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Agile Principle: Simplicity – The Art of Maximising the Work Not Done

by Avienaash Shiralige 19 Comments

Simplicity at work – I h’ve always wondered what does this mean to me, to my team and to my organization. In my quest to know more, I asked this to many Agile Coaches and enthusiasts on various groups.

In this post, I like to share what I understood and gathered from my interaction with these people: Steve Ash, Charles Bradley, Lynn Shrewsbury, Ruud Rietveld, Philip Ledgerwood, John Hebley, Jeff McKenna, George Dinwiddie, Adam Sroka, Michael James, Matt Anderson and Cass Dalton.

[pullquote]Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~ Leonardo da Vinci[/pullquote]

Decluttering is a consequence of Simplicity. Simplicity leads to:

  • Decluttering of products.
  • Decluttering of your mind. Not being manipulative – being honest, open and trustworthy.
  • Decluttering your workspace, working in open spaces.

[pullquote]Scrum philosophy of working in small teams, small sprints, small stories imbibe simplicity thinking – Thoughtful reduction.[/pullquote]

The desirability of simplicity is sometimes expressed as the KISS Principle.

  • Do today only what you absolutely need to do today. No ‘future-proofing’.  No  ‘gold-plating’.
  • Achieve Just Barely Good Enough (JBGE). JBGE is actually the most effective possible.

Thanks to Scott Ambler for sharing this term JBGE. You could read more about this in my earlier post Agility is About Identifying and Achieving “Good Enough”

There is a point in time when any additional effort put into work product will increase its cost without increasing its value. If not zero, the increase in value may be insignificant compared with the increase in cost. This is the point to stop! (Achieving JBGE).

[Read more…] about Agile Principle: Simplicity – The Art of Maximising the Work Not Done

Distributed Scrum: A Day In The Life Of A Distributed Team

by Avienaash Shiralige 4 Comments

In my earlier post on “How to Address People and Communication Challenges on Distributed Scrum Teams” we discussed about importance of communication in building trust. Quality and Quantity of communication needs get amplified as soon your team gets distributed.

Distributed teams I have worked with have organized their schedule and overlapping hours some thing like below.

distributed scrum team communication between offshore and onshore team

[Read more…] about Distributed Scrum: A Day In The Life Of A Distributed Team

100 Practices to Form Your Dream Scrum Team

by Avienaash Shiralige 12 Comments

Today I would like to share few practices that I have seen working wonders to teams following scrum. Not all the practices are followed by all the scrum teams. But by and large you see highly successful teams has many of them from this list.

Below is a mind map which you can download to see in it a bigger view or click zoom after you click on the image to see larger view.

I would like to hear from all of you regarding what else you would like to add to this list or modify any of them. Depending upon your feedback I will update this diagram and share updated version of this for everyone to use.

On purpose, I have not included XP practices just to keep focus only on Scrum.

What practices you would like to see or have experienced in your dream scrum team? Please write to me in the comments section.

Scrum Team Best Practices

Agile Transformation: 8 Mindset-Shifts You Make In Your Agile Adoption Journey

by Avienaash Shiralige 17 Comments

Agile Mindset

1. Senior Management

Agile is a silver bullet that will fix all issues is a myth. But Senior Management perceive this as fact. Agile and its frameworks have a great knack of bringing forward hidden organization issues like tendency to command and control, developers/testers taking short cut to quality, less focus & preparedness to test automation etc. Agile need for cross-functional roles and collaboration within the company can create issues in strictly functional organization structures. Companies need to adopt matrix structure

2. Senior and Middle Management

Their affinity towards metrics to compare productivity between different teams or an attempt to measure productivity at individual level may derail your agile efforts as it can be easily misinterpreted by teams and can work against Agile values.

3. Project Manager

Given focus on transparency and on pushing responsibility to the team, the Project Manager will be less of a task manager, and more of a problem solver, and will have to “let go” of a lot of previously held control. There is an increased emphasis on honesty, openness, and trust that may feel very different. Operating in an adaptive planning environment will feel very uncomfortable to many.

[Read more…] about Agile Transformation: 8 Mindset-Shifts You Make In Your Agile Adoption Journey

Is “Faster, Cheaper” Enough? The New Rules of Service Differentiation with Kano Model

by Avienaash Shiralige Leave a Comment

Service companies offerings and messages often says “Faster Time to Market” or “Reduce your Cost of Development“…. Do you think it is a game changer NOW? I would agree if it was couple of years back. But is it still? Applying Kano analysis here could reveal few thoughts.

For those not familiar with the Kano Analysis, there are three types of features or needs. This is more easily depicted in below picture:

[Read more…] about Is “Faster, Cheaper” Enough? The New Rules of Service Differentiation with Kano Model

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