Agile Bootcamp public training completed!

Another 2-day course completed by Kaizania, Agile Bootcamp, last week in Centurion…

This was again a fantastic group of people, seems like the people who attend Agile training are always open-minded, eager to learn and active particants!

The companies represented, NuPay – JunkMail – Telamenta – Investec, made for good variety in opinions, experiences and organisational size and complexity!

We deviated a little bit from our previous course outline which was focused around Scrum, to a course outline focusing on laying the foundation of Agile first – Flexible Production Era (download the whitepaper here).

Then we covered Scrum, history and principles of Scrum, Scrum framework and all the roles, ceremonies and artefacts in detail.

Different to our previous courses, we introduced Kanban to the delegates as an Agile solution to service support development organisations and teams. We did this by playing a great game to illustrate Kanban and the financial effect thereof… What was nice to see was the teams actually embracing the concepts and principles discussed earlier from Lean, especially avoidance of waste!

Overall, a great success and a fantastic opportunity to spend time with eager Agilists!

Kaizania likes to think that we not only train and coach folks on our training courses, but that we also treat them a little bit… and we can truly say we did, what a fantastic venue for training at KleinKaap, and the food was fantastic!

A venue with style, warm and friendly service and absolutely great food! Well done all at KleinKaap!

Here is some feedback from JunkMail who were on the course:

“I found the course to be highly informative and enlightening with regards to a better PM approach, handling the demands of modern online business development. The course was very well presented and kept the flow going strong, making for a mentally sparking and invigorating experience.

I am confident that this will assist us significantly in our development team to minimise development time and maximise accountability among developers for their various tasks. The reduction in project specifications time is also a huge bonus to us.

Well done guys! I would recommend Kaizania training in a heartbeat.”

- Douglas Bailey, Internal Development Manager, JunkMail Publishing Group

Next course is planned, not yet confirmed, for mid-September… may you be interested, please send a mail to agile@kaizania.co.za or phone Arrie on 083 700 2181 and we can place your name and preferred dates on a list, which will help Kaizania to try and accommodate all as best as we possibly could!

Evangelists to Fundamentalists – where are the Agile values?

On Thursday (2 April) I was present at an IBM sponsored talk on Agile. Some luminaries of the Agile world were present. They covered the usual Agile ground and all was good in that respect. What saddened me was the intermittent bashing of anything not RUP. Interspersed, grudgingly, was admittance that others had a good point here and there. Now that the pioneers have convinced the world, the heavies are moving in and the smell of money is in the air.

I heard the same kind of negative views and sniping at RUP from a SCRUM trainer recently. “RUP is not Agile, don’t believe their new marketing spin” etc. etc.

Most of the Agile techniques are based on what the folks in consumer product development and manufacturing learnt. Some new stuff here yes, but let’s not get carried away with how smart and righteous certain software people are.

All the pioneers in Agile contributed to our better understanding of how to develop software. Some of what they said overlapped; some of what was said by each approach was unique. The Agile manifesto was the culmination of theses separate efforts, joined together as an Agile whole – better and stronger.

What did each uniquely contribute? My views, typed up in 5 minutes, but bash me if you really need to and think I deserve it……..:

XP

• Stories
• Test driven development
• Continuous integration
• Continuous refactoring

Scrum

• Self organization
• Plan – Do – Check – Adapt; Continuous improvement; Kaizen

RUP

• Attack highest risk issues first
• Architecture and component driven

Lean

• Deliver the right product at the right time at the right price
• What does not benefit the end customer is waste
• Eliminate all forms of waste
• Challenge the status quo

DSDM

• Time box
• Flexible requirements – not flexible budgets and release dates

FDD

• Plan, deliver and organize based on features and business value, not tasks

When I now hear the RUP, SCRUM, DSDM, FDD, XP, Crystal etc. zealots bash each other I wonder where the Agile values are. One of them is RESPECT. So please, even though money is at stake, try to show some.

Where have all the values gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the values gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the values gone?
Sold for a dollar every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Lionel Bisschoff
CEO, Kaizania