Guardrails for Backlog Items - 7 Things Every Story Should Use

People ask us all the time “What are the must use fields that every team should use?” While this is the ultimate “It Depends” answer, I have found that setting a few key guardrails across the entire project team enterprise will give you the best possible chance for decision making, accelerating delivery, and ensuring alignment from the Board Room to the TeamRoom™.

Here are the seven things that help any companies product backlog become a strategic alignment machine.

1. REAL RELEASES – Every backlog item must be linked to a Project Asset (e.g. Release). Why not make the release meaningful, and consistent? It’s very easy to see when the Quick Status Check story will be delivered and when if the release is named “11.30.15 – Release 1.0”. In my Scrum Master world, no story is committed to production without being tied in the Org Level hierarchy to a date-based release. Try to keep your project levels as lean a possible.
2. PORTFOLIO ITEM – All backlog items should roll-up to an item in the company’s portfolio. That is the best way to provide the visibility and transparency leaders need to help make better decisions and to be able to support the teams overall.
3. SIZE – Point estimates provide you a relative ranking of the size of your backlog and are one measure of the potential for delivery of a sprint, release, feature.
4. TEAM – Align the work to the team, it’s the agile way. Assigning the work to a team is even more important to me than an owner. The Team will take it from here…
5. DEPENDENCIES – Establish the upstream and downstream dependencies to be able to track and manage any potential problems, and to help notify other teams of things you might be putting in their way.
6. BLOCKERS – Is the story in trouble? Blockers are the main way to truly know that. Be transparent and use blockers to do your dirty work.
7. CONVERSATIONS – Document all conversations associated to that backlog item using meaningful and descriptive conversations.

When every team in your enterprise follows these seven rules, your Portfolio, Program and Team level reporting has the consistency and predictably you need to compete with any company in the world.

Agile Leadership Engagement Grid

As we continue our Agility transformation, we have been establishing how our leadership teams will engage with our product teams now that we have become an Agile organization. We have focused primarily on when and how organizational vision is created by senior leadership and how that vision is translated to our product teams with the director level leaders playing an important role.

Here is a description of the Sr. Leadership track:

SR. LEADERSHIP / SHORT-TERM  Encouraging and cheer-leading the teams. Monitoring the progress teams are making relative to the key performance indicators established during the vision creation.

SR. LEADERSHIP / MID-TERM Supporting the oversight planning and product team preparation efforts by providing funding and investment decisions.

SR. LEADERSHIP / LONG-TERM  Establishing the vision for our organization and the roles in our framework. ..continue reading original post...

via Agile Leadership Engagement Grid - Illustrated Agile. Original post date 4/23/2012 by @Len Lagestee reposted here with permission.

The 12 Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto

Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer

through early and continuous delivery

of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in 

development. Agile processes harness change for 

the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a 

couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a 

preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work 

together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals. 

Give them the environment and support they need, 

and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of 

conveying information to and within a development 

team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development. 

The sponsors, developers, and users should be able 

to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence 

and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount 

of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs 

emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how 

to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts 

its behavior accordingly.

Source:  http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Barriers to Agile Adoption

Inability to change your culture and resistance to change can stop an agile transformation in it's tracks!  Here are a few tips to break down those barriers:

1. Have an open mind
2. Celebrate what you want to see more of (via Tom Peters)
3. Be prepared to respond to change
4. Ask WDTAMTM - "What Does The Agile Manifesto Tell Me?"
5. Don't punish trying
6. Measure what you value
7. Don't give up

Want to contribute to the 2014 results?  Take the State of #Agile
Survey and you could win $1k or 1 of 9 SONOS HiFi Systems
valued at $600 http://gag.gl/TzBzy 

Conversations Helping Business & Development to Work Better Together

A very important component of the agile mindset is the partnership of business and development. When your company culture shifts away from silos to an all-for-one mentality where teams are working together on a regular basis, the organization’s capability to produce customer value and achieve goals dramatically improves.

“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

This is one of the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto. If you want to learn more about the values outlined in the Agile Manifesto, check out this video.

