Ball Points game at CITI

Sounds a bit like S*x and the City, but no!

I was invited by Martin Wright of Cape Venture Partners to talk to members of the CITI My Mentor programme about Scrum. As we frequently experience, most of these IT entreprenuers knew nothing about Scrum…other than the game of rugby kind. After a short intro we ran Boris Gloger’s Ball Points game to illustrate the value of empirical over defined process models.

The key learnings were (and this is always the case):

• Wow, we really improved the process a lot over the 5 iterations by applying our learning!
• Our estimates were quite close to actuals from the 3rd sprint on.

It’s always exciting to see the cogs click as people - in this case entrepreneurs - start to visualise the potential for applying Scrum principles in their businesses.

Now they need to decide whether to do something about it or just go about business as usual.

Last thursday evening, Peter and I gave an introductory presentation of Scrum to over 80 interested members of the Computer Society of South Africa at the Dimension Data premises in Observatory. When Peter asked the question, “How many of you are practising Scrum?”, I expected to see a flurry of activity. One hand went up tentatively. This is great news for us as Scrum evangilists, as it means that we were given an opportunity to introduce the concepts of Scrum to a relatively large new group of individuals.

Following a brief presentation, the audience split themselves into two teams in order to get their hands dirty and  compete head to head in Boris Gloger’s ball-points game. With each team comprising 40 people, these were the largest ball-points groups that Peter and I had facilited to date. It seems that regardless of the number of people, this exercise never fails to effectively demonstrate the power of self-organisation coupled with iterative improvement. Fun was had by all!

Boris Gloger has just spent another week with me doing Scrum Training in Midrand, Gauteng and in Cape Town. For the first time in South Africa we ran Product Owner training as a follow-on to the CSM class. This was well-received with 22 people receiving both CSM and CSPO certificates.

Overall in 2008 we have run 9 classes together in South Africa and Brazil with 177 participants including 132 CSM’s and 22 CSPO’s. 2009 looks to be a busy year too.

The Cape Town chapter of the Scrum User Group of South Africa held its second event on at 18:30 on Thursday 6 November.

We took advantage of Boris Gloger’s presence here to host a panel discussion with Boris, Steve van der Merwe and myself. Sue Bramhall facilitated and her company, 24.com kindly sponsored the venue and refreshments.

The audience of around 40 varied from people curious to know what Scrum is to those practising for a couple of years and looking for some therapy <g>. We had some lively discussions. Boris asked one person from a large enterprise what was preventing her from starting to apply Scrum in her team. Another outcome I recall is we all said we didn’t trust architects who don’t write code!

Steve got people to write down what they want from future events, which should help the organising team to tune future events.

Sue threw the laggards out around 21:00. Sorry, Dan, that I asked you so many awkward questions about your team’s journey with Scrum.

Last night Mike and I ran Boris Gloger’s “ball points” game for the monthly Cape Town SPIN meeting.

We had a group of twenty-something IT professionals who got off to a flying start by immediately organising themselves into the classic concentric circle formation. Yet their score in sprints 1 and 2 were pedestrian. In the reflection after sprint 2 they shed one member to make their number even (illegal?). In sprint 3 the team ‘gelled’ and the score raced up to 60! They asked what the record is. We said we thought it was eighty-something.

Then they made an adjustment to their process that Mike and I had not seen in perhaps 20 times we’ve done this exercise: they threw the balls two at a time. Not exactly throwing, mind you; more like dropping from one person’s hands into the next. To my surprise it worked brilliantly with very few ‘bugs’ (dropped balls). They managed 93 and 103 points in their final sprints and were justifiably pleased with themselves.

Is this a new world record?

Here is a rather long reading list that I have assembled over the last few years. Books marked with an asterisk (*) are those I have read and personally recommend. The rest are those I have found to be frequently recommended by other Agile practitioners. Within each section the books are listed more-or-less in the order that I value them.

Agile methods and principles

*Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle [the “Black Book”—essential reading for good ScrumMasters]

*Agile Project Management with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber [the “Gray Book”—supplements the first Scrum book with real life examples]

*The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber [essential reading for coaches and for enterprise rollouts]

*Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck [a great book for team members]

*Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck

*Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck [a great read for managers who want to understand Agile]

*Agile Software Development - The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition) by Alistair
Cockburn [a very inciteful view of product development]

*Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development by James O. Coplien and Neil B. Harrison [a great book for software architects and other team members]

Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin

Agile Software Development in the Large: Diving Into the Deep by Jutta Eckstein

The Art of Agile Development by James Shore

Additional context

*The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks [a classic]

*Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco [another classic]

Slack by Tom De Marco

Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity by Joel Spolsky

Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams by Steve Maguire

Teamwork

*Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner (2007) [a gold mine for coaches]

Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni

Continuous improvement

*Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
[essential for ScrumMasters and coaches wanting to run good retrospectives]

Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth [the classic text]

Accelerating Process Improvement Using Agile Techniques by Deb Jacobs

Requirements and planning

*User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn [essential reading for good Product Owners]

*Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn [essential reading for good Product Owners]

Development practices

Refactoring by Martin Fowler

*Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck.

