2. ✤ Founded in 2007 - Salt Lake City, UT
✤ Specialize in Public & Private Certification Workshops
& Courses
✤ Deep understanding of Agile & Traditional Project
Management, (PMP), RUP, Lean, Kanban, Scrum, (CST),
XP, & PMI-ACP
✤ Proven Applied Agile Principles in Software, Hardware,
Financial, Insurance, Construction, Medical,
Marketing, Legal, Entertainment, Research, Military,
Government, Retail, Education, Law Enforcement, and
many more...
2
3. V. Lee Henson CST
✤ Certified Scrum Trainer
✤ Project Management Professional
✤ PMI- Agile Certified Practitioner
✤ Certified Lean Agile Professional
✤ Motivational Speaker & Executive
Coach
✤ Author of The Definitive Agile
Checklist
✤ Inventor of Rapid Release Planning
✤ Information Technology / Psychology
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4. Start Using Agile:
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5. The Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software
by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals & Interactions over processes & tools
Working software over comprehensive
documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is , while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.
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7. Agile vs. Plan Driven
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8. Agile vs. Waterfall
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9. 5 Pitfalls That Beset Agile
Implementations
1) The inability of the Product Ownership Team to
clearly identify and manage requirements that are
consumable by the team.
2) What’s My Role Anyway? (Setting the course with a
lear definition of each role with a consistent
understanding of each across the team.)
3) Outlining a clear definition of done. What is the
difference between done & accepted?
4) Lack of support from leadership to believe in the
Agile mindset and set the wheels in motion.
5) Lack of consistency in training & coaching for the
people who are responsible for getting the work done!
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10. The What If’s:
All too often embracing even
the most basic Agile Principles
requires us to address the
What If’s:
Agile Teams are nearly as
inquisitive as our own children.
We need to say what we’ll do
and do what we say in order to
be successful.
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11. More What If’s:
What if we could engage
Agile methods without Pain?
What if we prescribe to one
Agile Method and follow it to
the Letter of the Law?
What if we stop worrying
about time and start focusing
on end delivery?
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12. What About Managers?
✤ Managers should have three
items of focus during the
transition period to Agile:
✤ 1) Define the Vision & the
Strategy needed to achieve the
vision.
✤ 2) Remove obstacles that
nobody else can remove.
✤ 3) Play lots of golf! (Trust the
people you hire to get things
done.
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13. How Do We Know If They Are Effective?
7 Traits of a Highly Effective Executive:
1) Ability to Manage and Deal With Risk
2) Results Oriented
3) High Energy
4) Team Player
5) Multitasking Ability
6) Improvement Oriented
7) Listen First Speak Second
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14. What About Teams?
Agile Teams also have three
responsibilities as part of the
Agile transition.
1) Collaborate &
Communicate
2) Remove obstacles they
can remove themselves.
3) Get the work completed
that they have committed to.
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15. Is The Team Being Effective?
1) The team embraces the truth
2) The team works in a culture that supports learning
3) The team has the authority and makes regular decisions
4) The product owner is consistently available to the team and the team takes advantage of it
5) The team has a GREAT ScrumMaster
6) The team meets daily and is aware of current & upcoming projects
7) Everyone required attends regular Agile Meetings
8) The team effectively uses the retrospective to inspect & adapt
9) The team has set the rules and understands the definition of done
10) The team is accountable for the work they commit to and they take that commitment seriously
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16. Establishing Trust:
✤ Management needs to work to empower Agile teams and show them that they
trust in their ability to create quality solutions in a timely manner.
✤ Teams need to trust in the vision of the product owner as well as upper
management. Their leaders have a strategy planned to execute the vision in the
form of a clearly defined product backlog.
✤ Established trust is critical to the success of Agile Projects.
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17. According To Walt...
✤ People and their enthusiasm are a
precious commodity. We should
take precious care to hire people
we trust and are a pleasure to
work with.
✤ If you have people you trust the
work will get done.
✤ Take the trust litmus test...
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18. How Does This Apply To What I
Do?
Can making even the smallest
of changes have an impact on
the success of an Agile project?
What can I do in my role to
make a difference on my team?
Is it really possible to let go of
the reigns without inciting
chaos?
