Apr
25

Agile Roles and Responsibilities

What’s expected of me in this new Agile team?

When we work with teams transitioning to Agile, we have to address the transition from existing roles and the anxiety surrounding the change:

  • What will be expected of me?
  • What can I expect of others?
  • Will my skills still be valuable?
  • How can I contribute?
  • I’ve heard that there are only developers and customers on Agile projects. Don’t they need testers, designers, analysts, architects, managers…?

Portia and I have written a number of Agile Team Roles and Responsibilities in the form of User Stories and Acceptance Criteria. We use these as a start to help the team define the roles they need to deliver value.

Just remember

  • These are only a start to a conversation about roles within the team.
  • Role does not equal person. A role can be filled by many people; a person can be in one or more roles. A team where many people can take on a role is more flexible, smarter, more resilient and more efficient.
  • Roles change fluidly over time. In an agile team, people will take the responsibility for a role as the need arises.

How do you add value to your team?

Apr
21

Why estimate?

Is estimating due to lack of trust?

Rob Bowley’s “Estimation Fallacy” session at SPA 2009 contained some discussion about trust. In particular, this pithy statement was made:

Estimates are due to the lack of trust between the business(*) and development team.

There have been a number of descriptions of “estimation-less” approaches. Is it simply a case of lacking trust?

It’s probably a bit more complex than that.

Valid reasons to estimate

Why would we estimate the effort and cost of a project, a release, an iteration, a feature?

To evaluate if the benefit of the project outweighs the cost. Say we have an estimate of the value a project or product may bring. I’m prepared to pay you 1.000.000€ if you deliver certain product. Do you do this project? Only if it will cost you less than that amount to deliver it. Of course, we should try to break the product down in smaller Minimal Marketable Features so that we can deliver sooner and get value earlier.

To make scope tradeoffs. Say we have a given budget and time: we need to show a demo at an industry event in 3 months with the current team. Which features shall we keep, which can we postpone? Which features will give us most “bang for the buck”? Of course, we start by prioritising by value, but three lower valued/lower cost features may have more effect than one higher value expensive feature.

To know how to distribute resources over multiple projects. Say we’ve got 20 projects we could start and we have 50 developers. Which project(s) do we start? How do we know where the developers will have the most effect? Of course, we start the fewest possible projects simultaneously, but there’s a limit to the number of people that can work on one project.

To make reliable promises to others. “Can we deliver this game before Christmas? If so, we need to get the marketing campaign started.” Of course, it would be easier if we were all in the same multi-functional team or if we had a real cross-company value stream. But sometimes we do have to coordinate with others or agree on contracts.

To know when to exercise our Real Options. Real Options tells us we need to make a decision at the optimal decision time. This is the deadline minus the implementation time of the most costly option. How do we know the implementation time?

No estimation? Really?

I agree that spending inordinate amounts of time on estimating is a waste of time. But no estimation? If I look at the “estimation-less” methods I see a few different approaches:

  • Break down the work in approximately even-sized amounts of work. In effect, you can say that each item now has a cost of ‘1’. Then you can simply count the number of items and use throughput and cycle time to make your estimations. How do you know that the items are approximately even-sized?
  • Count the number of user stories, even if you know they have different sizes. In the end, it doesn’t matter much, some stories will go faster, some stories will go slower. Over a release many of those differences cancel each other out. What do you call the number of stories you typically deliver per release?
  • Give each item a high level estimate (in points, gummi bears or t-shirt size) and track (or estimate for the first few releases) how many of those you can reliably deliver. Concentrate on those items were estimates matter.

The only really estimation-less method I see is one where features are prioritised purely based on value and then pulled for implementation one by one, without caring how long it would take to implement. I think this is what’s described by Joshua Kerievsky. Even then, he talks about micro-releases, so the features must have been broken down into reasonably small pieces.

That’s about how I work on projects where I’m both developer and customer: user stories are prioritised by value and released in micro releases. The features are small enough to be implemented in a couple of hours. In any case, I set a timebox and revert if implementation takes too long. I know the value; I know how much I want to spend; most of the time I correctly estimate that the cost of the feature is within my budget.

