Project Management

Whilst conducting an agile retrospective, it is imperative to consider essential elements that must be included. The purpose of any retrospective is to aid a development team in identifying what worked and what did not throughout a project. During the retrospective phase, strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities for improvement are uncovered so that actionable steps can be taken to improve the team’s success. The best measure of a retrospective is the trend of success over time, from project to project. Throughout this article, you will find an explanation of what can be found in a high-quality retrospective.

Celebrating Achievements

It’s critical to state what was done well. Not only does it increase the morale of the team, it also is a way to evaluate how successful changes were made so that those conditions can be mirrored on future projects (Hazrati, 2009). Mutual beneficial outcomes will occur as team members feel recognized and the team examines the circumstances under which they are most likely to succeed.

Examining Issues

What was unsuccessful? Why was it in unsuccessful? It’s important that team members feel comfortable being candid and open about what went wrong. The team must work together to examine patterns and potential contributors. It’s important that  blame is not placed and problems are examined closely and understood, rather than attempting to resolve immediately (Crowder, 2015). Before the evaluating improvements phase of the retrospective, relevant variables must be identified and feedback should be collected. It is common that throughout doing so, the root cause is uncovered and the improvements that are suggested thereby become more appropriate and effective.

Evaluating Improvements

This is the actionable step where a plan is created to improve. Given that everyone on the team feels heard and issues have been brought to light, the team must shift their focus from the past to the future. Everything the team decides to start and stop doing should directly relate to a problem being solved and be realistically able to be implemented. Major process and structural changes can uproot and overwhelm team members. This is why it is important to make sure the solutions relate directly to the problems addressed. The relation between issue and improvement should be clear to everyone. Finally, improvement occurs over time (Atlassian, 2019). All issues will not be fixed over one sprint or even a single process as agile is a dynamic, iterative process and teams are constantly pivoting to address new concerns.

Sources:

Atlassian. “How to Run an Agile Retrospective Meeting with Examples.” Atlassian, Atlassian, http://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/retrospective.

Crowder, J., & Friess, S. (2015). Agile Project Management: Managing for Success. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Hazrati, Vikas. “Key Elements of a Successful Agile Retrospective: Preparation and Participation.” InfoQ, InfoQ, 8 Sept. 2009, http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/key-elements-agile-retrospective.

If you’re not sure where a retrospective falls in a sprint, it happens at the end. The group should be able to talk about what went right and what went wrong. The purpose is to improve with each sprint. It is not to blame others of something that failed. How does this play in into everyday work life? When we talk about what we need to improve, that’s what needs to be in focus in the next sprint. It should not just be a meeting of what needs to be changed, without follow ups. However, doing the same thing in every retrospective can be boring and tiring, specially when they take longer than expected.

There are many ways to change retrospectives and make them fun. They could be easy things like bringing snacks or by being creative by taking a different approach. Here are different ways to approach retrospectives:

Start-stop-continue: This is the simple one where team members are asked what they should start  doing, stop doing, and what they should continue (Similar to what we have done in class)

Speedboat retro: The island is the vision/goal for the project. The Wind is what pushing the team to the goal. The rocks are risks that should be analyzed. and the Anchor is what could hold the team back from meeting the goal.

Rotating the retrospective facilitator: The facilitator of the meeting shouldn’t always be the Scrum master. Instead, they should let one of the team members facilitate the meetings. Every person has a different style of facilitating, so other team members will not be bored of the same person. Giving the role to a team member can also make them think differently of the meeting. Pablo Pecora says “I find it challenging to give the facilitator role to team members. It makes them think more and participate while they empower themselves” (Pecora)

What happens when the team members think they shouldn’t have a retrospective? Some team members might believe in skipping a retrospective if they don’t really have anything in mind to talk about. This is probably not the best idea for the team. Retrospectives should never be skipped because it creates a habit (Lindqvist) Reflecting what the team has done always creates feedback.

Retrospectives help not only improve future sprints, but mainly the teamwork in a group. If a group is not doing well communicating, after their first retrospective, the team should know how to better communicate with one another. It gives everyone a stage to talk about what they believe went wrong and how they can improve from there until the end.

