Story points: Who gets the Credit?

How getting caught up in the accounting can make us miss the point

My cell phone rang and it was my Agile coaching compadre on the other end of the line, exasperated. Uh oh, time for an Agile intervention.

He had a team that took on 10 points of user stories in a sprint, but only finished 3 points. Now they were planning for the second sprint, and they were starting in a hole with work to complete on the 7 unfinished story points, plus another 10 points of work they were taking. They were trying to keep their average velocity at 10 points per sprint. I asked him what they were going to do about the credit for the 7 story points that spanned the sprints?

"They're going to get credit for them in sprint 2, since that's when they completed the work." Well, he couldn't give them credit for the points in sprint 1, since they weren't completed. That was the right answer there. I asked how much of the work was left over for the stories. "About 10% left, all testing" was his answer. Hmmm…OK. Something was bothering me about that. The majority of the work on these points was done in sprint 1, but they weren't completed in sprint 1, so the credit couldn't go there. But to get full credit for 7 story points in sprint 2, when only 10% of the work had to be completed, wasn't striking me as kosher either. What about partial credit in each sprint…90% credit (6.3 points) in sprint 1, and 10% credit (0.7 points) in sprint 2? Well that seemed like ridiculous mathematical gymnastics, and besides, it would send the wrong message to the team: that it's OK to NOT finish work in a sprint. 

This team was indeed in a box. They had already completed most of the work (and wound new code deep into the existing code base) for those 7 story points. They started all of them in motion at the same time in sprint 1, too, (the Scrum Master should have advised against this) which had limited their flexibility to move some back to the product backlog. So now, it had to be completed.

We continued debating the issue and trying to decide where the points should go. They had to go somewhere, didn't they? And then it hit me.

Those 7 points go nowhere. 

No credit. But they DO have to complete the work. "Well, that's an answer that everyone will hate" was his response. They probably will, but its tough love for the Agile team. And here is why I think it's the right thing to do.

What are we measuring with story points and level of effort? First off, it's NOT "time tracking." It's not meant to be a measure of how the team spent their time. What we are measuring is business value delivered. Stories are worth nothing to the business if they are not completed. We want teams to start a sprint entering into a commitment with the Product Owner that they are taking on work, and will finish it in the sprint. Of course, there are times during a sprint when work takes longer than expected and teams can't finish everything they committed to, but that's when the Scrum Master facilitates communication with the Product Owner to move the lowest priority not started items back to the product backlog, ensuring that whatever stays in the sprint can get to "done." I covered this in a previous blog post.

You honor the commitment, but story point credit and velocity has predictive value in measuring how much work the team starts and completes. Since this was not the case with this work, no credit is given. Would everyone (team, Scrum Master, Product Owner) hate this solution? Sure, but it makes for a great retrospective topic, and a lesson learned for the future.

So how do you, as a Scrum Master or Agile team lead, avoid having this happen in your teams? Here are a couple of tips:

• Use solid velocity measurements in sound planning: Scrum Masters should use velocity as a rolling average, not a single number, and in concert with good capacity planning (vacations, holidays, other commitments, other drag factors) help keep the team from "biting off more than they can chew" in their commitment in sprint planning. This is precisely why I feel you don't get credit for partially completed stories at all…it provides no predictive value.
  
• Minimize WIP: The fewer number of stories a team has in flight at any one time, the greater their flexibility to adjust and move not started stories around without having wasted effort and having to unwind code from the codebase.
  
• Inspect and adapt daily: No matter what, keep the daily standup sacrosanct and effective. It remains the team and Scrum Master's primary channel for surfacing and mitigating potential problems before they become real issues.
  
• Practice "tough love" servant leadership: Remember, a Scrum Master is not a manager of the team, they are the coach and protector of the process framework. The coach does not take the field; he/she observes, advises, supports, and puts the team in a position to succeed. And by practicing tough love like in the example here, a Scrum Master helps the team, and him/her self, learn a valuable lesson from a mistake they are unlikely to repeat in the future.
  

As always, I welcome your comments.






 

Effort Estimation is Child’s Play

Our schools are teaching Agile techniques to 2^nd graders.

My 2^nd grader asked my wife for help with his math homework. As soon as she heard the word "math," she said "go ask your father." He brought it over to me. They are learning about weights and measures and how to use scales. He showed me his homework and said "dad, I don't get it. What is this?" I looked at it and smiled. "Well," I said, "that's what dad teaches grown-ups to do every day at work. You're learning about effort estimation."

