Agile in Bangalore agilebangalore.groupsite.com

any one?

Is it possible to meet someone tomorrow to discuss this subject over lunch? :-)

Hey Pals,

Met Rajkumar S to discuss this topic. He gave me lot of information about scrum.

Thank you Rajkumar.

I would have missed lot of fun if I could not have started looking at scrum. In broader  way scrum can be applied not only to software engineering process but any thing we do. Its systematic approach to what we have do.

Jagadeesh, I'm glad you were able to connect with Rajkumar.

Regarding tools, the most important thing to consider is this: are you making the teams more effective? Agile / Scrum techniques are simply about making teams more capable to deliver business value. Many team members jump straight to the tools question, because they want the tools to tell them how to do their work. However, the most effective tools implementation is one that feels seamless to the work at hand, supporting each step of the project with zero intrusion and overhead. A tools engineer that tailors his configurations to the specific needs and dynamics of a team, is much better than one who demands the team change its behavior to match the tool.

My 2 cents...

-jesse

___________________

Jesse Fewell, CST PMP

www.jessefewell.com

Hello Jesse,

Actually I choose software tools area as my career because I want to automate every stuff I come across. I want computer to do everything for me. For example, in everyday scrum meeting if I get information from computer about what is accomplished since last meeting, that is quite useful data. This is kinda monitoring our experienced developer. :-)

Thanks

Jagadeesh

Trying to give my points....

Agile is an umbrella term (collection of different names but similar processes based on same principles..e.g: Scrum, XP, DSDM, Crystal, Lean SW Dev etc)....all of them espouse certain human-centered management processes/framework...some of them (like XP) go further and suggest Engineering Best Practices to adopt (e.g: Unit Testing and TDD, Continous Integration/Build and Config Mgmt, Automated Testing etc)...

Nearly all Agile practices will need some or all of these practices to succeed and these will in turn demand skilled artisans/craftsmen to implement via tools....so if you joined the Agile revolution to enhance your ability in this direction, your best bet will be to investigate these...(try googling "software craftsmanship" and you'll get lot of starters)...

However I want to give a caveat....Agile DOESNOT espouse Tools and Automation for any human-centered interactions (you can still use them but in my experience they are rightly used only by mature teams).....

So if your idea of using tools is to get status updates I would not support that since by doing so you are going to sap the spirit of the daily scrum...your best tools to manage these would be whiteboards, excel files (and for mature teams some lightweight manegement tools like VersionOne, RallyDev, Mingle etc.

Lastly, you can still use some tools to capture metrics ...follow the same rule...try and focus metrics on the work and not the people....so you can use tools for code review, defect management, static code analysis...all these will enable better agile team spirit...don't focus on tools to captures things like - the time taken to complere stories (unless mandated by mgmt), variance in productivity between team members etc etc..

Hope this helps...

Ani

Hi,

I liked “focus metrics on the work and not the people”. Your input gave much better idea about process. Thanks much for taking time to jotting down these points here. I will use them all.

Thanks again

Well said, Aniruddha!!

My 2 cents: If you (including your client) are not facing any trouble or are satisfied with the development method your organization is currently using, then there is no need to change to agile methods. The ultiamte goal is to meet the client's expectation and satisfaction. The goal of using agile methods should be to respond quickly to changes, even late in the development effort, and have complete satisfaction upon the delivery of any software or project.

As far as tools are cocerned it depends upon need and maturity level of team. the first goal is to acquire self organized team. For an example the Daily Standup helps to improve the individual’s commitment within the team, and the team’s maturity level and self organization. Eventually it creates a self organized team with positive team vibes and this can not be achived through any tool.

Yes, for tracking and capturing metrics some tools are required but again as said earlier it depends upon the actual need.

Ani, I'm putting your metrics quote into my Scrum curriculum. I got into a debate with one  batch on this topic, and have since been struggling to find the right way to phrase it.

-jesse