Citations
(Pecora, Pablo) https://www.hexacta.com/2017/09/25/5-ideas-to-improve-your-next-scrum-retrospective/
( Baldauf, Corrina ) https://retromat.org/blog/what-is-a-retrospective/
(Lindqvist, Alexander) https://uxdesign.cc/why-skipping-the-retrospective-is-a-big-mistake-4a78e182e093

There are many tools and tricks incorporated into agile to ensure quality software is distributed. Of these tools are a set that focus on learning on your past actions. The two most prominent ones are Retrospectives and Post Mortems. In this article we shall discuss both of them, and talk about the differences between them.

The first one we shall talk about are agile retrospectives. Agile retrospectives happen at the end of each iteration, when the current sprint is just released. In the retrospective, the point is to look back and praise the things that were done well, but more importantly point out things that could’ve gone better. The article, “Agile Retrospectives” goes deeper into this.

The article splits retrospectives into an agenda, which includes these things: the prime directive, the appreciations, and the goal setting. The prime directive is spent mostly talking about things that weren’t as smooth, and brainstorming better alternatives. The author makes it clear that in retrospectives, facilitators should trust that everyone did their best, and that it should not turn into a name and shame game. Appreciations talk briefly about the good, and goal setting is important as well.

In goal setting, often times people work on making SMART goals, so that in the future they know what they can focus on to make sure that the retrospective was a success. The other type is Post Mortems.

The main on-paper difference between retrospectives and post-mortems is that post mortems happen after the end of a whole project (Post Morts Vs. Agile Retrospectives). Due to this, a lot of times there is not a lot people can do to improve the project. While agile has retrospectives at the end of a sprint, meaning that there are more to come, Post mortems happen at the end so any feedback or critique would have to be used on a  completely different project. There are other differences too though.

Retrospectives are often handled and facilitated by upper management. Because of this, there is a lot of nice, clean documentation that talks well about the things that were accomplished, and then “placed on a shelf and ignored (Post Morts Vs. Agile Retrospectives).” It’s a very sterile, procedural thing that many employees just have to do. While agile retrospectives can also be turned into “just-another-procedure”, because Post Mortems are set after a project end  this feeling is much more prominent.

These are the differences between retrospectives and Post Mortems, hope you learned a lot and will use this on your next project!

Works Cited

“Agile Retrospectives.” Agile Pain Relief, 28 Feb. 2019, agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2010/05/agile-retrospectives.html#.XMdtWuhKhEZ.

SoftwareDevTools. “Post Mortems Vs. Agile Retrospectives.” SoftwareDevTools, SoftwareDevTools, 22 June 2018, softwaredevtools.com/blog/post-mortem-vs-retrospectives/.

“Https://Www.yodiz.com/Blog/Wp-Content/Uploads/2015/11/Agile-Retrospective-Yodiz.png.”

Imagine you just finished working on an intense project sprint and want to review your group’s progress. While you could simply talk it over with your teammates and move on to the next sprint, proper methods and techniques known as agile retrospectives exist that serve to strengthen your review experience.  According to GroupMap’s analysis, “An agile retrospective is a short meeting for project teams to reflect on the most recent stage of their project, analyze their processes, and identify things they can do better moving forward.” (Groupmap) These agile retrospectives allow project teams to self-organize and are a fundamental staple in Agile development.

Now that we have established what an agile retrospective is, let us discuss various tools to enhance your team. For starters there is the Starfish template. This template is simple; “Use 5 categories to reflect on team practices and activities and how they are impacting our results” (Fernandez).These categories are start, stop, less, more, and keep. Let’s say you want to keep your current workflow schedule but with more communication between teammates. Simply pin each objective to its respective section and you are done.

Of course this is not the only way to self organize. Other templates such as PIPA (Puzzles, Ideas, Problems, Appreciations), and ORID (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decision) are among various visual tools to compliment the Agile retrospective experience. “Any team, regardless of their level of Agility, can use retrospectives to improve.”(Fernandez).

