Book Notes: 'Scrum The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time' By Jeff Sutherland
Size Does Matter, but Only
Relatively
- You have your list, you have
prioritized the list
- Now you have to figure out
just how much effort, time and money the project will take.
- We are horrible at estimating
time - but pretty good at comparing one thing to another.
- Assigned 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,
21
- Fibonacci Sequence - its all
around us.
- If one person estimates
something as a five, and another person an eight - we can see the
difference.
The Oracle of Delphi
- A list of prioritized things
is good. How do we figure out what is a 5 or an 8.
- How do we make sure our
estimates line up with everyone elses.
- People assume that if
everyone else is going along with something their reservations are silly
or misinformed.
- 'Informational Cascade'
- An informational cascade
occurs when its optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of
those ahead of him, to follow the behavior of the preceding individual
without regard to his own information.'
- It's critical to apply your
own judgement and use other estimates to improve your own - not replace
it.
- The other well-known problem
is the 'Halo Effect'
- When one characteristic of
something influences how people will perceive other unrelated
characteristics.
- The Apple Ipod gave all
apple's products a veneer of coolness.
- How to prevent one person's
false assumptions from spoiling the opinion of others.
Planning Poker
- Takes a broad array of
opinions, attempts to remove as much bias as possible and with informed
yet anonymous statements - into an accepted estimate.
- We're talking estimates - not
ironbound schedules.
- This simple method is a way
to avoid any kind of anchoring behavior - such as bandwagon or halo
effects.
- Allows the team to share
knowledge on a particular task.
- Only the people doing the
work know how long and how much effort it will take.
- Teams are individual and
unique.
There are No Tasks; There
are Only Stories.
- Problem is - you're not
getting, or giving enough information to actually do the job right.
- We have an understanding of
characters, desires and motivations.
- When creating a story
- First - think about who -
character or role of that person
- Who is this task being done
for.
- Second - What - what we want
done in the first place.
- Third - motivation - why
does this character want this thing.
- Before you prioritize what
needs to be done
- You need to define the
character, the user or the customer
- You need to know their
likes, dislikes, passions…
- Then you need to understand
their motivations.
- This will all influence how
you'll estimate things.
Write Short Stories
- You want to make sure they
are small enough you can estimate them.
- The team decides how the work
will be accomplished.
- A whole collection of stories
is called an 'Epic'
Be Ready and Be Done
- When you are writing stories
- it is important to know two things.
- Is this story ready
- How will you know when it's
done.
- Bill Wake - Bill says that
for any story to be ready it needs to meet the INVEST criteria
- Independent
- Negotiable
- Valuable
- Estimable
- Small
- Testable
- For each story to be pursued
there should be a 'definition of ready'
- And what is the definition
of done.
Sprint Planning
- What can we accomplish in
this sprint.
Know Your Velocity
- You can start answering the
question as to when things will be done.
- Now we know how to measure
what the team is actually doing.
- Count up all the stories that
are completed - for that week - total the points they were estimated at -
that number is our velocity.
- After you know your velocity
- you can start to figure out what is keeping you from going faster.
- In six weeks we will know the
velocity - but I can give you a list of what is getting our way. Your job to remove them as fast as
possible.
- Examples:
- Not empowering people to
make decisions
- Onerous technical
requirements.
- People not showing up for
meetings.
- Not having people in the
same room.
- There are process,
personality and procedure problems.