Trust: necessary but not sufficient

Estimations are useful but fraught with many problems. Trust between everyone involved helps a lot, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for estimates in most circumstances. Let’s look at some of the issues related to estimating and see what the root causes are. Maybe we can do something about the root causes.

And why don’t we talk about estimating (business) value?


(*) I really, really hate the use of the expression “The business“. IT, the development team is part of the business. If we want more trust, can’t we start by seeing them as one team?

Apr
16

The Theory of Constraints’ “Five Focusing Steps” in action

Where do we intervene and what do we do?

When we first start to improve processes, the situation is daunting: we can see so much that can be improved. Where do we start? What will have the biggest effect? And when we’ve done that, what do we do next?

The “Theory of Constraints” gives us a simple and powerful framework to guide our process improvement: “The Five Focusing Steps”.

Step 0: What is the goal?

The first and most difficult step is to determine (and agree on) the goal of the “System”.

Before we can do that we must determine what the System is. As a rule of thumb the System equals the “Sphere of Influence” of our Client: everything that our Client has the authority change.

To determine the goal of the System, we must ask ourselves “Who uses the results the output of the System and what do they value?”. We try to find metrics that measure the amount of valuable output we produce. The Theory of Constraints calls this the “Throughput” of the System.

On the “B” project, our goal was to release valuable features that were actively used by our users. Our measurement was the “Business Value” estimate that our onsite customer put on each User Story.

What is your system? What is its goal?

Step 1: Where is the bottleneck?

The fundamental insight of the Theory of Constraints is this: “the output of any system is determined by one bottleneck.” A chain is as strong as its weakest link. If we want to make the chain stronger, we need to work on the weakest link.

At the start of an improvement process, the bottleneck is easy to spot. A bottleneck resource is:

  • Always busy. But busyness isn’t the only (or even a good) criterion by which to recognise bottlenecks. Many systems are mistakenly optimised to get high utilisation (or rather busyness) out of all resources.
  • Work piles up in front of them.
  • Downstream resources are regularly idle.

The development team was the bottleneck. We had a list of features that was piling up in front of us. It would take us several releases to implement our backlog. Users were getting impatient for features to be implemented and deployed.

Where is your bottleneck?

Step 2: Exploit the bottleneck

If the output of the system is constrained by the output of the bottleneck, we must first try to increase the output of the bottleneck. Any idle time of the bottleneck reduces output of the system. What can we do?

  • Remove any non-value adding work.
  • Remove or limit interruptions. Remove impediments.
  • Let the bottleneck resource work at a steady pace.
  • Provide high quality tools and materials.
  • Carefully prioritise the bottleneck’s work so that they always work on the most important tasks.
  • Ensure that there’s always enough work to do for the team (the backlog), so that they don’t become idle through lack of input.
  • As team lead, I received and prioritised all incoming requests and questions. As I could deal with most of them, the team wasn’t interrupted.
  • Production issues needed to be handled quickly. All issues were handled by me and one developer. The bugfixer role rotated after every bug. This provided a nice balance between keeping the team focused on developing the current iteration and ‘feeling the pain’ of production issues.
  • I made sure that everyone worked at a sustainable pace. No more overtime!

Warning: don’t shield the team from useful information like input from the customer, production issues, installations and feedback from users.

We start by fully exploiting the bottleneck because this type of improvement is relatively easy:

  • It requires no extra cost or investment.
  • Only one resource is involved.

How can you exploit your bottleneck?

