Posted by Geert Bossuyt at around evening time: February 16th, 2011
MoreAgile organizations support the following principles :
Complexity is a choice; we choose simplicity.
We carry out our vision and strategy
so that our people can make decisions in line with the mission of our organization.
Effectiveness is worth inefficiency.
We optimize the end to end value chain to maximize the result of our work.
We support selforganizing stable teams.
We create an environment that encourages people and teams to take responsibility and show entrepreneurship.
Our primary measurement for success is realized business value.
Our customers are the people that use our products.
Even when they are not the ones paying for our products.
We establish equal relationships on all levels
to empower knowledge sharing, commitment and shared responsibility.
We create opportunities from change, to continuously improve our products.
We prioritize all work in line with our vision and strategy.
Planning is a natural product of priority and sustainable pace.
We work smart, rather than hard, and learn every day.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt at around evening time: January 17th, 2011
Just like the Agile Manifesto was a shock 10 years ago, the MoreAgile Manifesto creates some shock effects now.
Responsibility is scary, Business value is undefined, partnership feels impossible and change is kind of accepted but not loved.
- Over the next coming years expert professionals will become very rare, so employers will have to make the difference by creating the best possible workplace. Part of this will be that responsibility embraces empowerment and that the freedom that comes with this will be the only thing wanted by this professionals.
- Business Value is already important today, however difficult to measure. The Lean and SixSigma movements are creating a setting where not measuring value is not done. This expertise will be the a good basis to use as a logical measurement tool for success in software delivery.
- Endusers are rapidly maturing into strong groups with an opinion that matters. Social media will help them to raise their voice. Service companies and software suppliers will have no other option but to deliver services in partnership to catch up with the high demands from the market.
- The speed of change will go up for another couple of decades. Sprints of 2 weeks are far to long, waiting to see something in production that is already finished will no longer be accepted. Just responding to change will simply not be enough. We have to love change.
It took us 10 years to create a world where the ideas of the Agile Manifesto are accepted and commonly used. Likewise, MoreAgile is not something we will easily achieve. The ideas are bolt and a lot of things need to change before we can really work MoreAgile.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt around lunchtime: December 23rd, 2010
We encounter possibilities to focus more on effectiveness by working Agile and learning from that. Based upon our experience we value :
Teamwork & responsibility over Individuals and Interaction
Deliver Value over Working software
Partnership elaboration over Customer collaboration
Embrace change over Respond to Change
While we value the Agile Manifesto, we state that MoreAgile is more Agile.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt around lunchtime: September 30th, 2010
The tester is a member of a Scrum team. This is a different mindset from the traditional views on testers in software development. The agile tester focuses on delivering value instead of on testing. The agile tester is responsible for delivering what the business needs instead of just finding bugs. Most importantly: the agile tester is not responsible for testing!
Recently I published an article on testing in a Scrum team for the Eurostar 2010 newsletters. It’s about the mindset of an Agile tester. This blog post summarizes the core of that article.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt just before lunchtime: September 24th, 2010
For many of us ‘Inspect & Adapt’ has become a second nature. We love to timebox because we need the feedback to learn from it. ‘Feedback’ about the system we’re building or the process we’re using. Because individuals are to be found more important than processes and tools, we must not forget to give each other good feedback so we can also learn from that. After all, the Team will never grow, if the individuals in the Team don’t grow.
To give good one-on-one feedback is a very difficult thing. It’s hard to keep it save and it’s even harder to do it in a way that really helps the other learning something from it.
I ran into some nice ways of giving feedback :
Posted by Geert Bossuyt around lunchtime: August 8th, 2010
The art of coaching is not as easy as it looks. One of the main reasons for this is that being a successful coach is not measured by what you do but by what is achieved.
I’ve discovered a few ‘patterns’ in my own coaching behavior that leed to on ‘working hard’ instead of ‘achieve results’. And I’ve found some alternatives for these behaviors that will help me to become a great coach.
I would not like to use the word ‘anti-patterns’. It’s better to speak about wolves in sheep’s clothes. Some amazing results can be achieved working like this. However, on the long term it will neither help the coach become any better, neither help the organization to live on without the coach.
Love the sheep, but be aware of the wolf !
What wolves am I talking about :
- Do whatever is needed to make the change a success.
- Do whatever is expected from the coach.
- Focus on the biggest impediments.
A coach who manages to do all three above is a great coach, right ?
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Posted by Geert Bossuyt at around evening time: May 25th, 2010
Scrum claims to be ‘Very Simple, but Very Hard’ with its 3 principles and 3 roles. Indeed, the rules of the game are easy to understand and the Scrum process that links everything together is one of the leanest ever seen. The hard part of Scrum is understanding why it works and how to make it work. If you implement Scum on the right side of the Agile Manifesto you’ll be having a very hard time making it work. More important than the rules and roles of Scrum is the spirit of the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is meant to be a practical guide for ‘doing Agile’.
It’s not easy to implement a process with roles, rules, principles, meetings and timeboxes in a way that brings ‘Humans and Interactions over Processes and Tools’ alive. How to create an atmosphere where commitment and the product backlog are not seen as a strict contract with the Product Owner and project management, but where ‘Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation’ is a normal thing. ‘Respond to Change over Follow a Plan’ seems a perfect match, however many Scum implementations seem to have a large focus on delivering releases on fixed dates, no matter what… And many Teams love ‘Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation’, where QA and management still demand All Documentation.
The point is… It’s hard to implement Scrum in a real Agile mindset.
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Posted by Geert Bossuyt late at night: May 18th, 2010
I have been experimenting with standups a lot over the last 4 years and I found a good way to get the most from it.
In my experience a good standup only serves one goal. It is to unite every mind in the Team into One Mind so there can be one view on status and one view on focus. Or put otherwise : One commonly understood answer to the questions ‘Where are we now?’ and ‘Where do we want to be tonight?’
If every member of the Team leaves the standup with a clear understanding of where the Team wants to be at the end of the day, then they will make choices during the day that lead towards the actual realization of this goal.
The structure of an effective standup looks like this :
- Welcome the Team in a happy and energetic way
- Decide together on the actual status of the project.
- Decide together on the focus of today.
- Find a way to achieve this Goal in the most effective way.
- Send away the Team with a wrap up of the focus of the day and a reminder to have fun.
Do all this from a point of view of the TEAM and avoid talking about individual achievements or goals and you will increase the effectiveness of your Team.
The amount of energy and interaction during the standup represents the quality of the Team. A boring standup will never lead to an inspired working day.
To bring your Team alive, you should bring life into your standups!
Posted by Marco Mulder in the early morning: May 15th, 2010
In my experience as a Scrum trainer and coach, I have seen too many Scrum teams that fail to do what Scrum was invented for: Inspect and Adapt.
Do the following statements describe the situation of your team?
- Little is done about problems discussed in Retrospectives.
- Sprint Reviews have no impact on what is build in subsequent sprints.
If so, you may be interested to read my article on the Scrum Alliance website: Effective Retrospectives & Reviews.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt at around evening time: May 12th, 2010
Statement for discussion :
”
The Team should be organized optimally.
The rest of the organization should be adapted to the needs of the Team because the Team is where the real value is created.
“
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