Marc Bless
Notes on agile methods, software engineering, requirements engineering, and project management.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The blog has moved
This blog has been silent since quite a time. The major reason is that I have moved my focus on agilecoach.de my german site.
From now on you will find new posts mainly on agilecoach.de/blog - not only in German but also in English.
I will post references here to new English posts so that you will be able to follow up.
From now on you will find new posts mainly on agilecoach.de/blog - not only in German but also in English.
I will post references here to new English posts so that you will be able to follow up.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Agile 2011 Attended Sessions
At this year's Agile 2011 conference in Salt Lake City I attended following sessions.
At the Open Jam I hosted a session to play the "Fearless Journey" game with Linda Rising, Martin Heider, Portia Tung, and two other guys (sorry I forgot your names). The game was created by Deborah Preuss and is based on Linda Rising's book "Fearless Change".
Also at Open Jam I joined the "Lean Flow" card game by Nancy van Schooenderwoert. With a team of 14 people it was a highly interesting experience to see chaotic alpha-male behavior turn into controlled collaboration -- and we could observe that longer planning does not lead to higher performance.
I will write some more details to several of these attended sessions in the next days.
- Workshop: Fear-Driven Impediments
by Ralph Miarka and Marc Bless - Workshop: Introduction to Behavior Driven Development
by Liz Keogh and Katherine Kirk - Special Event: The Agile Manifesto 10th Anniversary Reunion: The Big Park Bench
with 15 of the 17 original authors of the agile manifesto - Keynote: Why Care about Positive Emotions?
by Barbara Fredrickson - Talk: Exploring Enterprise Agile Transformation Strategies
by Mike Cottmeyer and Dennis Stevens - Workshop: Release your team's intelligent energy through five powerful conversations
by Declan Whelan and Bryan Beecham - Tutorial: Scaling Software Agility: Advanced Practices for Large Enterprise
by Dean Leffingwell - Workshop: Lean Procrastination - How to Identify the Last Responsible Moment
by Marc Bless and Dave Sharrock - Tutorial: Agile Education by Object Game - most HISSATSU way to understand it
by Tsuyoshi Ushio - Workshop: Flirting With Your Customers
by Jenni Jepsen
At the Open Jam I hosted a session to play the "Fearless Journey" game with Linda Rising, Martin Heider, Portia Tung, and two other guys (sorry I forgot your names). The game was created by Deborah Preuss and is based on Linda Rising's book "Fearless Change".
Also at Open Jam I joined the "Lean Flow" card game by Nancy van Schooenderwoert. With a team of 14 people it was a highly interesting experience to see chaotic alpha-male behavior turn into controlled collaboration -- and we could observe that longer planning does not lead to higher performance.
I will write some more details to several of these attended sessions in the next days.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Preparing for Agile 2011
Only 32 hours from now and I will take my plane from Frankfurt to Salt Lake City. Agile 2011 is arriving and I'm really looking forward to it.
There will be two sessions co-hosted by myself.
On Monday morning together with Ralph Miarka I'm going to host a three-hours workshop on Fear-Driven Impediments. Join us to learn and discuss how to recognize fear and how to deal with it in individual, team, and organizational contexts.
The second session will also be a highly interactive gaming session. We're going to play the Last Responsible Moments Game created by Olaf Lewitz and me during the last nine months. Dave Sharrock will co-host the session with me. Join us to play the game and learn some concepts of Lean Procrastination.
See you in two days in Salt Lake City.
There will be two sessions co-hosted by myself.
On Monday morning together with Ralph Miarka I'm going to host a three-hours workshop on Fear-Driven Impediments. Join us to learn and discuss how to recognize fear and how to deal with it in individual, team, and organizational contexts.
The second session will also be a highly interactive gaming session. We're going to play the Last Responsible Moments Game created by Olaf Lewitz and me during the last nine months. Dave Sharrock will co-host the session with me. Join us to play the game and learn some concepts of Lean Procrastination.
See you in two days in Salt Lake City.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Agile Principle 12: Inspect and Adapt
Let's take a look at the twelfth underlying principle of the agile manifesto:
Also read in this blog post series:
"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."What does that really mean? What are the implications for our daily business? Let's analyze this principle and see where this gets us.
- "At regular intervals" - It's not enough to take a look at the project after it is finished. We are not able to change our project development habits afterwards. So even if a worst-case "post mortem analysis" could bring up severe issues and action items for the next project, we can't change what already happened. Therefore we have to take a look at our current behaviour in an iterative way.
Values: Commitment
Principles: Iterative
Practices: Iteration, Sprint, Weekly Cycle - "the team reflects on how to become more effective" - Neither the team's manager, nor the Scrum Master, nor a quality manager is in charge to define the development team's workflows and processes. Only the team is able to inspect its own habits and to decide what and how to change. Of course it is not forbidden to get a retrospective facilitator from outside the team--this may help the team members to focus on getting insights rather than holding the meeting.
