When: 2 February 2012, 6:00PM

Topic: Release Planning with Scrum: Controlling the Chaos                    

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 Agile Manifesto tells us that we should be responding to change over following a plan.  This encourages us to plan into the future at the last responsible moment.  But we still may need a plan.  A plan can help inform our customers what may be in the next release or by when their favourite feature may appear.  They can help inform stakeholders on the cost of the current focus and hence whether the investment makes sense at this time.  These are Good Things for a business.  The essence of agile planning is to understand that the plan may change.  The plan must be reassessed for validity every time new data comes into the system – usually at the end of a sprint. Plans often allow us to appear more certain than we may actually be.  The hardest part with planning in Scrum is ensuring that everyone understands that things change and we will respond as soon as they do.  Effective agile planning allows us to more reliably respond to the changing business and market needs as early as possible.

Objectives:
In this talk I will discuss some of the techniques that I have used over the last couple of years to do release planning.  I’ll touch on of some of the things that have worked for me and some that haven’t.  The ideas will range from some simple maths, to reporting release progress through a release burnup and overviews, to the how to deal with change and ensuring that people understand what it means.  I hope by the end of the talk I will have shared some ideas and generated some conversation around controlling the chaos that can surround a software development release.

About Patrick Vine:
I started my career more than a decade ago at Microsoft in Redmond. Since then I’ve moved through different companies as developer, architect and manager in diverse technologies and industries.  I first started to dabble in Scrum a couple of years back while working at Yellowtail Software where I helped the roll out of Scrum. While there I gained an appreciation for how well you can manage software using Scrum.  I’ve worked on Fixed Price, Fixed Team, Fixed Budget projects. I am passionate about working with Scrum, learning more about software development and helping teams get better on a daily basis.

Sponsored by

Coaching circles are groups of people interested in Scrum and Agile who meet one a fortnight for 90 minutes and discuss a topic the are all interested in. Read about some of the things people have said in the past about coaching circles here.

If you are interested in joining, or in finding out more, make sure you attend the next kickoff session.

When: Monday 18 July 2011, 6pm

Venue: DVT, Annexe A, Long Kloof Studios, Darters Road, Gardens. See a map here.

Signup: Please signup here.

Willing to host: We need people to volunteer as hosts for this round of circles. Hosts are people who provide the venue for a coaching circle. You don’t need to facilitate the session, just be able to provide a venue where 6 people can meet in the evening. We are looking for venues all over Cape Town. The venue can be a meeting room at your office, or your lounge at home. If you are able to host a venue, please add your details to the following spreadsheet.

 The previous events were so well attended and using your feedback from this, we have decided to use this event for an open discussion around Agile and Scrum with help from a panel of experts.

Case studies will be presented for discussion, Scrum practitioners and organisations using Scrum will be present to share their ‘war-stories’ with us and to answer your questions.

 Join us for an evening of open discussion – bring your questions, bring your concerns, bring your own ‘war-stories’ and share with all of us… we are all keen to learn!

When: 21 May 2009

Time: 18:00 for 18:30

Where: Momentum Auditorium 1, Centurion, Pretoria (click for map)

Event registration:  http://www.scrum.org.za/resources/event-registration/event-registration-gauteng

Refreshments will be served before and after the event.

For any additional information, please contact agile@kaizania.co.za.

This is the announcement and your official invitation to our first event in Cape Town for 2009, to be held in just two weeks’ time.

When: Tuesday 24 Feb, 2009 at 18h00 for 18h30

Where: MagmaTec House, Greenford Office Estate, Punters Way, Kenilworth, Cape Town. Go to http://www.magmatec.co.za/ for a map. Parking is available on-site.

We have an interesting programme lined up for our first event of 2009:

* Aimed at Scrum newbies, Carlo Kruger will give a brief overview of Agile principles and the Scrum framework. It should help you with some of the practical questions of what Scrum is and how to get it started in your organisation.

* Chris Tisdall will share some experiences of implementing Scrum at Allan Gray from his perspective as Product Owner.

The event is being kindly sponsored by MagmaTec, which means that attendance, snacks and drinks are free!

Space is limited, so please do confirm your attendance as soon as possible by clicking the following link: http://www.prohmote.com/892ab682. Just fill in your name and how many guests you will bring.

Bio for Carlo Kruger

Starting off in risk management for a financial services provider, at some point Carlo realised he was spending more time involved in software development than managing financial risk, and that it was more fun. Since then he has been actively involved in software development for the past five years. Certified as a ScrumMaster in
2008 he’d like to see Scrum more widely accepted in South African IT. He currently works for Saratoga Software where he is involved in a number of projects. Carlo is a member of the SUGSA team.

