Agilopolis Community Conference is coming back to Wroclaw...

Conference: 18.06.2008

This first semi-annual Wroclaw Agile Community Conference designed for team leads, team members and project management is back! There is no other event in the Poland with similar opportunities for learning, networking, and tracking innovation occurring in the Agile communities.

Picture gallery is available here.

Some of our speakers include :

• Habte Woldu, QNH Poland
• Lukasz Bratek, Research&Engineering Center
• Tomasz Lukasiewicz, Wroclaw University of Technology/Research&Engineering Center
• Roman Sorokiewicz, Research&Engineering Center
• Jerzy Wachala, Nokia Siemens Networks

16:30 - 16:40 Welcome and introduction

We had a very worm welcome from Emanuela Kubicka (Research&Engineering Center)& Ewa Schumacher into the conference. Short talk about rules ;-) and schedule, coffee breaks and presenters.

16:40 - 17:25 Lecture 1: Case study: Agile in non-Agile environment

First lecture of the conference was already a strong blow. Habte presented his agile experience during automation of business processes. Project was considerably long however only one team was delivering.

One of the first sentences already made agile purist hair rise: “In perfect world, there will be customer onsite, clear agile process and organization. However, we are not leaving in fairy tale, so must adjust to circumstances.” In that particular case, to standard milestone oriented process and remote customer. Such setup is quite standard especially in offshoring environment.

Presented case study offered practical insight, solutions verified in real project with real customer and answers for most burning issues usually raised on agile trainings.

First question was related to role of product owner. Short question towards audience revealed that surprisingly large number of people have local product owner! The question is these real product owners or more like local PO-proxy? In Habte’s project it was clearly proxy, person that links real business owner with the team and pushes PO to deliver answers, requirements and prioritization. In that case, Product Owner was from business side when PO-proxy from engineering side – standard case of shadow organization.
In case of organization not oriented on agile, there is usually problem (issue?,
chellange?) – who should become PO-proxy?

• Project manager
• Technical leader (architect)

Both options were verified during project that case study is based on. Unfortunately, there is no definite answer. Project manager was too conservative on spending and required features. On the other hand, technical lead had no consideration or interest in spending. The advice is not to base on role but more on person attitude or matching personality. Related to PO question, it was clearly stated that long requirements clarification path does not work and is a large burden to the project.
Standard case: team->PO-proxy->PO->analytics->PO->PO-proxy->team.

Having defined PO role, not it is time to take second most often asking question. Who should become SCRUM master in organization with standard line organization? Here there are a little bit more choices: line manager, team members in round robin fashion, technical lead or project manager. Advantages and disadvantages were discussed based on Habte’s experiences. One of the questions was related to conflict of interests if project manager is at the same time Scrum Master. On the one side, his role is to shield the team from external disturbances when at the same time he is the bad guy, management representative, trying to interrupt with team work and focused on milestone plan pushes for deliveries. Such conflict of interest is once more only possible with proper people attribute despite the fact that in PM’s job description is to balance between customer requests and team capabilities. In any case, project manager has at least one important responsibility. It is his job to fill time sheets .
Next time of presentation was focused on Habte’s experience in sharing people between different projects or departments. Answer here is pretty clear: no sharing. Not because switching between tasks takes time but because such member gives no commitment to any team and ruin iterations together with teams’ morale. It is usually standard case that despite of planning (44,6% team A and 55,4% Team B) tasks are not done since there is always explanation that there was more important job in other team.

People sharing or team organization was also presented in the context of tester assignment. Should tester be part of the team – the answer was also clear and loud: yes – tester is part of the team. He might be cross functional (doing also development) or purely testing, but he is always part of the team. Here comes a question, so what to do with him at beginning of project were there is nothing to be tested? Habte also in that case was well prepared, in such situation testcases should be written and requirements should be reviewed.
Discussion and further issues went on and on but in similar manner but the final statement was important: Always be pragmatic when dealing with agile!

16:40 - 17:25 Lecture 2: Agile Project in reality – execution of an example project

Short review of “Agile Project in reality – execution of an example project” by Tomasz Lukasiewicz (Wroclaw University of Technology/Research&Engineering Center) and Lukasz Brakte (Research&Engineering Center).

Tomek & Lukasz have presented an interactive lecture called: Agile Project in reality – execution of an example project. Idea behind presentation was to give participants (or clients) hands on experience about creation & execution of an agile project – presentation project. First the roles were setup, as in every project, so ACD participants were called Product Owners (clients representatives), and presenters were acting as team / scrum master based on their current activity. If Tomek was presenting something - he was actually doing something – he was then team, at the same time Lukasz was acting as Scrum Master – so protecting the team before e.g. questions ;-). Presentation, or should I call it project has started by creation of Product Backlog. Before project started each of participants become a card with issues and places for comments. After that Tomek has shortly presented topics that were to be done. Product Backlog items were mini-presentations that the client should pick up as most important / interesting from his/hers point of view. Participants were informed, that every iteration should delivery something valuable and ready to be used by all participants. Success or failure of the iteration is verified during demo session. Following user stories were proposed to participants and could be delivered by development team: Estimation and planning, Retrospection, Distributed teams and offshoring, Requirements management, Project management method selection, Introduction of agile in organization, People management and motivation, Scrum in practice and Scrum introduction. Participants have picked up by voting the most important ones: Scrum in practice, Scrum introduction, People management and motivation. Each of us have had two votes. This part was very intensive & interactive, because each of participants was asked to give his votes – as in real project during backlog grooming. We were noted, that business choice is important since only half of them can be usually done during presentation. During the course participants could see and execute prioritization, backlog operation, burndown chart and taskboard creation. Backlog was created, iteration was planned and task board was created. Backlog items in order of realization:

1. Scrum introduction
2. People management and motivation.
3. Scrum in practice,

Project was planned for 3 iterations, but due to large amount of questions & really strong interest in first 2 topics project was descoped and planned for only two iterations. First Łukasz has presented “Scrum introduction”. This issue was about scrum basics, so roles, ceremonies amd artifacts. Since there were many people, who previously do not experience Scrum, there were many basic, but very needed questions on that. Łukasz answered inbetween on many questions regarding his practical usage of scrum in own teams.

20:00 - 20:40 Expert panel: Agile - differences and similarities to standard project management methods

This time expert panel main topic was “Agile - differences and similarities to standard project management methods”. First Jerzy Wachala from Nokia Siemens Networks acting as moderator of panel has made a short introduction to the topic of talk. He went through standards of project management Waterfall & Agile, show the background of our talk that is should be more about introduction of agile into our organization having in mind benefits and downfalls of it. The panel has started; Habte Woldu (QNH Poland), Lukasz Bratek, (Research&Engineering Center), Tomasz Lukasiewicz (Wroclaw University of Technology/Research&Engineering Center) and Roman Sorokiewicz (Research&Engineering Center) have started to “fight” each other.

During the panel there were many questions coming directly for the audience e.g. what is the difference between agile & interative development used with RUP? or how to introduce agile into my own organization? Panel was planned for less the hour but took more then one ;-) This makes us sure, that Agile introduction into organization is really a hot topic that’s need to be address at least one more time. During the session there were so many questions, that organizers have promised to gather all of them and publish & try to answer them on Agilopolis website.

You can find all all questions and discussion on Agilopolis Forum.