Step 3: Subordinate every other decision to the bottleneck

When we’ve fully exploited the bottleneck, we must subordinate every other decision to our decision to exploit the bottleneck. All the resources that aren’t bottlenecks have, by definition, some slack. Use that slack to support the bottleneck. We can subordinate by:

  • Letting the non-bottlenecks help the bottleneck or take over some required but low value adding work.
  • Everybody works at the pace of the bottleneck, no faster no slower, to avoid overloading the bottleneck with work in progress.
  • Those in front of the bottleneck ensure that the buffer of work for the bottleneck is always filled, but not too much.
  • Those after the bottleneck ensure that they have some slack to deal with variations in output of the bottleneck.
  • Non-bottlenecks ensure that only high quality work in progress handed to the bottleneck.
  • As team lead, I subordinated all my work to the team: whenever there was a request for the team, a production issue or an impediment, I dropped all my work and supported the team. I quickly learned that I shouldn’t commit to delivering stories. My contribution to the team was less in contributing to its throughput and more in protecting the throughput of the rest of the team.
  • The onsite customer performed acceptance testing on completed stories every week, so that the developers got rapid feedback on the quality and fit of their development.
  • The onsite customer and I prepared stories for the next iteration and release, so that the team always had something to work on.

Subordinating is still relatively easy:

  • It requires no extra cost or investment.
  • Only a few resources, typically those that interact directly with the bottleneck, are involved.

However, there is one aspect of subordinating that won’t be accepted easily: whereas the bottleneck resources should be fully loaded, non-bottleneck resources must have slack time to be able to support the bottleneck and deal with variations. Most managers are evaluated on the efficiency and not the effectiveness of their people. Deliberately making people work below their capacity goes against their goals. We can solve this problem by fully loading the non-bottlenecks but ensuring that a part of their work is ‘discardable’, “nice if it gets done, but not essential or time-critical”. Whenever the non-bottlenecks need to support the bottleneck, they can drop the non-essential work to free up time.

Which decisions do you need to subordinate to the bottleneck?

Step 4: Elevate the bottleneck

This is the step most people will intuitively apply first: add more people, more machines, more training, more tools, more of everything. We only take this step when all the ‘free’ improvements have been performed. We can elevate by:

  • Adding more people or machines
  • Training and mentoring
  • Better tools, faster machines
  • Switching to a different technology

My manager asked me about every week if I wanted some more developers, if I “wanted to elevate my team by adding more people”. I declined, because we had plenty of room for improvement left with exploit and subordinate improvements. I asked if we could get faster computers instead. He told me we couldn’t because the hardware budget was exhausted. But there was budget for extra developers if I needed any…

Elevation improvements are more difficult because they require an investment. Elevation improvements are dangerous because most of these improvements take some time to produce results. Results might even worsen until the improvements start to have a positive effect. For example, when we add people to a team we lower the team’s velocity and accept less work while the team members help the newcomer get up to speed.

Don’t elevate yet. I know you can apply so many more exploit and subordinate improvements. 🙂

Step 5: And again!

When we’ve applied one improvement and have seen a positive effect, we go back to the beginning:

  • Is our goal still valid? Is our measurement of throughput still correct?
  • Where’s the bottleneck? After some improvements we may have solved our worst problem. As there’s always a bottleneck, our second-worst problem gets a promotion. We now need to focus our attention on the new bottleneck.

And the result was…

The team got better and better by repeatedly going through the five focusing steps. After a while, they started to develop stories faster than customers could write them. That’s when we needed to apply focusing steps six and seven.

I want to know more

Read the Goldratt books about the Theory of Constraints.

Download and play the “I’m not a Bottleneck! I’m a free man!” simulation from http://www.agilecoach.net

Read more about the Theory of Constraints on this blog.

Apr
15

The secret trick to make IT projects easy

Software projects are difficult because…

I’ve heard this said several times over the years:

Software projects are difficult because software is so easy to change.

Other engineering and building projects are seemingly easier because they deal with “hard to change” stuff like bricks, mortar and steel.

I heard this statement again at Rob Bowley‘s SPA 2009Dealing With the Estimation Fallacy” goldfish bowl discussion about estimation. Rob has written up the outputs of the session, but sadly there’s nothing more about this fascinating statement.

I find it difficult to accept this statement. Surely, the ease of change must be an advantage? It means we can exercise our Real Options later, that we can change our mind when we know more? It means that we can correct mistakes and wrong assumptions more cheaply? It means we can keep our creations relevant in a changing world?

