Monday, August 27, 2012

Agile in the Large-scale GSD: Success or Sudden Death?


Today is the first day of the ICGSE 2012, the7th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Development which is happening at Porto Alegre, Brazil.
In an hour, I will be participating on a panel about Agile in the Large-scale GSD.
The panel discussions will be led by Albert Avritzer from Siemens.

The panel is bringing academics and industry leaders together. Here are the panelists:
  • Darja Smite, Blekinge Institute of Technology
  • Nils Brede Moe, SINTEF
  • Casper Lassenius, Aalto University
  • Paulo Caroli, ThoughtWorks
  • Jude Fernandez, Infosys
  • Miikka Penttinen, Tieto

Friday, August 24, 2012

Risk brainstorming activity


Every Agile project I work on has recurring retrospective sessions.
At times I highjack the retrospective session and run this risk brainstorming activity instead.
I find it useful to run this activity at the project beginning (on the first or second Sprint), and before major releases.

Introducing the activity
This is a collective thinking activity to develop the team criticisms, awareness, and responsiveness for possible challenges ahead of us.

Identifying risks
Please put on your "Black hat" on (from Eduard de Bono's Six Thinking hats) and write down things that can negatively impact our project.
Use a color for each note and place it on the top of the canvas.

The canvas
Below is the canvas drawing.
This one is on a shared GoogleDrawing document. This was useful for a distributed team. For local teams, I rather draw it on a whiteboard, or on a A3 paper.

the canvas


Risk mitigation conversation
Let's chat (and take notes) for each identified risk. For doing so, we will follow the following order for each identified risk: prevention, detection and response.


  • Prevention - What is in place that will attempt to stop the risk happening in the first place? (eg: security, awareness & training programs, qualified staff, planning, and/or procedures);
  • Detection - What is in place that will let me know if and when the risk does happen? (staff / customer reporting mechanisms, financial reconciliation, fire alarms, audits); and
  • Response - If the risk happens anyway, what measures do we have in place to lessen the impact? (eg: contingency plans, back ups, insurance, resolution processes). text from University of Victoria website

A canvas from a real project
Below is the canvas used on a real project I participated on. Note that you can either use one canvas per risk, or have many risks on the same canvas. I prefer the later with many colorfull post-its.


Thursday, August 16, 2012

workshop: Otimizando o fluxo de trabalho em projetos ágeis


Neste workshop, falaremos sobre otimização do fluxo de trabalho em projetos ágeis. Os seguintes tópicos serão explorados em detalhe:

Workflow, Desenvolvimento de software Ágil e incremental, Card wall, Fluxo dos cartões na parede, Conceito de Action stage e Waiting stage, Parâmetros de fluxo (WIP, lead time, cycle time, batch size, throughput), Pull & Push System, Replenishment, Teoria das Restrições, combinação de Scrum com Kanban, gerenciamento visual (Story tracking, Bug Tracking, Cumulative Flow Diagram, Control Chart, Story Tracking Diagram), planejamento e tracking de projetos ágeis.

Este workshop inclui atividades práticas e simulações do dia a dia de projetos ágeis. A partir de tais atividades práticas, conversaremos sobre aspectos qauntitativos e qualitativos relacionados a melhoria do fluxo de trabalho.

Público alvo: agilistas, gerentes de projeto, executivos, analistas, desenvolvedores e QAs.

 fotos de workshops já realizados.

feedback de workshops anteriares.

Próximo agendamento: 4 de Setembro em São Paulo na Virada Ágil da  AgileBrazil 

http://www.agilebrazil.com/2012/pt/viradaagil/otimizando-o-fluxo-de-trabalho/

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Lightning talks and fishbowls at TecnoPUC


The IT community at TecnoPUC, Porto Alegre, is really awesome.
Check out what is happening on August 20th - 24th:


Four consecutive days with many lightening talks and fishbowl conversations on really cool topics. To name a few: Lean startup, Games, UX,  Continuous delivery, Knowledge management.

If you are around Porto Alegre, join the Facebook group for frequent updates.

Interested in learning more about it? Check out Jorge Audy’s post on it.

Agilidade na Prática 2012

and her team organized another amazing event: Agilidade na Prática 2012. 


More than 300 people got together at Recife to talk about Agile.


The speakers for this year: Sílvio Meira - CESAR, Guilherme Silveira - Caelum, Michel Goldenberg - GoToAgile!, Marcos Garrido - Globo.com, Marcela Guerra - Pitang, Paulo Caroli - ThoughtWorks, Alexandre Gomes - SEA Tecnologia, Thiago Diniz - Eventick, Luiz Sanches - Tá safo!, and Martin Fowler - ThoughtWorks.

Rumors say that Recife will host AgileBrazil soon.







Monday, August 13, 2012

fotos do workshop em Recife - otimizando o fluxo

O workshop Otimizando o Fluxo de trabalho em projetos ágeis foi realizado em Recife no dia 08/08/2012.

Segue abaixo algumas fotos do workshop:











Story tracking graphs

Cumulative Flow Diagram graphs

Control chart Graphs




feedback do workshop em Recife - otimizando o fluxo

O workshop Otimizando o Fluxo de trabalho em projetos ágeis foi realizado em Recife no dia 08/08/2012.

Segue abaixo feedback do workshop:


RT : Excelente o workshop sobre otimização de fluxo de trabalho () por  

Parabéns pelo workshop . Recebi excelentes feedbacks!! Volte sempre ;)


Excelente o workshop sobre otimização de fluxo de trabalho () por . Iremos colocar em prática no  

Muito bom o workshop sobre Fluxo de trabalho com Agile de . Recomendo! 

parabéns pelo workShop tudo bem prático fácil de entender agora para ficar melhor so trazer whiskys para apresentaçoes!

Excelente workshop "otimizando o fluxo de trabalho"! Aguardamos o próximo. :)

You can find more feedback here:
http://sites.google.com/site/kanbanandbeyond/recent-feedback

 

John Little, whiskey and flow

Here are the slides on my latest talk:


Retrospective activity: Happiness radar


This activity is very useful for narrowing down the retrospective conversation.
I find it especially useful for helping the team mapping feelings into data points.

How to run it:
1. Create the voting canvas


people
technology
process
:)



:|



:(



2. Ask people to give one vote on each section (people, process, technology);
3. Decide upon the next retrospective activity (based on the Happiness radar)

Below is a sample photo from a retrospective where I used the happines radar activity.

And here is the photo from the activity to follow. Please note that the activity to follow focused into answering the questions: What will increase the happiness?

The two colors of notes where for technology and process. I have selected these based on the happinees radar score.