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19. Five Levels of Agile Planning:
A great place to start is by analyzing the levels of Agile Planning
Product Vision
Yearly by the product owner
Product Roadmap
Bi-yearly by the product owner
Release Planning
Quarterly by the product owner and team
Iteration Planning
Bi-weekly by the team
Daily Planning
Daily by the team and individuals
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20. Do The Executives Lack Vision?
To what detail should the
Executive team be involved in
the day to day operational
issues of a project?
Does the team have an
achievable strategy to execute
the vision?
Can executives still feel in
power by not using the iron fist
approach?
Sail Well...
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21. Roles - An Overview
✤ Most Agile methods profess the
use of 3-5 different roles.
✤ Many teams adopting Agile
struggle to determine where
their traditional roles fit into an
Agile landscape
✤ Every role fits into 3 Simple
classes:
✤ Customer
✤ Facilitator
✤ Implementor
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22. Executives & Managers:
✤ Executives & managers have
the primary goal of focusing
on the vision & the strategy.
✤ One common point of failure
happens when management
dives too deep into the day to
day activity of the core team.
✤ Realistic expectations should
be set for this group.
✤ Ultimately executives should
foster top down support with
regard to Agile adoption.
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23. Managers Care About?
✤ What am I going to get?
✤ When am I going to get it?
✤ How much is it going to
cost?
✤ Are we there yet?
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24. Agile Project Reporting:
✤ The best status comes from a demo of working product.
✤ We should strive to minimize intrasprint reporting.
✤ What gets measured gets done!
✤ Make it big and visible.
✤ Possible metrics could include:
✤ Current burndown chart(s)
✤ Sprint goals & changes to the goals
✤ Defects - inflow, outflow, & number of open defects per
week
✤ Build quality per day / week
✤ Number of tests automated / tests passed per day or
week
✤ Velocity over the last X sprints
✤ Action items, impediments, risks
✤ Customer satisfaction
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25. Thank You!
Lee@AgileDad.Com- Twitter @AgileDad - LinkedIn leehenson@gmail.com
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Editor's Notes
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On occasion the truth may be too much to handle. The team needs to deliver the truth first and always in order to maintain high visibility and to become trusted amongst management. \nWork should never be assigned or delegated. The team may have a subject matter expert on the particular story at hand, but cross pollination is encouraged. Teams should take advantage of every opportunity to learn and educate each other. Over time the team’s velocity will increase as a result. \nThe worst decision that can be made is no decision at all. Make and embrace decisions. Your leaders will thank you for it. \nTeams really should be having items signed off on throughout the iteration. When a great product owner or manager makes themselves available to you for questions etc., make certain you set aside time to regularly demo what you have internally to prepare for the external release. \nNo team can be successful without a champion to remove the impediments and assist the team in running interference. This leader should be both a champion of the cause and a great facilitator. \nRegular short meetings have proven time and time again that they are far more effective than the once weekly status updates. Keeping on top of the information daily provides for crisper communication and increased visibility.\nAll committed parties should attend every team meeting. The meetings should be short, time boxed, and to the point. (This includes the retrospective)\nThe team should set rules, define done, and make & take commitments seriously. \n
The What If’s? are quite an interesting bunch. I remember the day when my children first stated asking this very question. \n\nCan I ride my bike to the park? …No, not now\nWhat if I invite a friend to come along? No = What she really hears = You do not trust my friends?\nWhat if I ride slow? No = What she really hears = You feel I am not safety conscious?\nWhat if I walk instead of ride? No = What she really hears = You do not even trust me to walk across the street?\nWhat if I just don’t go? What she really hears = You do NOT trust me at all? \n\nAgile teams feel very much the same way when we do certain things in the workplace. \n\nWhy did this project fail? Why did we deliver late? Why did we exceed our budget? \nThe plan to execute did not match the strategic vision of what the customer wanted = The Executive vision was not accurate and / or not communicated well.\nThe Management team failed to provide me with the tools / resources I needed to do the job to the best of my ability. = It’s a managers fault.\nThe requirements were not clearly defined or, we did not have a clear interpretation of what was to be done. = It’s the Product Owner\nWe had too many outside interferences and were constantly putting out fires. = It is the Project Manager or ScrumMaster\nWe simply failed to get it done. We the team take full responsibility. \n
Let’s put this in a different light: \n\nTeam: Will you support us in our efforts to complete this project using Agile Principles? \nBoss: Sure, if that means I get more done in a faster amount of time with fewer resources. \n\nAs the boss walks away he dreams of all of the last minute things he can toss into the fire and get them done quicker than ever before!\n\nThere is still so much left to explore when it comes to what if’s…\n\n \n\n\n\n \n
