Agile is
about a fundamental shift in thinking. “Agile is not a process is a mindset”
that was the title of Janusz Gorycki’s presentation at New
Trends in Project Management 2012 conference held in Sopot in May. Also Bob Hartman has a good presentation on this topic
– Doing Agile is not the same as being Agile. The essential point is that we are
“Doing Agile” when we follow practices and we are “Being Agile” when we act
with an Agile mindset – set of values and beliefs defined in Agile Manifesto. According to the survey results and recommendations
presented in „Agile Maturity Report – Benchmarks
and Guidelines to improve your effectiveness”
a broken waterfall based project execution approach is not sufficient reason to
commit to Agile. Agile is not a “silver bullet” or a solution to a mission
critical initiative without any background in the approach.
The most popular Agile framework is SCRUM, although from the
discussions with practitioners I know organisations very often tailor their
approaches to their needs. Steve
Denning, Forbs’ contributor, described practices that facilitate agility as:
(1) Work is organized in short cycles: (2) Management doesn’t interrupt the
team during a work cycle. (3) The team reports to the customer, not the
manager. (4) The team estimates how much time work will take. (5) The team
decides how much work it can do in an iteration. (6) The team decides how
to do the work in the iteration. (7) The team measures its own performance. (8)
Work goals are defined before each cycle starts. (9) Work goals are defined
through user stories. (10) Impediments to getting the work done are
systematically removed.
Adopting Agile is about transforming the culture of a
company to support the Agile mindset. I really like the conclusion from one of
the yesterday’s discussions during Agile3M meeting on Agile practices - first Tricity Agile
community meeting, that Agile is about creating a culture/ team environment where
everyone is self-motivated to contribute to the overall success of the project.
That’s also my understanding of Agility.
The first Tricity Agile community meeting was held yesterday in Sopot and gathered
21 Agile practitioners, supporters and others interested in this new approach
of working. The umbrella subject of the meeting was “Retrospectives” and 3 tables
with more specific questions were organized: A) Tools & Techniques, B) Problems,
C) Solved Problems. Each person after 20 min discussion at one table moved to
another table to be able to hear and talk on all topics.
One definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
Project retrospectives are a powerful opportunity to find and change the things
that lead to undesirable results
Some tips on effective retrospectives:
- Start form positives to give credit for achievements and
accomplishment
- Discussing what could have gone better also can be constructive,
especially if your intent is to identify needed changes.
- Keep everyone focused on the process and potential remedies instead
of character assassination and “blamestorming.”
- Implement top 3 changes - most people will willingly participate in retrospectives if they know that their efforts will not be ignored
As a result of more frequent structured learning, team
members become more adept at reflecting collectively in a group format - enabling
them to feel more competent and skillful in the art of addressing sensitive
issues and communicating in ways that reduce the impact of defensive routines,
blame, and avoidance. In some cases a kind of “ballot box” is used to encourage
less confident or shy team members to feedback on the project unanimously and
at the time they feel like. Although not everyone fancied the idea due to the
fact I mentioned before that Agile is about creating an open minded, positive
and less judgmental environment.
Project teams stop and reflect at
regular intervals while the project is in flight so that they can define
improvements and tangible action items that can be actively applied during the
next phase. The result is learning and performance improvement as the project
progresses, reducing the risk of project failure, improving team effectiveness,
and providing real- time feedback and development opportunities for project
members.
I would like to thank the organizers Hania, Bogdan and Jakub for
the opportunity to be a part of this interesting meeting and look forward the
next one – we have agreed to meet on a monthly basis. Good luck with your retrospectives!
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