Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Mistakes make life interesting

My rules for mistakes are very simple:
1/ You cannot repeat any.
2/ You have to make one everyday, at the least - intentionally.
3/ Never regret making mistakes. Regret repeating them or Miss them badly - everyday.

:)

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Black Swan

The notion of a Black Swan is a low probability event with highly unfavorable impact. It is a common example of the "long tailed" probability distribution found in many domains.

Agile planning

The notion of "big planning up front," is of course a red herring in any credible Agile based project management plan. Rolling Waves, Planning Packages, incremental and iterative processes are all parts of the manual. Those who want full confidence on Day 1, should consider change their staff to those who can commit to it.
Can some give a 100% confidence (Agile) plan on Day 1? If the plan is more than a month long. Plan is supposed to evolve over a period of time, through regular revisions. Agile advocates the philosophy of forecasting deliverables on the basis of moving velocity, not using velocity to get commitments for deliverables. Agile suggests we revise/alter commitments around the deliverables as we progress on execution. It also does NOT expect upfront complete design (all details) – High Level design, if possible, is good enough. Play it by the ear.

Agile & Collective ownership

Agile as a methodology advocates collective ownership of tasks. It prefers team work over individual performance or heroism. The Manifest talks about individuals & interactions over processes and plans. It sounds so cool - people centric thinking ...

Then come questions to mind - A lot of them ...
If the ownership is collective, does it mean everyone is Accountable and everyone Responsible too?
Whom do we sacrifice as a scape-goat if something goes wrong with Agile. If everything is going
Well, who do you say is the best of them all. With Rewarding being a mandate how do we recognize contributions without discriminating on irrelevant aspects of the achievement?
Should leadership be rewarded or criticized as an individualistic behavior?
With the team having a common notion, are we leaving room for creative suggestions by new team members?
What are the possibilities of these suggestions, at least being considered, if not tried out.

With inter-changable skills and almost equal performance/ through-put are we heading towards mediocre teams?
Will the Hercules of the team be treated equal to others?
Would we be playing to the strength of each individual or trying to normalise capabilities across the group?
If it is a team effort, should only the Scrum Master have all the answers to these questions, or should the entire team be confused about it?

Let me know if you have answers to it ...

Scrum of Scrums

Scrum of Scrums –
Do we ask the same questions as in a Scrum Meeting? If not, why call it a Scrum.
Should we have the same format of stand-up meeting with brief summary of status & Blockers?
Also why do we end up making it like a project status meeting?

Think about it

Statistics suggest Probability of injury is more with a not-so sharp knife compared to a sharp knife ...
Statistics suggest Probability of slow moving cars getting hit is higher than fast moving cars ...