Agile and Agile Testing

Kaizania was invited to speak to a group of testers at Standard Bank recently on Agile and Agile Testing.

This was a really pleasant experience and the conversations we’ve had during the open session confirmed that Agile is an absolute need these days and not just something nice to attempt.

We all know that the role of the tester within Agile is very much neglected, however, we do determine that Agile is all about Quality and the different way to look at Quality.

In Agile we look at quality as Business Value Delivered over Total Cost and that there is absolutely NO TRADE-OFF to quality.

Anything not producing quality and value to your customer is believed to be waste. Who are the best people to assist you in determining waste? The Agile Tester is playing a big role in assisting you for sure!

In Agile we believe that quality is to be delivered by adopting a ‘whole team approach’, where the complete team, customer and developers are mutually accountable for quality.

This presentation provides an overview to how we got to what we call Agile and how Agile and Quality link to Agile Testing…

Download the presentation here: Kaizania: Agile and Agile Testing

Story Points versus Hours

Well well well… this is probably the hottest issue to any agile implementation… most certainly the issue causing the most debate, emotions and pure frustration to any agile team!

Can one convince a team or individual to adopt points over hours, or hours over points?

Well, as an Agile coach I made the massive mistake of thinking that one could!

A few years on, I can now say, one can’t, there will always be a counter-argument to any argument you make… teams and individuals have been conditioned throughout the years NOT to think relative, but in hours… that is just the nature of the beast…

I found the best way to deal with this, in training and in coaching, is to divide the teams into two camps, points and hours, give them reading materials and articles, and let them present the case for either story points or hours… they will debate this one for hours, but its worth the time spent!

However, make sure they at least try relative estimation with Story Points, or let at least ONE team do that… once teams grasp the concept of relative estimation over ‘accurate’ hours, then the benefits will show and most teams will make the mindset change, not to say that one don’t get high-performing agile teams using hours… it’s a preference!

This works really well, and it stays true to what an Agile coach is supposed to do… present the issue, ask some provoking questions and provide the environment for the teams to actively and effectively communicate…

All this said, here is a fantastic article covering both Story points and Hours… http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/story-points-versus-hours

Note that we will be covering this subject in detail and in a fun way in our course, Agile Bootcamp planned for 7-8 October 2009! For more information, visit http://www.kaizania.co.za/agile/agile_bootcamp_registration.php

Kaizania at GovTech 2009!

As part of our mission to foster, support and assist the adoption of Agile software development techniques within Southern Africa, Kaizania sponsored and attended the recent Govtech 2009 conference at the Durban International Conference Centre – see http://www.govtech.co.za/

The conference itself was a great success and exceedingly well organised. If the conference is the standard at which government IT projects are to be delivered, SA citizens are in for excellent ICT service delivery.

Our conference started on Sunday the 13^th of September when Kaizania sponsored the Project Management Special Interest Group (PM SIG) event http://www.govtech.co.za/conf_pmsig.asp.

We were first of all treated to an overview of the Gautrain project by the man in charge – Jack van der Merwe, CEO of the Gautrain Project. It was a fascinating insider view into one of the largest public private partnership projects in the world today. Jack himself was no less fascinating than the project itself. It is heartening to see and hear about the amazing talent we have in South Africa. More information on the Gautrain project can be found at http://www.gautrain.co.za/

Next up there was a panel discussion with the following panellists:

• Jack van der Merwe                      CEO Gautrain project
• Craig Smith                                       SITA IFMS Programme Manager
• Gideon Smit                                      SITA Quality Manager
• Lionel Bisschoff                               CEO Kaizania
• Manon Deguire                                Valense Managing Partner

Some interesting project management aspects were discussed, but it was no surprise that a barrage of questions regarding the nitty gritty details of the Gautrain project were directed at Jack.

Kaizania at GovTech 2009 - Ben and Lionel

One interesting question was regarding techniques to motivate and promote team spirit on project teams consisting of cross-cultural, remotely located team members. Jack described how the project and management world has changed from very hierarchical command-and-control organizational structures and processes to lead-and-co-ordinate organizational structures and processes. A common vision and associated goals provide the basis for self-organizing teams to achieve an organization’s goals, led by business and agile project leaders. The Flexible Production era is what it is all about – more info on that in Kaizania’s white paper here.

