This presentation was provided by Jonathan Clark of Jonathan Clark & Partners, during Session One of the NISO event "Agile Product and Project Management for Information Products and Services," held on May 14, 2020.
3. Part 1) What does Agile mean for people?
Discussion / Q&A
Part 2) Who does what ?
Discussion / Q&A
Part 3) What happened to the Project Manager?
Discussion / Q&A
Agenda
4. Agile uses
continuous
improvement to
incrementally figure
out the best way
forward
One of the founding
principles of Agile:
“At regular intervals,
the team reflects on
how to become more
effective, then tunes
and adjusts its
behaviour accordingly.”
Kaizen = improvement
high performance
lean principles
5. Taiichi Ohno ,The Toyota Way
“Kaizen is about changing the way things are. If
you assume that things are all right the way they
are, you can’t do kaizen. So change something!”
7. adaptive teams:
combine freedom with responsibility
balance flexibility with structure
deal with inconsistency and ambiguity
persistently deliver on the product vision
an adaptive team is self-organising and self-disciplined
9. • Tasks ALWAYS come
from the top
• Timeframe is set
• Project manager
resposible
• Project manager rules
• One-way communication
• Tasks defined by team
members
• Timeframe committed
• Team responsible
• Scrum Master facilitates
• Brainstorming from all
team members
traditional vs self-organising
self-organising teams are not characterised by a lack of
leadership, but by a style of leadership
11. Jim Highsmith, Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products
Get the right people involved, and
self-discipline comes more easily.
Get the wrong people, and imposed
discipline creeps in, destroying trust
and respect.”
18. • Products are built by capable, skilled people not by processes
• Focus on people, product and process (in that order)
• without the right people, nothing gets built
• without laser focus on product, there’s activity creep
• without a process framework, there’s inefficiency and maybe
chaos
Agile values individuals and
interactions over processes and tools
Recap
you need the right people with the right technical skills
and the right behaviour
23. Product Owner
Points the team in the right direction
Has the authority to set the goals and shape the vision
Provides vision
Responsible for product backlog
Voice of the customer / user
Makes decisions
Establishes boundaries
Available
Business-savvy
Communicative
Decisive
Empowered
a.k.a. Product
Manager
24. Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software
“Each team needs exactly one
product owner”
25. Agile Project Manager
Supports and helps the agile team
Removes barriers that block the team
Responsible for managing the process, and only the process!
Facilitates stand-ups, retrospectives
Expert in estimation & planning
Helps with product backlog
Helps team clarify the goals
Always looking to improve effectiveness
Responsible
Humble
Collaborative
Committed
Influential
Knowledgeable
a.k.a. Scrum
Master, Iteration
Manager…
26. The Dev Team
Developers
Estimate, plan, program, test
Collaborates
Understands the user
Ux Designer
Plans and gathers customer / user data
Mocks up designs
Tests
Looks ahead
Analyst
Just-in-time analysis
User story details
Architect
High-level view
Considers complexity
Tester
Talks more than they write
Helps teams deliver better stuff
Content Lead
Expert in content coding
Link to content production
27. Business Sponsor
Provides overall strategic direction
Sets a vision and does not stop talking about it!
Understands, lives and breathes agile
Makes the hard calls
Spends much of their time removing barriers
28. Subject-Matter Experts
brings specific
knowledge or talent
that is needed by the
agile team
helps the team
understand
how stuff works
is part of
the team
speaks in facts speaks in opinions
brings specific
knowledge or talent
that is needed by the
agile team
tells the team
how to do
stuff
is not
part of
the
team
29. How Large Can We Go?
“2 pizza” teams?
The 7 +/- 2 rule?
3-9?
5-11?
5-8?
30. Does Agile require co-location?
Can distributed agile really be successful?
these are very good questions!
What if everyone works from home?
33. Business people and developers must
work together daily throughout the project
• an agile team is an adaptive team
• teams are self-organising and self-disciplined
• you need the right people with the right technical skills and
the right behaviour
• agile demands cross-functional teams
• key roles are product owner and agile project manager
• communication is easier with small teams
• cross-functional doesn’t mean everyone can do everything!
Recap
Plan together, demo together, learn together
36. Leading vs Managing
Agile leaders
lead teams
A traditional
project manager
focuses on
following the plan
with minimal
changes
Non-agile ones
manage tasks
In an agile project the team takes care of the tasks and the project
leader takes care of the team
An agile leader
focuses on
adapting
successfully to
inevitable
changes
37. Ken Schwaber, Co-founder of Scrum
“Using the old words will slow or prevent the
adoption of a new approach. Retaining an
old title discourages thinking in a new way”
39. Scrum Smells*
signs that something might be wrong
*Term coined by Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software
Guests who are invited to attend the Daily Stand-up
meetings are allowed to ask questions or make observations
Not all the Agile Team
members attend the Daily
Stand-up meetings
Work is assigned by the
ScrumMaster rather than
signed up for by developers
The Daily Stand-up feels like it is
a status update from the team
members to the ScrumMaster
Team members are
pulled away by the
organisation to do
other tasks
Team members avoid responsibility. When the
team has highly specialized job roles, it can
allow an “it’s not my business” attitude
Executives demand the team commit
to releasing a set of "minimum"
features by a certain date
Executives communicate directly with team
members to remind them of deadlines