AGILE TRAINING ~ CONSULTANCY ~ COACHING

I first came across the concept of Design Sprints whilst helping a UX team with their process - They were working up to 3 months ahead of the development and generally from concept to implementation had a lead time of around six months! This was currently their first opportunity to test concepts. Design Sprints come out of Google and are used widely within Google Ventures - Their Venture Capitalist division. Design sprints are 5 days in duration, run from 10am to 5pm. It's really important to have the right people involved in these sessions and they must not be considered as part-time sessions where people can dip in and out of... If you can't set aside 5 days to run the sessions - than perhaps your not ready to run one! That all said there will be some important stakeholders and decision makers who will not be able to put aside the time required. In which case make sure that the people who really care, those who have a real vested interested those who are the ...

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I've been meaning to write a blog post all about metrics for a very long... It's a really important subject and one that doesn't get spoken about anywhere near enough - I also plan to come back and add to this as time allows. Metrics in Kanban as opposed to Scrum is perhaps more common place, Kanban is much more a case of bench marking where we are, Conducting 'experiments' and measuring the result before rolling back or continuing. But, Good metrics not only allow you to understand the effects of experiments made but also allow you to start planning with at least something approaching a scientific methodology! Although admittedly it does take more effort than the old finger in the air, double it + a safety margin trick that! Below are some of the main metrics I use regularly. Flow efficiency I love this little metric - It gives a quick indication as to how efficient your process is. The exact way you record it might differ based on what you're try...

One of the things I can't over emphasise enough when coaching agile techniques or working with a team is the importance of keeping everything 'real' and 'physical' I'm an enormous fan of the  'Information Radiator'  despite being accused numerous times of being a 'bit old school' and once told by a manager that a task board didn't reflect well on an IT department! A task board is a brilliant way of being visible and visibility helps to encourage collaboration and trust. Writing stories on index cards or post-it notes is the start to working collaboratively - you can touch and feel the story... pass it around sequence them on a board as a team and discuss each story - it's something that just doesn't happen when using a computer based system. If I'm being really honest - I secretly wonder if teams who don't use a physical task board are really all that agile or just scrum-buts! That might sound a bit far stret...

This is a brilliant little game I love playing with both new and experienced agile teams... Unfortunately I can't claim any credit as I never came up with it! Preferably it's best to play with a team who are already doing some level of agile practices and are already doing the daily stand-up. Ask for one volunteer in the group to play Scrum master and give the rest of them a card with one of the following 'secret' objectives on, It's important that team members don't discuss their hidden role before hand :- Arrive late. Hidden impediment: Mention an impediment/blocker but don’t be obvious about it Noisy chicken: start by saying, "I’m only an observer" and then report on things the group doesn’t care about. Silent chicken: as an observer, just say "pass" or "I’m just observing" when it’s your turn Ask a clarifying question on somebody else’s turn. Ramble on until you’re asked to move on. Try to side...