ATMAN HB summary seminar #

Challenges 2 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Product mgmt Project portfolio mgmt Project mgmt Iteration mgmt Daily work From strategy to daily work and back again (not established) Business mgmt 3 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

4 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Too much multitasking and task switching "The longer you have been in the company, the more people ask you (to do) things" Ignoring resource allocations –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) Optimizing efficiency with respect to parallel work –Feelin a bit queasy (3) Number of ones own responsibilities –Feelin a bit queasy (3) Amount of parallel work in general –Ouch, it clearly hurts (2) 5 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Insufficient resources "Too much stuff in parallel with several product lines" Sufficiency of resources –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) Impact of busyness to work quality –Feelin a bit queasy (3) Pipeline pushing –Feelin a bit queasy (3) 6 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Lots of small stuff that originates from many different sources "There are strange 'nippelijuttuja' [details] people sometimes use their time on" Target spending levels –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) 7 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Specialized knowledge Cascading effect of resource changes –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) 8 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Lack of effort estimation and slipping schedules "We should also understand what is left, not just what has been done "Effort estimates are hard to make" Activity progress status reporting –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) Ongoing activities are behind schedule –Feelin' a bit queasy (2,5) 9 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

"..., but where do answering questions to customers and similar stuff go?" Development activity type separation in practice –Feelin' a bit queasy (3) The amount of effort spent on unplanned and unscheduled activities is not known nor managed 10 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Try this 11 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Strategy Deployment by Team Workshops Each team gets the task to figure out what the strategy means for their work –A senior management representative can facilitate the group work and explain the thinking behind the strategy –Emerging strategic issues will surface during the discussion Each team presents their findings/ideas to the others –Enables learning from the other teams –Even senior management may get new ideas based on this 12 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

There are Portfolios on every level Product and project portfolio Product/Service offerings Product development projects Epics Release portfolio Features and stories Iteration portfolio or team portfolio Stories and tasks Personal portfolio or daily work Tasks 13 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Technical excellence as a prerequisite for agility/speed Technical problems increase thrashing and slow down new development with unanticipated problems If we dont know that it is done-done and it really works, how can we even define a measure of progress? Technical practices from eXtreme Programming are still valid (and are especially helpful in multi-team projects) –Continuous Integration (and testing) –Automatic unit testing, TDD (and today also BDD) –... Lean principles suggest that it is much cheaper to stop- the-line and fix a bug immediately 14 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Utilising Cadence Iterative and incremental, time-boxed software development is a form of cadence (rhythm) and has been around (officially) for 20 years BUT You can also use it for scheduling your personal calendar to help you get uninterrupted work time –E.g. Daily scrum is a form of this (every day, same time) –In a similar fashion, schedule Intra/infra Resident Service Desk Q&A availability for knowledge sharing Meetings (its actually more efficient to schedule meetings on-cadence than on-demand, you can always skip the meeting, if there is nothing on the agenda) 15 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Feature teams vs. Pooling resources Feature teams are great... –...if skill and knowledge is equally distributed (=everybody is a guru)... –...but if there is a bottleneck skill, Flow thinking suggest pooling the bottleneck resources Typically different amounts of the bottleneck skill is needed in different teams at different times Pooling (or centralisation) helps in coordinating for the variability of demand to achieve better system flow Flexible (T-shaped) resources should also be fostered –E.g. Cross-training 16 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Contrain Work-in-Progress to control cycle-time and flow Do less in parallel to achieve more –Faster cycle-times (with less queing time) increase the total throughput and flow of a system to create more value WIP purging –When WIP is high, purge low-value projects Control WIP by shredding requirements –Flexible requirements (also known from agile SW development) –Continuous planning probably required, which can become a bottleneck Control WIP by flexible resources –T-shaped people (deep in one skill, broad skill base) Pull them to emerging bottlenecks and queues –Maximising resource utilisation minimises capability to react 17 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Examples of WIP constraints Limit the amount of completed code that awaits testing Limit the amount / time horizon of detailed planning Limit the number of active projects in the pipeline 18 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Scrum-of-Scrums for many things Normal Scrum-of-Scrums –Progress and impediments –Could benefit from participation of others than SMs Process improvement S-o-S –SMs discuss practices for improving processes –Knowledge transfer between teams Business S-o-S –Product Owners and/or Business Owners discuss emerging issues and impediments –Could facilitate better continuous planning 19 ATMAN project 9/17/2010

Thank you! 20 ATMAN project 9/17/2010