What is Agile?

December 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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  • Agile is a mindset.
  • It is not a goal or end state. You can’t be agile because someone or something (including certificates) say so.
  • There are no agile people. But, there can be agile organizations.
  • Agile organizations are in constant pursuit of improvement. They constantly learn and improve quality. They use the proper tools and processes to support improvement. And improve those as well.
  • Agile organizations respond quickly and effectively in a state of uncertainty. To succeed in a state of uncertainty, agile organizations trust their people. People feel safe to experiment. There is no penalty for failure, rather encouragement for learning. Agile organizations bring out the best their in people.
  • Agile is not a private club. Everyone can join in. It embraces collaboration and abhors exclusion.
  • Agile is about putting people first.
  • All the good things that come later are side effects.

Source: http://www.gilzilberfeld.com/2012/12/what-is-agile.html

Filed Under: Agile

Scrum: The Future for Education?

November 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When we first heard about teachers using Scrum in a classroom we had to know more and got in touch with those teachers through Ilja Heitlager at Schuberg Philis in the Netherlands. Here’s what they sent in. It’s translated into English from the original Dutch.

eduScrum in Dutch education

How it began …
Imagine: you are a chemistry teacher at a school for secondary education. Your students work in groups on complex assignments, but you are not completely satisfied about the results of that teamwork. And then your son-in-law becomes a Scrum Master and you hear his enthusiastic stories… That is how it began.
How it continued …
Willy Wijnands and Jan van Rossum, chemistry teachers at Ashram College (secondary education in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands) have been using an educational version of scrum since October 2011: eduScrum. They incorporate scrum into their lessons, to give students the opportunity to study more energetic and more effective. UsingeduScrum also stimulates students to develop their strength as a team player.
Team work starts in their lessons with an introduction about confidence and an activity in which students talk about their personal capabilities and soft skills like punctuality, leadership capabilities, planning skills etc. After that, they form groups of four, set up to have additional capabilities. In this way, individual strengths in a team make individual weaknesses less relevant. Subsequently, they work in groups on the assignments of the context-rich chemistry module from a detailed sprint schedule.
Teacher: ‘I have indicated the number of time points per assignment (one point equals 10 minutes) and requested them to make an individual schedule. They have discussed those schedules and processed them into a group schedule. When I pointed out that I also wanted to do some whole-class teaching, they told me there was no time for it and that I should have announced it earlier. Wonderful, that much ownership. But they have to be in for it, because they have to learn to cope with unexpected events in their schedule.’
Group of four students, almost simultaneously: ‘This work is more pleasant in a group rather than individually. It is possible to ask each other questions and divide the tasks, which saves time. We have divided the experiments, because they are a good deal of work. But today we are going to work in groups of four during the entire lesson, because these assignments are very important and everyone should understand them. That is why we work together, it is something we have thought about during planning.’
Every group starts the lesson with a short scrum. This way they know what they have to do and where they stand to each other. A subsequent step is for them to learn to call each other to account, in case a group does not function optimally. The first step in doing this is a short but effective evaluation, executed by the groups themselves. Confidence in each other is the key theme in this evaluation.
Boy: ‘Our group consist of two boys and two girls. A group is useful when the group members co-operate. We’re fine in our group. Everyone takes his or her responsibility.’
Girl from the same group: ‘Everybody is contributing in our group. We have committed ourselves to do the work and we all are living up to it. We do our own tasks, and also work together. We do not study alone, if one of us does not understand, we explain to each other instead of asking the teacher. The information we have found we share with our group.’
From a Scrum perspective this might be trivial, but from a traditional educational perspective (focusing on the individual cognitive training) this is very special.

The plans for the future …

Willy Wijnands and Jan van Rossum are working with with Ellen Reehorst, an education designer and trainer, to further develop eduScrum and to hand it over to other teachers later. Use these addresses to find out more:

www.eduscrum.nl
info@eduscrum.nl
@eduscrum on twitter

Filed Under: Agile Process, Agile Team

Are You Making These ScrumMaster Mistakes?

November 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

Scrum asks for a cultural change.  The traditional management style doesn’t work well in a Scrum Team. Scrum calls for servant leadership instead of command and control.

Some Scrum Masters stick to their servant leader role. Especially when the goings get tough, they tend to go back on what they know best – traditional management. Knowingly, or unknowingly, Scrum Masters keep falling into this trap. They start to behave more as project managers than as Scrum Masters.

Several symptoms indicate that the Scrum  Master is struggling to let the Team self-organize.

  • Scrum Master – the task master
  • Scrum Master – the decision Maker
  • Scrum Master – the communication barrier

Scrum Master – the task master 

The Team gets together around the board for the Daily Scrum. It starts on time, a good sign. Look closely. The Team members are talking to the Scrum Master during the Daily Scrum. They are providing a progress report to the Scrum Master.

One Team member has just reported what she did yesterday. She does not have any tasks for today. Instead of picking up some task or self-organizing with the Team to pick up work, she just stares at the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master wisely nods and tells her about the next task. The Daily Scrum goes on.

The Scrum Master is behaving as a manager, not as a Scrum Master.

The pattern can be observed outside the Daily Scrum also. Team members finish their tasks, instead of working with the Team to pick up the next one, they go talk to the Scrum Master asking about what should they do next. As in good old times.

 Scrum Master – the decision Maker

The Team needs to make a difficult decision during the Planning meeting, or during a Sprint. Discussion kicks off. Opinions start flowing, as it happens during a good Team discussion. Then the Scrum Master starts talking. She issues her verdict about the problem and how it should be solved. There is a lull in the discussion.

The Team members are ‘trained to’ look up to the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master has strong experience in design, development or anything similar. The discussion sort of ends.

The Team has decided, though the decision was “spoon fed” to the Team by the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is unknowingly training the Team to look up to her whenever they need to make a difficult decision. The Scrum Master is essentially working as a “manager”, a “lead architect’, and a “decision maker”.

Scrum Master – the communication barrier

The Team has finished the Planning meeting and the Sprint has kicked off. The Team has started to do the planned work. After a day or two, the Team members feel they need to talk to the Product Owner to get feedback and they want to clarify a couple of issues. Rather, they have several questions for the Product Owner.

The Scrum  Master, of course, frequently talks to the Team members. When the Team raises issues, the Scrum Master is “on it”. The Scrum Master  goes ahead, locates the Product Owner, and asks the relevant questions. She comes back to the Team with the answers, or her interpretation of the answers. And feeds these answers to the Team. The Team feels happy; and gets back to work. The cycle goes on.

Primarily, this is a legacy of traditional management culture, where managers need invent work for themselves. They are accustomed to acting as a go-between for their Team and other stakeholders and teams. The self-organization takes a back seat.

From: agilescout.com

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