Month: December 2013

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Happy Holidays 2013

To everyone who helped in 2013 make the world a little bit of a better place to live and work in (and all others), we say:

“H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S”

Fijne Feestdagen 2013

I was great knowing you, talking to you, working with you, feeling you were around.

See you next year, for more of the same.

Ian, Jente, Nienke, Gunther & Natascha.

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Top Music 2013

Looking back at the year in music that 2013 was for me, I can only conclude that it’s been an exciting year with a superb mix of music.

A Top 5:

  1. Editors - The weight of your loveEditors have grown into being one my of my all-time favorite bands, and that is not to be underrated, as it puts them next to a band like Bauhaus. 2013 saw the release of their “The Weight Of Your Love“, a fantastic resurrection after the near-death situation of 2012 with original guitarist Chris Urbanowicz leaving. The Weight Of Your Love combines the wide stadion rock music sound with their old indie background, desire for grandeur and acoustic silence. All at once. And then they are still widening their spectrum by intelligent use of the additional musicians but also in Tom’s singing.
  2. Arcade Fire has not only released the album Reflektor, but are also performing at some occasions under that name. It is a great double album, that made it very close to my number 1. With every album they release a work of integrity, intelligence, lots of folk influences and electric eclecticism, centered around a theme. The double album set up allows them to wander and search without too many limitations. The small contribution of David Bowie to the title song is a great plus.
  3. Nick Cave released a somewhat slow album, Push The Sky Away, with his Bad Seeds. I am very fond of the rather relaxed sound and production which holds many subtleties. The opening song, We No Who U R, and the closing title song cut deep into my soul and brain every time again.
  4. David Bowie made a completely unexpected sort of come back with The Next Day. Although, ‘come back’ feels quite inappropriate in case of a chameleon like mr. Bowie. The album is full of references to his career, the music he created, the places he visited, the people he met. Yet, it is clearly out of time music, immediately recognizable as Bowie’s.
  5. The Clash - Sound System Ghetto BlasterAfter 3 years of work behind closed doors (much by bass player Paul Simonon), The Clash released a brilliantly packaged overview of their career with the Sound System collection. A great way to finally catch up with this phenomenal band. In their brief existence they produced an enormous variety of tunes and dubs, but always remained true to their punk-style principles and ideals. All of these and a bunch of great extras were re-edited and re-issued and complemented by some little collectibles in a Ghetto Blaster format. Counting 5 regular albums over 8 CDs, and 1 extras album over 3 CDs, a poster, badges, dog tags and a manual.
    This collection got me into buying the Live At Shea Stadium album, where in 45 minutes or so they showed their greatness and forward rock approach, blowing away a crowd of 72000 rainy people waiting for The Who.

Other much liked music was released by:

  • Eels, “Wonderful, Glorious”. I also read mr. E’s autobiography which helped understand his personal and musical universe a lot better. And even besides that advantage, it is a worthwhile work full of humor of a survivalist kind. Much like the music. A true free spirit.
  • Bent Van Looy, lead singer of Das Pop, has released a bright and vivid solo album Round The Bend. The album was intended to be mostly piano, but ended up full of beautiful strings and light orchestral arrangements.
  • Suede did release a real come back album with Bloodsports. It has the old fierceness and wild pop orientation. The only minus I felt was the limited lyrical spectrum.
  • Agnes Obel gave us a beautiful follow-up to her debut album. Aventine resides mostly in the same universe as Philharmonics, but the intelligent and sparse use of classic piano, cello and silence does not feel ‘have heard’ at all.
  • Nine Inch Nails were brought to life again by Trent Reznor with Hesitation Marks. Although much more electronical again, less rock and -certainly- much less desperate and self-destructive, it reminded me much of The Downward Spiral, in a good way. Not that the latter gets surpassed, but that’s probably never going to happen anyhow. A good thing that mr. Reznor has found ways to collaborate.
  • Franz Ferdinand, much like Editors, conquered that little special place in my heart. I even lively remember how their debut album (2004) raised my hope again about music, after some years of disillusionment. With Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action they stick to their hyperactive danceable rock style funk something, highly recognizable, yet very fresh.

Top Music 2012

In 2012 it seemed I wasn’t involved in music too much. Not enough, that’s for sure. Result of being a workaholic? Anyhow, I still wanted to share:

Album of the Year (2012): Swans – The Seer

Swans - The SeerAfter rebooting Swans around 2010, Michael Gira released the epic double-sided The Seer album in 2012. It’s been repeatedly, including by the man himself, described as THE ultimate Swans album that Michael Gira not only had in mind during all of his Swan years, but also has been working on for over 30 years.

