Reply to: AGILE

[Lockhouse]

Has anyone done planning poker?

Yep me.

Not read the whole thread sorry.

I'm a Scrum Master, we run our daily stand ups over the phone plus Net Meeting. We have a team of 13 people, 7 in the UK and 6 Bobs.

The Bobs do the BAU stuff so I run that more Kanban type, the UK we have a proper sprint planning meeting and do a variation of planning poker to estimate how much work we can accomplish in a sprint. When doing the retrospective I tend to report the two groups separately. Really they should have their own scrums but it's nice to have the whole team know what's going on.

I can normally do a daily scrum in 10-15 minutes. There's no hanging about and it's very to the point. I really try and keep the momentum going. When we had the previous Scrum Master people were hanging up halfway through and I'm glad to say I think I've stopped that.

Agile is just a tool like any other and I'll change the drill bit to suit the material. It's all about relationships rather than processes in my book. My aim is to keep people focussed, make sure there's plenty of interesting stuff to do and keep the boring bits to a minimum.

Just my 2p worth.

[DigitalUser]

Re: AGILE

Has anyone done planning poker?

Yes, but there isn't a huge amount of value in it. To be honest, any type of estimation is a wasteful activity, but that's a separate discussion.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[DigitalUser]

Re: AGILE

I've seen a team of circa 20 standing around for over an hour every day at my last place. WTF were they doing?

Misunderstanding Scrum by the sounds of it. Anything above a size of 8 and you should be looking to split your teams into smaller groups. The daily stand up should be timeboxed to 15 minutes. If it's going consistently over then you have problems with your process.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[The Spartan]

Has anyone done planning poker?

[jmo21]

I've seen a team of circa 20 standing around for over an hour every day at my last place. WTF were they doing?

I've seen similar. Always turns into discussions over how to solve everyone's blocking issues and wastes everyone's time

[GB9]

It all depends on the way Agile is implemented. I have seen places where the morning standups drag on from anything between 30 -45 mins depending on the number of people involved. Not one of the things I look forward to as soon as enter the workplace.

I've seen a team of circa 20 standing around for over an hour every day at my last place. WTF were they doing?

[tranceporter]

FLA in this case, surely?



In my (admittedly limited) experience of Agile, it seems to involve more talking than doing, more meetings than necessary and more need to detail the minutiae than can be justified. Good developers don't need that, they just need a list of deliverables, a framework, a timescale and a bottomless supply of coffee.

Maybe I've just never seen it implemented properly, but I don't (yet) have any desire or need to find out.

It all depends on the way Agile is implemented. I have seen places where the morning standups drag on from anything between 30 -45 mins depending on the number of people involved. Not one of the things I look forward to as soon as enter the workplace.

[magicbuttons]

Sadly I thought of Synchronous Data Link Control because I've never heard of the other one and that's a real problem in computing with too many TLAs being reused.

FLA in this case, surely?

What makes you say that? It should encourage self-organisation (assuming the ScrumMaster allows this to happen) and therefore micromanagement wouldn't be an issue?

In my (admittedly limited) experience of Agile, it seems to involve more talking than doing, more meetings than necessary and more need to detail the minutiae than can be justified. Good developers don't need that, they just need a list of deliverables, a framework, a timescale and a bottomless supply of coffee.

Maybe I've just never seen it implemented properly, but I don't (yet) have any desire or need to find out.

[cojak]

Sadly I thought of Synchronous Data Link Control because I've never heard of the other one and that's a real problem in computing with too many TLAs being reused. I agree with your last sentence though

It's all about context DS

[darmstadt]

Software Development Life Cycle, not Syncronous Data Link Control.

My advice would be to stay out of threads you don't understand Dear. It makes you look like a know-it-all idiot.

Or a sockie.

Sadly I thought of Synchronous Data Link Control because I've never heard of the other one and that's a real problem in computing with too many TLAs being reused. I agree with your last sentence though

[DigitalUser]

"Agile" is among the terms I have in my contracts-to-email exclusions list. Its mere mention in an architect/developer spec suggests a culture of micromanagement and an atmosphere in which I would not enjoy working.

What makes you say that? It should encourage self-organisation (assuming the ScrumMaster allows this to happen) and therefore micromanagement wouldn't be an issue?

[nomadd]

You're not in retail are you?

Good god no. Did Retail once. Worst contract in 25 years of contracting. Never, ever again.

[tranceporter]

Indeed, we have enterprise architects dithering about the minutiae of interim functional enhancements on a daily basis. And now they want a huddle at 8.30 every day!!! FFS I'm not cuddling anyone at that time, they will be lucky if I'm parking my car that early!

edit and I forgot to mention, it's just one step away from lots of fag packet specs stuck around a bunch of cartoon stick men

So have they yet managed to get passport size pics of you to stick on the kanban blue board? Our pics were taken 4 months ago, but they are still gathering dust on the window sills because the scrum masters could not find the appropriate places to put them

[GB9]

Full-on Scrum in my current gig. It's fooking madness. Half the team is in India, so the "Daily 15 minute stand-up around the story board" is a very strange experience indeed. We tell the Indian team which post-its we moved to which columns afterwards.

You're not in retail are you?

[tractor]

..

"Agile" is among the terms I have in my contracts-to-email exclusions list. Its mere mention in an architect/developer spec suggests a culture of micromanagement and an atmosphere in which I would not enjoy working.

Indeed, we have enterprise architects dithering about the minutiae of interim functional enhancements on a daily basis. And now they want a huddle at 8.30 every day!!! FFS I'm not cuddling anyone at that time, they will be lucky if I'm parking my car that early!

edit and I forgot to mention, it's just one step away from lots of fag packet specs stuck around a bunch of cartoon stick men

oh and I just noticed the number of my post