Values: Openness, Feedback
Principles: Reflection, Inspection
Practices: Sprint Retrospective, Root-Cause Analysis, Seeing Waste, Value Stream Mapping - "then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly" - The worst reflection is a reflection without any insights and action items. There have to be actionable results for the team so that it is possible to take charge of these actions.
Values: Commitment
Principles: Improvement, Eliminate Waste, Amplify Learning, Adaption
Practices: Sprint Retrospective
Also read in this blog post series:
- Agile Principle 1: Satisfy the Customer
- Agile Principle 2: Embrace Change
- Agile Principle 3: Frequent Delivery
- Agile Principle 4: Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Agile Principle 5: Support and Trust
- Agile Principle 6: Face-to-Face Conversation
- Agile Principle 7: Working Software
- Agile Principle 8: Sustainable Pace
- Agile Principle 9: Technical Excellence
- Agile Principle 10: Keep it Simple
- Agile Principle 11: Self-Organization
- Agile Principle 12: Inspect and Adapt
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Agile Principle 11: Self-Organization
Let's take a look at the eleventh underlying principle of the agile manifesto:
Also read in this blog post series:
"The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams."What does that really mean? What are the implications for our daily business? Let's analyze this principle and see where this gets us.
- "The best architectures, requirements, and designs" - We talk about discovering product ideas, as well as finding the challenges they offer and exploring appropriate solutions. These artifacts must not be approached each on its own, but as a whole system belonging together and building the resulting product.
Values: Simplicity, Focus
Principles: Diversity
Practices: Whole Team - "emerge" - The artifacts can not be planned up-front but will be discovered and created in an evolutionary way. Don't think too long about the right way to do something. Just do it in an iterative-incremental way and improve that way by reflecting afterwards.
Values: Simplicity, Feedback, Courage
Principles: Decide as late as possible, Baby Steps, Adaption
Practices: Test-Driven Development, Refactoring - "from self-organizing teams" - The team does not need a single responsible person "on top" of it to decide who is going to do what, when, and how. If teams have all the necessary roles and skills to create the wanted product, they are able to decide and organize by themselves.
Values: Communication, Commitment
Principles: Diversity, Accepted Responsibility, Empower the Team, Humanity, Supportive Culture
Practices: Whole Team, Osmotic Communication, Servant Leadership
Also read in this blog post series:
- Agile Principle 1: Satisfy the Customer
- Agile Principle 2: Embrace Change
- Agile Principle 3: Frequent Delivery
- Agile Principle 4: Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Agile Principle 5: Support and Trust
- Agile Principle 6: Face-to-Face Conversation
- Agile Principle 7: Working Software
- Agile Principle 8: Sustainable Pace
- Agile Principle 9: Technical Excellence
- Agile Principle 10: Keep it Simple
- Agile Principle 11: Self-Organization
- Agile Principle 12: Inspect and Adapt
Monday, April 11, 2011
Agile Principle 10: Keep it Simple
Let's take a look at the tenth underlying principle of the agile manifesto:
To say it in three words, the tenth principle is about Keep it Simple.
Also read in this blog post series:
"Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential."What does that really mean? What are the implications for our daily business? Let's analyze this principle and see where this gets us.
- "Simplicity" - As already mentioned in the principle, we talk about "the art of maximizing the amount of work not done". Always think about unnecessary tasks in your todo list. Think about requirements no one needs fulfilled to do her job. Think about methods, classes, and your software design in general - you will find various things to be skipped as they do not contribute to your sprint goal or acceptance tests.
Values: Focus, Simplicity
Principles: Limit Work in Progress, Decide as late as possible, Self-Similarity, Opportunity, Eliminate Waste
Practices: Product Backlog, Refactoring, Seeing Waste, Simple Design - "is essential" - The essence is what really creates value. All other things are nice-to-haves, gold plating, and pure technical bits and pieces. We need to focus on the essence to reach the goals we are committed to.
Values: Focus, Courage
Principles: Eliminate Waste, Decide as late as possible, Economics, Business Value
Practices: Seeing Waste
To say it in three words, the tenth principle is about Keep it Simple.
Also read in this blog post series:
- Agile Principle 1: Satisfy the Customer
- Agile Principle 2: Embrace Change
- Agile Principle 3: Frequent Delivery
- Agile Principle 4: Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Agile Principle 5: Support and Trust
- Agile Principle 6: Face-to-Face Conversation
- Agile Principle 7: Working Software
- Agile Principle 8: Sustainable Pace
- Agile Principle 9: Technical Excellence
- Agile Principle 10: Keep it Simple
- Agile Principle 11: Self-Organization
- Agile Principle 12: Inspect and Adapt
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