Here is his actual homework sheet:

Each example gives you choices of absolute measurements (pounds), BUT you don't have the tool to weigh each object. Instead, you're relying on past experience and knowledge to estimate the weight. Have you ever held a baby? Probably, and even if not, you know they are a lot closer to 8 pounds than 20 or 70 pounds. And while you've certainly never weighed an elephant, you know from your visits to zoos and circuses that they are huge, and your experience with objects that weigh 100 pounds or 500 pounds tell you that an elephant is certainly much more than that, so given the choices, 11,000 pounds is easily the right answer.

This is essentially what we do with effort estimation in Agile product development. We are asking team members to measure how much work is required to complete the product feature, not how long the work will take. And the measurements are not on an absolute scale, they are on a relative scale, meaning "how much work is this item, relative to the amount of work the simplest item you can think of is?" When we start using effort estimation (BTW, a.k.a "story points" or "effort points") we have teams baseline on a common simple activity in their domain, and use that as the base measure. After they agree on what that is, all other features are measured relative to that baseline.

Many, if not most, Agile teams use a numerical scale called the Fibonacci scale to measure effort. The Fibonacci scale is named after Leonardo of Pisa, who was known as "Fibonacci" (son of Bonaccio). He introduced the concept to the West in the early 11^th Century. These are the typical Fibonacci numbers used for effort estimation:

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 40, 100

Without getting into a doctoral dissertation in mathematics, let's just say it gives you a scale with steps that increase in magnitude as you go up, so when you have to decide between two of the larger numbers, it's not so fine grained. Seeing it graphically really helps. Here is a "Fibonacci spiral" which you get by making boxes with areas the same as the Fibonacci numbers, and drawing circle arcs corner to corner, and connecting them:

And where else have you seen that shape in nature?

The increase in step values forces you to choose the closer "bucket" rather than argue over minutiae. And that's why it works so well in effort estimation…it forces you to "pick one!" and not get bogged down in the details, which is the point of effort estimation…the right amount of detail at the right time. We use it early on in the process, before you can know all the detail you would need to know to get down to estimates in hours.

Pick Your Measure

Here's one of the great things about effort estimation in Agile…you don't have to use Fibonacci. It's hard enough, when we're used to a professional lifetime of giving estimates in hours or days, to mentally switch to measuring effort. If your team is having a hard time with Fibonacci, and divorcing a numeric measure from absolute time measurements, don't use it. It's only important that your chosen measure has relative sizing that the whole team can relate to; it doesn't have to be numeric.

Teams have used T-shirt sizing for effort estimation (Small, Medium, Large, eXtra Large). I'm coaching a team right now that uses sea life: guppy, salmon, dolphin, shark, whale, Kraken. ("Release the Kraken, Jim!"…props to you). I even heard of a team that measured stories in "Frito bags." Why? They baselined a 1-Frito bag story on the amount of work it would take this one developer (who ate Fritos all day, every day) to complete while eating one bag of Fritos. You really can use any scaling method like that.

But in the end, remember to focus on simplicity. Effort estimation doesn't have to be difficult, They are teaching the concept to 2^nd graders.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Agile – It’s Not Just for Software Development Anymore

2011 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, and it's a good time to examine where the movement is headed. In February, 2011, there was a gathering at the Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah, sight of the original Manifesto creation, to do just that. While I understand that there were some views at that event that Agile is really just about software development, there were thankfully other voices that endorsed Agile as values and principles applicable in general terms, and not just in the area of software.

My view? The Agile Genie is out of the bottle.

Agile is not a methodology, it is a way of thinking and being. The values of the Manifesto articulate where to focus attention and effort to make sure we create product that provides maximum business value the quickest. Agile's simple, but elegant, tenets are inspiring the Agilists among us (of which I am one) to look for new ways to apply them and engineer new solutions in areas, I suspect, were not even on the radar in Snowbird in 2001.

Scrum is by far the most popular Agile methodology in use today, and is technology agnostic. It is a lightweight Agile project management framework that focuses on building a releasable increment of product (not just software) frequently. Working in short increments, an empowered, creative, cross-functional team collaborates with a business owner, and each other, to ensure they are producing quality product while constantly adapting to the changing world around them. Why does it work? Agile embraces a simple concept that we all accept as fact in our lives: "The Only Constant is Change." The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that about 100 years before Plato was in his prime. I use that quote in each presentation I do on Agile, and every time, every head in the room nods. However, for a notion that is so universally accepted as a truth, we traditionally practice project management techniques that try to predict, measure, and engineer that constant out of our reality, and ultimately often fail in the attempt. To me, it only makes sense to practice management techniques that not only accept change, but capitalize and thrive on it.

