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What is it?

eXtreme Programming (XP) focuses more on the programming aspect of Agile – pair programming, refactoring code, continuous integration of working code and test driven development.

XP has five core values, and we’ll compare them to the Scrum core values.

1. Simplicity

Find the simplest thing that could possibly work. Keeping things simple means removing complexity and waste in the development.

“Occam’s Razor”

2. Communication

Transparent, frequent, face-to-face communication is best for a project team.

Co-located where possible.

3. Feedback

Feedback on the product and on the team process.

Fail fast and fail early to get feedback on what’s not working before getting too invested in the project approach.

4. Courage

The courage to speak up, put ego aside, be vulnerable. Code is visible to everyone all the time on an XP project. Courage to put your work out there for others to review, inspect, and edit.

5. Respect

The team respects each others’ ideas, culture, values, and how they work to get results. Quality and the success or failure of the project is everyone’s responsibility.

– David McLachlan

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What is it?

“Ceremonies” is the term for meetings and events when working in a Scrum team. Let’s look at the seven Scrum ceremonies and how to using them.

1. Backlog refinement meeting

The product owner, the Scrum Master, and the development team work together to discuss and prioritise the backlog items.

2. Sprint planning meeting

The team determines how much work they can take on from the prioritized backlog for the next sprint (two-week iteration).

This is based on estimates of the items, and velocity of the team.

The selected items from the product backlog become the sprint backlog and the goal of the sprint.

3. The Daily Scrum

This is a 15-minute daily meeting, sometimes called a “stand-up” (where everyone stands around the Kanban board).

The development team and the Scrum Master each take turns answering three questions:

What have I accomplished since the last Daily Scrum?
What will I accomplish before the next Daily Scrum?
Is there anything blocking my work?

4. The Scrum of Scrums

In larger projects or programs there are multiple teams working within the same “program of work”.

A representative from each team meets in a Scrum of Scrums (often one to three times a week) to report on each team’s progress. They answer the same Scrum questions plus a fourth: Will our team be putting something in another team’s way?

5. The Scrum of Scrum of Scrums

In larger programs, you may have overlapping projects or programs, where a representative from each scrum of scrums may attend this scrum of scrum of scrums. The same scrum of scrum questions are asked.

This is typically getting up to the executive level, where multiple programs are involved.

6. Sprint Review

At the end of each sprint, the development team demonstrates the work they’ve accomplished for the product owner, the Scrum Master, and other key stakeholders.

This is an opportunity to see, feel and touch the feature and garner any feedback necessary before signing the feature off as done.

7. Sprint Retrospective

After the sprint review, and before the next sprint planning meeting, the development team meets to discuss and answer:

What worked well,
What needs improvement,
What did we learn, and;
What still puzzles us.

This feedback goes back into the process to improve for future iterations.

– David McLachlan

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What is it?

An Agile Certified Practitioner focuses on Value Driven Delivery – delivering value to the customer as soon as possible. There are four parts:

1. Define positive value
2. Avoid potential downsides
3. Prioritisation
4. Incremental development

Define Positive Value

This means project requirements (features) are prioritized based on value. This prioritised list forms the backlog of work. Then the development team works to deliver the most-valuable items first.

Define Positive Value: Step-by-Step

• Define a customer-valued list of deliverables or features that can be produced incrementally in order.
• Refine the requirements for these features by gathering their acceptance criteria – the “definition of done”.
• Work to improve the team’s process over time through retrospectives, in order to optimize value delivery.

Avoid Potential Downsides

This means delivering in increments of value, so the customer can provide feedback, changes in priority, and address risks in the project incrementally too.

Avoid Potential Downsides: Step-by-Step

• Organise requirements into “Minimum Viable Products” (MVPs) – small, releasable increments – in order to deliver value early.
• Solicit customer and user feedback by reviewing these increments often.
• Limit increment size and review with the customer frequently to confirm business value, and identify and respond to risks early and at minimal cost.

Prioritisation

This means we prioritise the backlog of requirements from most value to least value (in the customer’s eyes), and we periodically update and reprioritise with the customer or product owner so the team is always working on the most valuable items.

Prioritization: Step-by-Step

• Prioritize the increments or features by collaborating with the customer (or customer-based stakeholders such as the Product Owner).
• Perform frequent reviews of the backlog list to ensure it has the most value delivered first.
• Continuously the team process to ensure quality deliverables.

Incremental Development

This is where the work gets done. By delivering in increments the team addresses the most valuable requirements first, addresses risk in smaller doses, ensures features are reviewed and deliver what the customer wanted, and future features are still in the right order.

