agile journeys

...rants by Asheesh Mehdiratta on Coaching, Transformation and Change

Category: agile practices

Is your engineering team leaning to “Heaven” or “Hell” ?

August 10, 2013 /
Listening to the legendary Eagles, Hell Freezes Over album, it always touches a high point for me with the lyrics –

I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
‘This could be heaven or this could be Hell

Well the mission for the engineering team(s) is to provide a continuous flow of business value to the stakeholders, with stable teams working at a sustainable pace, while improving their technical excellence daily.

But do we really know if we are any closer to achieving this mission or are we simply stuck and wondering if we are holed up and have no way out ?

So to find the answer, take this 20 Questions survey below and SCORE your engineering team(s) to check your WAY,  and find if you are indeed leaning towards Heaven or Hell ?

For each question below, use this RATINGS SCALE below to assign a score to your response –
• 1 – 4  : No , we do not ….……you are possibly closer to HELL than you think ~~
• 5 – 7  : we try and succeed mostly…..you are moving closer to Heaven
• 8 – 10 : we do this almost every time and love it ..you are reaching HEAVEN-ly Bliss !!

Prerequisites:

1. Are using ‘High Maturity’ Engineering Practices and Tools ?
2. Do you have Sponsors commitment to Technical Excellence ?
3. Do you have Collective Team Ownership ?
4. Do you have Stable Team(s) ?

Agile Development Process :

5. Do you have Business Value driven requirements from Stakeholders ?
6. Does your Product Manager, Business Sponsor and Architectlead do collaborative product discovery ?
7. Do you capture requirements using Acceptance Tests (possibly with Automated frameworks) ?
8. Do you follow Evolutionary Design for emergent requirements ?
9. Do you follow pair programming development + Test Driven Development frameworks ?
10. Do you have a culture of Continuous Refactoring ?
11. Do you have limited Work in Progress in your sprints ?
12. Do you have Pre-Submit Development Checks ? include writing Unit Tests + peer Code Reviews
13. Do you have Continuous Integration for DailyWeekly builds, followed by Post Submit Checks including Static Analysis, Code Coverage, and Technical Debt metrics published to everyone ?
14. Do you do Continuous Testing at all levels (unit, component, feature, system, including non functional) ?
15. Do you use Feature toggling and Release Trains (based on Product Management launch decisions) ?

Continuous Feedback , Demos, Collaboration, Insights and Rewards :

16. Do you share for you  products, solutions: Continuous Alpha, Beta builds – company-wide at a common location for access by everyone ?
17. Do you have Continuous Deployment for Hosted (Saas) solutions (DevOps) ?
18. Do you have Monthly Open Spaces for Company-wide Demos ?
19. Do you have Quarter end Major Launch Demo’s, Customer experience Talks for insights / feedback ?
20. Do you follow Peer Ratings and Portfolio Rewards for your teams ?

Calculate your FINAL SCORE !!!

Hope your final score helps you to review your current state and push forward to the Heavenly bliss…!

Till then –

‘Relax’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’

what really is my secret sauce ?

July 22, 2012 /
In the quest to deliver business value quicker, enterprise agile transformations are common and growing, leaving the organization CXO’s confused and struggling in the myriad universe of agile process and tools. They hear Scrum, Lean, XP, Kanban, DSDM, FDD, and are asking their team which ones should I choose ? Based on my experiences with enterprise wide transformations, I would love to share as to what really is my secret sauce?

The answer is not a simple YES only Scrum works ! and NO XP does not work !

Instead the real story is about a new breed of agilistas, who are mixing the various ingredients and bringing an integration of the various methodologies to deliver the promise of faster turnarounds and keeping the CXO’s smiling. The amazing process landscape map by Mark Kennaley, as referred by Carson Holmes, summarizes this beautifully below and points to the SDLC3.0 wave approaching and becoming the new world order till we get to the next evolution.

SDLC 3.0
Courtsey: Fourth Medium Consulting

As the agile community evolves, the real adoption levels of these varied methodologies will always remain a hot topic…but now you know my secret sauce! But I would really love to hear your comments on which methodologies are actually converging in your organization? Is it Scrum and Kanban ? or Lean and XP practices with AMDD ? Tell me about your secret sauce in the comments now.

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