Tag Archives: Product Owner

Party like it’s 1967

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Party like its 1967The Agile stuff I’ve been introducing to my team has generated a lot of interest, so I kicked off a series of brown bag sessions at work, to lift the lid on Agile. These are informal introductory learning opportunities held over lunchtime.  People turn up with their lunch, their brain and if they like, some questions on the topic.

Our first session was titled “Party like it’s 1967”. 1967 was an exciting year. It was the summer of love in San Francisco, The Beatles starred in Magical Mystery Tour, The Doors released Light My Fire, The Monkees, I’m a Believer and Aretha Franklin, Respect. An unmanned craft, the Surveyor 3 was landed on the moon and sent back 6000 pictures. Martin Luther King Jr denounced the Vietnam War and tens of thousands of protestors marched on Washington. In Australia, Aboriginals were given the right to be counted in the national census. It was probably not good form for me to mention to my Geelong attendees that Richmond defeated Geelong in the footy grand final.

It was, whether you were around to remember it or not – BIG!

The aim of the brown bag, was to plan project “Party like it’s 1967” using Agile. During the session, attendees put together user stories to deliver all that was required for a groovy 1967 themed party. The user stories looked like this:

  • As the event coordinator, I want a venue, so that Katrina can hold her party.
  • As the event coordinator, I want music, so that I can evoke the atmosphere of 1967.
  • As the event coordinator, I want invitations, so that guests can come to the party.
  • As the event coordinator, I want food, so that guests can eat at the party.
  • As the event coordinator, I want entertainment, so that guests can enjoy the party.

Thinking through the venue story, the participants artculated the following acceptance criteria:

  • The venue can comfortably accommodate 100 people.
  • The venue has an area for quiet conversation and groovy dancing.
  • The venue is in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
  • The venue décor has a party, rather than corporate, atmosphere.
  • The venue must allow pictures to be hung on the walls.

Whilst planning the party in an Agile way, the team talked with the Product Owner and learnt heaps of useful stuff like what the  the most popular colours of 1967 were – turquoise, pink, orange and sunshine! They also had the opportunity to be Scrum Master  for an hour and be involved in a self-managing Agile team. It was a fun session and the image with this blog post shows what the team looked like after planning “Party like it’s 1967”.

The Hoodoo Gurus do Agile

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Hoodoo-GurusA few days ago I happened upon the iconic album cover from the Hoodoo Gurus 1984 album Stoneage Romeos. Initially a cult inner-city act, their popularity expanded due to regular airplay on radio station Triple J and nationwide pop TV show Countdown.

I had organised a field trip for my team to the offices of accounting software company MYOB, to see Agile product development in action. There in the groovy breakout space was the cover image of the “Gurus” first album. Let me be perfectly clear here, back in the eighties when I followed the band around the pub circuit, I wasn’t imagining that thirty years later I’d relate their meteoric (in my mind only) rise to fame with Agile product development methodology!

It did get me thinking though, that just like Agile methodology, the Gurus were a bit out there. Agile emphasises business people and developers working together daily throughout a project. Likewise, it recognises that the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to, and within a development team, is face-to-face conversation.

On our field trip to MYOB, we saw these principles in action where about four standups were being conducted simultaneously, with Developers asking Product Owners questions about features, and confirming how they could drive forward their activities for the day. The sound in the large open space office area was that of people involved in face-to-face conversation.

As visitors to MYOB, the team unanimously commented on the passion shown by the Scrum Masters who hosted us on our tour. It turns out that it isn’t just a principle in the Agile manifesto to build projects around motivated individuals and give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done! We saw it in action.

True, the Hoodoo Gurus had a different sound to other eighties rock bands that had come before them, but championed by radio station Triple J, their non-mainstream sound took hold. In my organisation we are amongst the first teams adopting Agile. It means that we are doing things a bit differently to satisfy our stakeholders through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

When inducted into the 2007 ARIA Hall of Fame, the announcement stated that the Gurus were one of the most “inventive, lyrically smart and exciting” bands from Australia. “Inventive”, “Smart” and “Exciting” – sounds a bit like Agile to me.

Minions rush to Agile

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MinionsI was recently beyond excited to hear that the Minions are set to star in their own film, a spin-off/prequel to the 2010 Despicable Me and 2013 Despicable Me 2.