From the 14^th to the 16^th of September the Kaizania stand was manned by

• Ben Cilliers                          General Manger Kaizania
• Arrie van der Dussen      Agile Business Manager Kaizania
• Lionel Bisschoff                 CEO Kaizania

Kaizania at GovTech 2009 - Ben and Arrie

We used the ever present sticky notes of the Agile world to decorate our stand, as well as Version One posters, a flat screen showing Agile related videos and our Kaizania pull down banners. The Kaizania stand attracted much attention and we met many interesting people, many of which are now very keen to embark on the Agile journey. Success!

Thank you to all the folks at SITA that assisted Kaizania in sponsoring and exhibiting at Govtech 2009. We look forward to being at Govtech 2010, apparently in Cape Town!

Kaizania Agile Coaching in the press!

A recent case study has been done on SDT by the BrainStorm magazine…

SDT gets Agile – Rethinking and reshaping an entire product development cycle means a big change in mindset.

Read the full article here http://www.brainstormmag.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3479:sdt-get-agile&catid=43:in-depth-analysis&Itemid=86

Seems like the value of Agile and proper Agile coaching is starting to gain momentum!

Scrum and human behaviour – a hand and a glove – Part 1

Scrum, Agile and Lean techniques all make clear that Respect and Trust are necessary conditions for success. What is less mentioned and understood is how Scrum and Agile techniques create and engender this trust, and more so, does it in such a way that those being “manipulated” to trust and respect do not even realise what is going on.

To understand how Scrum and Agile techniques achieve this, let’s look at some of the planning and co- ordination events within Scrum:

• Prioritisation
• Estimation
• Sprint commitments
• Daily stand-up

In Part 1 we give a brief overview of Prioritisation – parts 2-4 will cover estimation, sprint commitments and daily stand-ups

Prioritisation

When there are a number of customers providing input into a unified Product Backlog, and there is contention about what is done first, the technique used in Scrum and Agile is to play Planning Poker. Put simply:

• All interested parties assemble in a meeting room
• Each is given a set of Fibonacci series based planning poker cards – the same used for estimations
• Each presents their input to the Product Backlog – why is it worth doing?
• Once all have presented – voting starts from the top
• Business value voting –what we stand to gain if we do it
  • All members raise a card to score business value
  • The highest and lowest scores present their cases – why it should be done, why not
  • Vote again
  • Repeat usually maximum three times for adequate consensus, after which the senior makes a call (the designated Product Owner for the meeting)
• Business risk voting –what we stand to lose if we do not do it
  • All members raise a card to score business risk
  • The highest and lowest scores present their cases – risk high, risk low
  • Vote again
  • Repeat usually maximum three times for adequate consensus, after the senior makes a call (the designated Product Owner for the meeting)
  • Repeat for all of the Product Backlog
  • You now have the best consensus opinion on what priorities are

Repeating these meetings regularly to review priorities brings you closer and closer to the best possible set of priorities

Why does this work?

It works because:

• It is based upon the trigger class of strategies employed in repeated non-cooperative games from game theory
• Research shows that human and other co-operative species evolved to intuitively employ a tit-for-tat strategy in order to achieve more together by balancing co-operative, aggressive and defensive impulses.

The trigger strategy works as follows:

• Initially cooperate
• Punish the opponent if a certain level of defection (i.e., the trigger) is observed.
• The level of punishment and the sensitivity of the trigger vary with different trigger strategies.

What this translates to in business prioritisation where:

• there are non-cooperating or conflicting goals from the various business representatives present – be they business plans, product features whatever
• there are shared resource limits such as budget, time, skills, staff etc.

is the following:

• All press for objective presentation and evaluation of business cases
• Those that appear to vote on emotion or are overly partial to their own projects will be punished in the next round of voting

More information

• Trigger strategies                             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_strategy
• Tit for tat                                             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
• Evolution of co-operation            http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465021212