An Agile Letter To Santa!

Wouldn't it be great if Santa Claus was more agile? I mean, by now we all know that it is crazy to work for 364 days a year and then do a delivery within a 24 hour period! Wizard definitely had the right idea, wishing that it could be Christmas everyday! Working in shorter, 1 day sprints, Santa and his team could have more chance to stop, reflect and improve. Plus, his clients would get the added benefit of getting value, enjoying Christmas everyday!

Putting Santa's waterfall approach aside, today is a month till Christmas day and it is about time that we put an agile letter to Santa together (let's just hope that we haven't changed our minds as I don't think that Santa and the elves can cope with change this late in the game).

I have been thinking of some of the things, products and artefacts that have made agile teams that I work with successful over the years. I have put them into a nice list for you, in order for you and your team to pick and choose the ones that you want to add to your list!

Toys are an important part of our day to day work...

Here goes...

Dear Santa,

My agile team and I have been really well behaved this year, been responsive to change, open minded, value focused and committed to continual improvement. With that in mind, please can we have:

1. A huge 60" TV - If you haven't already read it, read my post on "How To Justify a 60" TV To Your Boss". It explains in detail why I love the benefits that a large TV can bring to your agile team... Really!
2. More whiteboards - Whiteboards have transformed how we work at McKenna Consultants. We use them to; draw wire frames, discuss ideas, make lists, come up with technical architecture, stick things to it, display the World Cup sweepstakes and even as a kanban board before we went digital! There are many more ways to utilise a whiteboard in your office. We cover every spare metre of wall space with them! Just remember to photograph any moment of brilliance before a colleague comes along and wipes the board clean!
3. A JIRA subscription - We started to use JIRA for our digital kanban around 18 months ago and have never looked back since. It is easy to use and great for managing our backlog. We use it in its simplest form as we find that the more you customise and restrict it, the more that the team becomes bound by it!
4. Planning poker cards - A staple of any agile team. If you're not already relatively estimating, start now. It's easy to do and you will be amazed at how accurate over time your estimates become! If you don't want to buy them... make your own!
5. Books - CPD is a big part of what we do at McKenna Consultants and it's something that we actively encourage the team to do. We have a shared Kindle account and Amazon account enabling anyone at any time to buy or download a book that they need! In a bigger organisation? Why not start a CPD book club, or in a smaller team, each member do a show and tell on a book they've read each sprint! Just try to avoid any titles starting with 50 shades... Some of our favourite books can be found on our training references list.
6. ElfKit Festive Fitness Advent Calendar app - Who loves counting the days to Christmas with an advent calendar? We certainly do, that's why we have made a couple of Christmas advent calendar apps, free for you to download now! Check them out and spread a little festive joy around the office!
7. Scrum ball - I like to keep my teams on their toes - especially in the daily stand up. I introduced a mini rugby ball as a symbol to determine who's turn it is to speak. Once a team member has finished, they throw it to who they want to hear from next. Only the person with the ball can speak. When the stand up is finished, the person with the ball has the responsibility of starting tomorrow's stand up. This game makes it fun (there is a certain amount of heckling when someone drops the ball), and encourages everyone to pay attention and LISTEN!
8. Microsoft Surface 3 - Transform the way you work with one of these nifty little machines. Our CEO Nick has recently moved to this as his work and on the go machine. He has even spared the time to blog a couple of times about it here, and here. 
9. Video camera - During a CPD book show and tell, a team member shared an insight into a book about User Story Mapping. The author suggested that you record discussions around requirements, or as we call them at McKenna Consultants, "User Story Workshop" or "Story Time". The benefits of this is amazing. These discussions can often become detailed, enthusiastic, interesting and key to the product. But if the team is not immediately going off to work on this, some key insights can be forgotten. We found that by recording these short, snappy discussions, we can watch them back and recap on any decisions and suggestions made. It also provides a great talking point for a retrospective! (Which are also great to record!).
10. Toys! - No software development team is complete without some toys! We have Ironman, a Plant of the Apes monkey head, R2D2, lightsabres, an Xbox One... We try to find some downtime now and then to make the office fun and to foster creative thoughts.
11. Coffee machine - The Tassimo in our office is probably the hardest working member of the team. It's not because the rest of the team doesn't work hard, just that we drink a lot of coffee. No one likes rubbish coffee, so don't buy your team and guests it!
12. Dedicated PO - Finally, the thing that all agile teams want for Christmas, a dedicated, pro-active Product Owner. You can have the most highly skilled software development team in the world, with a weak Product Owner and you are likely to build a really good, but ultimately WRONG product. However, with an average development team and a strong Product Owner, you are more likely to build the RIGHT product... eventually! Imagine what you could do with a great team and a great Product Owner. We have coached, trained and mentored numerous Product Owners and find that once this is nailed, the team almost instantly becomes more focused, more productive and happier!

