Team on the wall
In the sessions I run about agile teams I ask people to create a poster about themselves based on their Myers-Briggs Indicator. Each person presents their poster in the session. We've stuck these posters on a section of our Team Wall (see top photo).
At the far right in the top photo is a print of a Myers-Briggs Indicator chart. A close-up is shown in the bottom photo. Each person in the team is represented by an orange dot (with their initials on it), which is stuck to the chart according to their Myers-Briggs Indicator. This provides an interesting view of the team and presents some insights into the behaviours we observe and experience when different people pair program.
Team member profiles plotted on the Myers-Briggs chart
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.Tags:
myers-briggs
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When does adaptation become compromising?
There's a lot of discussion going on about dogmatic agilistas missing the point about being agile. The point being to adapt and be agile rather than enforcing the practices. It's certainly a fair point. But I see a lot of things being done by people and organisations in the name of adaptation that, quite frankly, I consider compromising. Specifically, their adaptations compromise the value system and the
principles behind the Agile Manifesto. There's a debate to be had about when an adaptation aims to achieve improvement to the agile method/s and when an adapatation goes further and compromises the foundation provided by the values and principles.
In my experience, organisations trying to adopt agile methods are too quick to quote the 'adaptation card' because they're too afraid of (or ignorant to the need for) organisational and cultural change. And this worries me. It worries me because I fundamentally believe that most organisations need to undergo some organisational and cultural change to realise the full benefits and productivity that agile methods are capable of achieving. You can't plug agile methods into an organisation (or a person) without the organisation (or person) having to change somewhat.
It's certainly possible to evolve and enrich the value system and the principles but I'm not sure adapting either is sensible. I also wouldn't recommend letting people inexperienced with agile modify the values and principles. I'm thinking, but am not yet convinced, that adaptation should be limited to the adoption and application of the practices. And that the values and principles should be preserved as they are stated in the
Agile Manifesto.
What do you think?
Tags:
agile,
adaptation,
agile values,
agile principles
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I'm bored of business cards so I ordered some
moo cards today.
If you upload your company logo to your
flickr buddy icon and add your personal details you can get a simple and clean business card with one of your
flickr photos on the reverse side.
The cards are small and cute. In length they're about the same as the average business card but the height is cut in half.
They're really funky!
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It's fun to be daft in work
Matt walked into the office the other day, having gone out for his daily lunchtime walk, and puts on a witches wig (what with Halloween coming up). He walks upto
Gus and says "I wanna be like you".
I love my flowing locks
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.
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Silly hats for failing build
In our team, if you break the build you wear the hats.
buildhats
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.See what I mean.
Naughty boys
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.
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Timeline retrospective
Our last iteration was charged with frustration. This gave me an opportunity to try out a timeline activity that looked at events and emotions, instead of our usual
heartbeat retrospective format. Our
burn-up chart was used as the actual timeline. We placed each story card on it at a location corresponding to the day it landed in the done column on our
planning board.
retrospective-timeline-stories
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.We stuck colour-coded post-it notes to the timeline representing key events, and added colour-coded dots to reflect the emotions of individuals during those events.
retrospective-timeline-emotions
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.Here's the completed timeline:
retrospective-completed-timeline
Originally uploaded by sjb140470.Tags:
retrospective
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Looking ahead after the iteration review
It can be hard to look ahead at what's coming in the next iteration when you're so busy in the current iteration. It sounds easy, just go look at the story cards at the top of the
product backlog and have a conversation about them with the
product owner. But it isn't easy. You might grab a peek every now and again when you
come up for air, but you might not get the time to follow-up with the
product owner.
A few times we've experienced frustrating planning games because people weren't sufficiently prepared. So now, after our
iteration reivew, which completes at 4:45pm on a
Tuesday, our
product owner sets the context of the coming iteration by stating the iteration goal and introducing the user stories that will be discussed the following day in the planning game. We only spend about 15 to 20 minutes doing this, but it provides sufficient information for the team to sleep on and come up with questions for the next day.
Tags:
iteration review,
planning game
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