References

Image courtesy of https://luis-goncalves.com/content/uploads/2013/08/starfish-exercise_luis-goncalves.png

Cohn, M. (n.d.). Self-Organizing Agile Teams Don’t Just Happen by Chance. Retrieved from https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/self-organizing-teams-are-not-put-together-randomly

Fernandez, M. (2018, June 19). Top 10 Agile Retrospective Templates & Techniques. Retrieved from https://instantagenda.com/top-10-retrospective-templates/

Lu, J. (2018, April 08). Agile Retrospective Template, Online Retrospective Tools. Retrieved from https://www.groupmap.com/map-templates/agile-retrospective/

Scrum is known as a framework for agile development that focuses on helping teams work together in software development. Scrum is nicknamed after the rugby formation that helps teams function cohesively and with maximum output.

Kanban is a visual workflow management tool that like scrum, serves to optimize workflow and in turn, make teams more efficient. Kanban is a Japanese term that translates to “visual card,” hinting at the visual nature of the system.

Kanban and Scrum are excellent tools and increasingly utilized by project managers in small and large companies alike (Crawley, 2018). It is critical for emerging project management professionals to understand both.

Companies that use Scrum are plentiful and include many Fortune 500 household names. Among these are Google, Facebook, CNN, Bank of America, Adobe, and Nokia. This suggests that Scrum is a useful project management tool across a wide array of industries including, but not limited to, technology, banking, and broadcasting (Smith, 2011). Their diverse revenue streams and wide array of project types make an organized and team-focused framework such as Scrum highly suitable.

Companies that use Kanban include many creative companies that employ artistic and visually inclined people. Among the list are Pixar, an animation company, Zara, a fashion company, and Spotify, a popular music-streaming service. These companies are all focused on innovation and building products that meet the needs set by current trends and styles (Lily, 2008). The ability to work quickly and adapt to changes in an optic manner cannot be undervalued for these businesses.

No matter which company someone is aspiring to work at, or even if they are starting their own venture, Kanban and Scrum are useful investments in professional development resources.

Citations:

“Certification Types & Tracks.” Foundational & Advanced Scrum Training & Certifications, 2019, http://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified.

Crawley, Chris. “Which Is The Best SCRUM MASTER Certification?” LinkedIn, 20 Apr. 2017,http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-best-scrum-master-certification-chris-crawley-csm.

“Professional Scrum Master I.” Scrum.org, Scrum.org, 2019, http://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-master-i-certification.

“What Is a Scrum Master?” Scrum.org, http://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-scrum-master.

Scrum Alliance. “Who Is Scrum Alliance®.” About Us, http://www.scrumalliance.org/about-us.

In agile we have several principles and ideals that we have to uphold. Making sure that everyone is aligned with these values is an important piece to effective agile software development. At the forefront of this housekeeping is the scrummaster. In this article, we shall discuss what exactly a scrummaster does, and all of the responsibilities therein.

The scrummaster is a team member seen specifically in the scrum methodology of agile. As a scrummaster, you are expected to be very knowledgeable in the ways of the scrum, and agile in general. Because of this, you are able to tweak the scrum practice to best fit your teams needs (What is a scrum master?) Having someone who is an expert in agile that can serve as a coach for using best agile practices has a lot of benefits.

The main overall benefit for having a scrummaster in the team is a more streamlined process. Scrum Masters are focused on increasing the quality and level of output, and they do that either directly or indirectly. Some examples of doing things indirectly would be things like coaching other team members on the ways of scrum, helping facilitate conflict resolution, and more. More direct examples, (as we shall discuss later) include things like introducing tools to make the process more efficient.

Day to day, the responsibilities of a scrum master include “clearing obstacles”, “establishing an environment where a team can be effective”, “protecting the team from outside distractions. (What is a scrum master?) ” This all sounds very abstract, so what does it mean?

Scrum Masters are usually the facilitators in the daily standups. They are also supposed to act as servant-leaders. They help protect the team by even advocating for them to higher ups (like stakeholders) so that the higher-ups are more understanding of these new processes. They also serve in other ways too. (What does a Scrum Master do)

They help facilitate other “scrum ceremonies”, like sprint retrospectives. They also do more talking for the team like talking to funders to get better tools to act in a more agile way. Since they are so good with scrum and agile and maybe even other methodologies, they are familiar with a wide array of different tools to help speed up the process. One way this would be helpful is that the Scrum Master might introduce tools like Kanban, and Burndown charts. They “establish an environment where a team can be effective” in a lot of ways.

