Comments on: What’s So Great About Flow?

By: Bachan

Bachan — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:32:18 +0000

At this point in our Agile implementation we rely solely on story position for estimation and release plannig . Team pulls from the backlog during the sprint planning and there is no command and control on how much they pull, team know about the avreage velocity and more or less pulls the story points based on the velocity and if they wrap up story points during the Sprint period they take up additional tasks if it can be finsihed during the Sprint cycle.
We are defnietly following the 5 points you notes about , So how can you tell if your team has embraced Flow?

Do you think we should be looking the total hours for the resources and use those for estiamtion and release planning over story points and team velocity

By: RickS

RickS — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:49:18 +0000

Ok, I guess I don’t get the idea of ‘Flow’. We’re already scheduling only 5.5 hours of work per person. I though the idea of story points, spikes, and story decomposition was the recommended way to handle uncertainty and to build in some slack into stories. Are you saying that there needs to be additional slack built in? if so, then should we increase the amount of available time(say to 7 hrs/day), so that with slack built-in, we can get about 5 hours of work?

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:11:54 +0000

LOL!!!! Should Sarah give Walter “Extreme Makeover” tips on his mustache as well as Agile adoption tips? Hope your market testing and Agile adoption are both now on terra firma :- )

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:27:27 +0000

Walter is why I shaved my mustache! A career counselor told me they don’t market test well :-)

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:53:12 +0000

I have had experience with a few skeptical/resistant Walters in my life as an Agile coach. I’ve dealt with this in organizations small, medium, and large. My attempt at a humorous portrayal may have gotten in the way of portraying my real life experiences with these Project Managers and Directors.

I honestly ran into a group just last year who told me that they had been “doing Agile” for a while. They had been taught by their CTO who had “done Agile” at a previous company. And this is the truth: they were required to be 100% allocated. Their Sprint plan and all the tasks and estimates in it had to account for 100% of everyone’s time in the Sprint timebox. This mindset was exacerbated by the team practice (dictated by the CTO) to therefore put in all their vacation time, holidays, and even book club meetings as part of their commitment in the Sprint.

I had a really really tough time talking with them about only committing to delivery of valued items as their Sprint commitment, AND that that should not equate to 100% of their available time within a Sprint’s timebox.

One other thing. This situation also indicated that a lot of command-and control still existed and that there were no retrospectives to inspect and adapt practices and team agreements.

I think the team could have really used a Sarah (though much nicer and less snotty than the one I thrust on Walter) I am hopeful that no one would view me as an Agile coach like Sarah :-)

Thanks for your comments.

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:09:06 +0000

I think Walter (minus the irony, of course) is not too far off from Project Managers trying to adopt Agile just to go with the stream, which, IMO, is a big mistake.

Agile is getting bigger by the day right now, and the problem with it is that a lot of people have different understandings of what Agile really is.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:35:19 +0000

I think the info about flow is good, but Walter is looking like a bit of a “straw man.” There is much he doesn’t “get” about Agile which may be understandable. But there is also much he doesn’t seem to “get” about even reasonable non-Agile development.

By: Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:26:25 +0000

Thanks Scott,

Yeh, it is tricky figuring personas when trying to be “funny” and also give useful information. So, thanks for taking the time to express your view on the goodness of the “flow” stuff, and the potential hazard of going too far with the Walter and Sarah exchanges. It was their first trip out of the gate. I am hopeful they will get more settled! Thanks, Jean

By: Scott Duncan

Scott Duncan — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:06:05 +0000

On the other hand, Sarah is coming across as a tad supercilious. I’d like the exchanges to seem a bit more realistic. I think most Walters would be a bit more “careful in how they phrase what they do. And Sarah, as a consultant coming from the outside, should likely not immediately tell the person she has to work most with that they misunderstand and need “a long talk.”