SCRUM for Microcompanies
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Project Management is fundamental in any company, clients insist on knowing when products will actually be delivered and as a result timescales are key to profitability. In software development, companies have the unique issue that clients love to change their mind and worse still try to extend the project scope and claim huge new features were part of the original brief! “Oh I didn’t mean it to work like that” or “but obviously it will also do ….”. These problems often seem exaggerated in smaller companies with a greater range of competing time pressures and agile methodologies often don’t seem workable unless there is a team of 4-8 people who are all able to work on the same project. Steve is an astute project manager and over several years has had to balance competing time pressures with often-unrealistic client expectations. This talk will explore why Steve believes everyone can become more agile and how discovering that SCRUM could be implemented in a micro-organisation revolutionised his approach to project management. If you work in a small organisation, or are a freelancer this talk may change the way you build software – forever!
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SCRUM for Microcompanies
- 1. Steve Westgarth MD @ Footsqueek @stevewestgarth www.westgarthsweb.co.uk
- 2. Define the Problem? Project management is just like herding cats!
- 4. Strategies Pics of lots of people???
- 6. Who am I? Picture of John Vajean singing who am I?
- 7. Define the Problem? What do developers know about project management?
- 8. Find Work Employ Students Get students to Do Work Deliver Work
- 9. Easy
- 10. is the Job of the Project M
- 11. The Project Update “Your project is on track, we’re making better than expected progress; look at this lovely pictures that a graphic designer has drawn of your new system, doesn’t it look beautiful; and how functional look I’ve even spent several hours linking the images together in powerpoint so when you click on the buttons it looks as if the system actually works”
- 12. “So when will it actually be delivered?” So when will it actually be delivered?
- 14. Impending Doom in ….
- 16. 14th March
- 18. Methodology
- 19. Prince 2
- 20. The Project The Project The ProjectThe Project Work Packages
- 21. Clients Requirements “I’ve got a great idea for an app – its just like Angry Birds and its going to …..” “Please could you build me an app that is a point of sale system. I’ve got prices for buying an existing off the shelf product and its just too expensive so I thought I’d build my own.” “I want to build a social network for businesses in the local area. It will be just like FaceBook but targeted specifically at small businesses. I have £1500 to do the project. My favourite bit of Facebook that I really want to include is Facebook chat”
- 23. Top 4 things that always seem to go wrong Deadlines Client Satisfaction Developer (and team) Collaboration Change management
- 26. The Agile Manifesto http://www.agilemanifesto.org We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
- 29. Lead Developer Chief Marketeer Product SupportAdmin Support Finance Lead Designer
- 30. I didn’t want to be a freelancer
- 32. var scrum = "Team" var i = "Footsqueek" if (scrum.rangeOfString(i, options: nil, range: nil, locale: nil) == nil) { println("No Scrum In Footsqueek") }
- 33. Lets take the temperature • How many freelancers do we have in the room? • How many of you would say you currently work as part of an agile team? • How many of you are confident that you know what agile is all about? • How many of you had read the agile manifesto before today? • How many of you understand the principle of SCRUM and would be confident enough to talk about them? • How many freelancers work in an agile way?
- 36. Task Project Definition of Done Points Task 1 Client A Client A has approved 2 Company Backlog
- 37. Assigning Points Fibonaci Sequence 1 = Extra Extra Small 2 = Extra Small 3 = Small 5 = Medium 8 = Large 13 = Extra Large 21 = Extra Extra Large Take the Average Do It More than Once Do It Often
- 38. Tasks become larger over time
- 39. Task Project Definition of Done Points Date Added Task 1 Client A Client A has approved 2 24th August 2015 Maximum Task Age = 1 Month
- 42. Focus Areas • Review what has been achieved during the week (Retrospective) • Plan next weeks sprint • Happiness Barometer
- 46. So how does all of that help us to heard cats?
- 48. Things to take away If you havn’t seen it, DaPulse can be found at www.dapulse.com. If you’re interested in learning more about being Agile check out www.agilemanifesto.org. Jeff Sutherlands book How to Do Twice the Work in Half the Time. @stevewestgarth www.westgarthsweb.co.uk
Notas do Editor
- Morning - i’m My Name’s Steve; MD at Footsqueek - we’re a small company based in Chester on the north wales border. I thought i’d start today with a video.
- We all have a problem - Apple has a problem, Footsqueek, Universsity of Abberystth - in fact i’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have this problem
- We’re going to take a look at where can things can go wrong.
- We’re then going to explore some strategies that I’ve been able to adopt to improve my ability to herd cats and hopefully give you some links to some tools that you might find useful in your own working practices. And crucially i’m going to look at how methodologies such as SCRUM can be used by small companies; and even free lancers in order to improve the chances of project success.
- And hopefully by the end of the talk we will all have considered how we can better manage projects; which will hopefully help us all to build better software to surprise and delight our clients.
- Informatics Centre Manager - Employed at University of Chester Part of Computer Science - Enhancing Employability Employ Students, Get Work, Students do work
- I had just graduated - what on earth did I know about project management?
