Agile Assessment

By -
I've had the opportunity to perform assessments of several product and technology organizations looking for help with their Agile transformation efforts.

 When I do an assessment I like to use something like the Dreyfus Model, with these 5 distinct stages: Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient, Expert.  Here's how that plays out in a couple areas:

Team/People/Roles
  • Expert - high levels of trust, communication and collaboration with a focus on meeting commitments. Whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Performing stage in Tuckman's model
  • Proficient - all members engage in planning and estimation activities. Norming stage in Tuckman
  • Competent - one or two members dominate planning, estimating and retrospective activities. Between Storming and Norming.
  • Advanced Beginner - team has not worked together through more than one cycle. Toxic patterns may be evident. Forming to Storming
  • Novice - Low levels of trust, communication and collaboration. Forming stage.
Process/Practices/Activities
  • Expert - Collective code ownership; code reviews and refactoring produce high quality code; extensive and informed use of unit tests; CI, CT, CD; TDD/ATDD; exploratory testing; regular Product Backlog refinement; focused and deliberate Sprint Planning and Daily Standup; Daily Review of Done Items by PO; lively and highly anticipated Sprint Review and Retrospective
  • Proficient - Commitment to excellence in work provided to the customer; new feature delivery exceeds 60% of team effort; technical debt is tracked and managed; value flows through the system; activities and artifacts are key components of value delivery pipeline
  • Competent - Velocity is stable; new feature delivery approaches 60% of team effort; technical debt is acknowledged and owned; silos have become semi-permeable; excuses made to forego various activities thereby depriving the team of tools to become proficient
  • Advanced Beginner - Productivity is taxed by frequently broken builds; each release is sure to break existing features; degree of cruft is evidence of no shared ownership; product backlog is stale; sprint burndown shows lack of focus and too much WIP
  • Novice - Daily standup is the most frequent of all activities but is sporadic and lackluster

The more time I can spend with teams and the more situations in which I can observe them, the better.  In addition to being part of team activities, I like to observe the work area, evaluate artifacts like the product backlog and current sprint backlog, the team's history of sprint burndown reports and velocity reports.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Severity, Priority, Impact and Likelihood - Managing Defects and Risks

By -
Defects and Risks are often dealt with in a subjective, emotional way.  That's unfortunate, because among all the things a software development team deals with, those are two that can be handled in a more constructive and empirical way. First, a couple definitions. Defect Severity: the degree of impact a defect has on system operation. A defect is something observed, so impact can be empirically quantified. Risk Severity: the degree to which a hypothetical event, should it occur, would impact system operation. A risk event is something that has not occurred, so impact must be estimated or extrapolated. The common element in both Risk Severity Assessment and Defect Severity is Impact on Revenue.  The FMEA framework that AKF recommends uses 1 = Low, 3 = Med, and 9 = High, to represent the exponential effect of a high impact risk or defect Impact on Revenue No payments being collected and/or payment data security compromised (Critical) Payment collection being de
Read more

Enterprise Agile Framework: The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

By -
Image
Brian Rabon introduced me to the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as the framework he uses to manage his company, The Braintrust Consulting Group (TBCG). EOS is the missing element in organizations that are having some success with Agile at the team level, but not succeeding with change at higher levels or outside software development. As Charlie Rudd points out in his post The Third Wave of Agile , there is broad consensus on the value of Agile practices at the team level, but all types and sizes of businesses are struggling to scale Agile and to increase agility across their organization.  I think EOS addresses those challenges. EOS is comprised of the EOS Model : Having a model like this in place allows teams to function optimally as self-organized units that share the vision and goals of the organization.  Teams are able to align themselves with the organization's objectives, and can see how their outcomes affect the organization's performance. The EO
Read more

Chatbot Code of Ethics

By -
A  NYTimes article  describes efforts by a consortium of the largest technology companies to create ethical standards for AI. A related article in MIT Technology Review is titled  AI Wants to Be Your Bro, Not Your Foe . Artificial Intelligence has reached a level of sophistication, and is on the brink of being so pervasive, that we can have these serious conversations. In my work developing AI-powered chatbots to assist with learning, I work within the bounds of these 7 precepts: Right View - our chatbots honor humanity, human dignity, and the human quest for knowledge, understanding and technological innovation Right Intention - our chatbots promote human progress in the areas of intellectual pursuits and personal ethical development Right Speech - our chatbots use encouraging, prudent, and situationally appropriate language Right Action - our chatbots perform with integrity toward the aforementioned right view and intention Right Live
Read more