How are we adopting Agile in our companies?

[srayhan]

It's been a while since we have any activities in this group. Let me
wake this group up...:-) How about we share how we are implementing
Agile/Scrum/XP in our companies? Let's be brief. Let me start with how
we are doing it at Code71.

1. Sprint
- 2 weeks (starts on a Sunday and ends on a Thursday).
- Daily Standup between 9:30 and 10 am
- Sprint review
- Sprint Retrospective
- Sprint planning
- Tuesday final test release
- Wednesday production release (if the product is already live)

2. Engineering practices
- Continuous integration
- Automated functional tests
- TDD if team wants to
- 90% target test coverage
- pair programming when makes sense

3. Release planning (depends on the product/project). At least
relative estimation is done.

Please identify your company when you share how your team is doing it.

Thanks,

Syed

[Emran Hasan]

Hi There,

In our company Right Brain Solution, we try to be agile in nature and
often tweak our preferences. We are mainly practicing Scrum and our
usual setup is as follows:

1. Sprint

- 2 weeks (sometimes 1 week if release is demanding)
- Daily standup at 6 o'clock
- Starts on Sunday and ends on Thursday
- Sprint meeting with the client on premise (video conference if
client is from abroad)
- Sprint retrospective

2. Engineering practices

- Pair programming in case of critical code
- Coding convention
- Code review
- Unit testing (some do TDD)

3. Inception stage practices

- Spec from client is used as guidance
- User stories and use cases
- Wireframing of the functionality of immediate next sprint
- Everything is kept on wiki

4. Next target

- Automated Acceptance Testing
- Continuous Integration
- Big visible task board (with stickies)
- More inclination with XP principles

Looking forward to inputs from other companies.

Thanks

Emran

[nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)]

Hi,
thanks for initiating this thread, i will write about my experience on
adopting agile.
this is my second company where we are in a transition from waterfall
project management to agile based project management.
as you guys can pretend we have so many things to put together to make
it easy to understand to those who none believers.

i am very very happy because of the positive and more agile attitude
from management bench.
more over management has realized we have to be more picky while
choosing client.
fortunately tekSymmetry (our company) is working with those clients
who really loved us
seeing our open collaboration, more friendly attitude and honesty.

our belief is, "we don't think client as our client we rather think
them as our partner"
we assist them to get smile on face at the same time they are helping
us to be happy being with them.

to help or accelerate adopting agile i had to do the following stuffs
along the team -

- after stand up meeting we submitted daily (when sprint is running)
"sprint burndown chart" and "sprint backlogs" to the management
(management got more curiosity seeing more communication and
transparent activities with in the development)

- simplified deployment process, (didn't setup CI because we wanted
more controlled environment, specially i wanted to understand the team
and team attitude first)

- initially i had to prepare product backlog to demonstrate how to
use it.

- joined with the development team and involved myself in coding

- understanding the development team and management team very closely
to figure out how you can be part of their achievement. (thanks to
management because they rather helped me a lot and made so many things
easier for us)

- my personal preference is "no give up policy, all human beings are
similar possibilities", i have been working closely and motivating
each and every team members.

- helping them to understand they are not away from the standard and
smartness.

- initiated "after sprint technical session", (our talents prepare
their presentation and present them to everyone, perhaps someday we
will invite audience form many of your companies)

- ran 6 sprints being scrum master, showed them how to manage sprint
backlog, how to keep it up to date, available time commitment and
daily stand up

- built new scrum master who is now facilitating the core division of
the team (we separate the team in two major divisions, core team, new
feature team)

- helping him to realize scrum master is not someone who command,
rather who "listen and suggest" with soft voice. more preciously he
has to eradicate all those blocking issues which interrupting the
team.

usually we keep the following stuffs on our scrum -

- generally (8 development days, 1 sprint planning and 1 sprint
review meeting) = 10 days

- bug fixing sprints are usually 1 week span (4 days work + 2
meeting) = 6 days

- retrospective meeting is organized after sprint review meeting, we
used to go for lunch with the team to discuss about "what wasn't good,
could be improved"

- scrum team consists of developers + testers/qa + (soon we will add
up designer too)

- test cases are prepared and delivered before any developer take
commitment on any feature (though sometimes we can't get everything
before we kick starts coding)

- developer don't practice test driven development rather they
practice "validation driven development" (VDD :)_))

- i have practiced feature driven release on my previous company

- here we are practicing timely and feature driven release on new
company (not yet released anything)


challenge i have faced -

- motivating and showing team members their own career path

- helping team to understand the agile way instead of liner way

- making continuous productivity and hyperactivity understandable

- cutting the last moment hero rather making the team as a whole as
hero

advantages i have found -

- both of the companies where i have introduced agile, (somewhere
in... and tekSymmetry)
from management perspective view they had agile mindset

- management values human over process

- management is picky about choosing the right client with similar
mindset.

btw, feeling constant headache, perhaps that is the reason beyond this
big email :)_)

best wishes,

[Raisul Kabir]

Hi Hassan,
Nice to hear from you. Good writing as always.