Gira has transformed totally into the master of his self-shaped universe of martial music with much varying song lengths, styles and tones, with songs that fade away into a gloom an then restart to burst into total fierceness. But these time around Gira often adds a touch of brightness and even some folky tunes to the dark repetitive mantras and drones. He even creates some acoustic drones, quite hypnotic. In a very clear production Gira lyrically sounds familiar with his themes of children of love, mother earth, holy gods.

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Another Crazy Year Went By (keep ’em coming)

Somewhere during the year 2013 I had already taken a little note that this was about to be “an explosive year”. It did turn out that way, in a good sense. Looking back at our lives, our childhood and youth, explorations of life as a couple, having children and being parents, maintaining values, ethics and principles at work; many tough and hard lessons, but what a return we got from it.

2013 brought our family many great things. A mix of some highlights:

  • I found a really creative job when moving to the house of Scrum to direct the Professional Series at Scrum.org and partner with Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-founder.
  • We visited our friends in Germany, another German friend came to visit us, we went out camping, spent a weekend at Bosrijk Efteling, and spent our yearly family holiday in Sweden.
  • I published my ‘Smart travel companion to Scrum’, a Pocket Guide.
  • I traveled the world and worked with friends of Scrum all over the world, in particular the Scrum.org community.
  • It took us only 1 day to get our daughter Nienke to another school. To our enormous satisfaction.
  • At Scrum.org we released the new Agility Path framework and we completely revised Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courseware.
  • I have read more books than in any of the preceding years.

And those are just a few eruptions of the volcano that this nearly-past year was.

2013 Mosaic

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Illustrations of ScrumAnd

Although Scrum has an acknowledged body of knowledge, the Scrum Guide, it is -by design- incomplete. Scrum is a framework, not a methodology. With Scrum, an empirical foundation is created from which the details and specifics of the actual working processes emerge. And while the actual working processes keep evolving, the foundation of Scrum provides stability.

Scrum needs the continuous selection, application and revision of good practices, strategies and tactics to be really effective. The rules in themselves provide foundational guidance. The effective benefits an organization gets from Scrum largely depend on how the game is played. Ultimately the benefits gained from Scrum will vary with the implementation, usage and application of Scrum; from roles, rules, players, and principles to techniques, practices, strategies and tactics.

Doing Scrum, and doing it properly, is only the beginning. Yes, you do Scrum if you have the formal elements in place. And from that much more beauty comes within reach. We refer to this idea as ScrumAnd.

Yes, We Do Scrum. And

There is a ScrumAnd for a myriad of elements included in or attached to the use of the Scrum framework. I will illustrate the ScrumAnd potential to augment the fun, energy, and benefits from Scrum upon 3 elements only:

1. The Product Owner role

Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Product Owner. And you will do even better depending on how the role is fulfilled:

Yes, We Have A Product Owner. And

Scrum is at first often implemented as the new IT-process, or is started within the IT-departments exclusively. So, a business analyst is put in the role. In organizations suffering from the traditional Business-IT dichotomy, it is often much later that business comes into play; forcing themselves in or being invited to do so.

  • A (business) Analyst in the role has limited benefits. But development organizations feel like securing control over the process with an analyst as Product Owner; just because it is an IT-person (‘Can’t trust business people!’). However, for many decisions the analyst doesn’t have the answer, needs to revert to product management, look at the project manager, wait for an external decision, get an upfront approval from a steering committee. Every time the Development Team is halted, must wait, pick up other work, restart previous work, park work for a longer time. No flow, no value.
  • A proxy for the business, like an account manager or other gap bridging alternatives, is slightly better. Control remains with IT (‘Still can’t trust business people!’) but IT puts a person in the role who is closer to the business, who is more connected to the business. It creates less delays, less waiting time, less hick-ups; although many of those remain.
  • Often the business gets a smell of the role and sees the fun and advantage of it, or the organization just opens up to broader collaboration. A person is sent in from a business or product management department to fulfill the role. It is another improvement. There is more direct availability of functional knowledge and stakeholder expectations. Yet, still much waiting time for decisions by the real authorities, as the business representative often has limited autonomy in his representation of product management aspects to the development organization.
  • It works better if the person is not only from business, but also has the trust and the mandate to take decisions (on the spot). A mandate is a signal that the role is taken more seriously. Often the person in the role is allowed to spend more time on it. Less hick-ups, less context and task switching, largely improved flow. The Development Team can focus more, and get things done.
  • It is great if the Product Owner is a mini-CEO over the product, a real owner of the product (what’s in a role’s name, right?), a business person with full (functional and budgetary) responsibility over the product and knowledge over all product management aspects (marketing, competition, users, legal, finance). The person’s professional life is dedicated to the well-being of the product. They don’t come much better than this.

