Olivier Lafontan - on stuff

Redirect: www.leanpizza.net

2010-06-11T14:14:00.005+01:00

I have just realised that I still have this blog under my name...

My last post was in 2008, nothing since. I recently started blogging at www.leanpizza.net, and will not be using glogger anymore.

I could delete the entire blog' but there are some posts that I like, so I decided to keep it alive and just provide the link to my new digital den.

So, in case there is any doubt, You can find me at:

Www.leanpizza.net

Hope to see you there!! Ciao!

Oli

Woohooo! I am back!!

2008-06-04T22:43:00.002+01:00

I haven't posted anything for ages on this blog!

Not because I had nothing I wanted to share, it is just because:

I have been really busy over the last year and a bit
Speaking definitely works better than writing for this kind of things (and I spoke to more people in one year than the number of people that have visited this blog so far!!)

So, why am I writing again?

First, I am not sure how often I will post. I guess I will do this when I really feel the need to, as opposed to my initial stated objective to follow a certain Iteration and Relase cycle for entries.

Back to the why: not sure, but as I was reviewing my browser favorites tonight, I saw with nostalgy the link to blogspot... followed it and saw that my latest entry was in 2006!

Things have changed since then, so I thought I should at least put things right and update my current situation.

I now work for Exoftware, Irish Company, where I look after the fulfilment part of the business, which is Agile Enablement. And I am getting closer and closer to achieving what I set off to do with "the agile company"...

"the agile company" is no more. Long live the Agile Company!

More On Agile Analysis

2006-11-08T12:08:00.000Z

After more than 2 years of developing and using the Agile Analysis concepts myself, I have reached the point where I have a pretty solid offer on that subject for companies that are actually looking at doing their analysis for agile projects better.

the agile company is therefore now promoting this as one of its main offer. The first course in the series is Agile Analysis essentials: more details can be found here.

Any other questions, send them my way. Any comment, feel free to leave on blog.

The Agile Magic pill... it's here!

2006-07-05T12:07:00.000+01:00

Just a bit of fun... If this pill existed, would you buy it?

Ryanair... again!

2006-04-05T14:13:00.000+01:00

Sorry to keep posting on this subject, but I am spending too much time "waiting" to travel as opposed to actually travelling...

In my last post, I told the story of the outbound journey to my current work place... Today's post is about the inbound journey.

I am lucky enough to be able to come back home every week end and see my family. I use the airline mentioned in the title, as they are cheap and they have planes...!

Anyway, at about the same time they changed the time for the outcbound flights, they also changed the time for the inbound flights: this is now scheduled 2 hours before the previous time (i.e. it was flying at 14:30 and is now at 12:30).

With the old schedule, I could leave work at 12:30 and be there on time to catch my plane. That left me with plenty of time on the Friday to do what I have to do.

But now, I have to leave work at 10:30 on the Friday in order to go back home! There is no other flight until the next day if I miss this one!

Needless to say, this new schedule does not work really well with my co-workers and client(!), and I can feel that people are looking at me in a strange way when I tell them that my day finishes so early.

My problem however does not reside in how to deal with this. My problem lies in the fact that since Ryanair have changed the schedule for this flight, they have not ONCE been on time when I used the service. The best they did was last week where it was only 30 mns late. But on average it has been 60 to 75 minutes delayed....

You know what it feels like? It feels like the time Ryanair give to their passengers for departure are systematically false. Is this another way to ensure that people booked on the plane will be there and ready for when the plane really lands so that your plane can be even more in the air than they are today?

If this is the case, good thinking Batman, 'cause I do my best to be there at the time that is communicated to me when I book, so it works.

However, here is another bit of thinking Mr O'Leary: I travel every week, back and forth. Thats 2 flights a week, so I pay for 2 seats per week on one of your planes. I will project my usage for the last 4 months and say that I will be doing this for 1 year. That's 52 weeks, to which I will substract 8 weeks for holiday. You can therefore assume that I will be commuting 44 weeks per year. At 2 seats per week, that's 88 seats per year that I use and pay on your planes...

