Monkey Grassing

A common anti-pattern that I’ve seen is managers taking a highly effective team and scattering them across a larger number of teams in the hopes that they’ll take everything they know and make those new teams great. Then instead of having one great team, they’ll have many great teams.

Tracking metrics

Most companies I work with have a desire to track metrics for their development teams, and I support this. It’s hard to improve something we can’t see so metrics are a good first step as we seek to improve.

When everything is a priority

I was asked what to do when the customer won’t prioritize the stories and insists that everything has to be done now. That brought back memories of the first time that had happened to me. This was a very long time ago and I can’t remember who had given me the idea to approach it this way.

Flow Efficiency

Flow efficiency (sometimes called Cycle Efficiency) is a metric that gives us a sense of how much time work is waiting. A flow efficiency of 100% would indicate that we are adding value to the work item for the entire time it’s in progress. 50% would imply that half the time we’re working on it and half the time the work is just waiting.

Self-sufficient teams

A number of years ago, a client of mine had a new feature request come to one part of the company. It was a significant change that would touch quite a few teams to get done and when they asked those teams how long it would take, the answer was somewhere between 10 and 12 weeks.

When we do everything right and it still doesn’t solve the right problem

The Choluteca Bridge, in Honduras, was built in an area known for hurricanes and other strong weather. It was designed to withstand the destructive force of a hurricane so when hurricane Mitch came through later that same year, it was no surprise that the bridge sustained only minor damage. Clearly, it had been designed and implemented well.

Horizontal scaling

When we think of scaling the work, we’re typically thinking of stories that are grouped within features or epics, which might be grouped inside even larger items. This is vertical scaling and is fairly common. There is another type of scaling, which we need to also consider, and that is horizontal.

Book recommendations

I’m often asked for book recommendations on various agile topics. There is no single best book to start with so I’m giving you a bunch of categories to pick from.

Monte Carlo under the covers

Monte Carlo forecasting is the most common form of probabilistic forecasting that we see. It’s compelling because it can provide a highly accurate forecast of when work will be done, with relatively little effort.

What is Probabilistic Forecasting?

Do your customers ever ask “When will it be done?” When dealing with the future, there’s almost never an accurate deterministic answer (Tuesday, exactly at 3:45pm) to that question but there is an accurate probabilistic answer (85% chance of completion on or before October 1) and in most cases, it’s a lot easier to calculate than you’d expect.