Year: 2011

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Reflecting on Sprint Length via 1-day Sprints

The foundation of Scrum is empirical process control, a technique to build complex products in complex environments, where few activities are repeatable and the course of work is quite unpredictable. Which is the case for the creative work that software development is.

In empirical process control objectives are fed into a system, and via closed-loop feedback results are regularly inspected against the objectives in order to adapt materials, tasks and process. Skilled inspectors do inspection at an appropriate frequency, so focus and time to create valuable output are balanced against the risk of allowing too much variance in the created output.

Scrum includes 2 cycles and a lightweight set of events and artefacts to do inspection and adaptation upon transparently available information and commonly understood standards.

  • At the Daily Scrum the Development Team inspects its progress, estimates, planning and tasks within the container of the Sprint. All of these elements were initially laid out at the Sprint Planning. They use the Sprint Backlog, the Sprint Goal and a progress trend on remaining effort. It assures they don’t get out of sync with each other and with the Sprint Goal for more than 24 hours.
  • At the Sprint Retrospective the Scrum Team inspects the complete, well, ‘process’. Rather the way they have played the game of Scrum in the performed Sprint. The objective is to define what playing strategies will be applied in the next Sprint. No topics are excluded; tools, technology, communication, relationships, quality, engineering standards, definition of done, … It’s basically about establishing what went well, what shows room for improvement and what experiments might be useful to conduct in order to learn and build a better product.

There seems to be a tendency to move to shorter Sprints. The last version of the Scrum Guide advises Sprints of 1-4 weeks. 4 Weeks being an absolute maximum, I think 1 week is an acceptable minimum.

Let’s say you would do 1-day Sprints. Both Scrum’s described inspection events will occur at the same time, or at least take place at the same frequency. The danger is very substantial that a Scrum Team will focus merely on its daily work and progress, but takes no time to inspect & adapt the overall process and ways to improve quality.

We should also keep in mind that Sprint length is best defined upon the frequency at which the Product Owner and the Development Team need to consult with the stakeholders over a working version of the product and the decision on a functional release of the product. Sprint length will take into account the risk of losing a Business opportunity because Sprints are too long. Well, if your business is indeed so volatile that it is only 1 day, please do 1-day Sprints and release daily. But be careful in burning your inspection mechanisms.

Above all, do organize the Scrum events and enjoy the adaptive power of the 2 mutually re-enforcing inspect & adapt cycles. If you would only release on a weekly base, be realistic and go for the optimal approach, a Sprint that matches your product cycle and takes 1 week within which you will still adapt to reality on a daily base.

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10 years, or so. Piece of a career. Rückblick.

It’s been 10 years since the world was shocked by the brutal airplane attacks on the US. It’s a terrible birthday, but it also reminded me of the fact that it’s been only 10 years of working in IT consultancy for me. But, boy, what a path it has been.

On 9/11 of 2001 I was guiding a junior analyst of a customer of the consultancy company I started working for not too long before. After having heard of some crazy attack, but not even knowing what the twin towers really were, I drove off to an interview with another customer for an analysis assignment. They approved of me, and I started… analyzing. Having no formal background, except a 3-day UML course (hmm, don’t have the attached diploma anymore, I fear), I tried to be pragmatic. Mixing plain text descriptions with Visio drawn screen drafts and flow charts and other diagrams. Whatever seemed most appropriate to get the message across. I later on estimated the project upon a model built by a senior colleague, upon listing screens, field and data types, and expected difficulty. And my management strongly insisted on communicating less days to the developers than estimated. You can’t trust ’em, ya know. But I didn’t, as I didn’t hide the included contingency. Did create a predictive plan. A giant MS Project something matching the expected elapse time.

Having no formal background in project management, I managed to get my team in the same room and do intermediate sessions with the customer. Project room however was organized in a traditional class style (rows) and I was regularly disappointed because my extremely good contacts with customer staff didn’t prevent them from abusing my intermediate sessions for adding scope and changing their mind. Still, we had a fine time, and the project ended (for my employer) in a break-even, which made it even a fantastic fixed price project.

After this project I was asked to start up a new, critical project in very difficult circumstances, i.e. the project hadn’t started yet and was already nearly over time. It only took 2 smart software architects 15 minutes to talk me into eXtreme Programming. Because I saw how XP made explicit, structural and inescapable what I intuitively had tried to do in my traditional project: communication (pair programming, face-to-face) and consistent, clear iterations. Project wen extremely well, ended in time and with profit. Quite extraordinary for a fixed price project. Big-time success!

When scaling up for that same project in a next phase, I was pointed to this thing called Scrum. I read the 2 books by Ken Schwaber available at that time. I went to a CSM course by Ken, where I learned formally not so much, but was excited about the collaboration with Ken and the other participants. We then replaced our organizational practices from XP with Scrum. We kept on applying XP engineering practices though and this felt really natural.