Incremental development: Step by Step

• Create periodic checkpoints with stakeholders to gain feedback to current and future work, by performing inspections, reviews, and/or testing .
• Incorporate both value-producing and risk-reducing features into the backlog.
• Elicit relevant non-functional requirements (such as operations and security) as well.
• Re-prioritize requirements periodically in order to reflect changes in stakeholder needs or preferences

These four domains are the key for the Agile Certified Practitioner. Understand that the goal of Agile is to identify value, rank the value based on the customer’s needs, protect the value, and deliver value through increments.

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What is it?

Agile project management is largely based on the development team completing the requirements from most important to least important, as picked by the customer.

We may need to help or work with the customer to prioritise these requirements, using the following tools.

MoSCoW

• Must have: Needs to be included for the project to be successful.
• Should have:This will add value but isn’t essential for the project to be successful.
• Could have:Would be nice but we could ultimately do without.
• Will not have:We can leave these until last (if there is budget or time remaining) or not at all.

Kano Analysis

Kano analysis operates on the idea of:

• Delighters or attractive quality: That provide an extra special (above and beyond) experience but no dissatisfaction if not there.
• Satisfiers or one-dimensional quality: Where a customer is satisfied if there, and dissatisfied if not there.
• Dissatisfiers or must-be quality: the most basic requirements that customers take for granted, where the customer is dissatisfied if they are not present, but not additionally satisfied if present.

Fist of Five

The Fist of Five is a voting technique that allows the team or stakeholders to vote on requirements when a clear decision can’t be made.

• The team facilitator asks the team to show their level of support for an item.
• Each team member responds by holding up the number of fingers that corresponds to the level of support (five is the most).
• If a team member holds up fewer than three fingers, she is given the opportunity to state their objections and the team may respond.
• The fist of five continues until everyone holds up three or more fingers or agrees to move on.

Multi-Voting

Also “Voting with Dots”.

1. Sum up the number of requirements
2. Give each person 20 percent of that number in dots (for example, if you have 10 potential items to vote on, each participant receives 2 dots)
3. Participants put a dot next to the items they think are most important.
4. Sum up the dots for each requirement and rank the requirements by their votes.

You can also make the second step private, so people don’t follow the crowd or be afraid to vote on items that have received smaller numbers of votes.

Spending Monopoly Money

Spending Monopoly money gives each stakeholder an equal amount of pretend cash to spend on the different items in the requirements backlog.

• Participants can put all their money on one feature or item, or they can spread it out over the items they believe are most valuable.
• You then sum up the amount spent on each feature and rank them accordingly.

Lean Customer Benefits

A Lean method of prioritising requirements against the customer driven metrics can also work. Rate each requirement from one to five against the following:

1. Quality

How much will it reduce defects, reduce rework, or increase longevity?

2. Delivery

How much will it reduce the time from order to fulfillment? Or, increase the speed.

3. Cost

How much will it reduce the cost to produce the item?

Making a list of requirements and prioritising them according to customer value is a core component of Agile. Use these tools to your advantage!

– David McLachlan

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What is Kanban?

Kanban in an Agile team focuses on minimising “Work in Progress”. It uses a board, where task cards are placed, and move across each column from the “Backlog”, to “In progress” to “Done”.

Kanban gives a team a feeling of Progress.

Professor Teresa Amabile

Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer found in their study of more than 12,000 employee journal entries over a prolonged period of time that it wasn’t money, perks, recognition or time-off that contributed to their happiness.

It was a sense of progress, specifically progress in meaningful work.

People were also 50% more likely to find creative solutions on the days they reported their most positive moods, that came from making progress.

Dr Jason Fox

Dr Jason Fox took the idea of progress one step further, specifically:

To make progress visible.

So everyone can see it, and everyone is on the same page.  It is the “Kanban Board” of a team.

Kanban gives a team Clarity on the work and what is expected.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Released a study outlining three things in place when a person experienced the “flow state”, a state of ease and happiness.

Those were:

• When the person knew what to do every step of the way
• The person could tell clearly and immediately if he or she had made a mistake
• The skills of the person were more or less in balance with the challenges that the activity provided

Gallup

In 2015 the Gallup Business Journal studied more than 190,000 employee engagement responses and found that 50% of employees were not clear on what was expected of them at work.

Of these, only 4% were “engaged” in their work.

Companies where employees were clear on what was expected of them saw a 34% jump in engaged employees.

– David McLachlan

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What is Scrum?

Scrum is one of the largest parts of Agile, and involves clear roles (below), time-boxed work deliverables (two-week iterations) and a daily scrum meeting (15 minute stand-up).

