Thomas Henson

4 Steps to Increasing Team Productivity by 400%

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The idea of getting a team to increase performance by 400% sounds crazy but it’s exactly what is happening at software startups. It is no secret that the key ingredient is using agile project management. The real secret is that those same agile principles can be applied to any startup.

team-rowing
Photo by bplanet at freedigitalphotos.net

 

Myth: Agile is only for software

Agile management practices are being implemented in all kinds of businesses. Jeff Sutherland, a founding member of agile methodology and fighter pilot, in his recent book provides an example of a condo developer using agile principles to build high rise condos. If agile principles can work for the construction of high rise condos, with a little customization they will work in your company.

When switch to an agile project management can increase your team’s productivity by 400% why are you not using it today? Maybe you have thought agile can’t work in your organization. Begin implementing these 4 steps today to jump start your team’s productivity.

  1.  Laser Like Focus – In Agile development, teams go through what is called a sprint, this is a period of 1-2 weeks where the team only works on specific tasks. These tasks are agreed upon before the sprint starts by both the team and leadership. During a sprint the team only works on tasks that will help them accomplish the goals of the sprint. By eliminating distractions the company is allowing the team to accomplish the goals of the sprint. Try it out today by instituting a no meeting day or no emails before lunch. This will give your team a distraction free time to focus on accomplishing the single most important task.
  2.  Continuous improvement – Agile teams believe in continuous improvement. One way they accomplish this is by having a meeting at the end of each sprint called a retrospective. In a retrospective the teams talks about what worked well and what did not. This meeting is a judgment free zone with the single goal of helping the team perform more efficiently. Try it out today by having meetings at the end of each week. In this meeting you act as the facilitator and allow the team to give feedback about what is working and what is not. At the end of the meeting let the team decide on the most important item. Once your team has decided on an improvement to make, set a metric to track that improvement and follow up next week.
  3. Constant Customer feedback – Agile teams take customer feedback to a new level. At the end of each sprint agile teams show what they have accomplished to the customers. So every 1-2 weeks customers are getting a prototype to play with and give immediate feedback to the developers. Try it out today by bring your customers into your own design process. Give customer early access to the project you are working on and soak in all the feedback they give you. The earlier you get feedback from your customers the less costly it is to change down the road.
  4. Information Radiator – In agile project management information about the project is placed in a common area on a whiteboard with 100’s of post-its/notecards detailing everything about the project. This board is commonly referred to as the information radiator. Anyone is allowed to look at the board because this ensures the entire company is on the same page, from accounting to the sales staff. Try it out today by setting up a whiteboard in an area where everyone will see. Write down the entire task for your project. On the white board create 3 columns with the following headers TODO, WORK IN PROGRESS, and DONE. Now place all the task in the TODO column, as the task are being worked on move them into the WORK IN PROGRESS column and then finally move them to DONE when the task is complete.
climbing mtn together
Photo by ratch0013 at freedigitalphotos.net

 

Use these steps today

Don’t let the name Agile scare you into thinking the agile principles can’t be implemented in your company just because you don’t develop software. Embrace the 4 principles in your company today and experience the increase in productivity the software industry has for the last 10 years.

Complete Agile Podcast List

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Why Listen to Agile Podcasts

If you are continuously improving your Scrum Team, should you not take the same approach to your scrumification? A way you can increase your scrumification in Agile Development is to try and consume as much information as you can.  One of the ways I like to do that is by listening to podcasts. The reason podcasts are so great is because they are FREE and, it is EASY to listen to them anywhere. Especially if you have a hellish hour-long commute like I do.

Passing Cars

Where to find Agile Podcasts?

Searching for anything in the iTunes store is always so clunky compared to finding a list online, but I still tried to search for Scrum and Agile Podcast. I was able to find some Agile podcasts but it also threw in podcasts that weren’t Agile-based. After searching online I didn’t find a resource listing out specific Agile Podcasts.

(However I did find a great resource for Development Podcast from John Sonmez and I recognize his list as the inspiration for this list)

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After searching for Agile Podcast/Scrum Podcast I didn’t find any specific Ultimate/Complete/Best list of Agile podcasts. So I decided to create one.

Complete Agile Podcast List

(The following are in no particular order. Except the fact that This Agile Life is first because they have an MBA on the show)

This Agile Life – A podcast with about 4(+/-  1) rotating hosts that hold 30-45 minute discussions on Agile topics. One of my favorite podcasts because 1) the host has an MBA and 2) all of the hosts are really knowledgeable.

  • Daily Standup – Episode only had one host, John Sextro, but a lot of great tips about running your daily stand up. Now matter how long
    you have been doing Scrum, this episode will give you some ideas for your standups.

The Agile Coffee  – Episodes are done in a Lean Coffee format, meaning, where topics are voted and discussed for 5 minutes, then another vote is taken to decide to carry on the discussion or move on. There are different people on the show, but it’s more or less 2 people with the 3 hosts of the show.

  • Episode 16 – Discussion on the Hackathons Vic recently ran was very interesting, and how his company has been facilitating Hackathons is great information.

