4 Scrum Masters

My team now has 4 Certified Scrum Masters. The process we have implemented is very scrum-like, but also incorporates other agile and non-agile practices. It helps for people to get certified for the roles they perform. If certification is available, and if it is monetarily feasible, I would highly recommend it. Certification not only helps the people to feel more empowered to perform in their roles, but it also provides the team with with trained people to help steer the course and champion the ideals regardless of approach. Now, if I can only find a way to get our customers certified as Product owners!

http://www.scrumalliance.org/scrum_certification

Florida's Budget Woes

It's a rough time for the US Economy. Duh. Who doesn't know that.

It's been rough for State Government in Florida this year, too.

Training $ have been hard to come by this year. They're never really easy to come by, but this year is especially bad.

Shifting the team from a disciplined approach to an agile approach would certainly be easier if there was money in the budget for ongoing mentoring and training. Hopefully, things will improve next fiscal year!

In the mean time, we learn by doing!

Balance

Successful software projects require a balance of discipline and agility.

Becoming Agile

Moving from a disciplined software development approach to an "agile" software development approach is difficult, but not impossible!

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Understand the current process before you try to change it
• Look at the whole process
• Don't think of any new method or tool as a silver bullet
• Remember to set boundaries
• Start small
• Existing processes may only need to be streamlined and not replaced completely but...
• Sometimes you just need to completely stop doing what you have been doing and try something totally different
• Shifting people out of their comfort zone carries a risk, but it can also be very rewarding both for the team and the individual
• Give people the freedom to learn from each other and self-organize
• Involve your customer at every step for buy-in
• Keep an open mind
• Adopt and adapt
• Mentor and teach
• Review and improve

Importing Use Case Requirements into a new modeling tool

As a manager, I don't get nearly enough time to do the fun, more technical aspects of software development any more.  Still, occasionally I get to do something fun.  Today was one of those days. The system I manage has 180+ use case specifications of varying size and complexity that we use to manage ongoing requirements changes.  Recently, we have been experimenting with moving some of our modeling and requiremements management efforts into a different tool to see how the tool stacks up against our legacy tools.  Anyway, after a little monkeying around with a CSV export file, I was able to get the use case requirements imported into the new tool.  Yay me!  So, that was my highly technical work activity---tomorrow I'm back to management stuff and writing a Service Level Agreement.  

Happy 2009!

Here we are in 2009! How did we get here so fast!

For me, 2008 was a challenging but good year. I transitioned from a team that I built from the ground up over several years to a new team and role I knew nothing about. I had a goal--help the new team to transition from a disciplined, RUP-centric approach, to a more agile, collaboration-centric approach. I feel like we made great progress. There is still much to do, but we have implemented Scrum and are well on our way to becoming more agile in our requirements, testing, and build and release processes.

2009 should prove to be an interesting year. Things are a little crazy in the world right now and we all have our challenges. But, with challenge comes opportunity. I think the world has the potential to rise to the occasion.

I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of 2009!