2. Releasable software

Yes, you do Scrum if you have a definition of Done. And you will do even better when it reflects ‘releasable’ and all work for it can be done within a Sprint (not post-Sprint):

Yes, We Have A Definition Of Done. And

Scrum has no exact prescriptions for software development practices. However, the empiricism of Scrum thrives on transparency. A part of transparency lies in common standards and agreements, to drive inspection and adaptation. Engineering standards are a crucial part of that. Engineering standards guide the definition of Done, give focus to a team in getting stuff done, help a team in forecasting Product Backlog for a Sprint, define quality, create accountability.

  • Development (here as synonymous to ‘programming’) is quite essential in the wonderful world of software development. Without it, no result, right? And although the importance of it is often even underrated (think of the separation of design from development in separate, upfront phases), programming in itself is hardly enough. Although code aspects like clear code, self-explanatory code, naming conventions, refactoring are very important, it is only the start. But for sure, without development (‘coding’), no progress as there can’t be any working software, the primary measure of progress.
  • Code requires testing. And if all testing is to be done within a Sprint, testing skills are required in the Development Team and testing becomes part of the development activities. Testing is minimally needed at a technical unit and at a functional level. It gets even better if this part of development can be done first, can be automated as much as possible and is performed progressively within the Sprint, not just toward the end of the Sprint.
  • The releasability of an Increment, produced by the end of a Sprint, takes a giant leap if all integration, regression testing and alike work is done within the Sprint, and within the Sprint across multiple teams working on the same product or dependent products. It does help additionally if also this work can be automated and is done progressively in the Sprint, not just toward the end of the Sprint.
  • Teams can do better if they not only have the skills, access and mandate to perform QA work in the Sprint, but are also facilitated by organizational guidelines for quality, designs and architecture. No rework arising from QA on earlier Increments disrupts a current Sprint, or must be added to the Product Backlog. It does help additionally if any QA work can be automated and is done progressively in the Sprint, if quality is built in into the product and not just verified toward the end of the Sprint.
  • Even when doing Scrum, many organizations foresee additional stabilization time to prepare an Increment or a set of Increments for an actual release. Imagine the gain if this work can be done within the Sprint. Every 2-3 weeks a truly potentially shippable Increment of software is available, that can be brought to the market without additional costs or work. A good time to start thinking about continuous delivery.

3. A Collaborative Team

Yes, you do Scrum if you have a Scrum Team with a Development Team, a Product Owner, and a Scrum Master. And you will do even better when the team can improve its relationships and collaboration, often by remaining stable:

Yes, We Are A Team. And

Self-organized team work is the corner stone of Scrum. Teams however cannot be built or constructed like a mechanical object. With support, cherishing and nurturing, a collaborative team might gradually emerge.

  • A team gets formed by bringing a group of people together, preferably -but not always- in a shared workspace. Most of them are in observing mode, are keeping some distance. Formal arrangements and agreements get made, possibly including team agreements, engineering standards, a definition of Done, team values, meeting timings. And the team formally starts following them. Gradually people start expressing deeper thoughts, ideas and concerns.
  • A team goes through some storming as the team members get to know each other better and start expressing options and ideas that don’t match exactly. They sort the differences out. At first they might take it personally only to find out later that they are not used to the others’ gestures, tone of voice and facial expressions. They find out and they build a sense of trust.
  • The group of people jells better and better. The whole becomes equal to the sum of the parts. They become co-operative, they better align their individual work with the work of the others. They adjust their individual expectations to their team peers. They find a productive way to deal with conflicting ideas.
  • The team is really starting to know each other, even share more personal backgrounds. They have grown confidence in understanding each others’ remarks, stop taking comments personally. They stop looking for blame and stop covering up. A solution becomes the goal. As there is trust, and openness and honesty arising from it, they develop shared goals and are committed to these shared goals and objectives. Individual benefits are being sacrificed for the good of the whole.
  • The team has become a smooth, collaborative unit. Everyone’s focus is on the whole. The team members have passionate debates, engage on opposing ideas, look for the best possible outcomes and get their satisfaction from being part of the group. What used to take them hours and hours to sort out now only takes them a smile and a wink.

Organizations tend to overlook the scaling potential in the way Scrum is being played. Take advantage of these options first, enjoy the cumulative effect of multiple ScrumAnds and avoid the additional complexity that arises from volume-oriented scaling like adding people, adding teams, adding roles, adding phases.