So that's my Christmas wishlist for you and your teams, see how you can make the most of some of these things! Maybe you could adapt this to a themed retrospective, or wait patiently for next week's blog post... 

The Value of a Product Owner

One of my existing agile consultancy clients has booked me in this week to do some follow up coaching and consultancy after our initial session. The client in question faced one of the most common challenges that teams I encounter are facing - lack of/confused/mixed/missing product ownership.

With this in mind, the follow up session has a focus on what is product ownership, who makes a good product owner and the value of having one dedicated product owner.

As I am going to be going over in detail some of these points with my client this week, I thought that I would share with you some of my key thoughts on product ownership.

Product Owners...

1. Are responsible for the product, but this doesn't mean that they should be afraid or too proud to ask for help.
2. Are part of the team - they should feel part of the development team.
3. Are not "the boss" of the team.
4. Are there to make the life easy for the development team. I try my best to constantly remind my team this!
5. Need to be close to their stakeholders.
6. Need to have an interest in technology (or whatever sector your product sits in).
7. Must make brave and sometimes unpopular decisions (try telling your CEO that they cannot have a feature that they love!).
8. May not be appreciated by the organisation at first (especially organisations new to SCRUM, agile etc) but must celebrate their successes in order to earn respect.
9. Should not pass the blame.
10. Are critical to the success of the product.

I think that the following sums up the importance of great product ownership perfectly:

The best computer programmers ever in the team + a poor Product Owner = A really great but ultimately WRONG product

Average computer programmers in the team + a great Product Owner = The RIGHT product (eventually!)

The client that I am working with really understand this and want to educate their team and are looking to recruit a Product Owner from within the organisation's ranks. This is a great strategy for them as the new Product Owner will already be familiar with the product, stakeholders and the team that they will be working so closely with.

Product ownership is so hard to get right, but once you do, your company will reap the benefits!

Being the Product Owner of the ElfKit Festive Fitness Advent Calendar App

This week has seen us at McKenna Consultants successfully deploy the ElfKit Festive Fitness Advent Calendar App iOS8 iPhone and iPad app to the AppStore.

ElfKit is available on iOS8 from iPhones 4, 5, 6 and 6+ to iPads

This was especially exciting for me as I had the pleasure of being the Product Owner on this project! The app is based on a traditional advent calendar, where each day from 1st December you open a door. Behind each door there is a fun tip to help try and keep you fit and healthy over the Christmas period, hopefully instead of gorging on mince pies like myself and the rest of the team at McKenna Consultants!

We have also added some HealthKit integration and some little gimmicks to make it fun. You can read into more detail about the app on our website.

This app provided me with some unique Product Owner challenges. As a lot of app developers out there will know, Apple can sometimes have a tough approval process. A lot of this comes down to the person at Apple HQ who picks up your app to review.

When we submitted the app, within 13 minutes of receiving the "Your app is in review" email, the app was rejected! Imagine my horror! After a conversation with the reviewer, it turns out that they thought that the app was broken as when they tried to open a door they saw the "Too Soon" image. Now, we had anticipated this, so in the submission, we provided lengthy instructions on how to test the app (by dodging the dates).

Apparently though, the reviewer was adamant that this wasn't enough, and we had to provide a video to support the submission. We duly obliged, with my very own Yorkshire accent narrating the events on screen.

I thought that this would please the reviewer and the app would be accepted, but no! We were instructed to now re-submit the app and join the back of the queue!

As the app is based on a traditional advent calendar, it was imperative that it was live by 1st December, so I have been a nervous wreck for the past 8 days waiting for an answer!

To our delight (and my relief) the app was approved after being in review for a few hours!

You can view the app in iTunes here.

And......... Breathe!

Just another thing that us Product Owners have to deal with!

Our Office TVs!

Following up from my blog post last week on "How To Justify a 60" TV To Your Boss", I thought that I would share with you our latest innovation on our TVs.