• The Product Owner
• The Development Team
• The Scrum Master

The Daily Scrum is checking in for a 15-minute stand-up progress meeting.

Stanford Health Care

Stanford Health Care struggled with losing talent in a highly competitive market and an Employee Engagement score of 42%. They had leaders focus checking in – frequent, light touch conversations about near-term future work.  The more they checked in, the higher engagement was.

Fully Engaged staff members increased by 10% after just three months, and increased 14% in 7 months.

Gallup

In 2009 the Gallup Business Journal asked a random sample of 1,003 U.S. employees whether their manager focused on their strengths or weaknesses.

They found that there was a 59% drop in engagement when team-mates felt ignored by their manager.

Clarity of Roles and Work

Gallup

In 2015 the Gallup Business Journal studied more than 190,000 employee engagement responses and found that 50% of employees were not clear on what was expected of them at work.

Of these, only 4% were “engaged” in their work.

Companies where employees were clear on what was expected of them saw a 34% jump in engaged employees.

Google

In 2012 a Google project called “Aristotle” studied 180 project and engineering teams.  They found the highest performing teams all had this trait in common:

“Structure and clarity: An individual’s understanding of job expectations, the process for fulfilling these expectations, and the consequences of one’s performance are important for team effectiveness. Goals must be specific, challenging, and attainable.”

– David McLachlan

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Below you will find all the Agile Certified Practitioner videos with audio, a great way to learn more about the Agile methodology in depth, or to prepare for your Agile Certified Practitioner exam. Agile is one of the most popular methodologies for knowledge work in this century, so please enjoy it!

• Seven Steps to Leading a Scrum Project
• Five Core Values of a Scrum Team
• Roles and Responsibilities in a Scrum Team
• The Agile Declaration of Interdependence
• Agile Certified Practitioner – Video and Audio Series
• The Psychology Behind Scrum
• The Psychology Behind Kanban
• Six Ways to Prioritise Requirements in an Agile Team
• The Four Value-Driven Delivery Principles
• The Seven Scrum Ceremonies – Agile Certified Practitioner Videos
• Five Core Values of eXtreme Programming – Agile Certified Practitioner

– More Coming Soon –

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The Agile Declaration of Interdependence

The team of people who established the guiding principles of Agile in 2001, released these principles of Agile project management in 2005 called the declaration of interdependence, and they did so to serve as a value system for Agile project managers.

These are the core values we can use to work in an Agile way on our projects. Above is the cast who created this – an amazing cast of people who’ve helped organizations become more Agile over the years and have really contributed to this methodology, and who really founded this methodology.

Let’s look at the six principles of Agile Interdependence.

Principle 1

We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our
focus.

Principle 2

We deliver reliable results by engaging customers in frequent interactions and shared  ownership.

Principle 3

We expect uncertainty and manage for it through iterations, anticipation, and adaptation.

Principle 4

We unleash creativity and innovation by recognizing that individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating an environment where they can make a difference.

Principle 5

We boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness.

Principle 6

We improve effectiveness and reliability through situationally specific strategies, processes and practices.

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Roles and Responsibilities in a Scrum Team

Below are the roles and responsibilities that you’ll come across in a Scrum team.

Scrum is one of the biggest parts of Agile – the main parts being Scrum, Kanban, and eXtreme programming or XP. All of these things you will come across but scrum is one of the biggest, so this is a really great thing to know about the three core roles and responsibilities that you’ll come across in a Scrum team.

There are three distinct roles in the Scrum environment and they all work together throughout the project.

1. The Product Owner
2. The Development Team
3. The Scrum Master

The Product Owner

• Manages the product backlog, which is the long list of prioritized project requirements.
• The product owner arranges these items from most valuable to least valuable.
• What’s in the backlog and the ordering of the items is transparent to the whole team.

The Development Team

• The Development team is responsible for sizing the requirements of the product backlog and getting work done in each sprint.
• Self-organizing and self-led, and its members are called generalizing specialists (T-shaped team members) because they can often do more than one function on the team, but specialise deeply in one area.
• An ideal Scrum team has no less than five people and no more than eleven people (seven being perfect).

The Scrum Master

• Is the project manager role, but with more focus on servant leadership.
• The Scrum Master ensures that everyone understands the rules of Scrum, removes blockers for the team, facilitates Scrum meetings (stand-ups)
• They also bring in anyone necessary for the whole team approach
• They help the product owner groom the backlog, and communicate the vision of the project to everyone that’s involved.

You may find similar roles on any project or even within any team working towards Scrum and Agile – the principles translate to all types of knowledge work.

– David McLachlan

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