I fly on Boeing 737-800, capacity 189 people. The number of sits I will use and pay for per year is about 46% of a full plane.

My point is that I am not satisfied with the service I am getting. I f I could, I would actually use another airline. And it is not just the price: my customer actually pays for these, so I don't really care how much the flights cost to be honest (although I hate to waste, and I don't see why a free drink oin board should cost £200 on the ticket.).

Anyway, when I stop using Ryanair, you will loose nearly 1/2 a plane for 1 of its rotation. Not much I hear you say.

Let's just imagine that 1 more person has the same usage patern than me and decides to ditch it at the same time. That would be 1 of your planes grounded due to no passengers for 1 of its rotation.

Still not too impressive I hear you say, because you have 90 of these planes, and because each of your planes can do up to, say, 5 rotations. per day.

Some more opinions on Ryanair can be found here. I have not counted exactly how many dissatisfied people expressed themselves there, but there areroughly 100 of them. And that's only 1 site...

So now, lets imagine that all these 100 people have the same usage pattern than me and also decide to not use your company. That would be a loss equivalent of more than HALF OF ALL your planes not to take off for one of their rotations.

For an equivalent of ALL your planes not to take off for one rotation, we need 200 people being really unhappy with the service they receive. And, still in equivalence, for all your planes to be grounded for a full day, we only need 5 times this number.

To conclude, it does not look like a complete impossibility that this happends one day. How much would this hurt your company?

Looking at this from an opportunity angle, how could listening to your customers contribute to your growth strategy? Probably more than you can imagine right now.

Dear Michael O'Leary,

2006-03-21T10:51:00.000Z

I am not happy!

I have to fly from the UK to Ireland every week at the moment. In order to minimise the cost of this inconvenience, I am using a well know Irish low fare company: it is cheap, and they have planes.

I have been flying back and forth between the UK and Ireland for the last 3 months or so, and for the major part of using this company, I have been satisfied (ok, they are late from time to time, but hey, even if you pay more with another company, they also are late from time to time).

Because I have been flying the same regular flights for so long, I did not notice 2 weeks ago that the departure time from the UK had been brought forwards by 30 minutes: on that day, I ended up missing the chek in and therefore missing my flight (they would not let me on board with 2 bags...). The nice lady at the desk told me that I had missed the check in by 6 minutes, and I could take the next flight (the next day!!) or fly somewhere else to Ireland and then drive (there was a flight 2 hours later to this destination). I chose the second option 'cause I had to be at work the next morning: that costed me 4 times more than the cost of a typical one way ticket. I ended up having to pay £165 for 6 minutes >> That's crap.

Yesterday, I am on my weekly commute, and arrive well in advance so as not to miss the check in by 6 minutes again. All seems ok, we get on the plane on time and I get ready to doze off for a little hour before touch down. I wake up in a start about 45 minutes later at the sound of the captain explaining why we have not moved.

"There is a problem on the aircraft and the engineer has been notified. He will be here blabla..." Another 45 minutes later, they make us disembark the plane and go back in the airport: the engineer says we need a spare part: somebody will have to go get it and it will take blabla...

Two things here that really pissed me off:

what pissed me off - 1: we were on the plane for about 2 hours. Personally I was fine, I had some water and a good book (and I slept for half of that time anyway). But there were babies and young children stuck in there with their parents not really having planned for more than 1 hour flight in terms of drinks and food. Do you know what the crew did for these people and children? NOTHING. They did nothing at all: they retracted behind their blue curtain on the plane and waited for the captain to talk to us.
what pissed me off - 2: we ended up taking off at 10:30 pm (the original time was 3:20 pm). That's nearly 7 hours delay!!! I had a chat with a group of 4 people who were taking 3 days to visit Ireland and they were going to loose the end of an afternoon there, an evening there, and an early morning there.

What will this company offer to these people in return for that? Nothing.

Michael, your company charged me £165 for 6 minutes delay, I now expect £11550.00 compensation from you... or just a free drink on board when that happens again.

Welcome XP Day France!!