The notion of using Scrum outside of software development isn't new; Scrum co-founder Jeff Sutherland and his wife described how she used Scrum to run her church. There are success stories of marketing companies utilizing Scrum to deliver marketing initiatives, indeed to address "marketing crises." People have even used Scrum for wedding planning. At my firm, we use Scrum practices and Agile principles to run not only our development projects, but internal operations and our own marketing efforts as well. And in the interest of full disclosure, the favorite anecdote about me around the office right now is that I used Scrum to help my family prep to host company for Christmas this year. Yes, it's true.

The Agile Genie is out of the bottle. Like a platoon graduating from basic training, we have learned what our instructors had to teach, incorporated the values, and are now taking it to the next level and growing beyond their control. And this is a good thing. The Agile "revolution" is kicking into high gear, crossing boundaries to new horizons, and people are beginning to jump on board.

So why not you? Why not now? Come check out what Agile can do for you.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Planting the Flag – The Power of Vision

If I asked a random member of your organization to state the goals of the organization for this year, could he or she do it? Could they name even one goal? What if I asked "how does what you're doing today advance a strategic goal of the company?" If their answer is "I don't know" or, even worse, "I don't care," we have a problem. Not a problem that will keep you from being good, but one that can prevent your organization from being truly great. What is lacking is a Vision.

Architecture of a Vision

So what do I mean by a Vision, and why does it matter? I'm not talking about a mission statement, I'm talking about a goal…but it's more than that. To be effective, a Vision should have the following characteristics:

SIMPLE

"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex... It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction."  - Albert Einstein

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo da Vinci

A great Vision statement should be clear and simple. You shouldn't have to be an industry insider, or a senior executive, to decipher it. So we don't want a statement such as "Develop, deploy, and manage a diverse set of scalable and strategic knowledge management tools to serve our customers, improving the possibility of overall satisfaction among our diverse customer profiles." There's a lot wrong with that one, not the least of which is it's not simple. How many tools do we need to deploy to be successful? What does it mean to "improve the possibility of overall satisfaction"? Is it enough that it's possible that our "customer profiles" will be more satisfied, even if they're not actually more satisfied? As an employee, would you be able to tell when you had achieved the goal?

MEASURABLE

"The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror." - Hans-Georg Gadamer

Effective Vision statements describe a goal that can be measured. We can tell objectively whether or not it has been achieved. They should also have a deadline or target date. Open-ended, nebulous statements with, at best, subjective success criteria make it impossible to tell whether or not the organization has achieved the vision. Here's a good example of an immeasurable vision statement: "To experience the joy of advancing and applying technology for the benefit of the public." Simple, yes…but measurable? How would you measure the "joy" of a company? And the goal is to "experience the joy"…so if we experience it, and don't sell much product, have we achieved the goal?

INSPIRATIONAL

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood..." - Daniel Burnham

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau

Bold, inspirational Visions move people and organizations to push the envelope. Some of the very best ones set goals that may even seem somewhat impossible at the time they are presented. In 1987, Apple produced this video illustrating their vision of what computing in 2010 could be. It is a concept called the "Knowledge Navigator," a tablet-type device presenting amazing power for the user to interact with the device through speech recognition, research data from multiple sources through an integrated multimedia search engine, simultaneously accept and make voice and video calls, manage appointment calendars, etc.. To put this vision in perspective, 1987 brought us the following advances in computing: Windows 2.0, the introduction of Microsoft Works, and the creation of VGA. To say the Knowledge Navigator seemed "somewhat impossible" in 1987 is probably an understatement, but what do we have in 2010? We have high speed wireless internet, cloud computing, and the iPad.