In case you haven’t seen these movies, Minions are yellow henchmen who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who have only one purpose: to serve history’s most ambitious villains. So admittedly, they are driven by serving evil, but their industrious cuteness is what won me over from the very beginning, and continues to make me laugh every time I see their silly one or two eyed selves.

Minions were also the stars of  my team’s recent training. The focus of the workshop I put together was on understanding roles within an Agile context. It’s best explained by picturing an Agile team sitting in a room (of course if you picture the team as Minions, there’d be no sitting!).

The Product Owner would be nearest the door, because he/she spends a lot of time outside the room talking to stakeholders to define the product/initiative and to prioritise features. The Product owner is always available at standups to listen to the Developers and communicate the product vision.

The Scrum Master might be close-ish to the door too, because in the most diplomatic but firm way, he/she wants to ensure that the Development team is free of (admittedly well intentioned) disturbances from outside the team. The Scrum master is always at standups, checking the choreography of the event and keeping one eye on the Agile card wall to encourage the whole team to commit to pushing stories through the sprint. The Scrum Master is the team’s cheer squad.

The Development team would be further inside the room, so that they can get on with what they need to be doing – building the asset. By arrangement, the Product Owner and Stakeholders are invited to sit with the Developers for walkthroughs. The Developers always feel they can catch up with the Scrum Master about in sprint activities or obstacles. Likewise they feel confident to seek product decisions from the Product Owner.

Suffice it to say that in the Minions’ world everything has a happy ending. Translating this into Agile terms – assets are delivered on time, with the features our stakeholders and users need and want, and the team has a bit of fun along the way!

Goldilocks, Agile & the Three Bears

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BearMy web team are used to getting some crazy requests for resolution, but this one was weirder than the average digital project we work on.

Eager to take a collaborative and effective approach to managing digital content development, we are in the throes of introducing Agile methodology. We kicked this off with a workshop that saw us creating a comic book of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This fun exercise is based on Mark Levison’s Learning Scrum Through Games.

The exercise is a fabulous way for a team to experience Scrum ceremonies, practices and roles, from the ground up. I acted as Product Owner and provided the team with the following unprioritised backlog:

  1. As a parent I can be excited by the book cover, so that I will open the book and read it to my child.
  2. As a child I can see colourful pictures of the characters, so that I can understand the story without having to read it.
  3. As a child I can count the characters and items, so that I can develop my counting skills.
  4. As a sponsor I can showcase my advertisement for home security so that parents will contact me for my services.
  5. As a parent I can get appropriate content for my 4-6 year old child so that they are able to understand it.
  6. As a sponsor I can see my public service announcement about being kind to animals, so that the next generation will improve on our generation.

The team were given the following schedule for a two day sprint. They needed to complete the comic book in two sprints:

5 mins         Sprint Planning (decide how much to do)
10 mins       Sprint Day 1 – Standup (what did you do, what you will do, obstacles)
10 mins       Sprint Day 2 – Standup (what did you do, what you will do, obstacles)
5 mins         Sprint Review (show the work)
5 mins         Sprint Retrospective (what went well, what to improve, what’s still puzzling?)

After the team ran through the first sprint, as Product Owner, I explained that there was another story that I desperately needed to add to the backlog: As a child, I want to see a page in the book that shows what the bears were doing while they were out, so that I can once and for all know what they were up to when they left their house unattended and unlocked that morning!

The exercise was fantastic fun and the learning outcomes were similar to those that Mark Levison reported:

  • Utillise the Product Owner – The team forgot to ask the Product Owner questions, but after the first retro they corrected this. This lead to some great discussion of Acceptance Criteria and Walkthroughs.
  • Chaos reigned – We learnt that the forming stage of a team, can be pretty chaotic, but that it’s possible to still develop product
  • Working software is the only measure of progress – The team didn’t get through all stories in the backlog. Even when a late breaking story entered after sprint 1, they still didn’t ask what might have to come out of the backlog. What they did do really well though, was prioritise which items in the backlog would add value. This lead to a great discussion about Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
  • Roles within the team – The Scrum Master did a good job of checking in with the team if they had any obstacles. We also discussed how to best utilise a team with a variety of skills. I even saw some informal pairing happening!

Most importantly, the team learnt that Agile values satisfying the customer though early and continuous development.

I’d love to hear other Agilists experience at having a go at this exercise, or getting a team up and running. My team were really fired up from the activity, and the very next day we put it into action with our actual backlog.