Agile practices from a standing start

Agile practices from a
standing start
How do we get agile engineering
practices into a team?

what do you look for in a team
forming agile teams as a manager, as an agile team
member and as a customer
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forming agile team has different,
often conﬂicting objectives,
depending on your point of view


“A team effort is a lot of
people doing what I say.”

Michael Winner
British Writer and Film Director


"What we need to do is
learn to work in the
system, by which I mean
that everybody is there
not for individual
competitive proﬁt or
recognition, but for
contribution to the
system as a whole on a
win-win basis."

W. Edward Deming


characteristics of an
agile team
• cross-functional
• 7±2 people
• co-located


how many agile teams meet the
poll scrum characteristics?

the team includes all the skills
cross-functional teams necessary to deliver the end
product (from concept to cash)

every team will have its
specialists working together to
deliver an end product


sometimes you can’t because of:

scaling - too many people
or too big a product
Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea




different technologies,
products, backlogs




products, backlogs

limited availability of
specialists, e.g. architect




products, backlogs then you need to
1. manage
limited availability of dependencies
specialists, e.g. architect
2. create
knowledge


specialists exist on the team,
but every team member pitches in
to help when necessary


a result of self-organization,
not cross-functionality


The Ringelmann effect refers to
optimum (agile) team a combination of social loaﬁng
size is 7±2 people and coordination losses

the Ringelmann
effect
The more people Ringelmann
added to a group, the greater the
decline in personal effort.
Three people pulled at only 2.5x
the average individual effort, and
eight people pulled at a force
equal to the combined individual
effort of only four people.


social loaﬁng
(and coordination losses)
increase with team size


the perfect size is...


many aspects of distributed
co-located vs. virtual teams are still unclear


global market in labour
means distributed or virtual
teams are here to stay in
many businesses today


many agile practices work just
great with distributed teams


agile practices
support distributed
teams
“Teams in which leaders
periodically gathered information
about others and revealed
information about themselves
performed better than teams in
which members did not do this.”
Suzanne Weisband
Associate Professor


signiﬁcant risk factors
for virtual teams
• Insufﬁcient knowledge transfer
• Lack of project team cohesion
• Cultural or language differences
• Inadequate technical resources,
i.e. hardware, processing
availability
• Resource inexperience with
company and its processes
• Loss of key resource(s) that
impact the project
• Hidden agendas impact the
project

Project Risk Differences Between
Virtual and Co-Located Teams, Reed & Night


emerging agile
practices from a
standing start


drive collaboration
across the team


drive collaboration
across the team
done means coded and
tested


drive collaboration
across the team
tested
limit WIP (the number of
open stories)


drive collaboration
across the team
tested
limit WIP (the number of
open stories)
build habit of predictable
delivery


drive collaboration
across the team

capture learnings in
deﬁnition of done


drive collaboration
across the team
always keep a future-
capture learnings in state DoD on the table
deﬁnition of done


drive collaboration
across the team
deﬁnition of done use retrospective to
tighten DoD often


drive collaboration
across the team
deﬁnition of done use retrospective to
tighten DoD often
automate compliance
with DoD if possible


drive collaboration
across the team

deﬁnition of done

search out champions
and enthusiasts


drive collaboration
across the team
challenge and remind
capture learnings in team of desired state
deﬁnition of done

and enthusiasts


drive collaboration
across the team
deﬁnition of done watch for signs of
interest across team
and enthusiasts


drive collaboration
across the team
deﬁnition of done watch for signs of
interest across team
search out champions give credit for success,
and enthusiasts accept blame for failure


drive collaboration
across the team

deﬁnition of done

and enthusiasts

create pilots owned by
the team


automate user interface quick to set up, brutal to
maintain but plants the seeds of
testing through macros beneﬁt very fast

support manual testers once developers are dragged
into manual testing, test
with automation automation appears quickly

implementation of CI get basic CI in place
immediately an automated test
and static code analysis is ready

automate acceptance help developers own step
deﬁnitions so that testers can
tests for BDD provide tests prior to coding

refactoring legacy code add to deﬁnition of done and
give plenty of visibility to any
touched by new stories and all examples, however small

“Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”
Henry Ford

thank you

dave.sharrock@agile42.com
skype: dave.sharrock
follow us on: @agile42
follow me on: @davesharrock

Dave Sharrock

enterprise transitions
international
B2B matchmaking MBA

agile
executive leadership
husband start-ups
part-time Canadian
father
seismology scrum
English
email: dave.sharrock@agile42.com
twitter: @davesharrock
skype: dave.sharrock

Agile practices from a standing start

Agile practices from a standing start

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