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Scrum and the people that drive it

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Quality: last of line of defense

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by Philip Sauvé in Scrum

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Definition of done, Development, DoD, Engineering Practices, Maintainability, Measure of Success, scrum, Software, Strategies, Success, Team

Hi all,

Thought I would share with you a growing concern that keeps gnawing at our heels as an industry, the software development industry that is and it’s Quality! (Yes, I talk alot about this, for good reason)

Everytime we start a new development effort or work with clients to build software based solutions it seems that it always comes down to the amount of money it costs to develop. Not only do we talk about how much it will cost, but rather how low can we go to build this piece of software and this is where we fail as an industry or should I say “so called” Professionals. Ultimately, there is no room for argument about what needs to be done in order for organizations to get working software. It drives me nuts that we have to justify our actions in order to achieve best results. We have, for a long time, focused mostly on cost and time. I have been in too many discussions where we expose an issue and are given a ridiculous timetable because the business takes responsability for a feature/function. You should know, if you don’t already, that pressure only drives quality down. This behaviour seems to be part of the very fabric of our being, a natural response to a stimuli that pushes us to get results, but bad ones. This is at the heart of my responsability, a Scrum Master’s responsability to make sure that all parties are aware of the risks, behaviour and patterns that feed this perpetual wheel of Crap. It would seem that alot of people see software as a giant rug where various elements can be simply swept under and forgotten. People will argue, but what defines Quality, well according to business dictionary:

In manufacturing,  a measure of  excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies,  and significant variations,  brought about by the strict and consistent  adherence to measurable and verifiable standards to achieve uniformity  of output that  satisfies specific customer or user requirements.  ISO 8402-1986 standarddefines  quality as “the totality of features  and characteristics  of a product or service  that bears its ability to  satisfy stated or implied needs.”

In other words, Quality is obtained by a fully functionnal feature which in turn gives you (the organization) maximum business value. The point is, Quality is not driven by cost, rather it is the practices utilized in the process. As a profession we recognize certain practices which need to be in place in order to minimize defects, these practices happen to have a cost which should be established as the minimum effort required. Lastly, if you intend on building something and your starting point of view is that Quality is too expensive, why are you building it in the first place. One more thing, Quality is not a coefficient of a function, if you don’t have the appropriate practices you will surely paint yourself in a corner and a single breaking element could mean the feature is used or not at all. If the feature does not provide the intended purpose value is not attained, period. As a development team you should provide a clear message, 100% visibility, with a strong “Definition of Done” and drive it home. Anything less than these will result in loss of Quality and introduce Debt elements or/and more likely, unknown variables.

Sustainability and maintainability is key to any software and is at the heart of Quality practices in software. Never forget that software cost does not end with simply the development phase.

Thank you all,

PS 🙂

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Band of Developers

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Philip Sauvé in Scrum

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accountability, Agility, change, Management, motivation, organizational structure, Responsibility, Roles, scrum, scrum master

Hi all,

Quite recently, I have been in the process of helping an organization with the adoption of Scrum. Like I wrote in the past, education is at the heart of a sound implementation in order to establish a common base of understanding across all parties. The good word has already started spreading across the people and positive things have started to happen, but I digress. A hurdle that most (if not all) organization face is adapting the roles that already exist within and find ways to express the new responsabilities for individuals that have long been in positions which hinders Agility.

Uncertainty

At the beginning things always seem to look like this (left image). Management is at a loss with roles and responsabilities. They find themselves wondering “What happens with project managers? Who will make sure people have things to do? Who will keep everything on track?”. They are also left with not knowing what they (Management) will be doing in all this. This is where when I started doing this, I got baffled at how people who were suppose to be leading a company, making it the best it can be suddenly seem like they have their pants down and have no clue on how or what they will be doing. I believe the answer is so self evident that they can’t seem to see it. I like to tell people that one obvious responsability of a Scrum Master is to point out the “Elephant in the room” and have to say that I am quite happy at doing it. Like the many posts I have written before this one, we have to establish clear lines of responsability and let the people who have the competence to be accountable for their actions. Developers will learn to work together and form a team. As Scrum Masters we have to enable them to make that happen, meaning that roles within the organization cannot hinder this in any way otherwise developers will fall back to finding ways to wiggle out of decision by letting non-expert individuals take it for them. There is nothing like adversity and conflict to bring people together. Organizations have to learn to let people fail in order to learn. It is how Scrum Masters do their magic, by being patient. It is only through knowing that something is valuable that people will continually do something.

Be assured, with the proper amount of discipline, work, perseverance, determination, leadership you will get to this point (image right) without any hesitation. Lastly, remember that motivation stems from the activity of mastering ones abilities, sense of contribution and purpose.

Thank you …

PS

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