Feeling inspired after reading my blog post (that has to be the reason), one of our developers, Mike, suggested that we automate our burndown! Sounds like a volunteer to me!

We have an internal system called the "McKenna Contol Centre" (sounds like something out of the George Orwell Classic, 1984), that we use for various internal bits and pieces, such as automating deployments for clients, storing passwords etc.

Mike integrated a program that speaks directly to our JIRA Kanban and displays a graph of the current sprint. It also calculates the average number of stories and points that we complete over the last 6 sprints! We like to keep a rolling average over the last 6 sprints as this means that the velocity is more responsive to changes in the team. We could have taken a longer rolling average, which would give us a more stable velocity, but this would mean that changes in our sprint would have less of an impact on the velocity.

We are now proudly displaying this on our office TVs!

Unfortunately, Star Trek has given way to the Burndown!

Burn Baby, Burn!

Stand Up! (and be counted)

It's 8:35am and my Outlook is ringing at me - time for our daily stand up.

I perform a variety of roles in my team, from Product Ownership to marketing and sales to agile coach. This doesn't mean that I sit out the meeting and leave it to the devs (we don't have testers, our devs do that, but that's a whole other blog post...). No way! I want to know what is going on and see if I can help!

Photo courtesy of ScrumShortcuts.com

Over the past 12 months I've coached over 20 development teams. Some new to agile/lean/scrum, so not so new. One thing that I like to get nailed immediately is the daily stand up.

Why is the daily stand up so important? Why do I need to go? Why do I care what everyone else is doing? Can't I just email it? Isn't that what the Kanban is for? These are some common questions (excuses) that I hear.

Here are some reasons and tips to help your team take advantage of this traditional SCRUM discipline.

1. It gives the team a heads up of what you have been and are going to be working on - I like to answer three questions; Since the last stand up I worked on... Until the next stand up I intend to work on... The issues that I have are...
2. It gives the team a chance to raise issues to each other - Sometimes sitting in a dark corner with your headphones on "wired in" is not the best way to solve problems. Speak. Collaborate. Listen. Learn!
3. It gives the team a chance to SOLVE issues AFTER the stand up for each other - Don't waste others time by going into detail (or showing how clever you are) of how you're going to help solve some iOS memory leak issues, save it till the stand up is finished and solve it then.
4. It gives the Product Owner the chance to share vital information, feedback and insight with the team - Yes, that's what I said, Product Owner. They absolutely need to be there too!
5. It improves team bonding in only a few minutes - You'd be amazed at what the 2 mins on chit chat whilst you're stood waiting with a coffee for the last couple of members to walk over can achieve!
6. It provides the opportunity for stakeholders to come and LISTEN to what is happening in the team - Anyone can come along and listen. If they have any questions afterwards, the ScrumMaster should be on hand to help out!
7. It provides a mechanism for problems that cannot be solved by the team to be quickly escalated - This is where a great ScrumMaster will come into play to initiate a Scrum of Scrums (or Stand ups of Stand ups).
8. It can present the chance to have fun within the team! - There are some great games that you can play when holding the daily stand up to keep team members on topic. At McKenna Consultants we throw around a small rugby ball (rugby - scrum, get it?!) to indicate who can talk. Sometimes this can be a good laugh, especially if someone is not paying too much attention! I have worked with other teams who do things such as provide weather reports to summarise how their day have been and how they expect it to be! The book Scrum Mastery has some good ideas of how to "Sex up your Scrum".
9. It involves remote team members - Just because you are working with an offshore team in India doesn't mean you have an excuse! Get them involved. Use Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, whatever you like. Just remember that it is important to actually be able to see them on screen! We recently worked closely with Rocket Matter in Florida on an iPad app project. We installed a couple of clocks in our office and set one to London, GMT and the other to Florida, USA, EST and arranged a daily stand up at a mutually convenient time. Guess what? Despite not actually ever meeting the other team members, we got on great and delivered an amazing product
   !
10. Coffee - Do we really need an excuse to make the morning coffees?

When setting up your stand up, you just need to remember two things:

1. Agree a time and stick to it
2. Agree a structure and stick to it

The stand up is hugely undervalued and I am sure that your team can get more out of it that you currently do! Start getting more out of your daily stand up and be counted!

How To Justify A 60" TV To Your Boss

Christmas is fast approaching, so it's time to ask your boss for a present for you and your development team - a 60" TV.

