communication – It seems this was a critical point in our physical setup. In other occasions/projects although we were collocated actually it did not matter because conversation happened almost exclusively on Skype, so strange. The fact that we stayed in the same office, with the business expert, closed to each other helped us. We communicated frequently between us, we knew what the others were doing. We didn’t need special meetings for that. We intervened when we heard a discussion between the other team members and shared our opinion/knowledge/piece of advice – we helped each other. This aids us a lot.

We had a Skype group shared with the client. We put on the Skype group, as a profile image, an italian police car and agents from DIA, for us it was a way to say “ok, no fooling around”.

Personal Safety – We felt safe in the team. We didn’t had fear to make a mistake. Our team lead encouraged us a lot, he told us is ok if we also do make mistakes because we learn from that – who didn’t work, didn’t make mistakes. We helped each other, between us it wasn’t a competition. If someone made a mistake, nobody putted him/her on the wall, on contrary it was helped to find a solution. Another thing very important was that we trusted each other. That’s why it’s very important how the teams are build, because if you are in a team where you are not trusted this implies in a way that you don’t have trust in the other team members either. And when you don’t feel safe you will never do your best.

Focus – The team was built specially for this project. It was a very important premise from the beginning that the persons involved will have to work full time on this subject, no part time work or partially involved. It was very important because the work needed to be done involved full concentration. We set from the beginning some premises and we all knew the final scope.

Easy Access to Expert Users – The business expert, the one which envisioned the tool was with us. Also the members of the team knew the sub-parts of the product. When we had some unknowns we knew who were the persons to ask.

Technical Environment with Automated Tests, Configuration Management, and Frequent Integration – Since almost most of our work involved repairing and fixing existing code we needed these changes on the test platform as soon as possible.Without knowing, the other teams by testing their product indirectly tested also our work.

Probably some will say the same things could have been done in other ways. What was nice is that we were able to see another unknown face of agile in this case was Crystal. Our scope was to move fast, to deliver quickly the work which was needed, because without this tool, which we made, they spend more than 90 days to have some things done, which now with the tool are ready in ~20 minutes.”

(1) Alistair Cockburn, “Crystal Clear Applied: The Seven Properties of Running an Agile Project”, http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=345009

(2) Alistair Cockburn, “Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams”, https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0201699478