The Connection in Agile

So how do we tap into the power of a Vision in Agile practices? Once we have a leader who establishes the simple, measurable, inspirational Vision, try creating a "Vision Backlog"…analogous to a Product Backlog, a Vision Backlog can be created and revisited quarterly or annual basis by senior management, and contain the same elements as a product backlog item: the clear statement of the goal, acceptance criteria so everyone knows how to tell when that goal is met, and effort sizing to measure how much effort each item will take to complete, relative to the others. A Vision Backlog could have even just two or three items in it. Then, we can tie product backlog items to vision backlog items, assuring the product features we build serve a strategic vision of the organization. Break those product backlog items down into tasks and hours for a sprint, and you have a chain of evidence from the task to product backlog item to vision backlog item of how much work, and time, it takes to realize that vision.

The Perfect Vision

I have given a few examples of Vision statements that are sub-par. So has there been a "perfect" vision statement? On this 50^th anniversary month of John F. Kennedy's inauguration, I would say he takes the award for the most perfect Vision statement in at least the last 100 years:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." – John F. Kennedy, May 25^th, 1961

The statement is simple. Everyone in the world could understand what it meant.
The statement is measurable. It's very clear that if we landed one man on the moon, and returned him safely to Earth, before January 1, 1970, that the goal would be met.
The statement is inspirational. It's hard to imagine a more impossible, incredible goal than flying a human safely to another heavenly body for the first time in history.

Yet ordinary people followed that vision, that "castle" that JFK built in the air. They put the foundation under it, planted the flag on lunar soil, and achieved the goal.

Bravo, Mr. President. Bravo.

A Manifesto on Problem Solving

I have a natural tendency to be a helper, a problem solver. It drives my wife crazy when I try to solve her problems and she "only wants me to listen." I've long considered the question "what are my essential elements to effective problem solving?" What follows is my distilled "Manifesto on Problem Solving." I strove to keep it simple, straightforward, focused, and easy to remember.

1. DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST
   
2. SOLVE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SYMPTOM
   
3. CONTINUALLY TRIAGE
   
4. SEEK THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION
   
5. MAINTAIN THE VISION
   
6. START EVERY SOLUTION WITH THE INDIVIDUAL: YOU
   
   

To explain in detail:

1. DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST
   It sounds obvious, but it can be easy to forget and can be a temptation for those of us that enjoy developing "cool" solutions. Before I delve into lengthy and possibly expensive solutioning (in time and money), I want to make sure the problem I'm trying to solve really IS a problem. Especially if you're in the business of developing solutions, this is critically important, even to the point of being an ethical imperative where spending your client's money is concerned.
   
2. SOLVE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SYMPTOM
   Make sure you're finding the real problem, not just what initially is presented as the issue. This can take a bit of critical thinking and investigating, but can be done rapidly in conversation. I see a breakdown in this area often in organizations, especially when the root cause may be difficult to confront, e.g., an organizational culture issue rather than a process issue. One of my favorite models for this root cause analysis is the "Five Whys" of Sakichi Toyoda. Keep asking "why" each symptom happened until you reach the root cause.
   
3. CONTINUALLY TRIAGE
   Always ensure you're solving the most critical issue now. The triage concept originated with French Army field medics in World War 1, and has undergone many evolutions since then, but the original elements are the same and can be applied metaphorically to any problem situation. A more modern version for use in catastrophes categorizes patients (in order of triage importance) as:
   1) those most in need of immediate care,
   2) those whose required treatment can be delayed,
   3) those likely to live, regardless of treatment, and
   4) those likely to die, regardless of treatment.
   Translated to business problems, this can be done by quickly bucketing problems into: "Now", "Next", and "Someday." Continually triaging, and prioritizing within each bucket, is the key.
   
4. SEEK THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION
   My best friend is a sage in this area. I went to him one time in college because my elbow was hurting when I moved in a certain way. I said "it hurts when I do this." His response: "Well then don't do that." SIMPLE. Humans naturally add detail to anything. We find simplification far more difficult than elaboration. The simplest solution to a problem is often the easiest to implement, and will keep you focused on solving the problem rather than finessing the solution.
   
5. MAINTAIN THE VISION
   Never lose sight of the goal, the vision of what you, your system, or your organization is trying to accomplish. Post it somewhere visible. Begin solutioning every time with the question "does fixing this problem serve our goal(s)?" If not, put it in the "someday" bucket.
   
