Common pitfalls to avoid when developing software with Scrum

1. From hell to lean, from zero to Scrum. Part II
Pitfalls to avoid
proyecto:
Christian Rodriguez
Certified Scrum Master
crodriguez@softeng.es
Twitter: @guezian
Barcelona, 3 de Octubre de 2012

2. Introduction
Objective
How scrum helped us?
How we need to improve?
proyecto:
Impediments
Internal Quality
Personal and Individual Issues
Detecting Impediments
Story Points, estimation, value
The problem
Wrong Estimation
More work found

3. Introduction
About me
8 years in the software industry
3 Years Scrum Master
This talk is for people who know scrum, and are applying
it or starting to apply it
I hope my experience helps you improve your process.
Context! Product Team of 6 people
Scrum Master / Architect

4. Introduction
Objective: Avoid pitfalls
Internal
Quality
Problems
Rushing Impediment:
Velocity
Pressure

5. proyecto:
Introduction
How scrum Helped us?
How we need to improve?

6. Introduction
How scrum helped us

7. Introduction
How scrum helped us
Steady-forward development rhythm
Almost no critical bugs found in production
Few interruptions
Reasonable achievable release plan
Potentially shippable product at the end of each sprint
Feedback on working software during sprint and sprint
demo
Stable and robust releases

8. Introduction
How we (always) need to improve
We still need to improve
Release cycle: 3 Sprint + Stabilization (1-2 weeks)
Potentially shippable products (but not shippable)
Require a Release / Stabilization Phase
Need to use % of the sprint solving (non-critical) known
Bugs
The overall velocity could be better

9. Introduction
How we (always) need to improve

10. proyecto:
Impediment:
Internal Quality

11. Impediments
Internal Quality
During late 2008 we started using Scrum
We adopted Scrum and the “Scrum miracle happen”
In a number of sprints:
 order
 progress
 (reasonably) working software
But, as codebase grew…

12. Impediments
Internal Quality

13. Impediments
Internal Quality
Very slow progress
Constant Bugs IN production, sometimes very critical,
causing Panic Mode and work in sprint abandoned
No release plan possible
Unable to measure progress, velocity
Application ultra slow performance
Application crashing
Team demotivation
User (and management) frustration

14. Impediments
Internal Quality
But why??? We where using scrum!!!

15. Impediments
Internal Quality
I entered the company as a Junior programmer in late 2007
Our codebase, was a mess, a REAL mess.
Immense up-front architecture
So strange, unintelligible
Only architecture, no features
The core was doomed, and so the rest of the system
Portal Builder DIED

16. Impediments
Internal Quality
Lack of internal quality is the worst impediment of them all
Lack of internal quality can cause Death, the destroyer of
worlds

17. Impediments
Internal Quality
In January 2010 I was named Scrum Master
In August 2010 Portal Builder V2 started…

18. Impediments
Internal Quality
Portal Builder V2, now, has
 More features
 Integrated with Azure
 Incomparable better
performance
 Incomparable better stability
Flexible design
No big up-front architecture. Microsoft NLayerApp
Everything can be improved at a reasonable cost

19. Impediments
Internal Quality
Warning! I’m not saying stop and throw all your code
We were in an extreme situation, “Scrum wasn’t enough”
Luckily you will be before the point of no return
The price of quality is eternal vigilance
You must be alert to symptoms of bad internal quality:
 Bugs
 Recurrent Bugs
 Slow progress

20. Impediments
Internal Quality
You are not doing Scrum if you only do Scrum

21. Impediments
Internal Quality
Scrum is incomplete ON PURPOSE
The team is left to determine
 Engineering practices
 Or technical practices
 Or development practices
 Or VOODOO

22. Impediments
Internal Quality
TDD Buy books
 Convince by example Training
 Red-Green-Refactor
Pair Programming
 Design at the Refactor phase!
Code Reviews
ATDD (BDD)
(both of them)
Webcasts
DDD
Group discussions
Hire!
Coding Dojos
Technical Stories

