Being The Manager Of An Agile Team

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Being The Manager Of An Agile Team

• Jeffrey Palermo
• CTO, Headspring Systems
• www.headspringsystems.com
• www.JeffreyPalermo.com
• jpalermo_at_headspringsystems.com

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Quarterly Giveaway

• Drop a business card
• Win iPod Touch

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About me

• CTO, Headspring Systems
• Agilist since 2004, XPer since 2005, pragmatist
  always
• U.S. Army Veteran (Iraq, 2003-2004)
• Founding member, AgileAustin board of directors
• Microsoft MVP (Solution Architecture)
• Director, Austin .Net User Group
• INETA speakers bureau
• www.partywithpalermo.com
• Headsprings Agile Boot Camp
• Certified ScrumMaster

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Agenda

• What does a manager do?
• How to deal with risk
• Predicting issues
• Forecasting
• Hiring and firing
• No broken windows (defects)
• Feedback and metrics
• Managing scope setting expectations
• Questions up-front!

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Overview

• Extreme Programming has lots to say about the
  customer, agile management, agile planning, agile
  software engineering and testing.  Scrum has a
  lot to say about the process of iterating and
  organizing priority.  Lean has a lot to say about
  increasing production and production quality as
  well as eliminating waste. 
• Lots of clients, even with agile training, remain
  with questions about where management fits in
  within an agile culture.  This session is a blend
  of project management and people management.
• Agile agilemanifesto.org

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What does a manager do?

• Why is it different managing software projects?
• Why cant we manage it the same as managing a
  Taco Bell?

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What does a manager do?

• The best architectures, requirements, and
  designs emerge from self-organizing teams. -
  agilemanifesto.org

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What does a manager do?

• Self-organizing does not mean self-directing.
• What is the size of the team?
• What do individuals on the team get paid?
• What type of office space will we pay for?
• What project will make us money?
• Teams will always self-organize, even in the
  absence of management.
• How will we run the project?
• How will we involve stakeholders?
• http//tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/agilemanagemen
  t/

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What does a manager do?

• Chain of command is important
• Authority must be delegated

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What does a manager do?

• Everything that is right or wrong with an
  organization is managements fault
• The free love hippie culture doesnt jive with
  stockholder expectations.

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What does a manager do?

• How organized is the strategic roadmap?
• How are requirements coming?
• Is delivery on track?
• What about quality control? Defects?
• How is feedback getting absorbed?
• Are operations going smoothly?
• The right people
• The right things
• The right time
• (what IF these things are challenged?)

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What does a manager do?
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How to deal with risk

• Risk What might go wrong
• What does the Agile Manifesto say about dealing
  with risk?
• Agile risk managementResponding to change over
  following a plan -agilemanifesto.org

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Predicting issues

• As a manager, you cannot predict every issue that
  may arise.
• Individuals and interactions over processes and
  tools -agilemanifesto.org

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Forecasting

• Which metric do you use?
• Hours
• Ideal hours
• Function points
• Story points tied to complexity
• Story points tied to size
• Man-days

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Forecasting

• Units tied to time/effort are a moving target.
• Similar tasks get easier over time
• Programmer skills increase
• Libraries/componentization

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Forecasting

• Choose a unit that remains the same in the
  presence of improvement
• Function Point
• Story Point

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Hiring and firing

• I dont know exactly what you do, but I know
  that problems arise when you are on vacation.

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Hiring and firing

• I dont know exactly what you do, but I know
  that problems go away when you are on vacation.

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Hiring and firing

• Topgrading
• Its not a mystery who the weakest team members
  are
• Staff ROI opportunity cost

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Hiring and firing

• Senior/junior mix
• Highly repeatable processes
• More junior staff
• Novel or emerging processes
• More senior staff

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No broken windows (defects)

• No bug database The Art of Agile Development
• Stop the presses quality control
• QA as a strategy, not a job role
• Automation
• Define DONE
• 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. -agilemanifesto.org
  

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No broken windows (defects)

• Quality
• Strategic direction
• Requirements definition
• Architectural specifications
• Construction quality
• Functional test automation
• Operations monitoring deployments

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Feedback and metrics

• As a manager, what are your metrics?
• As a manager, what type of concrete feedback do
  you receive?
• Why is it difficult to measure management?

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Feedback and metrics

• Management is knowledge work.
• Slack by Tom DeMarco
• Efficient secretaries
• Fully utilized highway

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Feedback and metrics

• Software delivery metrics
• Consistent of points delivered per unit of time
  (not a programmer metric)
• Number of defects released (ZERO)
• Whatever you measure will improve
• - keep all the plates spinning
• - modify metrics as you see weaknesses

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Managing scope setting expectations
sourcedsdm.org
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Managing scope setting expectations

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of
  work not done--is essential.
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on
  how to become more effective, then tunes and
  adjusts its behavior accordingly. -agilemanifest
  o.org

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Managing scope setting expectations

• Small team
• Whiteboard, throw-away documentation
• Verbal agreements
• Large team
• Written, persistent documentation
• Documented agreements
• Meeting minutes
• Requirements traceability
• Story specifications

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Wrap-up

• Management is an enabler of an effective software
  organization
• Beware of the pendulum swing
• Leverage Agile values and principles to make your
  organization more effective
• Dont implement Agile. Implement effectiveness

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Questions?

• Jeffrey Palermo
• CTO, Headspring Systems
• jpalermo_at_headspringsystems.com
• www.headspringsystems.com
• www.JeffreyPalermo.com