6. START EVERY SOLUTION WITH THE INDIVIDUAL: YOU
   When you follow this tenet, problems will be solutioned at the most basic level possible and have the best chance of remaining targeted and simple. Think about your home life: if you have a clogged drain, are you going to call the federal government for help? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. You're going to go to the store and buy drain cleaner, because you understand that's all you need. (Although if you did ask the government for help, you might see a costly commission convened to study the curve of drain piping and its effect on debris-filled water flow contributing to clogging. Maybe new regulations for plumbing would be enacted.) If you don't have the means to solve the problem, then and only then escalate it to your boss, or your municipality. Performing the same means check at each successive level will ensure that the only problems that bubble to the top of the hierarchy (like national defense to the federal government) will be those that truly must reach that level to be solved.
   

What tenets for effective problem solving do you ascribe to? Do you have something to add to the list? As always, I welcome your comments.

Are Your Teams “Wired for Agile?”

Agile "out of the box" looks easy. Heck, it is easy. Take Scrum: a light framework (three meetings, three roles, three artifacts) within which teams self-norm. Form a team, plug 'em in and let 'em go…success! And the business side of the house and organizational leadership just kick back and reap the benefits, right?


Wellll…no. This approach belies the social and, frankly, psychological complexity in making the move to highly functioning Agile teams and Agile organizations. If you've tried the simplistic tools/processes-based approach, you've most likely struggled or enjoyed, at best, limited benefits of Agile (the "qualified success"), whether you or your organization is aware of it or not.


When I conduct trainings or speak to groups about Agile and Scrum, I'm often asked questions like "if I have a good traditional project manager, will he/she make a good Scrum Master?" or "what kind of personality is 'right' for Agile?" These are insightful questions to ask, because the reality is Agile is not right for every personality, and not every good traditional project manager will make a good Scrum Master. For that matter, I think the reverse is often true: a team member floundering in a traditional project structure or an underperforming traditional PM may thrive in Agile. The key is digging past the nuts and bolts of Agile – the roles, meetings, artifacts, tools, and processes – into the values and beliefs shared by highly functioning Agile teams and organizations. Then, you have to decide whether your team members and organizations have, or even want, to embrace those values and beliefs. In this multi-part series, I'll be doing that deeper digging, and looking at what it really means for teams, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and ultimately organizations to be "wired for Agile." In this first installment, let's look at the team level.


At its core, this is about the values and beliefs of team members. Your values and beliefs define how you interact with the world around you. They drive your assessment of which activities you find helpful in your workday, which you identify as impediments, and ultimately why I can present the same process to two different people, each will rate its value very differently, and they'll both be right…because it's subjective. Life coach Tony Robbins, in his series "Personal Power," talks about values and beliefs as being the drivers of your behavior. He teaches that your values define what's important to you: success, love, freedom, simplicity, transparency, etc. Your beliefs, then, are tests of whether those values are being met. Ask someone to state something they value, and then ask them "how do you know you have <the value>?", and they'll tell you the underlying belief. This is how two people can have the same values, but wildly different beliefs of what it means for those values to be met.


Take the value of Success as an example. Tony uses this example in his series. He had two attendees at a conference that both stated they value Success. When asked if they were successful, the first attendee, a corporate executive, surprisingly said "No." His definition of a success was a litany of criteria: you had to make $1 million/yr (he was something like $50k below that), you had to always be positive and never be down or depressed. The list went on and on. Tony asked the other attendee if he felt successful and the man replied with an enthusiastic "Yes!" How could he tell he was successful? Easy: he said "well, I feel that every day I'm above ground is a successful day. So I wake up, look around, and if I'm above ground, I'm successful." We see two very different belief systems feeding a shared value.


So how do we apply this to building a team "wired for Agile?" It takes more than just a cursory glance at the Agile Manifesto, but that is a good place to start. Even though the Manifesto says "…we have come to value…" what follows (Individuals & interactions, working software, customer collaboration, responding to change) is a mixture of what I term as "Ends" values (goals) and "Means" values (methods). They're not all exclusive to Agile teams, either. Waterfall PMs value the "Ends" value of working software too, for instance. But a "Means" value of customer collaboration – interaction – over comprehensive documentation won't likely be shared by lovers of documentation, as I noted in a previous blog. We have to sift through the Manifesto and then do some further digging for "Means" values that highly performing Agile teams should embrace, and what beliefs would need to be present for people to be happy working on those teams.
Here are just some of the values you should look for in choosing people for an Agile team:

1. Collaboration: Effective Agile team members don't work in their own silos. They talk to each other, and the Product Owner, frequently. A former instructor of mine described programmers as "sitting alone in a dark room, growing mushrooms all day." Potential team members that prefer to spend 8 hours a day, every day, alone on their own tasks may not be the best choices for an Agile team. Ideally, you're going to colocate these team members. So look instead for people who value collaboration, and favor face-to-face communication over channels like email, instant message, or phone.
2. Adaptation: Some people get very uncomfortable with change. These are people happy with predictability in their daily work. The antithesis of this might be the person who gets bored being on a maintenance project. Look for people who value adaptation, and express a belief that goes something like "I'm adaptive if I'm able to – and maybe enjoy – shifting direction quickly in response to changing conditions." If they get bored with routine, that's also a good indicator that they're right for an Agile team.
3. Autonomy: This is a concept from the Self Determination Theory in psychology that addresses our "…universal urge to be a causal agent of our own life." In other words, "having the freedom to make your own choices." This is an important characteristic of Agile team members because we want to set the goals for them (the prioritized Product Backlog), and give them the autonomy to decide the best way to achieve those goals. But the team must still be on the hook to deliver business value, so with autonomy must come a sense of responsibility. "I like to be left alone" is not enough to tell us if a person has the right beliefs related to autonomy. Someone who says "just tell me what you want me to build and I'll build it" seems to value autonomy, but likely doesn't believe that responsibility goes with it. Keep that way of thinking off your Agile team.
4. Transparency: On a properly functioning Agile team, there's nowhere to hide. We hold daily standups where team members talk about what they did since yesterday and what they will do before tomorrow. Teams share work in progress with the Product Owner, at whatever stage it's in. We post our progress, or lack thereof, in clear view for any passerby to see. This can be difficult, and is not for everyone. It's about daily accountability. Look for someone that favors true, honest transparency and defines it in terms of sharing daily successes and failures throughout the process. (NOTE: you have to commit to making it safe for them to share the failures). If someone tells you that the hardest thing about Agile is having to say what they are doing on a daily basis and how long it will take, they are unlikely to be happy on an Agile team.
   
5. Teamwork: It's an overused term, but important in Agile. There's no such notion among Agile team members as "you failed your sprint, but I succeeded in mine." Here, you want to look for people that define teamwork as "doing whatever I need to do to help the team succeed." You want to seek, for instance, a developer who wants to help the testers test if they're behind and the developer is available. Avoid the "it's not my job" people here. In addition, look for people who like to be sociable with each other to at least some degree. These folks will spend a good amount of time interacting. If they enjoy each other's company, it will make that interaction much easier and more likely to happen.
   
6. Efficacy: This can be a tricky one, but let me explain what I mean. In the field of electrical lighting, efficacy is defined as "the amount of energy service or useful energy delivered per unit of energy input." In Agile, we place high value on reducing waste and spending as large a percentage of your time as possible adding value to the product. So look for someone who has an aversion to "Process at the expense of Product." This might be someone that dislikes going to a lot of meetings in which they just sit and listen, or dislikes heavy overhead processes that take them away from developing for a significant amount of time. Avoid people that tend to call these type of meetings, even in spite of the effectiveness of the outcome. They may be overly favoring process.
   
7. Simplicity: To maximize efficacy, it is wise to seek the simplest solution to a problem. People who fit this value should be easy to spot in design meetings. They'll be the ones likely, as I say, "clouding the issue with logic." Again, this can be a fine line to evaluate in someone, but people who like to spend an exceptional amount of time in elaborate design before beginning development may end up feeling pressured on an Agile team that values simple approaches and learning as they go. The adaptive approach is also known loosely as the "ready, fire, aim" approach. Tom Steele has a nice blog explaining this phrase over at the Scrum Alliance.
   

As I said, these are just some of the values you could look for to build a successful Agile team. I would very much like to hear yours. I welcome your comments.

Managing Stakeholder Expectations in Agile

When starting any new significant change in your life, its easy (and natural) to have high expectations. Whether it's starting a workout program, a new job or even a marriage, human beings tend to get caught up in the euphoria of the newness and all that the change can seemingly promise. Unrealistic expectations of (somewhat) effortless success can pervade and sometimes sabotage the effort. Transitioning from traditional Waterfall-based methodologies to Agile is no different. The promise of the "silver bullet" of Agile and common misconceptions about what Agile even is (or isn't), if allowed to persist, will make the move far more difficult than it needs to be. Let's look at some of the challenges related to stakeholder expectations in Agile and how to address them. 