The Agile Revolution – Craig Smith, Renee Troughton and Tony Ponton are the 3 hosts of this podcast and have guests that appear on the show as well. Most episodes are around 45 minutes and the series has about 80+ episodes to date.

The Daily Scrum – The series ran during 2012 and has about 19 episodes.
Last episode was in 2012. About 17 episodes long.

Agile Weekly – Podcast has been running since 2009 and has about 130+ episodes. Most episodes are under 20 minutes. The last podcast was in mid-June 2014.

Scrum For Success – Series ran for 5 episodes in 2009. No current episodes.

Agile Toolkit Podcast – A wealth of information with a ton of episodes. Many episodes feature a lot of big names in the Agile Community. Topics
go from Scrum Certification to how to set up your team rooms. Most episodes are under 30 minutes, which provides a
great opportunity to listen on the car/train to work. Bob Martin Episodes Executive Transition – Great episode for learning how to guide your leadership into the Agile world.

Agile University – The idea for this podcast is to give an overview of agile in under 5 minutes. Great way to bring someone into the Agile fold
in 8 short episodes.

Confessions of an Agile Activist – 7 episodes spanning 2007 to 2013; the host talked about bringing the podcast back sometime. Contains a 3 part series on selling Scrum.

Arrested DevOps –  Host Matt Stratton, Trevor Hess, and Bridget Kromhout talk about DevOps topics. The Podcast is current and currently has 29 episodes.

Agile Chicago Style – New Podcast from the Chicago Agile community. New episodes published every month.

Meta-Cast – Agile podcast hosted by Josh Anderson and Bob Galen. Podcast has over 65 episodes and 2 episodes are added monthly.

Tell Me What I Missed

Just like in Agile development, this is the first release of the Agile Podcast list, so it’s not going to perfect. In fact, it will take many releases to become a GREAT Agile Podcast List. So be sure to let me know what I have missed or any ideas for improving the list by  posting comments, Tweeting, or sending me an email.

How to increase your Scrumification

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So it has happened , your company is switching to Scrum. Your boss came into your office today and asked you to head the transformation to Scrum. Of course you jumped at the chance, I mean who doesn’t want to be known for rolling out a company wide project? The problem is you really aren’t  sure what Scrum is and in fact you thought it was something from your glory days of intramural Rugby at college.

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Why do you care about learning Scrum before trying to implement it in your organization. It is just another process to learn or tool to use right? No Scrum is much more than a set of rules that can be recited and implemented in a 1/2 day. To really get the benefit from Scrum you will need commit to investing time in learning about Scrum. Continuous improvement is a key of Scrum. Everyone in your organization should have some idea of what Scrum is in order for your organization to thrive.

What is the quickest way for you to scale your learning curve

Books – Grabbing a book is the easiest way to begin to wrap your brain around Scrum. The first book I would recommend would be Agile and Iterative Development by Craig Larman book here while it is an Agile book it does give you a great perspective on Agile methodologies and why these methods work. Mike Cohn is an author and has a very helpful blog on Scrum/Agile development, you should read anything he puts out. Reading is essential for learning Scrum but it’s going to take some time versus attending training or hiring a coach.

Conference – Attending an Agile conference is a great way to get your Scrumification (knowledge of Scrum) whipped into shape. Depending on where you live you should be able to find a conference to attend a couple times a year without having to travel too far. A conference is a great way to meet other agile practitioners with different levels of experience.  If you just starting out in Scrum you will be surprised how many people you will run into who are in the same boat. Conferences also offer consulting companies a chance to set up booth space to showcase options for training and coaching should you decide to go that route.

Training – Get a training budget and send some key members of the Scrum team off to training. Many Scrum Consultants offer different training options, from fundamentals to Certified ScrumMaster, Product Owner, or  Scrum Developer. In an ideal world send the whole Scrum team off to be certified in each of their roles. At a minimum you should certify your Product Owner and ScrumMaster. Developers in your organization are more likely to have some familiarity with Scrum practices while the stakeholder/project manager might have limited exposure to Scrum. That doesn’t mean there is not value in sending the developers to training as well, the Scrum Developer training goes into depth about best practices for development and testing. Your budget will be the deciding factor in training, so use it wisely.

Hire a Scrum Coach – While this is probably the most expensive option, it is the quickest and most thorough. There are many different options here but the basic premise is you hire a certified coach to come into your organization. For a set amount of time the coach will observe and interact with your team. The goal of the Scrum Coach is to guide your team into a well oiled Scrum team as fast as possible.

These are just a few ways to increase your knowledge of Scrum. Hopefully you can tell by now that the most important part of learning Scrum is to keep learning about Scrum. There is no one perfect way to learn Scrum and your learning is never done. Insert joke about not having a proper definition of done here. Just as your team should strive for continuous improvement so should you.

 

How to become a Certified ScrumMaster

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For the past couple of years I have been working on Scrum or scrum like development projects. In both my Bachelors and Masters programs we studied Scrum, so I thought I knew how the Scrum development worked. Wow was I wrong. During the past year I have worked with a team of developers who taught me the error of my ways. Since I realized my Scrumifation (copyright pending) was off a little bit I decided to get certified.