Today I am reading “The Black Swan” (Dutch translation though). On unpredictable, high-impact events. Like 9/11. And I just officially became Professional Scrum trainer from Scrum.org and… Ken Schwaber (Professional Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Product Owner class). You can’t even imagine how proud and happy I am about this. It seems such a long road. Yet, the seeds were sown not more than 10 years ago. And no terrorist or traditional manager is going to ruin my pride.

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Eerste schooldag (v2011)

Zo, de eerste schooldag was weeral daar. Nu in de vermomming 2011. Na een vakantie die ongemeen snel voortsnelde, waarin onze jongens beide op kamp waren met hun scouts, Jente ook nog eens met Kazou (CM) en we met het gezin naar Frankrijk gingen. Zus gaat nog net niet op kamp.

Jaarlijks nemen we ook een foto, voor de voordeur, met boekentas. En daar breid ik dan telkens de bestaande fotoreeksen mee uit:

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Vervlucht (voor de engelen)

De jaarlijkse vakantie 2011 bracht ons gezin naar de Moulin de Creugnet in Tesson, een klein dorpje in het departement van de Charente-Maritime in Frankrijk. Niet meer dan zo’n 800 km van (t)huis.

Het betreft een voormalig wijndomein waarvan de gebouwen dateren uit de jaren 1700-1800. Vroeger was er ook een molen om meel te maken, maar die bestaat intussen niet meer.

In de vroege jaren 1900 werd het domein eigendom van de familie Creugnet. Toen de laatsten der Creugnets stierven in 1996 bleven de gebouwen leeg en verweesd achter.

Nadat in 1999 ook nog eens een zware storm, annex orkaan, door de streek was gepasseerd, sloeg de verwaarlozing helemaal toe. De enige getuige van deze orkaan is trouwens een prachtige oude eik in ‘onze’ tuin. Geen van de overige grote bomen overleefde deze wilde aanval van de natuur.

Het echtpaar Claudine en Jacques Dubois-Létang kocht het domein, na jarenlang zoekwerk, in 2003. Zij zeiden vaarwel aan Parijs, knapten het domein en zijn gebouwen op en maakten er de huidige, prachtige vakantiegîtes van. Bij de restauratie en modernisering gingen ze met veel respect te werk voor de oorspronkelijke sfeer. Alle moderne comfort is aanwezig en toch lijk je te verblijven in een charmante boerderij uit je grootmoeder’s tijd, met zijn brocante meubelen en inrichting verrijkt met eigen hand- en schilderwerk. Rustiek en authentiek.

Wij verblijven in het huis La Part des Anges. De naam verwijst naar de productie van cognac en het andere lokale levenswater, Pineau de Charente. Ons huis was een soort wijnschuur waar tijdens de rijping een gedeelte alcohol verdampte, het zogenaamde ‘gedeelte van/voor de engelen’.

De ligging is prachtig. Een rustige heuveltop met schitterend zicht over de omliggende zonnebloemvelden. En het zorgt voor de nodige wind, zodat we eindelijk hebben kunnen vliegeren, met een haaienvlieger van onze jongens die we toch al 3 jaar ongebruikt hadden gelaten. En over een lekker boerengrasveld zijn we zo bij het verwarmde zwembad.

De vakantie waar we op hoopten, in een huis met inrichting waar we op hoopten. Een diepgaand rustpunt na enkele jaren van zoeken, ongemak en rusteloosheid. Als gezin en in mijn professioneel leven. Dank u wel.

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Duchenne (en toch een zwembrevet)

Onze Duchenner heeft leren zwemmen bij Spinnaker. Dat daarbij al eens een mooie foto wordt gemaakt is erg leuk, het waterplezier nog meer.

Onlangs kwam hij echter thuis met de melding dat hij bij het schoolzwemmen zijn brevet had gehaald van 25m. Ondanks alles kwam dat als een verrassing. Maar de zwemjuf bevestigde het. Knap. Trots. Maar hij droomde van meer.

Op het einde van het zwemjaar organiseert Spinnaker ook brevet-zwemmen. En alhoewel hij eerst niet wilde (‘ik kan toch al zwemmen’), ging hij toch. En met ambitie. Want onze vastberaden Duchenner heeft met een ongelooflijke volharding en karakter zijn brevet van 50m gehaald. Ongelooflijk.

Als beloning kreeg onze eigen held deel 2 en 3 van de Pirates of the Caribbean films. En traantjes, jawel, van zijn trotse vake.

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Duchenne (en toch turnen)

Onze Duchenner gaat al sinds zijn 4e levendige jaar (2e kleuterklas) turnen. Dat was zo’n 2 jaar voor zijn diagnose werd gesteld.

Hij heeft er net zijn 6e seizoen opzitten, en hij doet het nog steeds erg graag. De prestaties zijn natuurlijk niet perfect, maar gelukkig genoeg heeft zijn turnkring (waar ook onze Down zoon wekelijks gaat G-Turnen) de ingesteldheid dat het recreatief is.

En voor onze Duchenner was het ook een leuke manier om een kameraad van zijn vorige school te blijven ontmoeten.