This is what Scrum Masters do, hope that helps paint a better picture!

Works Cited

“Https://Hematestingstuff.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/Scrum-Master-Rr.jpg.” Https://Hematestingstuff.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/Scrum-Master-Rr.jpg.

“What Does a ScrumMaster Do on a Daily Basis.” Agile Velocity, 8 Mar. 2019, agilevelocity.com/scrummaster/what-does-a-scrummaster-do-anyway/.“What Is a Scrum Master?” Agile Alliance, 3 Dec. 2018,

http://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/scrum-master/#q=~(infinite~false~filters~(postType~(~’page~’post~’aa_book~’aa_event_session~’aa_experience_report~’aa_glossary~’aa_research_paper~’aa_video)~tags~(~’scrum*20master))~searchTerm~’~sort~false~sortDirection~’asc~page~1).

There are many different tools and resources a software development team can choose in order to complete a project. We will be covering Scrum and Kanban, some differences between the two, and how to choose between the two when working in a team.

“The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master”(Scrum.org) Most Scrum teams are self-driven and organized and choose the best way to complete their work. Scrum is a framework for effective teamwork collaboration that can be used by products big and small. Scrum includes daily scrum meetings and sprint plannings. At the end of the sprint, there is a sprint review. after, there is a retrospective where they discuss what they did and how to improve.

Kanban is also another framework that is also another framework used. There are 3 principles for Kanban. The first is you visualize what you do today. You need to see the work flow and the items in each context. The second is to limit the amount of work in progress (WIP). This is to balance the flow-based approach so tasks don’t stack up all at once. And the last one is to enhance flow. Once something is finished, you can pull the highest task from backlog (Collab). A Kanban board keeps your team members informed on what needs to be done, what needs to be started, etc.

There are some things that make Scrum and Kanban different. One of them is Kanban doesn’t require Product Owners and Scrum Master. Scrum involves the team working in one sprint together, while for Kanban, the board can be used by anyone working on the project because it is not cross-functional. Kanban also allows for continuous work flow, while Scrum has fixed lengths of sprints.

So which one of these would best work in your project? According to Daniel Barreto there are two main things that should decide it:

1. “The team’s maturity” (Barreto)
2. “The expected level of change within a project.” (Barreto)

If your team already has experience working in agile but is expecting a lot of change throughout the project, your best bet would be Kanban. If you have a team that’s just being introduced to agile and you think there will not be many changes, scrum will be easier for them. Luckily you can apply Kanban and Scrum to both teams large and small, so that will not be a problem in deciding which you should implement

Citations

(Scrum) https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum
(Daniel Barreto) https://www.mindtree.com/blog/how-choose-between-kanban-and-scrum
(Collab) https://resources.collab.net/agile-101/what-is-kanban

Let’s say after weighing different career options you decided to become a Scrum Master in the field of software project management. Congratulations, but do you even know what a Scrum Master even is? For starters, “a Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum… by helping everyone understand scrum theory, practices, rules and values.”(Scrum.org). They seek to reinforce important Scrum principles such as the prioritization of “individuals’ interactions over processes and tools” and “customer collaboration over contact negotiation” (Scrum Alliance). The learning the fundamentals of Scrum requires more than what is learned in a standard college level course. Proper scrum training requires special courses and certifications.

Those who seek Scrum Master certification have multiple options to choose from. For now we will be discussing what The Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org have to offer. The Scrum alliance is an organization that was founded in 2001, they tout themselves as the “largest, most established and influential professional membership and certification organization in the Agile community” (Scrum Alliance). While it is the most popular certification it has its caveats. In his rundown of Scrum certifications, sales/marketing professional Chris Crawley points out that all it required was a 2 day training course. “This led to obvious criticism, considering someone without any experience in Scrum and demonstrated no knowledge of it could still walk out of the course as a Certified Scrum Master by simply paying the registration fee and attending the course.” (Crawley, 2017). This was remedied with an updated assessment in 2012 but many still have their doubts.