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So where can you get certified?

At first I didn’t know where to start since there are a couple of organizations that offer Scrum Certification. After a lot of research I decided to go with the Scrum Alliance and get the Certified Scrum Master certification. The certification is 1 of 6 possible certified by the Scrum Alliance , which is the most widely accepted scrum certifying body. The Scrum Alliance has the following certifications:

  1. Certified Scrum Developer
  2. Certified ScrumMaster
  3. Certified Product Owner
  4. Certified Scrum Professional
  5. Certified Scrum Coach
  6. Certified Scrum Trainer

It was an easy choice for me when selecting a specific Scrum certification. I like communicating and helping others so a ScrumMaster would interest and it fit into my overall career path and interests.

How to get a Scrum Master Certification

Scrum Alliance requires 2 steps to become a Certified ScrumMaster:

Attend Certified Training Course

The Scrum Alliance website had a find your class resource to aid in finding a class close to your location. I went to a session held by BrainTrust Consulting in Nashville. This class was an intense 2 day session taking me through the Scrum process from a ScrumMaster’s role. ScrumMaster training is two days of intesnse learning but it is a lot of fun as well.Day 1 starts on a team of 5-6 people and you are given a project to complete before the end of day 2. The time working on the project is broken up by learning about Scrum  then applying those steps on the project your team is working on. The class was really laid back and encouraged students to challenge the trainer to highlight areas where this wouldn’t work in the real world. As the class was ending on the second day I really found myself excited to get back to work and apply the lessons learned into our current project.

Take and Pass Exam

After attending the class you will be able to sit for the exam within 7 days of finishing the class. The test is 35 questions and you need only get 24 correct. I can’t tell you what is on the test but I can say with an awesome trainer you should be able to pass it easily. Checkout my trainer at BrainTrust. No time limit is placed on the test, but you do have to finish it in one session. The test took me under an hour. Also you want to take the exam while the content from the class is fresh.

Overall getting certified in Scrum was an easy process, but I had a good bit of experience and education before jumping into the certification. While no experience is necessary for going through the training it did seem to help me. The CSM certification helped me bring more value back to my team the first day after attending training.

How to Build the case for Scrum in your Organization

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So you’ve read all the great stories about how scrum can help your team produce better results. Most of your colleagues  at other companies are using Scrum and thriving because of it. Now all you have to do is sell it to your boss. You believe management won’t buy in, so what should you do? What if you could build the case for Scrum in your organization. Startup Stock Photos
Before beginning to build the case for Scrum in your organization you need to ensure your team is on-board first.. Even if management signs off on your proposal it’s not going to work unless your team is on-board. Chances are your team will be excited because, Scrum is a team first framework  based on the idea that teams are self-organizing.

So how do you build the case for Scrum in your organization?

  1. Start sending subtle hints to key decision makers in your organization – Find articles or case studies and pass them around to those decision makers. Send an email out as a by the way checkout this article. Try leaving a copy sitting in the break room or by the coffee pot. If you really want bonus points find articles that quantify how much money the company has saved or increased revenue by using Scrum. The goal here is to get the information out about Scrum.
  2. Point out missed opportunities with your current system – Try to constructively point out opportunities your team could capitalize on under a different project management methodology. For example is there a process you could update to make your team more productive. How about problems with your last project that could have been caught earlier with a more iterative process? Do your stakeholders have a voice throughout development? The goal is to pointing out the pain points of your current process.
  3. Look for ambassadors in your company – Talk with coworkers to find others in your organizations that are sympathetic to your cause. In a large organization you may find teams that are already using Scrum. Maybe some of your team members have used it with previous employers. You might even find other project leads who have wanted to take on Scrum for their teams as well. The goal is to build a collation.
  4. Build the slides – Even though you have built your case it’s still important to reiterate the points in your meeting with management.  First show the opportunities where your team could have benefited from using Scrum versus your current methodology. Next pick a use case of Scrum turning around an organization and lead with it. Third give an executive overview of the Scrum Framework. Be open and honest about what Scrum is and is not, leadership needs to have a realistic view of Scrum. Do not over sell Scrum as if it will solve world peace. Highlight any of your competitors that are using Scrum and how they beating you with it. End with a slide about the proposed roll-out of Scrum and how it will affect the current work in progress. The goal is to create a compelling slide deck.
  5. Have the conversation – Schedule a formal meeting with the decisions makers.  Invite any of your ambassadors to this meeting but be careful about bringing the team. You want to ensure leadership has an opportunity to discuss it, without feeling ambushed. If you have successfully built the case, leadership should not feel ambushed. Many organizations are slow to make decision or will need a few more meeting like this to get change to occur in the organization.

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Building the case for Scrum is not guaranteed to work in all cases. But laying out your case in a professional fashion will give your a higher chance for success. Some organization are not ready to make the leap to Scrum but having the Scrum conversation in a professional way will help your organisation move toward Scrum. Remember for Scrum to work in your organization you will need leadership to buy in.