2006-02-16T20:56:00.000Z

Just a quick post to announce that France now has its XP Day.

The organisers want to make this first in the series a success, so if you fancy a little trip to Paris at the end of March, be their guest ;-).

More info such as programme, location and accomodation information can be found here.

More on Agile Analysis: can it be used at programme level?

2006-02-14T22:35:00.000Z

Once again, I find myself working with an organisation that is trying to implement Agile...

Once again, I find myself in the position where the Story Pot does not exist...

Once again, I am given the opportunity to use, improve/experiment with the Agile Analysis concepts that I keep coming back to.

At a recent industry event, I spoke of using Agile Analysis for better Programme Management, with the direct result of enabling companies to implement Business Strategies faster and more effectively.

The presentation I used at the event mentioned above can be found here.

In the meantime, how good is it for me to say that Agile Analysis can enhance the programme decision making process if I don't use it myself?

So, here it is: my current assignment is to help a customer deliver a large programme of change before August. In a month and a half, we have managed to produce all the stories for the programme (8 projects), ran initial planning games for each and collected enough estimates that we have put in a larger Programme Story Pot.

In the meantime, we have started development on one of the projects of the project with a typical team and measured the velocity of a subset of the overall team.

Last week, we all gathered in front of an empty Programme board, and I handed over some Programme Cards (with project names, project value and estimates).

We had our first Programme Planning Game! And it was a great experience.

Here is a pic of the board after 1 hour of PPG.

That was just a warm up, some sort of education session for the IT team: it allowed everyone who took part to understand what and why we had been producing for the last few weeks... Later on this week, we will re-run the same PPG with the Business, our customers, and THEY will play with the cards.

If you are interested in the experiment, keep coming back, I will be talking about this some more I am sure.

My retrospective for 2005

2006-01-05T00:24:00.000Z

What went well:

I started working for myself >> I am now even more concerned about Business Value and the importance of frequent release of it!
I got some really good feed-back from my recent customers (always good ;-)
I saw, tried and learnt new things while I was still at egg
I left egg
I managed to go to a few industry events as a presenter

What did not go so well:

Managing the stress of creating a new activity is sometimes hard ot cope with
I had to leave egg, which was really convenient for the family life: now I am on the road all the time

Actions for 2006:

Get my first £million in the bank! (yeah, right...)
Retire...

Puzzles:
How to get my first million in the bank... That is really nagging me!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR ;-)

Promotion: The Agile Company

2005-11-10T22:28:00.000Z

News about me, news about Agile.

I have recently joined The Agile Company as one of the directors. The Agile Company was created to specifically help companies wishing to become Agile themselves (ie: with a true Transformation objective in mind).

The company of course provide services around the technical/technology departments of organisations and help them to become Agile; but we also recognise that the said departments are not the only ones involved or indeed required to deliver Enterprise Agility. There currently is a disconnect in the overall Agility Value Chain. There is a disconnect in the overall Business Value Chain!!!

This is why we also provide Transformation services for the Business functions, mainly in the shape of eXtreme Analysis experience and coaching...

Now, here's a concept: imagine a company which has become technologically agile coupled with Programme/Project Management and Business Analysis functions that also have the same attributes....

Enough promotion. For any information, just follow the above link or mail me at oli@theagilecompany.com.

Release 8.1: Just some news...

2005-10-12T19:57:00.000+01:00

Have not been busy like this for a long time!!!

I have recenlty decided to give up the "security" of my job to start building value for myself: yep, working for me has changed my life!

In a bit more than a month I have:

- gone to America (Boston is a great city by the way), utilised eXtreme Analysis successfully again, run 1 iteration with the teams and come back to the UK
- talked about eXtreme Analaysis at the Agile Business conference held in London last month, which generated a lot of interest
- started working with a big UK financial institution
- gone to Ireland with a lot to do for the customer and very little time to do it ;-) I have in fact just arrived today for this and will be here for another week.
- lined up additional work until the end of the year, but looking for more!
- became a COO!!!

Fantastic feeling! but feeling tired already...