Imagine the shock on your boss's face when you ask them to buy you a Samsung 60" Full HD LCD TV (other brands are available!!), or even worse, the shock when you just go and order one yourself on your company credit card.

You're going to need a pretty good reason for it, and you're going to need to convince them that you don't just want it for the F1 practice sessions or to hook it up to your Sky Go or Amazon Fire TV account.

Star Trek Season 1 and our JIRA Kanban board on 2 of our many TVs!

Luckily, that is where I come in!

I am a big fan of visual management, kanban, information radiators. If it's big, bright and in my face, I'm likely to pay attention. In our office at McKenna Consultants we have 5 large TVs to display information, have fun and create a great working environment. This doesn't seem a lot, but when you consider that there are only a handful of us in the office at any one time...

We get tremendous value out of the screens. Here are 10 ways in which we use, and you could use, a 60" TV to support your agile team.

1. Electronic Kanban - This is the simplest and probably most valuable use that you will get from a large TV. Get the team's kanban digital and get it out there for all to see! We use JIRA, but you can use TFS, Trello, Target Process or create your own. If your kanban is easy for all to see, infomation will flow, Product Owners will be empowered, ScrumMaster will be aware, the Team will be self organised and motivated, Stakeholders will be a glance away from being in the loop and collaboration will flourish. This isn't to mention the other benefits of having a digital kanban (supports remote working, backed up etc). One caveat to this is that you need to have a reliable established process. It is much easier to adapt a whiteboard kanban than it is a digital one!
2. Performance Metrics - Server stats, build warnings, load and usage statistics. You can get it all on one screen so that the Team can keep an eye on things. Find out what is important to your Team and get it on there.
3. Processes - Great Teams should have a clear understanding of the process and why we do things the way we do. Be proud of this and make it visible. Get your Definition of Done, Definition of Ready, Development Process, Coding Standards and any other process or framework that you follow on the screen. This will embed a high quality culture in your team and also serve as a constant reminder to new members and stakeholders of how you do things.
4. Burndowns - Burndowns are only useful if they are kept up to date and acted upon. ScrumMasters can make it easy for the team by making it digital. Use a spreadsheet. Create a plugin to your backlog software. Get the graph up on the TV. I often see burndowns neglected and out of date. They are no use to anyone if the information is not acted upon!
5. Case Studies - Prepare some case studies of the work that the Team has done. Quite often our Customers and/or Stakeholders will visit the Development Team. Be loud and proud of the work that you have achieved! Wow potential Customers and remind existing ones.
6. Diaries - It can be really frustrating when the Development Team need the Product Owner, only to realise that they are out on site today. Probably should have asked the question yesterday, or looked ahead at the backlog had they known. Prevent this by getting the Team's calendars up in lights. We have had our diaries up for everyone to see for years and it saves so much time as we all know who is where and when!
7. Technology News Feed - We (mostly) all work in the software industry. In an industry as forward thinking, fast moving and constantly changing as ours, we need to stay in touch. Get the BBC Technology page up, Mashable, industry specific web pages loaded. Not only will this serve as a constant reminder, but it may inspire new and creative ideas!
8. Social Media Feeds - Similar to point 7, we need to stay in touch with what is going on in our respective industries. We can also hook up to a social media management account like Hootsuite or TweetDeck to manage company and/or product accounts. This is a great way of quickly sharing Customer feedback with the Team.
9. TV - Use the TV as God intended (he created TV on the 7th day, right?) - to watch TV shows! Hook your TV up to an Amazon Fire TV (like us) and stream movies to provide some background noise to the office. Star Trek is a popular choice. This will provide the team with a boost now and then (introduce Star Trek Tuesdays - where the team gets together on a Tuesday lunch to watch an episode). You will need to get a company TV licences for this and will have to check about PRS licences (or similar) depending upon where you are!
10. Gaming - Another way to boost morale - play some games on it! After work competitions, chance for Team members to break away and clear their thoughts or an incentive to finish a piece of work, take advantage of the TV!

If you want to use multiple webpages, there are some great, free, Chrome extensions out there that will rotate through webpages automatically for you.

There are many other ways in which you can use a TV - I'd be keen to hear how you use them in your Team.

Use this list to help your Team to make better use of your TV, or to help you to justify a 60" TV to your boss. You can thank me later! ;)

I'd also like to take a moment to thank @mattdufeu for giving my Halloween themed retrospective a go this week. I will be checking out his blog to see how it went!