I had a great time presenting at the SQAA-OC in Irvine on Tuesday (5/18).

Here are copies of the slides: QA The Agile Way

Thanks to everyone from the Mass Bay PMI Chapter for coming to see me speak about Agile in the Enterprise. It was a great discussion and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have made my slides available from tonight’s presentation, they can be downloaded here.

Also, several people expressed some interest in local Agile groups so that they could learn more. I would point out three specific ones that have monthly meetings and support vibrant communities of both learners and practitioners:

• Agile Bazaar
• Agile Boston
• Nashua Scrum Club

The other day I had an interesting thought. I’ m not sure what precipitated it exactly, but there were several things that led me to this idea I’ve been mulling in my head. Perhaps it was Alistair Coburn’s keynote at Agile 2009 where he said that Agile as a distinct entity was gone; if it was once an iceberg, it has since melted and is now just part of the ocean. It could have been Jeff Sutherland’s presentation where he points out that 84% of IT organizations are self-reporting to use Scrum. Or perhaps it was simply working with a current client when they were asking for my help to come up with very clear guidelines about the number of acceptance criteria that should be allowed for a single story. Anyway, it struck me: as Scrum grows in popularity, are we institutionalizing it? more »

Odd Question, isn’t it.  We spend all this time focusing on getting the story to be the right size, chiseling away on the ones that are too big to fit in a release, and so on.  Then we turn around and fight the good fight when Scrum and Agile scales up and we are faced with keeping multiple teams working in peace, harmony and synchronicity.  It is this last problem that I keep on dealing with, particularly when trying to introduce Agile QA.  I got so frustrated that I took Jim Highsmith’s advice about “more being written about Agile than is known”, stopped reading Agile and read other things – like the Harry Potter series and 20^th century history.  It is here I re-read the words that on May 25, 1961, changed a generation’s life. President John F. Kennedy said in his, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” before a joint session of Congress.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

It struck me it was ‘the’ perfect story. It has a role, action that had to be taken, and a goal.  But most of all it had a very tangible, clear, and explicitly well defined definition of DONE – “returning him safely to the earth.” What a story!  What an Epic! What a way to get a nation – a world – to focus.   But it wasn’t a user story – it had this timeboxing clause,”before this decade is out,” that started the clock ticking.

I refer to it as a Focus Story. It serves as the transforming agent changing a poetic visiony user story into a ‘Mission Statement” and a Commander’s Intent”. With it in place, at the top of Product Vision, enough guide rails are in place to make reasonable initial roadmaps, release plans, prioritization criteria, and definitions of done.  But most of all we have a means to understand core values criteria “safely to the earth”.

We also have triggers to inform us when we are losing focus –  Meetings get longer, Done isn’t understood. Pieces don’t fit and the conventional mindset you have been struggling to win over sighs and goes back to its safe place of waiting for the fad to die.  When these show up it is time to revisit the focus story and build a bigger focus or wrap up what you are doing.  Otherwise you risk having “O”rings show up on your Columbia launch.  Nobody wants to be part of that type of bad day.

Many thanks to the people who attended this presentation. Their comments and observations were very good and helpful. Getting this type of feedback is great!. You can download a copy from this location.  The impact of Agile Architect Teams in Scaling Enterprise Efforts

Coaching has some really important benefits in helping organizations adopt Agile methods, Lean, <insert process improvement of your choice here>.  This is especially true in large, complex organizations with deeply-traditional cultures that seem resistant to change.

Are you considering a coach?

If you aren’t, are your organization and projects at risk? more »

I apologize for the delay in posting this presentation. Here is the third, and final presentation we offered at the Mass Bay Professional day on May 2nd. Presented by Giora Morein, it is focused on the challenges an organization faces as they try to grow an Agile initiative beyond a single team.

You can view the presentation here