I thought being on the roads and having hotel time would free up some time for me to work on this blog, but it has not been the case. Still, I will try and post a bit more often than the past month.

Release 8.1: Speed dating... speed pairing

2005-08-26T12:59:00.000+01:00

There is a discussion thread going on (see the extreme programming yahoo discussion group) about the fact that switching pairs is effective and can help implement of other practices and principles.

The argument goes on about the fact that it is actually hard to switch pairs to often, and that it could have a negative impact on the capacity of the team to deliver their iteration plan.

Following this argument, I have been thinking about speed dating and how it could be compared to pair programming: let's call this speed pairing shall we.

As I was thinking about this post, I looked for more info on speed dating there . Here is what they say:

"Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process or dating system (a variant of a meeting system where the purpose is to enjoy romantic or friendship dates rather than decide anything). It originated in Jewish circles in the United States as a way to ensure that more Jewish singles met each other in large cities where they were outnumbered by non-Jews. It has been made more popular by its use on dating game shows, e.g. Fifth Wheel, and has recently become popular in the gay community. Supporters argue that speed dating simply saves time, as most people decide if they are romantically compatible very quickly, and first impressions are usually permanent.

In the original idea of speed dating, men and women are rotated to meet each other for only eight minutes each, are forced to the next round no matter how much they are enjoying the interaction (or dread the next one), then submit to the organizers a list of who they would like to see again (a form of approval voting since any number of suitors can be approved). If there is a match, phone numbers are forwarded. They cannot be traded during the initial eight-minute meeting, to reduce pressure (especially on women) to accept or reject a suitor to their face.

Critics of speed dating say it's shallow and tends to reinforce first impressions, which are often shallow to begin with. A scientific view of speed dating is that eight minutes is more than sufficient to determine if the range of a mate's hormones, a key indicator of immunities, is complementary (different) from one's own. This is claimed by some researchers to be the key factor in the so-called "first impression", and since it is olfactory (smell-based), there is no need for two individuals considering child-raising to spend more time on first impressions, it being more important to "sniff out" other mates.

This view is often rejected by critics as reducing humans to dog-like status, sniffing each other and then running off to sniff others. Another objection is that dating has more purposes than the raising of children, and that the invention of speed dating by a religious minority intent on resisting assimilation (and thus resisting cross-breeding) is a cynical move to increase their own population relative to the majority.

Another criticism of speed dating is that it tends to put less extroverted subjects at a disadvantage, while those with low self-esteem have been known to experience depression or even attempt suicide if their efforts at speed dating are unsuccessful.

None of these views seem to contradict each other, and speed dating grows in popularity perhaps due to the very objections that have been raised to it.

Speed dating is considered, due to its low overhead and flexibility, to be akin to an agile method or open space conference. However, what's at stake in dating tends to be very different than the matters decided in an engineering or political conference."

Wooooh! Hold on a minute... "Speed dating is considered, due to its low overhead and flexibility, to be akin to an agile method[..]"? That's interesting and why not?

OK, back to my point then:

In speed dating, you get 8 minutes to decide if you would like to know more about somebody else (ie: exchange phone numbers, go on a real date, etc..), and then you jump to the next iteration (go to the next table and start from scratch with somebody new).

Normally, when everybody has met everybody, that's where the event stops. If there are people you like and if they like you as well, chances are you'll get their contact details and will be able to meet them for longer in the future.

Idea 1: what are the pros and cons of doing just that at the begining of every project when a team starts working together?
Pros:
- everybody will get to meet (speed pair) with everybody else very quickly, allowing them to find out who they think they will enjoy pairing the most with
- ideal pairs could be created within the team (if big enough...)
Cons:
- some people might never be chosen by anybody else!
- fixing ideal pairs might go against Common Code Ownership in the long term.

I can hear a bell ringing ;-) goto next table!

Release 8.1: Who/when to sign off stories?

2005-08-26T12:42:00.000+01:00

I have a problem:

I am still ensure as to what criteria should be used - formally - to sign off a story at the end of an iteration.

