Feedback from the group in general was that they enjoyed the circles, particularly those new to the group who started with a mentoring circle. All agree a mentoring circle is a good place to start if you are new to Scrum, or new to the coaching circles. These more structured circles give people a good idea of what to expect in future.

There were a few comments about circles that didn’t work as well this round due to a small number of people, which reminded us that these circles work well if the participants are committed to attending all of the session for a particular round. Spotty attendance tends to impact the whole group.

Fueled by some wine and an inspiration for radical brainstorming we came up with some novel suggestions including doing coaching circles while lying on the floor staring at the ceiling rather than other members, bring along our pets (always present at my coaching circles:), and starting our own reality tv show.

So out came the sticky dots for some dot voting on the ideas we thought would most benefit the next round. They were:

Everyone agreed drinks and snacks make circles better so at the start each circle should discuss how they will deal with it, will everyone bring every session, or will it rotate, etc.

We also agreed that sometimes there would be benefit bringing visitors. Although the trust and safety of the circle is important, we thought this time around circle members could bring a visitor to a circle as long as the rest of the group agreed in advance.

Since venues is a common problem, the idea was raised of having a circle type next round where the venue rotates to each person in the circle’s house. This would mean a new venue each time, but would be less onerous on a single person to provide a venue for every session. We will see how popular the idea is at the kickoff.

And finally it was agreed that people enjoy sharing their work stress with like minded individuals and so we agreed that all circles should allow some time each session for people just to unwind and share their current work problems, before tackling the topic for the session.

That’s it. Thanks to those who attended the retro for the interesting discussion. The next kickoff will be on 7 May at Allan Gray, facilitated by Sam, since I will be in Germany If you want to join a circle starting in May be sure to attend the kick off. You can signup for the event or find our more about coaching circles.

They are running a Lean IT workshop in Johannesburg on 16 May. Cost is R3500.

For more information please see their website: www.lean.org.za; the attached flyer or contact Lisa Mulder at 021 406 1477 or leaninfo@gsb.uct.ac.za

In no particular order.

Annu Augustine (@annua)

‘Product Manager – Working on improving enterprise applications’

And not only product related, but daily tweets about the improvement of the organisation too!

Cara Faye (@cara_faye)

‘Agile-passionate Scrum Master and Facilitation Fanatic’

With a true specialisation in all things that need to be facilitated!

Carlo Kruger (@ironicbuddha)

‘Agile coach, DJ, chef, husband, pwnd by cats’

Carlo’s Twitter profile is the shortcut to some of the best Scrum and Agile articles and topics on the Internet.

Karen Greaves (@karen_greaves)

‘Agile mentor, coach and trainer. Committee member of the Scrum User Group of South Africa. ‘

Not only on this list, but also features, internationally, among AgileScouts list Top Women in Agile Thought Leadership 2011. You go Karen!

Maritza van den Heuvel (@maritzavdh)

‘Learning Manager, parent, blogger, Kanban, problem-solving. Above all, learning organizations. In short, connectivist.‘

Showing us how to apply agile fundamentals into many others area’s of work and life!

Patrick Vine (@patrick_vine)

‘Dad, husband, medievalist. Scrum junkie desiring to deliver software better – both with process and design. Passion for solving technical            problems.’

With frequent links to his many fresh blog posts.

Rian van der Merwe (@RianVDM)

‘Tweets about design, technology, software development, and the creative process.’

Turning user experience on it’s head, and always sharing his insights!

Samantha Laing (@samlaing)

‘My passion for agile is lived daily – another love is spending time outdoors, usually running trails ‘

Yes, we know, there are only nine

Help us come up with the tenth.

Who are your favourite South African Agilists in Twittersphere?

Who: Mandy Schoeman

Topic: Predictability vs Adaptability, who wins?

Venue: Allan Gray Portswood office in the Presentation Room on the third floor.

You can download a map here. Everyone parking in the Portswood parking area will have to pay for their own parking tickets. There is also parking available in Beach Road.

Sign up

Synopsis:

While classic waterfall is based on defined methods and stands for predictability, Agile is empirical and stands for adaptability.  Agile is not just about avoiding the pitfalls of developing the wrong software or product but is used to reduce overheads and keep them as low as possible. Considering both these methods have their own strengths and weaknesses, which one would you use to get the best business value and biggest return on investment (ROI)?

This practical workshop uses a fun game to demonstrate the benefits of choosing Agile over the traditional methods. Each attendee will receive the complete game instructions to enforce the benefits of BEING agile in their approach to software or product development.

A bit about Mandy Schoeman:

Mandy is a passionate people’s person with an enthusiasm for Scrum and Agile. She is a Professional Scrum Trainer with more than twenty years experience in the field of Further Education and Training.