Bio for Chris Tisdall

Chris has a background in marketing and has been involved in e-commerce and start-ups since the late 90′s – both as a consultant and business owner. He managed to weather the bursting of the dot-com bubble and has worked across the financial services, telecommunications and retail industries. He was part of the core team
that launched 20twenty as SA’s first pure-play internet bank and currently heads up Allan Gray’s online channel. Chris has learnt technology through osmosis by working with amazing technology teams. He is fascinated by the possibilities of the web and the creative genius that is simplifying the lives of everyday people.

When: Tuesday 24 Feb, 2009 at 18h00 for 18h30

Where: MagmaTec House, Greenford Office Estate, Punters Way,
Kenilworth, Cape Town. Go to http://www.magmatec.co.za/ for a map.
Parking is available on-site.

Please remember to confirm your attendance at: http://www.prohmote.com/892ab682

Kind regards,

Peter Hundermark
SUGSA team chairman
http://www.scrum.org.za

I attended the second scrum user group meeting in Cape Town last night. A bit smaller than the launch, but still well attended. The format was a panel discussion with Peter from Scrumsense, Boris Gloger (in town for training) and Steve from MagmaTec.

Using a scrum task board for tracking the questions, it started with the usual question about what “It” is. (I have this urge to riff on the Matrix; “Unfortunately, no one can be told what scrum is, you have to see it for yourself”). Boris replied: “Scrum is Scrum”. Who knew germans could be so inscrutable?

Someone from Old Mutual asked for advice on how to implement scrum in a restrictive environment like OM. Boris’ answer was terse: “Just do it”. I saw a bit of myself in there; as technologists we want tools and guidelines.

The truth is that all you need to do scrum is: Know what it is and have a desire to do it. And maybe some stationery. Be brave, just do it.

We very quickly got into more meaty topics. The first one which I think was of interest was around Architecture. The question ventured that ‘design by committee’ was not a good idea and how scrum responded to that. The insight was really that, an architecture designed in isolation by an ivory tower architect did not accord with scrum principles. A cross functional team has value to be added in everyone participating in the activity.

This quickly degenerated however into architect slagging (e.g. they can’t be trusted, keep them away from your project etc.).

Another question was about analysis for the next sprint. Boris ventured that spending perhaps 10% on prepping for the next sprint was a good use of time, but that it should not necessarily be the sole province of the analysts. What was important was for the analyst to be prepared for Sprint Planning One; this is the analysis phase of the sprint, and any questions the team has, the analyst needs to be ready to answer. But this analysis should be communicated in the planning session with flip chart diagrams etc. Where analysis documents and artifacts are required to be produced by the team, this should be a task for that story to be done in the sprint.

Which led back to the previous point about design & architecture. If Sprint Planning One is about Analysis, then Sprint Planning Two is about design. Most teams use this meeting to create the tasks for the stories. SP2 should be workshop where the team design the solution that will be implemented for a story. Make some notes to capture that, but don’t laboriously create all the tasks required.

Another question examined the intention of the Sprint Review (or demo). There was some confusion I think since some people also use the term “Sprint Review” to refer to the retrospective. Boris highlighted that the intention of the “Sprint Demo” is to critically examine the functionality produced and how it has improved the product being produced. Too often this session has a tendency to be a chance to reward or to punish the team for performance. Either of these actions detracts from the teams self-management. The “Sprint Demo” should be focussed on the product, and should find the areas for improvement.

A question was around the ‘anarchy’ inherent in letting a team manage itself. This I think is a pernicious misreading of what the role of management in the team context is. The team is still subject to standards (of the organisation) and guided by the priorities established by the Product Owner. As someone from the audience pointed out; the longest a team, or team member should be allowed to ‘go rogue’ would be one day. When the next daily Stand Up rolled around, they should be reigned in by their team members or scrum master.

A clarification of what constituted an Impediment was requested. This boiled down to “anything that the team cannot accomplish” is by definition an impediment; else it is just a task that needs to be completed.

Our timebox finished around then, and it broke into smaller groups of private discussion.

Mention must be made of the uber-cool 24.Com room we met in. With its large screen TV, XBox360 and dual guitars for Guitar Hero, this was an office I would not mind working in… Add some draft beer taps into there and a really good coffee machine, and I doubt their employees would ever leave the building. Wait a second, I think I’m onto their feindish plot…