Archive for April, 2010

ACE 2010 – Confession of a lightning talk addict

1
762 days
by in Agile, Scrum

ACEYes, it’s true I’m a lightning talk addict. How that happened? Well, that’s how the story goes:

Day 1

Two weeks ago I attended the Agile Central Europe in Cracow, Poland. I arrived in the late evening the day before the conference and wanted to met Pierluigi Pugliese for dinner. As Pierluigi already started dinner with the other speakers he invited me to join them. Besides that I nearly sat on the brand new iPad of Paul Klipp (sorry for that ;) ) I had the pleasure to sit between Thomas Sundberg and Robert Dempsey and had some great conversations. After dinner we went back to the hotel sat in the lobby and talked till midnight.

Day 2

This day I met for breakfast with Robert. And that’s where it happened, where everything began. It started with a tiny little question Robert asked: “When is your talk?”. “Hmmm” I mumbled, “I do not talk at all.”. “I thought you are also a speaker as you sat together with us for dinner yesterday evening.” Robert said (hope he will pardon me for not using the exact words…). And that was the time when the idea was born to do a lightning talk. As I didn’t prepare anything I decided to do a talk based on one of my blog post: “10 things to drive a ScrumMaster crazy”. I went up to the lightning talk flip chart and added my talk. Then I registered for the conference at the registration desk which went really fast. Thanks to the guys of Ekobilet no waiting line at all. The conference started with a great keynote of Rachel C. Davies about retrospectives. As this is my confession I won’t dive into the details ;) The next talks I attended were “An an intro to Software Craftsmanship movement” by Maria Diaconu and Alexandru Bolboacă (were I get some great new ideas to resolve our current development problems), “Clean Code” by Thomas Sundberg, “The Invisible Coach” by Mack Adams (I still wait for the *poof* at the end of his presentation ;) ) and last but not least “Making Scrum Stick: Sustainable Scrum Transitions” by Simon Roberts which for me was the best talk of the first day. In between I prepared 12 slides for my first lightning talk ever.

My first lightning talkmy first lightning talk

Then it was time for my lightning talk. As the first entry on the flip chart was skipped I had the one and only lightning talk of day 1. I was quite nervous when I connected my laptop with the beamer and just curious if the audience would like it. After the stage-fright went away I started to enjoy talking. After about 2 minutes I started to love talking and at the end I got addicted to it. Some people who know me for a bit longer may say I was addicted to talk even decades before but who cares ;) Thanks to the audience for positive feedback in personal and twitter! As soon as the video of the talk is available I’ll post it here.

Day 2 ended with a great dinner, a lot of deep conversations and of course the idea to do another lightning talk…

Day 3

Day 3 started with the preparation of my next lightning talk. Robert Dempsey and I thought that the ScrumMaster has to be able to pay pack what the team did to him. So the topic “10 things a ScrumMaster can do to drive the team crazy” was born. I did a fast brain storming put 12 slides together and went to bed. After some hours of sleep I went down for breakfast together with Paul Klipp and Robert, added my next lightning talk to the flip chart and dove into the new conference day. I attended “Solution Focused Agile Coaching” by Pierluigi Pugliese were I got some great new insights (Thanks, Pierluigie), “Beyond Agility” by Andrea Provaglio, “Distributed Agile in a Multicultural World” by Robert Dempsey and last but not least my favorite talk “The Sword And Other Tales” by Gwyn Morfey and Laurie Young. Besides the great content and new ideas the talk performance which was some kind of impro theater was awesome!

My second lightning talk

As the first entry on the lightning talk flip chart was skipped again it was my turn to start with the lightning talks. There was it again: the stage-fright. I breathed deeply and started with my talk and before I was aware that I was already talking the 5 minutes were over and the talk ended. It was so much fun to talk to such a big audience. Unfortunately I had to leave the conference immediately after the second lightning talk to catch my plane back to Germany (at this point in time no volcano ash in the air ;) )

The Agile Central Europe was my first agile conference and I enjoyed every single minute. I’m already looking forward to Agile Eastern Europe in Kiev and of course to the lightning talks. See you there…

How to kick off your new Scrum team

4
768 days
by in Agile Coaching, Scrum

Kick offI’m currently working on a recipe on how to kick off a new Scrum team that is completely new to agile practices and Scrum. After some iterations I came up with the following recipe. The ingredients:

  • 1 team
  • 1 team charter
  • 1 team room
  • 1 experienced Scrum coach
  • 1 Scrum training
  • at least 1 whiteboard or pinboard
  • at least 1 flip chart or flip chart paper
  • a lot of post-its and din a6 cards

Train and coach the team

First of all you need to train the team. From my point of view this is the crux of this recipe. It is important that every team member knows the elements of the Scrum framework and even more important why Scrum or other agile processes are working. If they don’t understand the principles of agile software development the team will fail. You don’t have to send the whole team to a CSM or CSPO training but it is no disadvantage ;) As we have an experienced Scrum coach in our ingredients we can do in-house trainings and accompany the team through the whole process.

Create the team charter

The next step in our recipe is to create the team charter. The team charter defines how our team is working together. It defines the communication rules, code of behavior, the development tools used, the time and location of the Scrum meetings and one of the most important things: the “Definition of Done”. As the name implies the team charter is build by the team itself. To create the team charter a dedicated meeting is scheduled were all team members attend. Creating the team charter is a perfect way to boost the team building process. I prefer to create the team chart on flip-chart paper so that it can be easily put on the walls of the team room. If you need some input for your team charter, have a look at the great presentation of Simon Roberts called “Effective Team Chartering”.

Collocate the team

Latest now it is time to collocate the team into one team room. I know that this is not possible in every building without excessive reconstruction of the room structure. So if you can’t place all team members into one room they should at least sit on the same floor. This is really important if you want a hyper productive team. The more the team is spread the less is the productivity. So if you’re one of the lucky ones able to put everybody in one room I prefer the following setup. The room should have enough space for the team members, the sprint backlog, the burndown charts, the team charter and some space at the walls to be able to put some flip chart paper on them. This environment supports the communication and creativity of the team and therefore the self-organization.

Now your team is ready an eagerly waiting for their first sprint. This is my current recipe but I’m sure that it’ll change over the next weeks and month. What is your recipe? Comments?

10 things a Scrum Master can do to drive their team crazy

3
769 days
by in Scrum

You are a ScrumMaster, you hate your team and you want to give back what they did to you? Try these 10 things and you will be overwhelmed by the success ;)

  1. Be unaccessible for the team. Is the team self-organizing or not?
  2. Ignore their impediments they will vanish by itself
  3. Always schedule the Scrum meetings at different time and location. Your team loves suprises.
  4. Don’t protect your team.They are adults and don‘t need a babysitter anymore.
  5. Schedule the Scrum meetings as early or as late as possible.
  6. Lead the daily scrum by asking each team member the 3 questions and take notes
  7. Keep asking the team members to do things which are not planned for the current sprint
  8. Ignore any ideas from your team during the retrospective. You know best what to improve next.
  9. Always tell the team members what task to do next
  10. Be late, always.

You want to have slides for these items? Here you are:

Thanks to Robert Dempsey (@rdempsey) the talk is also available as video. Have fun.

Any other ideas on how to torture your team? Let me know.

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