Mandy uses training, coaching, agile games and facilitation techniques to help teams stay inspired focused and motivated, enabling them to reach their goals and achieve successful project delivery.

You can follow Mandy on Twitter (@MandySchoeman), check-out her website or connect with her on LinkedIn

In our groups we picked between 2 techniques: 5 whys and cause & effect diagrams, and applied them to an exercise – 3mile island. Reading about 3 mile island – you couldn’t help but be shocked and amused at the number of things that had to go wrong for disaster to occur – and how quickly they had happened.

http://www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/cause-effect-diagrams.pdf

During the exercise the parts that stuck out the most for me were:

• Break the problem down to the human level, if you’re still at a machine level – dig deeper.
• Each step can have action items, but you should expend most of your energy at the root level.
• How you phrase your question is important, try various questions and see where their path leads you.
• Try not to find THE root cause. There are usually many. Don’t worry if you don’t have clear 5 steps, most of us had tree’s.

Think of 5 whys and Cause & Effect diagrams as training wheels. Use them to practice the skill and discipline of asking questions and delving deeper into the problem. Another technique is a fishbone diagram – but I have no idea how that works.

We then looked at the A3 template: http://www.crisp.se/lean/a3-template. This is a techniques to force you to do more than just analyze the problem. Each A3 has both an owner and a mentor.

You look at the current condition, and explain the background – why is this important?

Root Cause analysis is one part of an A3 and should be done with the group closest to the problem – those involved.

Carlo mentioned some books to read for those interested:

• Understanding A3 Thinking – Sobek & Smalley
• Lean Thinking – Womack & Jones
• The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Thank you to our sponsor, Alacrity for the snacks and drinks

4 April 2012, 6:00PM

Please note this event is on a WEDNESDAY, rather than the usual Thursday, due to the Easter weekend.

Sign up

Venue:

Allan Gray Portswood office in the Presentation Room on the third floor. You can download a map here. Everyone parking in the Portswood parking area will have to pay for their own parking tickets. There is also parking available in Beach Road.

Synopsis:

For many teams, the hardest part of a retrospective is getting to the root cause of the impediments they uncover. Treating these impediments at the symptomatic level inevitably leads to the problem reoccurring at some later date, and as a result, undermines the retrospective process.

Taichii Ohno, the Chief Engineer who was responsible for embedding many of the techniques within what we now call “The Toyota Way”, attributed Toyota’s continuous improvement to the discipline of root cause analysis.

This will be a practical workshop format where you will get the chance to practice root cause analysis techniques that will equip you with ways to improve your retrospectives and after-action-reviews. There will also be a high level introduction to A3 (another Toyota technique) which provides a structured approach to problem solving using root cause analysis.

About Carlo Kruger:

Carlo Kruger is a Lean & Agile coach with four years experience in helping teams and individuals unlock their potential. He has worked with organisations as small as eight and as large as several thousand and in a variety of industries. His background is in Risk Management but he has been happily puttering around in the IT industry for the last ten years. He has recently joined Unboxed Consulting

When not at work Carlo likes to write about himself in the third person, read sci-fi and cook very complicated meals for fun. You can stalk him (and read all about his cats) at

• Twitter
• Blog
• RSS Feed
• LinkedIn

Event sponsored by:

Interested in working in a Scrum team, please see the job spec below fo a company looking for a C# .NET developer to join a Scrum team in Cape Town.

We are looking for a senior developer for a 1 year contract with the below skills set. There is a good chance of extending the contract if both parties are satisfied after the initial period. The position is available immediately, the candidate will be working at our offices in Cape Town city centre or remotely from home.

Essential skills at a senior level:

• Relational database design
• SQL / T-SQL
• C#
• Stored Procedures
• LINQ
• HTML
• Javascript
• MS Visual Studio
• .NET 4.0
• ASP.NET
• Sequel Server 2008 R2
• IIS (Internet Information Services)
• Any Source Control system (e.g. SVN)
• Continuous Integration (Cruise Control)
• Excellent written and oral communication skills

Optional skills:

• MS Test
• GUI Design
• MDX
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• Web Client Factory Software (WCFS)
• Entity Framework
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• SSIS
• SSRS
• SSAS
• Scrum / Agile
• Specflow
• Selenium
• Experience in working on global systems & entities framework would be an advantage.

We are an IT company founded in 1996 and have developed several internet applications of our own. Our current project involves the enhancement and development of new modules for a global, multilingual internet application.
The candidate will be working in a 6 member team of developers using the latest  Microsoft technologies. We are looking for a candidate with extensive experience in the required skills in the context of web application development, enthusiasm and commitment to quality and delivering on time.