So, to make software projects easier we just need to…

If the previous assertion is true, then making software projects easier is easy.

Make software hard to change so that software projects become (a little bit) easier.

Forget “embrace change”! From now on, I’ll make software hard to change. Not that I have to do much to achieve that, I can create hard to change software without thinking. 🙂

Hm. I still don’t understand why easy to change software makes projects hard. Do you know why?

Some effective ways to make software projects easy

The goldfish bowl came up with some more ideas about change.

1. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and process

One remark was that we make things difficult for ourselves through technology churn. Technology and tools change rapidly. Unfortunately, most of these changes are no improvements. But we don’t have to stay on that treadmill. Some time ago a new programmer in the team complained: “Why don’t we use technology X? It’s new!”. My response: “That’s exactly why we don’t use it. Yet.”

When I’m in charge of a project, we will only use a new tool or technology when it’s thoroughly tested and when everyone in the team understands it. We’ll first try the new tool on prototypes or small internal projects so that we can discover the hidden pitfalls. And even then I need to have a backup solution on hand if the new thing doesn’t work. As Weinberg says: “Anything new never works”. As the Toyota Way says: “Only use reliable, thoroughly tested tools that support people and process”.

2. Don’t reuse. Use.

Another remark was that we write too much custom code from scratch. We could reuse more or implement standard packages. My experience with this is mixed.

Standard packages can work IF they deal with a well-known, stable domain where you don’t want to differentiate yourself from your competitors. For example, you probably don’t want a custom accounting package, unless you’re Enron. But is a standard package really the best way to run your manufacturing plant? Maybe when you don’t want continuous improvement. If the slogan is “It’s easier to change your company to match the software than to change the software to match your company”, then you’ve got some really hard to change software. Those projects don’t look easy, though.

I’m no fan of frameworks. The penalty for “colouring outside of the lines” is too steep. Most packages and frameworks are “80% solutions”: great for the first 80% of your project, hell for the last 20%. For example, I like Ruby on Rails, but it takes me so much effort to do something differently than what the Rails developers think is the right way. As a result, I’ve seen mostly productivity decreases when using frameworks, even the ones I wrote 😉

What does work:

  • Writing software for use, not for reuse. When I write TDD code, refactor and remove duplication I end up with useable code. A surprisingly large amount of it ends up to be useable in other projects. Three or more instances of this happening and it becomes worth spending time extracting the common code and maintaining it in a library.
  • Using libraries, especially small, focused libraries with technical components. It’s a pleasure to be able to download a Ruby Gem, have a quick look at the source, write some unit tests against it, use it. For example, it took me about an hour to integrate the Akismet anti-spam service into my wiki. Since then it has stopped lots of spamming attempts on the many wikis I maintain. Great value for money!

These are just two small measures. They don’t make software projects easy. But they do avoid unnecessary difficulty.

Apr
13

New Agile Coach site online

Do you want to play?

Portia, Vera and I have published a new version of the Agile Coach website. There you’ll find coaching tools we use like games, tutorials and presentations. Topics range from introductions to Agile (the XP Game, the Business Value Game, XP Loops, First Five Steps to Become Really Agile), Theory of Constraints, Real Options, Toyota Way, Interviewing techniques to Agile Fairytales.

Creative Commons licenseMore materials and translations will be added. All of these games are licensed “Creative Commons“, so that you can use and reuse them. If you want to help translate or improve the games, let us know.

We run retrospectives after each session so that we can improve. You can read the results of the retrospectives on the Past Events page. This transparency allows you to verify if we really take the feedback into account.

Come and play at XP Days

If you want to play the “Business Value Game” or “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me?” come and see us at the Mini XP Day Benelux in Mechelen, Belgium (May 11th) or XP Days France in Paris, France (May 25-26th). Or invite us to come and play in your company or usergroup. Or better yet, download the games and play them yourself.

XP Days France