When: 2 February 2012, 6:00PM

Topic: Release Planning with Scrum: Controlling the Chaos                    

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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

Stand-ups every day? Check.
Impediment-removing Scrum Master? Check.
Product Owner who understands prioritising? Check.
Teams that deliver working code every sprint? Check.
Review every sprint? Check.
Retrospective every sprint? Check.

Does this make your business truly Agile? For me there are a couple of checklist items missing:

Development practices that deliver high quality code?

A team of developers who understand one another and operate as a cohesive unit?

Team productivity doesn’t drop when a particular team member is away?

How would you answer? How would your developers answer?

It’s bring-a-dev-day at SUGSA! In fact bring your whole development team.

About Austin Fagan

I work for Unboxed Consulting.

I started writing software in 1999. I think I’m as bad now as I was then. So I don’t code now, my team keeps me as far from the codebase as they can, they shudder at the thought of me coding. I still can’t help being passionate about development. Weird.

I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to Agile techniques and great development practice since 2006 and I’ve been boring people silly about both since.

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Hilton Giesenow, Development Manager at 3Fifteen and Microsoft MVP spoke on continuous integration (CI). He spoke of CI as a continuum and just one of a number of good software development practices. He outlined 10 steps to implementing good CI, with the first 3 being an essential starting point:

1. Source repository – gotta have this!
2. Make code self-testing with unit tests (for bugs in legacy code, write a failing unit test that reproduces the bug, then fix!)
3. Automate the build – use one of the great free tools such as Cruise Control from ThoughtWorks; trigger to run every 30 mins or on each check-in.
4. Everyone commits their code daily (at least).
5. Every commit should be built (all code is integrated)
6. Keep the build fast
7. Test in a clone of the production environment (use VM’s)
8. Make it easy to get the latest deliveries (for example use zip of exe)
9. Everyone can see the results of the latest build
10. Automate deployment

In the subsequent Q&A session we noted that:

• You can implement CI beneficially in any SDLC process, whether Waterfall, Scrum or other.
• Scrum is (deliberately) silent on software development practices, leaving teams and organisations to choose their own.
• It is essential that teams implement good practices such as CI to complement the Scrum process if they want to improve.
• Doing CI will provide you with useful metrics as a side-effect, for example code coverage by tests, number of automated tests.

We’re grateful to Hilton for taking the time to spend with us!

I found Jeff Patton’s ‘Story Map‘ to be a useful discussion on an alternative to the 1-dimensional product backlog.

It was also the basis of one of the Open Spaces sessions at the recent Orlando gathering. This is definitely not a vanilla scrum technique, so not suggested for beginners. Jeff’s presentation explicitly states he believes it to be a ‘Ha’ technique (in the Shu-Ha-Ri schema).

One for the scrum masters among the readers: the Scrum Alliance has a run down of a discussion on the ‘Top 10 Organisational Impediments‘. Which will also give you a chance to check out the zooty new Scrum Alliance website. There is lots of content from the Orlando Gathering there as well.

The hot topic at the moment in the scrum community is all about the role of certification and testing. Mishkin Berteig‘s view of the beta test can be found here. I’d be curious to hear in the comments what people’s view of the test are.

Till next time

I am particularly encouraged by the range of people and institutions that are engaging with the Scrum Alliance and embracing Scrum…from XP and Crystal to the PMI!

For more information visit http://www.scrumalliance.org/events/19–orlando-scrum-gathering

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

The adoption of Scrum as a project management process in IT projects has been extremely rapid. This is because of the fundamental principle that Scrum embraces is that software development if unpredictable. Scrum uses an iterative approach with short but focused iterations. Scrum formalizes the informal “do what is needed to be done” approach that is already followed in the software industry. People that use Scrum have seen huge productivity gains (up to 600% claimed by some). I will attempt to outline the reasons for Scrums success below.

  Methodology

Scrum is a lightweight, simple and highly effective methodology that delivers business value every two weeks (or there about). The team is highly focused on the goals of the iteration and the progress of the team (or lack thereof) is highly visible. Because the approach breaks down the work into small manageable pieces, teams feel that the goals of the project are achievable. It also allows the team systematically approach the work and start the project without necessarily understanding exactly how or what needs to be done in later iterations of the project.

Delivery 

Due to the fact that Scrum delivers business value every two weeks project sponsors feel that there is progress happening on the project all the time. They ultimately feel much more in control of the project and its budget. The use of the burndown chart and the daily “stand up” meeting gives everyone focus and makes any slippages or problems surface very early on in the lifecycle.

People 

Generally, because Scrum works so well and delivers business value very well, the mood on a Scrum team is very positive and motivated. Scrum encourages competition in a very subtle way between members on the team, however it also encourages a “one for all, all for one” type attitude on the project due to the fact that the productivity of the team is very visible. If one aspect of the project is failing it looks bad for everyone and this encourages everyone to get involved and help out. Naturally a lot of this type of behavior is seen in teams with more experienced and mature members.

 Philosophy

Scrum undoubtedly build trust between all the different members of a mature Scrum team. Everyone can see exactly what other members of the team are doing and what they are struggling with. It also builds trust with the sponsors of the project by quickly delivering business value to them and allowing them to shape and reform the project as it goes. Scrum also has the following “rules”:

• The people doing the work define and estimate the work

• The team sit together and interact constantly

• The people doing the work know what and how to deliver what is needed

Management 

Managers using Scrum generally enjoy the “No fuss”, delivery mindset of Scrum. Because a Scrum team very much “self managed” the work, there is very little management overhead required for a Scrum project. There are no complex Gannt charts to wade through and update and it is relatively easy to see where issues and slippage is happening.