Battling Misconceptions
There are some common misconceptions out there about what Agile is or is not, and you need to address these before they manifest on your adoption. Here are a few of the biggest ones:

1. "Agile=Rapid Development" – I'm not exactly sure where this notion started, but it is even perpetuated by some Agilists in the community. This, in my opinion, is potentially the most dangerous misconception that stakeholders could have. It's the notion that because you're "doing Agile," you'll just get done faster. I argue that while this will likely end up happening in the long run, I wouldn't characterize it as "rapid development." "More efficient development" is the term I would use. Agile should end up giving the development team more value-added time by stripping away unnecessary processes and lost time from miscommunication that comes from relying on the written word. It should also give the business quicker ROI by delivering release-ready product sooner in the business cycle. But stakeholders shouldn't expect that all else can stay the same, the development team starts "doing Agile," and code will just be cranked out sooner. 
2. 
   
   "Agile=No more Documentation" – Looking at the Agile Manifesto, and the valuing of "Working Software over comprehensive documentation," stakeholders will often expect this will mean they will get NO documentation. This should not be the case. As I tell my teams, "I want you to do as much documentation as is absolutely necessary." And how/when/if you should create the document depends on the type of document it is. To look at this a little more closely, I'll divide documentation into three subgroups:
   1. Compliance – Documents required by governing bodies external to the team, be they industry regulatory governance or even internal project management office requirements. Either way, those types of documents are necessary to release the product, even if they are not part of building the product. Creating these documents should be tasked out on the Sprint backlog, even if those tasks are all taken by a B.A. or technical writer. These tasks will likely be ongoing during a sprint so as to avoid a mad rush to document at the end.
      
   2. Users – User guides, help documentation, etc. These types of documents also are not directly related to building the product, but necessary for release. The key to developing these documents is to generate them as late as possible in the process, so as to capture the end state of the product, rather than expending effort throughout the development cycle to continually try to capture the change. Since they aren't published until release time, all that time spent changing them is waste.
      
   3. 
      
      Team – These documents are used by the team to document the development of the product and the technical aspects of the design. These will likely include logical and physical database models, class diagrams, design guidelines…anything you can picture would be used by designers and coders to understand how the product was/is designed and functioning under the surface. There are two keys to these documents:
      1. Have the conversation first, then document – We shouldn't assume we need all the documents we're used to generating. Teams should first talk about an issue, or approach. If they arrive at an agreement and no documentation is needed, then don't produce it. If they decide they need documentation at that point, then they've proven its validity and should task it out.
         
      2. Generate the documents, don't author them – Especially when we're talking system and database documentation, there are plenty of tools out there that can reverse engineer code or databases and document the end state. Spend your time collaborating and designing, then use one of these tools one the design is stable and let it do the work for you to optimize your time.
         

Radiating Information
Another key way to manage expectations is to give stakeholders the transparency that Agile promises. Use "information radiators" to do this. Beyond the typical burndown chart used primarily by the team to track progress towards sprint completion, consider using a burnup chart, showing the additional metric of scope change. In this way, stakeholders can clearly see the effect that adding or removing scope will have on the team's progress towards reaching their goal.

Burnup Chart



Consider also adding the information radiators of a release burndown and velocity charts. A release burndown will simply show the amount of work remaining from the product backlog after each sprint. Used in conjunction with a velocity measurement chart of the amount of work the team completes in each sprint, simple math will give you and stakeholders the best case, worst case, and probable average for how long it will take the team to complete the work for the release.

Velocity Chart

No "Silver Bullet"

You must coach stakeholders that Agile is not a "silver bullet" that will solve all the organizational development challenges overnight. Transitioning to Agile will actually surface organizational impediments, likely starting with the most significant and painful. What the organization decides to do about the impediments is the question. As Ken Schwaber says "Bringing Agile into your organization is like inviting your mother-in-law to come live with you. She won't solve all your problems, but she will sure point them out to you." Stakeholders should expect that following the initial euphoria that often accompanies new efforts, there will likely be a time when those involved find it very difficult, and it will seem easier to go back to the old ways. It's at this time that their commitment and support will be most vital to the team, to help them push through the "valley of despair."

Expect to Communicate

Finally, stakeholders should expect to be engaged throughout the process. Collaboration is critically important to successfully adopting Agile. If stakeholders expect to be disengaged, development will be far less likely to match the needs of the business. Ultimately, Dialogue + Transparency + Collaboration = Trust…and trust between stakeholders and the team will breed the most success.