I see tekS is a Kansas company. Do they have any devs there also? How many team members here in Dhaka?
Incase there is any dev in Kansas, do you do distributed scrum? Do you use physical board or software?
Distributed scrum is a big challenge. So, I was wondering what is your experience about that.

Raisul


--------------------
Raisul Kabir, CTO, BrainStation-23
H-480, R-32, Mohakhali, New DOHS,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
cell: +8801713458492
email: rai...@brainstation-23.com rai...@gmail.com rai...@latitude-23.net
skype: raisulk gtalk: raisulk

[Nayeem Ahmad]

Thank you very much for sharing your experience!

At ValuePLUS, we have started adopting scrum only recently. Our team members were very good at picking it. Here are few things that we are trying:

1. We are doing one week sprint (for requirement from the commercial side)

2. We use 'ScrumBoard'. Everyone is very happy with benefits it is giving.

3. We do daily stand ups, sprint planning (one and two), sprint review and also the retrospectives.

4. Using our internal information system for recording user stories and task management.

5. Also using excel for chart and others.

Initially we are having to spend good amount of time for Product Backlog Refinement and planning. Now it seems improving.

If you have any suggestion let me know.

Thanks.

--
Nayeem Ahmad
Director, Software Development
ValuePLUS Computer Systems Ltd.
BSRS Bhaban (Level-5)
12, Karwan Bazar, Dhaka
W: www.vpcsbd.com
P: +88 02 8153324, 8153365
M: +88 017 14 111 977

[srayhan]

Nayeem,
It seems you guys are on the right track. The only thing I would
suggest that also focus on some engineering practices. Specially I
will recommend <a href ="http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/
continuousIntegration.html">CI (continuous integration)</a> and test
automation.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Syed Rayhan

[nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)]

Hi raisul bhai,
thanks for your reply, yes we have 3 teams located in 3 geographical
locations. us, middle east and bangladesh.
we have 12 people (designer + css expert + dev + qa + project manager)
here in bangladesh, (soon we becoming JV company tekSymmetry bd and
tekSymmetry kansas),

we have open collaboration tool where everyone can see, what's going
on. (including client).
more preciously after daily scrum we send updated sprint backlog and
burndown chart to everyone, so management can easily find what's going
on.

since our current project is the first agile (scrum) converted project
(i started with tekS 3/4 months back),
so i had to give flexibility to transform more trust and knowledge on
the same domain.
now we will have product owner onsite and offsite, both of them will
be responsible to synchronize product backlogs with client.

luckily our whole team is under the same hood, so we haven't face any
problem with multi site distributed team.
i'd definitely feel great if you could share few of your problems, so
it'd help us to learn from the problem.

btw, we still use excel for managing product backlog, sprint backlog,
team available time commitment and burndown chart.
perhaps you can give ScrumPad a try - https://scrumpad.com/

best wishes,

On Jul 26, 4:12 pm, Raisul Kabir <rais...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Hassan,
> Nice to hear from you. Good writing as always.
>
> I see tekS is a Kansas company. Do they have any devs there also? How many
> team members here in Dhaka?
> Incase there is any dev in Kansas, do you do distributed scrum? Do you use
> physical board or software?
> Distributed scrum is a big challenge. So, I was wondering what is your
> experience about that.
>
> Raisul
>
> --------------------
> Raisul Kabir, CTO, BrainStation-23
> H-480, R-32, Mohakhali, New DOHS,
> Dhaka, Bangladesh
> cell: +8801713458492

> email: rai...@brainstation-23.com rais...@gmail.com rai...@latitude-23.net

> skype: raisulk gtalk: raisulk
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 1:29 AM, nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan) <
>

[Raisul Kabir]

Like ... the CEO likes to decide what he wants. So, it would be better if he is product owner. But, he won't be present in the sprint planning meeting to answer questions. We have two hours of overlapping time, so 4 hrs sprint planning meeting isn't possible ... things like that. There are common sense solution to those, but wanted to know if somebody having distributed team, then could know others experience, you know.

Thanks.

Raisul


--------------------
Raisul Kabir, CTO, BrainStation-23
H-480, R-32, Mohakhali, New DOHS,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
cell: +8801713458492

email: rai...@brainstation-23.com rai...@gmail.com rai...@latitude-23.net
skype: raisulk gtalk: raisulk

[S. M. Sohan]

Dear Raisul bhai,

You pointed a good issue of remote development. At Code71, we worked with US clients and had the similar situation. We followed two different approaches:-

1. Stay late at office for asking questions and attending reviews (also for those delicious Bar-B-Q tonight chicken :-)). For this, we use conference call using FreeConference.com and have a three way conference. It works well with some clients.
2. Use tools to facilitate collaboration. So, we ask our product owners to populate the backlog while we are working in the sprint. Then we usually post a series of questions when 1/2 days still remain in the sprint. And product owners can answer the questions before we plan for the next sprint.

