Category Archives: ScrumAlliance

12.08.15
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Agile Maturity Self-Assessment Survey (Published at ScrumAlliance)

Sharing my recent article publish by Scrum Alliance today, Tuesday 8th of December 2015.

This article identifies questions you can use to create an Agile Maturity Self-Assessment Survey, and it discusses the importance of this type of survey.

You might be asking why you would need a survey. Well, I truly believe in constant feedback. There is no better way to challenge the status quo. Also, it helps us understand what we can improve, how to be faster, and how to be more adaptive and responsive to the changes or challenges that come our team’s and business’s way.

Keep in mind that these kinds of tools are what allow us to improve what we already do well and to help us gain a clear view of where we need to focus our efforts. To that end, I think that the best place to retrieve this feedback is from the people who deal with the real scenarios every day. They are the best at evaluating their team and business for Agile maturity so that they can identify the anti-patterns and develop possible solutions and corresponding actions for improvement.

For these reasons, some time ago I searched on the Web for existing surveys that I could use and was able to find one that, from my perspective, was complete and had all the right questions.

So, the next step was to create the survey and send it to everyone. The number of replies was very good, and some conclusions were interesting, but (there is always a but) the survey feedback included the following remarks:

  • It was too long.
  • Some questions were not clear enough to understand and answer.
  • Some of the questions were hard to answer because they didn’t have a full overview.
  • It was confusing if you did not have a Scrum role.

Again, after this feedback and based on my beliefs, I decided to collaborate with a few people who answered the survey and a few others who face these challenges every day. These collaborators have also decided to accept the challenge to become Agile Champions or Change Agents.

I was amazed by their motivation and commitment to help improve the survey and their commitment to understand its results. It was really impressive!

After long discussions and reviews, the result of this collaboration was the following improved survey:

Your Role

  • Dev Team Member
  • ScrumMaster (dedicated)
  • Product owner / Manager
  • Delivery Manager / Head of / Director
  • Project / Program Manager
  • Other

1. Which Agile framework does your team use?

  • Scrum
  • Kanban
  • Other
  • None

2. Is your team able to deliver valuable software frequently?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

3. How often do you think that we are delivering what the business needs most?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

4. Is your team accommodating all the changes suggested by the product owner?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

5. How often does your team have visibility into what it will be doing in the next three sprints?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

6. Does your team have an agreed and clear DoR (Definition of Ready)?

  • Yes
  • No

7. How often are the user stories that enter your sprint ready to be implemented?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

8. How often is your team being disrupted and controlled by outsiders during the sprint?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

9. Does your team find blockers during the sprint?

  • Yes
  • No

10. Are any blockers found being tackled in a timely manner?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

11. Is your team collaborating daily? (Ex: Daily stand-up)

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

12. Is your team motivated to deliver the sprint deliverables?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

13. Do the Scrum team members trust each other?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

14. How often, when it’s possible, does your team communicate face to face?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

15. Does your team have an agreed and clear DoD (Definition of Done)?

  • Yes
  • No

16. How often is your team able to deliver fully tested, working software at the end of the sprint?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

17. How often is your team able to deliver at a sustainable pace?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

18. Is your team striving for quality and technical excellence by Betfair standards?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

19. Is your team self-organized in accordance with Agile principles?

  • Yes
  • No

20. Are the team members locked into their specific roles?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

21. How often is your team able to reflect on whatever has happened? (Ex: Retrospective)

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

22. Does your team take appropriate actions based on whatever has come up in retrospectives?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

23. Is your team continuously improving what it does (including processes)?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

24. Is your team using performance metrics to improve team performance?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Sometimes
  • Often
  • Always

25. Do you have any ideas on what we could improve regarding our software development process?

  • (Open Question)

My thoughts are to continue to analyze the next feedback and review this survey periodically with all the Agile champions (each time with a small group to be able to stay focused).

Please let me know if you have any questions or if you want to share your own experience on this subject. I would like to hear your thoughts and opinions.

See more at: ScrumAlliance.org | Agile Maturity Self-Assessment Survey

08.25.15
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Achieving a Successful Scrum Implementation – Making the Red Pill-Blue Pill Decision (Published at ScrumAlliance)

Sharing my recent article publish by Scrum Alliance today, Tuesday 25th of August 2015.

Again its a very interesting article regarding one of my past experience that I called “Achieving a Successful Scrum “Implementation – Making the Red Pill-Blue Pill Decision“.

It’s amazing how often movies are my source of inspiration for talking about real themes related to Agile.

