Avienaash Shiralige

Should Teams Go for Multiple Demos within a Sprint?

Many scrum teams believe and practice sprint demo as part of sprint review meeting. Because Scrum says so. Formal demo end of sprint is a minimum requirement as per scrum guide. But it is not stopping you from doing more of so.

I strongly believe in the principle that if you see value in doing something, then do it more often like testing, frequent code commits etc.

Sprint end demo should NOT be the place where you are showcasing the product for the first time to your Product Owner(PO). You Should or Must go for more informal demos all through out the sprint. Product owner should be able to see what is being built all through out the sprint rather than just end of the sprint. Ideally if your user stories are small then you should be able to finish them after very couple of days.

When is a Good Day to Start a Sprint?

by Avienaash Shiralige 4 Comments

My first reaction would be Monday! Week is just starting and definitely good day to start something new. You are right! But my suggestion would be to rather focus on sprint ending day then starting. Ending on a Friday is not I have seen worked very well for many teams.

Let’s check out few reasons for the same:

Friday being last day of the week and team is quite tired by then. Hence chances of making a mistake in rush to complete a sprint is higher
Many times last few changes go untested before Monday demo which is a high risk
I have seen team working over weekends to finish and push last minute changes to code repository. This is absolute NO, as I want my team to relax and also these changes are not known to rest of the team and it is not tested. This breaks Scrum philosophy.
Most important thing, people get freedom to take long weekends as they would not miss Sprint Review and Sprint Planning which I feel are two most important Scrum team ceremony where we want everyone on team to be there.
Lot of Public Holidays falling on Monday or Friday would not disrupt the team much.

Hence my suggestion to the team I have worked with is to go for starting mid week and ending mid week. Even if you have to stretch a bit to finish some tasks, team would not hesistate to do it during mid week and also keep in mind as per research Wednesday and Thursday are most productive days of the week too!

Teams moving to this schedule have seen reduction in defects, increase in quality of code and also quality of demo improved substantially. Above all this I have seen team being less stressed and hence better productivity.

In addition to this if teams are working in distributed agile set-up(say Product Owner is in US west coast) and team is in India, then starting sprint on Monday may pose few challenges like Product Owner being available for sprint planning on his Sunday evening!

So do consider your team set-up, how they are structured, their maturity, Product Owner & Stakeholder availability etc to see what day suits well for you. But don’t stop experimenting around this!

The Hidden Obstacles to Agile Transformation Success

by Avienaash Shiralige 5 Comments

Let’s say one day you wake up and think, ‘I want to be healthier.’ You decide, ‘I’ll start eating an apple every day.’

You stick to this routine for months while continuing all your old habits, such as staying up late, eating junk food, drinking alcohol, smoking, and so on.

Do you think having all these habits and eating an apple a day will keep doctor away?

Definitely NO.

And after a while you might even get disappointed and frustrated, and you will decide to stop eating apples claiming that “a healthy lifestyle simply doesn’t work for you” or “eating apples is not really helping you”.

Strategy Making Should be More Agile

by Avienaash Shiralige Leave a Comment

Companies find it very tough to survive in current fast changing markets. You can not sit on a one year plan assuming that it will strike gold! You need to monitor your strategy implementation, measure it and make necessary changes. Some leaders who are extreme agile(giving complete autonomy) get this wrong and they pay the penalty of being extreme agile. So it is a balanced approach that you need to take depending upon the culture and maturity of the hands at work.

You can read my earliest post “Do You Think Your Strategy Would Succeed?“

Why Agile is Like Doing Yoga

by Avienaash Shiralige 4 Comments

Agile is so natural that you can apply them into any discipline, in your personal lives, in other industries etc. Why we are seeing mass movement within and across companies to adopt agile. Because people are realizing it as natural way of building software in this imperfect world. My experience in last 7 years taught me that it is like doing meditation or yoga. It relies a lot on honesty, rhythm, openness, flexibility, sustainability, complete control on self etc.

Please check my earliest post on the same. Scrum is Yogic way of doing software development.