In general, to make up for the alternating time zone, it is a good idea to stay late/ come early for planning and reviews. It works best this way in my opinion. However, if that is not possible, I found collaboration and beforehand questions to be really important. For collaboration and distant meetings we use:-

1. Desktop sharing tool Yugma

2. Email/IM/Skype

3. Conference calls with Polycon (conference phone)

4. ScrumPad

Last week we were talking about using a video conferencing facility. However, we are yet to start it.

Please share how you are communicating with remote clients/teams.

--

Sohan
http://www.smsohan.com
http://smsohan.blogspot.com

[Nayeem Ahmad]

Rayhan Bhai,

Thanks for your input.

I am already planning on how to do the CI part. The link was very useful for that purpose.

Thanks.

[nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)]

I doubt if CEO could be good product owner :) since he has to focus on
so many stuffs.
it'd be better someone who can directly talk with client and sync
product backlogs accordingly.
because product owner also has to prioritize backlog items, also he
needs to be in review and planning meeting.
more preciously he has to be every time during the sprint, if any
issues or unclear requirements come up he has to clarify.
so it shouldn't be someone who got so much power in hand. so everyone
(team and scrum master) might feel in shake.

can anyone discuss about CEO as PO ?

@sohan bhai, nice reply btw. though in my previous company we had
everyone on site.
here, we are facing problem with continuous communication, thus we
have been communicating over the phone and messenger.
your referred tools will be a good support.

best wishes,

On Jul 27, 2:57 pm, Raisul Kabir <rais...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Like ... the CEO likes to decide what he wants. So, it would be better if he
> is product owner. But, he won't be present in the sprint planning meeting to
> answer questions. We have two hours of overlapping time, so 4 hrs sprint
> planning meeting isn't possible ... things like that. There are common sense
> solution to those, but wanted to know if somebody having distributed team,
> then could know others experience, you know.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Raisul
>
> --------------------
> Raisul Kabir, CTO, BrainStation-23
> H-480, R-32, Mohakhali, New DOHS,
> Dhaka, Bangladesh
> cell: +8801713458492

> email: rai...@brainstation-23.com rais...@gmail.com rai...@latitude-23.net
> skype: raisulk gtalk: raisulk
>

> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:21 PM, nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan) <
>

> hasan8...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi raisul bhai,
> > thanks for your reply, yes we have 3 teams located in 3 geographical
> > locations. us, middle east and bangladesh.
> > we have 12 people (designer + css expert + dev + qa + project manager)
> > here in bangladesh, (soon we becoming JV company tekSymmetry bd and
> > tekSymmetry kansas),
>
> > we have open collaboration tool where everyone can see, what's going
> > on. (including client).
> > more preciously after daily scrum we send updated sprint backlog and
> > burndown chart to everyone, so management can easily find what's going
> > on.
>
> > since our current project is the first agile (scrum) converted project
> > (i started with tekS 3/4 months back),
> > so i had to give flexibility to transform more trust and knowledge on
> > the same domain.
> > now we will have product owner onsite and offsite, both of them will
> > be responsible to synchronize product backlogs with client.
>
> > luckily our whole team is under the same hood, so we haven't face any
> > problem with multi site distributed team.
> > i'd definitely feel great if you could share few of your problems, so
> > it'd help us to learn from the problem.
>
> > btw, we still use excel for managing product backlog, sprint backlog,
> > team available time commitment and burndown chart.

> > perhaps you can give ScrumPad a try -https://scrumpad.com/

[nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan)]

One good thing about CI is, your QA doesn't need to bother developer
about deployment related issue, they know when issue is marked as
resolved maximum 10 minutes (if you have 10 mins schedule) requires to
get it up on test server.

best wishes, what kinda of platform are you working on ? java, .net,
ruby or php?

On Jul 27, 4:21 pm, Nayeem Ahmad <nay...@vpcsbd.com> wrote:
> Rayhan Bhai,Thanks for your input.

[Nayeem Ahmad]

I think the following attributes are needed in a product owner to make the sprint successful:

1. Real interest in product. Not just someone officially assigned to play the role.

2. Have clear understanding about the expectations of the stakeholders (the people he/she is presenting)

3. And most critically, available during the sprint for clarification or adjustments.

4. Desn't own so many products (making all inferior)

5. Able to prioritize and measure business value of the features.

Considering all this, I don't see it to be a very good option for CEO to be product owner.

Thanks.

[Raisul Kabir]

Thanks for the points. I agree with you, Hasan and others. But, sometimes it's difficult to put everything in place perfectly, you know. We are trying to put PO differnt than CEO for sometime but so far without any success because nobody can answer questions. Probably we will have to have a PO abroad who will have product grooming meeting with CEO with some good amount of time. But, having a PO abroad isn't an easy thing :-)

Raisul


--------------------
Raisul Kabir, CTO, BrainStation-23
H-480, R-32, Mohakhali, New DOHS,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
cell: +8801713458492

email: rai...@brainstation-23.com rai...@gmail.com rai...@latitude-23.net
skype: raisulk gtalk: raisulk