Pair Programming Illuminated by Laurie Williams

Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky

Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers by Lasse Koskela

Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World by Venkat Subramaniam

Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software by Michael Nygard

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros

Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk by Paul Duvall, Steve Matyas, and Andrew Glover

Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design by Scott W. Ambler and Pramodkumar J. Sadalage

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell

Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans

Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps by Mike Clark

Agile Project Management

*Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide by Craig Larman
[provides a useful overview and comparison of the main Agile development methods for those who don’t know which method to choose]

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products by Jim Highsmith [this book is on the list because so many other people recommend it; I have read it and I don’t]

Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management by Johanna
Rothman

Managing Agile Projects by Kevin, J. Aguanno

Are you interested in attending the required training to become a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)? These classes will be taught by one of the most experienced ScrumTrainers and Coaches and author of “Scrum - Produkte schnell und zuverlässig entwickeln”. Boris Gloger was trained and mentored directly by Ken Schwaber and Norm Kerth. He has practised Scrum since 2003 and is the longest-serving Certified Scrum Trainer after Ken himself.

Why a Certified ScrumMaster course?

The ScrumMaster is a leader and a change agent on a mission. His or her duty is to make a Scrum development team successful. Throughout this course you can experience how to professionally take up the role of a Change Agent using Scrum as your Swiss army knife.

The vision for this course is that you learn that working together can create outstanding results. This is why it includes lots of hands-on exercises.

During the CSM course we will teach you how to make a development team, a project or an organisation agile and successful.

Why a Certified Scrum Product Owner course?

The Scrum Product Owner must lead the project strategically, collaborate with customers and team on a daily basis, and manage the business value.

The Scrum Product Owner takes back the accountability from the traditional project manager for delivering the right solution to the customer and end-user.

The CSPO course will provide you with the core of skills to support this new and awesome responsibility.

Who should attend?

The CSM course is an ideal stepping stone into the Scrum world and can be attended by team members, project managers, team leaders, senior management etc. This also creates the foundation for a deep understanding of Scrum for experienced ScrumMasters. Even people who attended this class three times offer the feedback they can still learn a lot.

The CSPO conversion course follows on from the CSM training (which is a pre-requisite). It is intended for those already active in Scrum’s product owner role as well as managers, facilitators and coaches within organisations adopting Scrum.

A public training class offers significant benefits. You will work with people from different companies, you will share a lot of experiences, you will learn from different companies and you will get to know new people.

Prepare yourself for a roller coaster ride full of creativity and emotion. We promise: you will leave these courses with a new mindset and a new approach to work. Visit Boris’ blog at www.borisgloger.com for news, insights and more.

Details

CSM Gauteng

Dates: 3 - 4 November 2008 from 08:30 to 18:00
Location: Constantia Hotel, 546 16th Road, Midrand

CSM Cape Town

Dates: 5 - 6 November 2008 from 08:30 to 18:00
Location: BMW Pavilion Conference Centre, Waterfront, Cape Town (http://www.thepavilion.co.za/)

CSPO Conversion Cape Town

Dates: 7 November 2008 from 08:30 to 18:00
Location: BMW Pavilion Conference Centre, Waterfront, Cape Town (http://www.thepavilion.co.za/)

Prices

CSM:

Early registration and payment on or before 17 October: R9200 (plus VAT) per single person and R8600 (plus VAT) per person for at least 3 people from one organisation.
Late registration after 17 October: R10800 (plus VAT) per single person and R10200 (plus VAT) per person for at least 3 people from one organisation.

CSPO conversion:

Early registration and payment on or before 17 October: R4800 (plus VAT) per single person and R4500 (plus VAT) per person for at least 3 people from one organisation.
Late registration after 17 October: R5600 (plus VAT) per single person and and R5300 (plus VAT) per person for at least 3 people from one organisation.

Bookings

For each participant we need: full names (for certificates), email address (for Scrum Alliance membership), land line and mobile phone numbers.

For each invoice we need: company name, address, VAT registration number, and contact person and email for account payment.

Email:This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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docu peter [at] scrumsense [dot] com
Fax: 086 661 3860

Welcome to the Scrum Sense blog-cum-website!

This will be the place where you can find out what’s going on in our little Scrum coaching and training world based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Soon our domain url http://www.scrumsense.com will bring you straight here.

Peter & Mike