Then there is the Professional Scrum Master(PSM) held by Scrum.org. While it and the Scrum Alliance’s certification are based off the foundations of the Scrum Guide, the PSM focuses more on assessments and reinforcing the knowledge gained. This hands-on direct teaching style is backed by Crawley’s discussions with clients who own both stating, “But clients who hold both certifications have shared the PSM is more knowledge based on the direct teachings found in the Scrum Guide.” (Crowley, 2017).

So there you have it. The path to being a proficient Scrum Master has several obstacles and requirements. It is not for everyone, but the knowledge gained through certifications only enlightens and elevates those who seek them. Whether you choose to partake in a Scrum Alliance course or enroll in Scrum.org PSM assessments, the payoff will be worth it with the right work ethic and confidence.

References/Citations

“Certification Types & Tracks.” Foundational & Advanced Scrum Training & Certifications, 2019, http://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified.

Crawley, Chris. “Which Is The Best SCRUM MASTER Certification?” LinkedIn, 20 Apr. 2017, http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-best-scrum-master-certification-chris-crawley-csm.

“Professional Scrum Master I.” Scrum.org, Scrum.org, 2019, http://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-master-i-certification.

“What Is a Scrum Master?” Scrum.org, http://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-scrum-master.

Scrum Alliance. “Who Is Scrum Alliance®.” About Us, http://www.scrumalliance.org/about-us.

As a business analyst, you know that you are the liaison between the product team  and the guys with the money.You need to make sure requirements are communicated and documented out so the developers know what to build. A key part of being a good analyst is understanding how to interact with the stakeholders. In this article we shall discuss key topics to grow in this regard.

(Business-Analyst-Role)

The first topic is about developing empathy for your stakeholder. This is a very important part of good communication and understanding with stakeholders. When you put yourself in your stakeholders point of view, it allows you to ask deeper questions that further cement your understanding and increase the quality of your documentation. Some good questions to ask yourself when meeting the stakeholder would be like, “Why would the stakeholder want this certain feature in this particular way?” “What is the overall business value of this piece of the product?”

When you put yourself in the stakeholder’s shoes, it allows the you to better negotiate with them (10 proven stakeholder tactics). Let’s say for example your team wishes to switch to the agile methodology and you are explaining this to the stakeholder. By thinking beforehand about what sort of counter-arguments they might come up with, it allows you to better prepare yourself. “They might want to stick to this particular methodology because they were the ones who originally proposed it,” would be an example of a good thought to have.

The second topic for better communicating with stakeholders is involving them more in the team. Within agile, this is a key principle. Stakeholders are not just passive people from above. Yes, the business analyst should make sure that the stakeholders are getting what they want, and a part of doing this is involving the stakeholders more.

Why is this important? When people want a certain thing done, often times they are not good at articulating it. However, “people are fairly good at indicating what they think they want and then when an option is presented to them what they like and don’t like about it (Building Empathy).” When we encourage the stakeholders to take on a more active role, misunderstandings and communication greatly increase.

One way to do this would be allowing Stakeholders to attend standups. When the stakeholder knows what the developers are actually doing day to day, it would do a number of things. First, the stakeholder is able to feasibly measure just how well the progress is going. Second, it allows the stakeholder to talk about the different activities that are going on and even reduce certain activities when they realize how long they are taking.

These are ways to increase your communication with stakeholders. I hope this helps and that you use it in future projects!

Works Cited

Maier, Andrew. “Digital Service Delivery | Build Empathy with Stakeholder Interviews, Part 2: Conversation.” 18F, 22 July 2016, 18f.gsa.gov/2016/07/22/building-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-2-conversation/.

Wolpers, Stefan. “10 Proven Stakeholder Communication Tactics.” Age of Product, 9 Dec. 2017, age-of-product.com/stakeholder-communication/.

“Http://Businessanalyst.techcanvass.com/Wp-Content/Uploads/2017/08/Business-Analyst-Role-1024×576.Jpg.” Http://Businessanalyst.techcanvass.com/Wp-Content/Uploads/2017/08/Business-Analyst-Role-1024×576.Jpg.