If you are interested in this position please contact vera.wehrle@softwarecolors.co.za

We have pinned down our next topic though which is sure to be a catalyst for some heavy debates.

Topic

The use of Pivotal Tracker and Jira in Scrum development teams.

Speaker 1: How we use Pivotal Tracker for scrum at IS

In this talk, I’ll walk you through some of PT’s fundamental features, and how we use them at IS to keep the scrum process ticking over. I’ll also talk about some of the untapped potential that PT offers, and give a sneak peek of an an important upcoming feature that’s currently in beta.

Bio of Gabriel Fortuna

I started working at Internet Solutions 10 years ago as a support technician, and since then have done software development, network management, and various other things to keep me out of mischief. Currently, I am a team manager running a small, but diverse team of software developers at Internet Solutions. We rely on scrum to understand to Get Things Done, and to maintain our sanity.

Speaker 2: There are pro’s and cons to JIRA so it’s important to know what you are getting into. I would like to present JIRA its strengths and weaknesses.

Bio of Kevin Shine

I have been in the software development industry for over 10 years, I have worked in various languages but spent most of my career working with Java. I worked as a system analyst for a few years and decided to move into a development manager position to try and facilitate change around the way developmentwas approached. I have been using scrum for software development for over 5 years. In terms of agile certification and I have a CSM and Scrum master I certificate.

I find a popular question with scrum is should we use a tool or not?

Most of my experience with scrum involves doing things manually, but this has presented some problems of its own and therefore the search for a tool to solve these problems. I believe selecting the wrong tool is worse than having no tool. That said I have tried a number of tools and approaches and would like to present JIRA as a tool I recommend for scrum.

Where?
Discovery Sandton
155 West Street
Sandton
Johannesburg
South Africa

When? 28 February 2012

To register go to: here

Topic: Building self-organising teams with Information Radiators.

Sign up: Please sign up here in order to help us with catering.

Venue: Allan Gray Portswood office in the Presentation Room on the third floor. You can download a map here. Everyone parking in the Portswood parking area will have to pay for their own parking tickets. There is also parking available in Beach Road.

Synopsis:

The self-organising team. The stuff of dreams, the dreams of team members and “management”. How do we throw off the shackles of accidental oppression and liberate teams to do their best work? David will share some of his insights from his experiences building and re-building teams. Key to great teams is communication, both internally and externally.

Information radiators are the things we stick on our walls and plaster on our development environments. We see them every day, they radiate information. The art of crafting an effective radiator is something that David has been trying his hand at for a while, and he’ll introduce his take on the core library and some friends.

Particularly interesting is how radiators can hurt or improve a team’s autonomy, innovation and quality. The tension that binds radiators and self organisation is expressed by Peter Drucker: “What gets measured, gets managed.” Let’s explore how we measure, who does it, and what do we really want?

David will be presenting on this topic at Agile Africa in May. This SUGSA sneak-peek will be the first time this talk has been presented, so please bring your critical thinking caps and add to the conversation.

About David Campey:

David’s credo: ”Never waste a drop of talent”

about.me/campey

David started Information Logistics in 2004 and for the last 7 years has been uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. David has built, run and led development teams from 2 – 30 people building products in companies from start-ups to some of the biggest companies in South Africa and the world.

David first tried out a task board and daily stand-ups with a large team in 2007, he has tumbled down the Agile rabbit hole. “Either the hole is very deep, or I am falling really slowly, for I’ve had plenty of time to look about and wonder what was going to happen next.” In his learning, the two main toolboxes David has drawn on are Scrum and Extreme Programming.

David still spends a large portion of his time at the code face, while balancing the processes of team creation at Information Logistics and finding cool new projects for the teams to work on.

Sponsored by

With an emphasis on simplicity & transparency, he starts with high-level release planning using magic estimation at a feature level to generate a gut feel release date, develops detail in backlog grooming, and uses a comprehensive set of spreadsheets for reporting. These and the talk slides are all available on Patrick’s blog.

The overall message was an emphasis on communication throughout the release.

Communicate that:

• The first guess is just that – ultimately just an input into a “go / no-go” decision on the project,
• Change will happen – make sure everyone understands that
• Communicate all changes as more detail becomes known, and
• Communicate alternate options so that decision makers are informed

I liked the point “the numbers rarely lie… but you may have forgotten something” – followed by a useful list of things we frequently forget to accommodate.

Discussion points:

• How to handle large unknowns (epics and themes) – suggestion: use estimates as constraints when fleshing out the stories
• Who should estimate, when (sometimes the PO’s gut feel can help clarify expectations)
• In groups: how we handle release planning in our teams – lots of good sharing here