23. Impediments
Internal Quality
Not all of a large system will be
well designed

24. Impediments
Internal Quality
“Not all of a large system will be
well designed” – Eric Evans

25. Impediments
Internal Quality
Modifications Improvement
High value
Feature
Changes Feature
Adjustments
Feature Feature Feature

26. proyecto:
Impediment:
Individual
or personal issues

27. Impediments
Individual or personal issues
“Over-relaxing” “Releasing the gas pedal”
Acting as individuals not as team
Self-organization does not mean do whatever you want
In a “I don’t care” attitude:
 “I don’t care if the sprint is good or bad I just come here do my
work and don’t care about anything”
 “I don’t care if someone else on the team already solved that
problem I don’t want to ask I’ just rewrite this code again my way
and that’s it”
 “I don’t want to do test, it makes me think too much”

28. Impediments
Individual or personal issues
Talk to the team to solve these issues
Talk to individual to solve these issues
If it cannot be solved
 You must raise the issue with management
 Maybe with human resources…
 Hard decisions or recommendations must be made

29. proyecto:
Impediment:
Detecting
Impediments

30. Impediments
Detecting Impediments
Impediments kill productivity
One of the most important things to do is to “detect”
impediments.
Examples
 Slow compile time
 Slow CI Build (and automated) test time
 No build visibility
 The team does not see all this as an impediment

31. proyecto:
Points, estimation, value
The problem

32. Points, estimation, value
The problem
At the end of a sprint “We are going slow”:
The Scrum Master must be the “referee”
Why are we “slow”?:
 Impediments
 Wrong estimations. Why?
 Was there a mess under the hood?
 Internal Quality
 Need to improve your estimation
 More work found

33. proyecto:
Points, estimation, value
Improve your
estimation

34. Points, estimation, value
Improve your estimation
There are “normal” reasons why an estimation failed

35. Points, estimation, value
Improve your estimation
You can improve your estimations
Perhaps during the planning meeting:
 Not enough question asked
 Backlog Items not split correctly
 Backlog items not enough divided into tasks
 Everyone wants to kill themselves!!!
The Team must LEARN from these mistakes
Product Owner pressure

36. Points, estimation, value
Improve your estimation
“There’s no sense in being precise
when you don’t know what you’re
talking about”
-John von Neumann

37. Points, estimation, value
Improve your estimation
Official Scrum guide 2011 changed the term “the team
commits what will be developed” to “the team forecasts
what will be developed”
That’s logic
How can you commit
over an estimation !?!?!?
Force to commit will cause
defects
Scrum Master must defend
the team
Or negotiate with the Product Owner.

38. proyecto:
Points, estimation, value
More work found

39. Points, estimation, value
More work found
Consider this situation:
After finishing the most valuable stories, the team
discovers that they require more work, or discovers
valuable improvements:
 Perhaps the story is open
 Or the product owner does not exactly know what he wants
This extra work is much more valuable than the rest of
sprint items, its better aligned with the Sprint objective!
This “much more valuable” is agreed between the product
owner and the development team

40. Points, estimation, value
More work found
“Responding to change over following a plan”
“Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated
between the product owner and the Development Team”
Fast feedback, collaboration, great Job!
Adapt the sprint!
But make it count on the velocity!

41. Points, estimation, value
More work found
Re-estimation! (danger!)
Remember, story points are a tool to:
 Estimate size, to compare with other stories
 Estimate size and complexity, not amount of time!
 Do not re-estimate only because it took longer

42. Points, estimation, value
More work found

43. proyecto:
Thank you
Christian Rodriguez
Certified Scrum Master
crodriguez@softeng.es
Twitter: @guezian
Barcelona: Pau Claris, 162-164 2ª Planta
Madrid: Avda. Doctor Arce, 14