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The signs of an effective manager are a little more tough to outline on an Agile team. Not because they are doing less demanding work, but they are doing less work and more inspection and adaptation. Instead of steering a team to turn right, turn left, move slower, move faster, etc. the manager is spending more time removing the roadblocks and being a true team player. This does not mean they are spending great amounts of time analyzing things at the same level as the team. It does mean that they are taking the time to understand exactly what needs to be done and using that as a building block for team success. \n\nAbility to Manage and Deal With Risk - Every decision an Agile team makes involves some level of assumed risk. It becomes the managers responsibility to assess the dangers ahead and steer the team on the most safe route. It is also the responsibility of the manager to highlight what facets of any given project are at risk.\nResults Oriented - The Agile Manager worries a lot less about how many hours you have put in this week and worries a lot more about what you have produced as a result of the effort expended. This is not to say that we can completely do away with time as a fixture, there is always a cost to each output. This in essence says that our focus will be more directed to the output than the throughput. \nHigh Energy – Nothing is worse than the ‘donut supervisor’. If the manager in question is never around (especially from a product perspective), that is an indication that you need to get someone involved that is a bit more excited about the teams’ accomplishments. A GREAT manager is engaged.\nTeam Player – The Manager of an Agile team should truly feel like they are a part of the team! Although they may not be allowed to constantly change requirements or verbalize why something is critical to be squeezed in, they are still a core part of the success of the team. In many cases they represent the team to the customer and or the customer to the team. \n
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On occasion the truth may be too much to handle. The team needs to deliver the truth first and always in order to maintain high visibility and to become trusted amongst management. \nWork should never be assigned or delegated. The team may have a subject matter expert on the particular story at hand, but cross pollination is encouraged. Teams should take advantage of every opportunity to learn and educate each other. Over time the team’s velocity will increase as a result. \nThe worst decision that can be made is no decision at all. Make and embrace decisions. Your leaders will thank you for it. \nTeams really should be having items signed off on throughout the iteration. When a great product owner or manager makes themselves available to you for questions etc., make certain you set aside time to regularly demo what you have internally to prepare for the external release. \nNo team can be successful without a champion to remove the impediments and assist the team in running interference. This leader should be both a champion of the cause and a great facilitator. \nRegular short meetings have proven time and time again that they are far more effective than the once weekly status updates. Keeping on top of the information daily provides for crisper communication and increased visibility.\nAll committed parties should attend every team meeting. The meetings should be short, time boxed, and to the point. (This includes the retrospective)\nThe team should set rules, define done, and make & take commitments seriously. \n
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Many times we question the what if’s and how they apply to what I do. One of the very earliest projects I had the privilege of working on involved having an active Marine General as the end customer. For those of you without military experience, we are talking about the most impressive form of command and control management ever known to exist. The youngest Marines are educated by their senior officers based on years of experience backing every decision made for them. \n\nOne might go as far as to say that by letting go of the reigns, any complex project would enter a vortex of hopelessness and spin out of control ending in a fiery crash. I am here to state to you all this is simply not the case. In fact, it is almost entirely the opposite approach that works best. Once a team understands what they are being asked to complete and why, they are generally more successful than teams that rely on the command and control structure. My what if conversation went something like this:\n\nWhat if we didn’t jump into this Agile thing feet first? \nWhat if I just kept a running list (backlog), of the things I felt should be worked on first?\nWhat if we met daily for our recap as opposed to meeting once a week for several hours? \nWhat if I could provide you with samples of completed work every 2-4 weeks and let you inspect our progress? \nWhat if I could assure you that by placing confidence in the members of the team that the project stands a higher chance of being completed on time and within scope?\n
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Unfortunately, the first group looking to hold someone responsible for project failure is the executive team. Are you prepared to give a complete report on why the team failed to deliver? Have you considered doing a demo of what has been completed? What reaction might you expect from the executive team? What could we do to alleviate the pain in the future? \n\nWhat if we had the ability to promise both on-time delivery and precision metrics?\nWhat if we could help the Executive understand their role in the Agile process?\nWhat if we had the Power to help frame the Vision? \n