Topics covered in the Open Spaces format included: ‘What is the role of the analyst on an agile team?’, ‘Is TDD a design activity?’, ‘How self-organising should a scrum team be?’ and many others. We ran a total of three sessions of fifteen minutes with between two and three topics being discussed.

Afterwards we had a brief retrospective where we discussed the session. SUGSA Cape Town is currently trying out a variety of formats and it’s useful for us to get the feedback that will help us inspect and adapt our offering.

What worked well

• It was felt that the sessions were better than being lectured
• Participants got to choose which topics interested them
• A change from the last event was that we had a second ‘market place’ for topics and that worked well
• The food (I did say the snacks were fantastic)

Could be improved

• A few people had difficulty with it being during office hours
• A two minute warning for the end of the session
• Name tags (This came up at our last session and I forgot about it, so thanks for the reminder)
• To vary the format and sometimes have a presentation format with a topic marketplace for that content of the presentation

So it seems we should ideally have a mix of:

• Locations (Northern & Southern suburbs and Town)
• Timeslots (breakfast, lunchtime and evening)
• Format (Open Spaces is working well but have some presentation format events as well)

The long awaited videos from South Africa’s first Scrum Day are now finally available.

We have created a channel on Vimeo which you can find here.

Should you have any other questions, please email scrumday@scrum.org.za

Keep an eye out, we will be releasing the videos shortly.

The scrum day presentations will be made available here. The first ones are:

Business Track

• Charl Dreyer on “Product Ownership”
• Richard Bailey on ‘How I thought I could be a product owner and still keep my day job”
• Peter Hundermark on “Agile Metrics”
• Evan Person on “Transforming The Enterprise”

Technical Track

• Carlo Kruger on “Scrum101″
• Karen Greaves on “Scrum Smells”
• Aslam Khan on “Suicide is not painless”
• Kevin Fourie on “Where did my issue tracker go?”
• Alistair Fairweather on “Telling Stories”

Dr Jeff Sutherland’s presentation, “Take no prisoners: How a venture capital company does scrum”

I wanted to jump up and down when I read it. It speaks to me about why I hate the whole idea of an electronic board.

He also links to Xavier Quesada Allue’s blog, which echoes this practical approach to scrum and teams. I absolutely love his “Elements of taskboard design” which has real practical tips on what you can do to make your task board more effective. And he made me aware of “Super Sticky Post It’s“.

Now I’m off to convince Loren, Mistress of Stationery, to order us some of those. Sometimes the best tools are already out there.

Scrum(tm) – a 3M product

As promised, we have an organisation who will present a case study on the benefits realised with the adoption of Scrum and Agile…

Case Study:

Harry King of Rosami Products & Services, who are contracted to 2Dialog – a company based in Richardson, Texas, will be presenting a case study on how Scrum is assisting them in realising the expected benefits of Agile off-shore development in South Africa…

Book review:

Lionel Bisschoff will again entertain us with a book review

Agile and Scrum Committee Reading List:

The SUGSA Gauteng committee will for the first time reveal what we are reading and a list of subjects and books/articles on those subjects will be handed out.

So far we had overwhelming response and we are looking forward to see everyone… however, please don’t hesitate to bring friends/colleagues and whoever you think might benefit or add to the discussions planned!

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

————————————————————————————————————————

 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

Sponsors: Kaizania and Momentum

Refreshments will be served before and after the event.

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

 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 your official invitation to the next event to be held in Cape Town.

When: Wednesday 13 May, 2009 at 18h00 for 18h30
Where: Great Westerford, 240 Main Rd, Rondebosch (corner of Main and Dean). Click here for a map.

Click here to register for this event

Agile practice: Continuous Integration
Aside from the business challenges of the solution, the process of integrating the various bits and pieces of any reasonably-sized system can itself be time consuming, troublesome and difficult. To make matters worse, it is usually left towards the end of project, when pressure is often the greatest. This means the very integration process itself often introduces further bugs! Continuous Integration attempts to address these concerns.

At its core, Continuous Integration is the process of integrating the disparate components of a software system on a very frequent basis, often many times per day. However, in addition to addressing the actual challenges of integration, CI itself requires various tools and processes to be in place, and each of these is able to bring significant benefit to both the solution and the team. In this session, we will look more closely at the core concepts around both CI and the underpinning processes it relies upon. In order to demonstrate these concepts and keep it practical, we will make use of various well known tools and products.

About our Speaker: Hilton Giesenow
Hilton has been developing software professionally since 1997. Focused primarily on Microsoft tools and technologies, he lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa as a development manager and as a software architect and technical lead on enterprise projects. With experience ranging across a wide variety of platforms, client types and locations, Hilton is a Microsoft MVP, a regional lead for S.A. Developer.net, the national INETA representative, and a regular author and speaker at professional, community and academic events and conferences. His random ramblings can be found at http://hilton.giesenow.com/.

When: Wednesday 13 May, 2009 at 18h00 for 18h30
Where: Great Westerford, 240 Main Rd, Rondebosch (corner of Main and Dean). Click here for a map.

This event is kindly sponsored by Intec Billing which means that attendance, snacks and drinks are free!

Please don’t forget to register by clicking this link.

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…