- My Job - Find Work, Do Work, Deliver Work This is the same model employed by pretty much everyone in every walk of life
- I started to question what is the Job of the PM For me it all boiled down to this. Still remember the first conversation Asked to give an update on a project
- And I would have palpitations Looking at this experienced person, who knew way more than me. I knew that based upon the answer I was about to give to this question that the person in front of me was going to make critical business decisions; that if I got it wrong it had potential to cost someone a lot of money worse still
- they were going to put a hideous countdown timer on the homepage of their website counting down to a date that I wasn’t even 75% sure could be achieved.
- So I would sit up straight; looking very in control of the situation; I would muster all of my strength to look as confident as I possibly could and say with absolute certainty your project will be delivered on
- We had planned the project We had a mythology In the case of the Informatics centre within the first few months of being employed I was sent on a Prince 2 Project Management Course
- Prince 2 is used by Government organisations and interestingly there is a huge body of work currently looking at how the methodology can be extended to include agile principles.
- Prince 2 taught that you take a project and break it down into a series of work packages and then by creating a series of documents, appropriately tailored to your environment you would systematically monitor the project to make sure everything was running to schedule and then manage by exception.
- I knew the answer - we needed to be more agile! …. Like a Goat People loved this - and would regularly say that the Computer Science Department had an agile team working with it. But what is agile?
- Stop! This talk isn’t about telling what Agile is - or even explaining the principles of SCRUM. That said I would be very happy to talk about this with anyone after the talk if you want to share ideas and good practice.
- If you havn’t come across Agile before then check out
- If that peques your interest - I do like to point people in the direction of books - SCUM - the art of doing twice the work in half the time by Jeff Sutherland is a great read - and is actually one of the reasons that I love SCRUM. Its also really important because most developers find out about SCRUM and agile from other developers and its rare to find a developer who has actually researched the concept themselves and understood why. If you are in that category then this really is must read!
- Informatics Centre was not agile. Back in 2012 I left the University of Chester and I started by own company - Footsqueek.
- A whole different set of problems The biggest of those problems was the size of the software development team. That was compounded by the size of the departments running our core business functions; our marketing team was particularly successful at bringing in work; so much so that our development team regularly worked through the night to get it done; it was also difficult to make sure that our quality assurance team had the opportunity to fully test the system before it was released. Fortunately there was no problem with communication between all of these departments because of one key staff member was doing all of the work.
- But despite all of these functions at the outset being performed essentially by me I had drive and I had a vision. And key to that vision and with no disrespect intended to any free lancers in the room I knew if we were to be successful and create the enterprise I wanted to become then no matter what I must not become or be perceived as “a free lancer”. I could see the pitfalls of this and the limitations it would place upon Footsqueeks growth and development as employing freelancers can be perceived by clients as risky – there isn’t a company backing them up if things go wrong or they are unable to deliver.
- So very quickly I started to attract work – I was incredibly fortunate in gaining contracts with the NHS, Schools, Local Businesses. Very quickly we had a portfolio of projects which were all on the go simultaneously and there was me at the centre of it all – suddenly I found myself in the position of being a master juggler; often I would work on one project in the morning, a different project in the afternoon before returning the mornings project when I got home that night.
- So lets take a look at how I became more agile as a freelancer. I found a really great tool. Its called DaPulse and I started by creating a list of absolutely everything that had to be done. I categorised the list by Project; but crucially it was all on one list. I could then filter the list to show what had to be done on each individual project.
- Tasks become larger over time - the longer you put off doing something the bigger you believe the task to be
- As an individual or a freelancer agreeing and sticking to a definition of done is really difficult because its easy to say that will do. My solution to this was to involve my clients in the process. Or use the client test - would I be happy to show a client that piece of work.
- Now in planning next weeks sprint I had some interesting dilemmas with myself in terms of priority. Things that are higher priority must get done first. But those things that have been on the list the longest must also be completed with a higher priority because they cannot feature on the list for more than 1 month. The first week that I did this it roughly equated that 1 point = 1 hours work - but overtime things became faster
- Just stop for a moment and think how happy are you? I ask myself that question every week and try change 1 thing per week to make myself a happier person. 1 example - I don’t like meetings on Friday afternoons because to my mind Fridays afternoons should be a wind down for the weekend. So I stopped having Friday afternoon meetings and now i’m happier.
- For me I ask myself these questions at the end of the day - but the crucial thing is to make sure you do it.
- Keep a note of how long tasks actually take and once every few months do some analysis on the data you collect. In the early days of Footsqueek it allowed me to realise that our pricing strategy wasn’t right. Add up the points and then also add up the hours that it took to achieve those points you can easily work out the hourly rate for the project and the price you have charged per point. Was the project costed accurately? This also allows me to workout
- Its easy really; one of the problems I found with project management is ensuring that everyone is accountable for their actions. In a small company or as a freelancer I have found one of the hardest things to instill in myself is accountability - and doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it. Its all about under promising and over delivering and the techniques i’ve talked about today have helped me to get better at doing that.
- In a small company or as a freelancer I have found one of the hardest things to instill in myself is accountability - and doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it. Its all about under promising and over delivering and the techniques i’ve talked about today have helped me to get better at doing that and hopefully some of the ideas i’ve shared might help you to do that to.