Some time ago, a friend and I were discussing previous Scrum implementations. What could make them successful? This conversation was really productive, because we shared our opinions and past experiences. Also, we agreed that often Scrum or Scrum implementations don’t work due to people’s lack of understanding and their concerns, motivation, and beliefs.

What I’m trying to say here is that Scrum, as everyone knows, is not the silver bullet that is going to solve software development issues. Implementing Scrum sometimes means changing mind-sets, and to do that, people need to believe in what they are doing. They must free themselves from old ways of thinking.

I remember the dialogue from the 1999 movie The Matrix, in which Morpheus offers the main character, Neo, a choice between taking the red pill or the blue pill:

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” [1]

Pill
Source: http://counterinception.com/sites/default/files/pictures/MatrixBluePillRedPill.jpg

To give you context, the red pill represents the human desire to discover the reality hidden in the fabricated world that they are living in (the Matrix). As soon as Neo takes the red pill, it triggers his desire to free his mind and wake up from continuous sleep as a prisoner in the Power Plants. That is, it bolsters the will to wake up and be free from the old mentality. Embrace new methods and frameworks that allow us to learn, adapt, respond to change, deliver faster with high quality, search for real customer satisfaction, and have tools that help us continually improve.

What about the blue pill? Let me explain why I believe that people’s understanding, concerns, motivation, and beliefs are key to a successful Scrum implementation by using Morpheus’s pills as an analogy.

Some time ago, I was approached to help some teams in their Agile transition and Scrum implementation. During this time, I discussed ideas and approaches with everyone on the team to elicit feedback about how we should do it and what benefits the teams could realize from this transition. Everything looked OK at first; team members were motivated and interested. So we started following the steps as agreed.

In the beginning, everything was going well. We hit some bumps in the road, but that’s normal when changing mind-sets and old ways of working. But suddenly things started to slow down and issues surfaced regarding how the work was submitted to the teams and how the teams were performing. In that moment, we felt that something was wrong, something that was causing all this distracting noise and continuous interruption. The teams became confused. So we decided to investigate a little further to understand the root cause.

My biggest surprise was when we realized that this was coming from a group of people who were concerned with their sudden lack of control. How could things work if we had no control over what was happening? What would we do if all the information became so transparent that everyone could see the issues that we had been suffering from for a long time?

The irony was that this was coming from people who said that they believed in the transition to Agile and Scrum implementation. They were so concerned about making noise that they started doing what they were used to doing before the transition. You know what I’m talking about: working under the table, micromanaging, transforming the ceremonies in status reports, etc.

You might be asking yourself how this issue could be solved. That’s a great question. The first thing that I did was ask everyone to join me in a face-to-face meeting. I started the meeting by asking the following difficult questions, without pointing any fingers:

  • How do you think the transition is going?
  • What are your concerns about the transition?
  • What can we do better to improve the transition and adoption?
  • Why do you think that making the issues transparent is a bad thing?
  • What can we do to help you gain a better understanding of what we are trying to achieve, and why?
  • Can I count on your full support and commitment?

In the end, everything went well. I’m not saying we had a 100 percent shift in attitude and mind-set. Keep in mind that changing the familiar mind-set and, as a consequence, familiar attitudes is a difficult thing to do. It takes time and patience. But these team members saw that we were there to help and support them all the way.

The final statement and question during the meeting was the hardest one for them to accept. I told them that to have a full and successful transition to Agile and Scrum, all meeting participants had to think hard and decide whether they really wanted to achieve success in the Agile transition and Scrum implementation.

In other words, I asked them which pill would they take if Morpheus had offered them the choice.

Please let me know of any similar experiences you have had. By sharing we can learn together.

[1] IMDb | The Matrix

See more at: ScrumAlliance.org | Achieving a Successful Scrum “Implementation – Making the Red Pill-Blue Pill Decision

One last thing, I hope that you like reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing.

08.06.15
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Road Maps and Release Planning – The never-ending story (Published at ScrumAlliance)

Sharing my recent article publish by Scrum Alliance  on 6th of August 2015.

Again its a very interesting and hot topic called “Road Maps and Release Planning – The never-ending story“.

I hope that you like reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing.

07.27.15
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Why for Some Product Owners and Stakeholders Agile Is Like Crossing Over to the Twilight Zone (Published at ScrumAlliance)

I’m happy to share with you that I have my first article approved and publish by Scrum Alliance  on 23rd of July 2015.

Its a very interesting topic called “Why for Some Product Owners and Stakeholders Agile Is Like Crossing Over to the Twilight Zone“.

I hope that you like reading this article like I enjoyed writing it.