Volgend jaar wordt een twijfelgeval, omdat er dan de overgang naar de groep van het 5e-6e leerjaar is. En het gaat m.i. echt wel te moeilijk worden om nog enigszins mee te kunnen. Willen we wel op zoek gaan naar een andere sportbeleving. Hmm, effe nadenken.

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Rex Mortuus Est

Though we still smell his perfume, the king is dead. The King of Trash.

One happy morning I found His Majesty’s testament in my mail. After feeding it many times to my ears I finally got a grip on the journey that Mr. Gavin Friday has taken us throughout his bewildered solo career. In the morning he softly sang of his dreams on Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, he took us to the dance floor on Adam ‘n’ Eve and he made us think over the day at the bar with Shag Tobacco. And now he’s taken his body to rest in restless nights full of weary thoughts.

He rolls over and over, can’t sleep, mumbling mantra after mantra on catholic (small ‘c’, anti-institutional restoration on semantic grounds). Thoughts of silence, sorrow, guilt, pleasure and blame. A sort of sadness, a blazing hope. He knows he’s going to survive tonight, like he survived the day. And his heart grows more vivid than ever. He celebrates, says goodbye, cherishes the ones he loved and… had to let go of.

Here are the musings of a man skinned by life, still longing to be able to live, love, laugh. With the brittle hope that he can land on the moon. A hidden roadmap showing the determination of life, of living, and moving on. It’s delicate though. As are the musical arrangements. Once voluptuous paintings have been replaced by miniature, pointillist songs. Celtic moods hidden in Dublin mysts, in pubs of swinging sadness, smokey voices of long lost singers.

Mr. Friday has grown flowers on his trash, and he has stopped eating them. The King transformed into an angelic breeze. Herr Doktor Introspektor ruthlessly decomposes and dissects the apple so bitter Eve wouldn’t bite it. While virile Adam-boy has gone grieving but returns to find hope in an eternal mantra that the best is yet, yet to come. There is no real epilogue, no real ending, only growth.

Beyond the dark feelings, I personally dare to hope to see a vibrant performer returning to the stage. A bit of anarchy cabaret reflecting Brel, Weill and Dietrich. The Return of the King! Hail. The man Friday overcomes.

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Distinguishing Distributed from Dispersed

An upscaling technique for Scrum is installing Multiple Scrum Teams, i.e. fully enabled Scrum Teams that work in parallel. It includes the introduction of a ‘Scrum of Scrums’ to discuss integration aspects across the Teams and the identification of integration tasks for the Teams. The working increment at the Sprint Review should be an integrated result.

It’s all about inspecting reality. A Product Owner cannot figure out whether separate increments work well together without real… inspection. Less than integrated increments leaves unknown, undone work in the system. Putting Quality, time and predictability at risk.

And it would eliminate transparency. Taking away the basis for adaptation, not? Gone are then the pillars of empiricism. No use in putting a cloth over the thermostat if you want the heating to adjust to the real room temperature.

When applying Scrum in a non-collocated mode (or whatever deceptive term is used) the concept of Multiple Scrum Teams is usable if you have complete Scrum Teams at globally spread locations. You will still need some grouping notion over Product Backlog items (themes, packages, features) to orderly distribute work. But every Team has its Sprint Backlog, sprints as a ‘Whole Team Together’ and does a Daily Scrum. The Teams share a ‘Definition of Done’ and engineering standards (as well as source code and integration systems). They figure out a way to do common Sprint Reviews. These are Distributed Teams, full Teams that work together on a Product/platform at different locations in the world.

But people use ‘distributed’ even if they in fact mean Dispersed Teams. When the Team members of a Scrum Team are spread over the globe. It requires a different approach to organizing Scrum, looking for solutions to have a Daily Scrum… daily, with the complete Team (of Developers) at a (convenient) fixed time, and a fixed place. To organize a Sprint Planning with the complete Scrum Team. To have short, direct communication.

Important reasons to think very consciously about the type of ‘distribution’ teams are working in, in order to be well organized.

And, whatever formula is being applied to collaborate across the world, voice calls do not suffice. It requires video conferencing, electronic whiteboards and a virtual form of a shared visual workspace. There is additional overhead. And traveling should be included in the calculations (for collocated Team formation, regular visits, social contacts). It tends to cut the cost cutting that (let’s be honest) offshoring is being used for.

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Down (le danseur dansant)

In september (2010) zaten we nog volop in de rats met de schoolverandering voor Jente. Maar al snel (1 week later of zo) bleek het de enige, juiste keuze.

In zijn nieuwe school kwam hij in een speel-leerklas (de vorige school wilde hem nog laten kleuteren) en er wordt veel intensiever aan zijn mogelijkheden gewerkt (cognitief, spraak, inzichten, creativiteit).

Hij is er ook semi-intern. Beetje vreemd misschien, want hij komt wel netjes elke dag naar huis. Maar het betekent dat hij de nodige extra begeleiding krijgt, maar ook kan meedoen aan andere activiteiten. Op zijn recente schoolfeest heeft hij alvast laten zien hoe graag hij danst!

ps. Jente is de geweldig enthousiaste kerel in het oranje t-shirt…