Author Archives: Chris Sims

The Great Agile Spec Showdown!

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Agile evangelists claim that extensive written requirements and specifications can be dispensed with in favor of lighter-weight ‘stories’. It sounds easier, certainly, but can it really be as good? Won’t all of the important details get lost? Join the Engineering Managers Support Group as we stage a participatory showdown between traditional and agile specs. May the best specs win! Of course, we will also feature our usual round-table discussion of your pressing engineering and leadership issues.

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What Makes Distributed Agile Teams Succeed – At Agile2008

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Greetings from Agile2008 in Toronto! To say that I have been overwhelmed by the conference would be an understatement. With 1600+ agile folks here, I am constantly running into old friends, people that I met at previous conferences, and my agile heros. The sheer volume of knowledge and expertise that is being shared is beyond my ability to describe. Wow!

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Agile Quotes of the Day

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For me, the final session of Dr. Dobb’s Architecture and Design World was ‘SOA Challenges: An Open Source Case Study’ by Sonya Lowry and Evan Deaubl. Evan talked about the technical challenges. Sonya talked about the leadership challenges on the project, and how she used agile methods to over come them. Sonya shared these:

“It’s agile, not ad-hoc!”

“You need to make agile fit your team, not make your team fit an agile book.”

Indeed.

Cheers,

Chris

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What Makes Agile Projects Succeed at Dr. Dobb’s

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Monday evening more that 40 people turned up at a ‘Birds of a Feather’ gathering to consider “What makes agile projects succeed (or Fail)?” as part of Dr. Dobb’s Architecture and Design World in Chicago. In 90 minutes the group generated, discussed, and ranked about 40 different answers to this question, while enjoying some pizza and beverages.

Below, I’m listing all of the ideas as ranked by the group. I’ll elaborate on a few of the ideas that the group focused on. I’ll also provide links to the results from other groups who have considered the same question.

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Self-Organizing Orchestra

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The traditional roles on a scrum team are: Product Owner, Developer, and Scrum Master. Noticeably absent is the role of Team Leader; the team is expected to self-organize. Similarly, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has dispensed entirely with the role of conductor in favor of a process where leadership is shared and decisions are made by the team. The result has been to create one of the world’s most renowned chamber orchestras. Along the way, they have learned lessons and ways of working together that any Scrum team can benefit from.

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Cheers,

Chris

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The Power of Self-Organizing Teams

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Greetings,

A lot of attention has been focused on the power of self-organizing agile teams. This power is the foundation upon which Scrum, the most widely adopted agile methodology, is built. Is it hype or is there something there? This month, the Bay Area Engineering Managers Suport Group will experience how a group can self-organize into a team, and how such a team can evolve ever-better ways of working together. Come out and join the fun, now in Santa Clara.

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Intro to Extreme Programming

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This past Wednesday, I presented a 45-minute introduction to Extreme Programming (XP) to the Project Management and Program Management Special Interest Group, who meet every week Cupertino. The group was lively and full of questions. I especially enjoyed the chance to discuss XP, as that is where I got my start doing agile software development, back around the turn of the century.

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Makings of a Great Manager – at EUSF

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Greetings,

Today I had the pleasure of facillitating The Makings of a Great Manager for a group of ambitious job seekers at Experience Unlimited, a program of the San Francisco Chapter Employment Development Division.

Each member of the group considered what attributes, practices, or skills set the best managers that they had worked for, apart from the rest. The group had diverse experience, and the discussions were interesting. We chose a label for each idea, and then we ranked them, based on the collective experience of the group.

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