Conversations, both verbal and written can help the business-development working relationship immensely. Here are a few key things organizations can do to work more closely together to deliver higher-quality working software:

 

• Use common-language user stories - Making sure that stories are understood by both the customer and coder. This clarity will help drive shared ownership, confidence and the ability to deliver.
• Be visible - Keep reviews and updates visible to all parties. All-in reviews and having the end goals in mind at all times helps everyone know they’re on the right track.
• Build trust - All sides should work to build a strong level of trust across the team(s) and to help actively address any areas that need to be improved.
• Partner with business to resolve impediments - Reach out and use all available resources, but work to reduce the number of communication vehicles; find a common repository to share your story conversations and decisions.

What do you think are some ways to ensure that business people and developers can communicate on a regular basis?

October 10 - Agile Day Chicago 2014!

Product Driven Learning

Building on the success of last years conference, this one-day conference is dedicated to helping Chicago practitioners learn from other practitioners through questioning and dialog. We continue the excitement from last year and are bringing in more experts to work with the community.  The theme this year is: Product Driven Learning – Listening, Learning, and Doing.  

• Learning - Learn patterns and ideas that are currently being done for product learning
• Listening - New ideas for product learning
• Doing - An all interactive track where you will be doing things hands on

Sessions will speak to various topics like product design, leadership, technology and development practices all with a focus on outcomes.  People from all roles, skills, and backgrounds come together to make this a community experience.

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Agenda 

• 8:00    Registration
• 8:30    Opening Discussion: 
• 9:30    Morning Schedule Sessions:
• 12:15  Lunch
• 1:00    Afternoon Open Space:
• 4:30    Conference Closing and Reception

For more details, visit http://devjam.com/2014/07/31/agile-day-chicago-2014/

 

Talks and Speakers:

Jeff Patton

David Hussman

Si Alhir

Mark Des Biens

Brandon Carlson

Angela Harms

Jane Cleland-Huang

Jeremy Kiegel

Brad Jaehn & Prerna Singh

Dion Stewart

Joel Tosi

A complete list of speakers and bios can be found here http://devjam.com/agile-day-chicago-speakers/ 

7 Things I've Validated in My First Month With VersionOne

What’s your lucky number? In June, I attended the Agile West BSC/ADC conference in Las Vegas and didn’t do so well at the roulette table; however, two months later on 7/21/14 (lucky 7s) I placed an even bigger bet; not on red, but on Pantone color number 216.  It’s the signature color of VersionOne, the all-in-one agile project management tool and services provider.

After almost seven years of building up my agile acumen at Cars.com, I decided that it was time to close that season of my career, and I began researching and planning my next career challenge.   I outlined three key pillars that were very important to me and my ability to truly enjoy going to work every day:    

• Customer Centric Vision – Having the ability to know WHY what we do matters to customers, and matching values and alignment to priorities.
• Clear Agile Direction – Finding a company who is moving the agile ball further down the line.  
• Fun and Innovative Culture - Life is too short and if you are going to work hard, it makes it much easier to find the joy in your job if you have fun doing it.    

These were the most important traits I was seeking in part because they were the things that made me love being at Cars.com.  I plugged into my network, had some interviews (and one offer that didn’t work out), and continued my quest to not settle until I found a career that valued these same traits.  Then, just when I thought that finding my career “match.com” was out of reach, I found an opening for a Chicago-based Product Specialist that turned out to be the perfect blend of vision, direction and fun.  

Luckily for me, it was also at a place I knew very well, VersionOne.  After a few interviews and a relatively painless courtship, I accepted the position and can report that so far it has been a jackpot payoff. Since my start at VersionOne, I have validated or learned seven key things that I believe you can also learn from, no matter where you work:  

1. The customer is king (or queen); however, not everyone is a customer – If the slipper doesn’t fit, you can’t force it!
2. Community is very important – Sometimes a company does things because it’s for the greater good.
3. You can’t fake culture – If you’ve got a great culture, you’ve got it. Hang onto it.
4. Agile is a mindset, not a methodology – Like culture, the question is not “Are you Agile?” but rather, “How Agile are you?”
5. Cold beer, anyone?  A cold beverage and a game of pool after work is still a great way to end the day. When they say “Work Hard, Play Hard,” believe them!
6. Valuable training is essential - Among the many other benefits, new-hire training as a group bonds people together and to the company.
7. VersionOne is a great place to be because of the people, agile project management products and services to help companies achieve agile success, as well as VersionOne’s commitment to the agile community at large.

Going into my Product Specialist position I tried hard to find red flags, indicators that would give me some warning or reason to pause.  At the end of the day, every flag I saw was Pantone 216.  It’s my new lucky number! 

For more details on VersionOne, visit our Community page.