I am a velocity preacher, and I also devote a lot of attention to the fact that the velocity figure we produce at the end of each iteration is meaningfull and can be reflected upon and discussed during our retrospective meetings.

Velocity is innacurate if:
- we have not estimated consistently tasks of similar complexity
- we measure delivered stories using inconsistent criteria for each.

I also find it really hard to actually define what "consistent story acceptance" should look like. So far, I have managed to still produce a Velocity that has "meaning" by making sure that the team agrees what the sign off point of stories should be, but I am not convinced I should feel particularly happy not to have an answer on this.

Also, on some projects, the number of people (who are genuine customers) who need to sign stories off as delivered is such that it is virtually impossible to sign off stories within 1 iteration. As I also preach the Story Velocity over the task velocity measurment, I cannot be happy with this.

I am still banging my head on that one, if anybody has any ideas or experience to share.....

Iteration 8: Planning Game

2005-08-25T16:51:00.000+01:00

New stories:

Story ID: 8.1
Estimate: 10
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 5

Description:

I want to have a minimum of 3 posts at the end of this Iteration so that the people that read this blog have something new to get from here.

Acceptance criteria:

- at least 3 posts are published within 1 month
- each blog entry is of good quality (quality defined by: innovative subject and related to XP or Agile)

Tasks:

- find some subjects to blog about
- write entries
- ensure that they pass the "quality" check
- publish

Iteration 7: Retrospective

2005-08-25T14:45:00.000+01:00

Outcome:

I have published two entries in this Iteration. I have released some of the value I described during my planning game, but not all. There are still some non-XP related litterature that I am sure I could have mentioned here.

What worked well:

2 posts, and some comments!!! Boy, are some people actually readin my blog? am I getting famous? (thanks for your comment James ;-)))

What did not work so well:

The 2 comments I got were:
1- spelling mistake...
2- somebody who disagrees with me!!! (I know, that is actually a GOOD thing). But still...
3- it has taken me an awfull long time to do this retrospective and get starting on the next iteration!!!

Puzzles:

I still wish I could find a bit more time to work on this blog.... Repeat from Iteration 6, 5, 4...

Release 7: my schedule for 2nd half of 2005

2005-06-03T11:32:00.000+01:00

I am currently planned to go and participate to 2 events between now and the end of the year. These are:

XP2005, in sheffield, UK.

I will Co-animate and run an XP Game session along with Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, Ivan Moore and Vera Peeters on June 21st, 2005. If you have not participated to one of these yet, I strongly advise you to come along. You will probably want to run one yourself for your teams or customers as soon as you get back to work.

I have also offered to Pascal and Vera some thoughts about an XP Game Level 2 concept, which would demonstrate other aspects of XP to participants and which are not explained in the usual XP Game. We have agreed to spend some time define what this Level 2 should look like. Hopefully, this should lead to another type of session for XP practitioners and project managers, focusing even more on Value Release Planning.

Agile Business Conference 2005, in London, UK.

I will spend a bit of time talking about eXtreme Analysis and how this concept can be used within large Programmes to allow the Business to take better decisions, faster, on which projects to start. This will be time devoted to Business Value and Programme Decision making process, as opposed to XP proper.

My objective through this session would be to convince at least one organisation to give eXtreme Analysis a try for their Programme. ;-) If you are already interested, give a shout!

Release 7: Planning the unexpected... the XP way

2005-06-03T10:43:00.000+01:00

I am currently reading the second installment of Takeshi Kovacs' adventures, "Broken Angels" by Richard Morgan. Fantastic noir SF cyberpunk stuff, if you like this kind of thing. I must admit I did not pay that type of SF too much credit until I read "Altered Carbon", the first novel from Morgan. I am not hooked to the genre though, just to the author ;-)

Ok, why did I want to talk about this book. And why that title for this entry?

Well, Kovacs is an ex-Envoy corp member. These guys are trained to be excellent warriors and efficient killers. Their senses are enhanced and their mind is conditioned to coped with extraordinary situations which allow the Envoy corps to make split second decisions whatever life throws at them.

In this second book, Takeshi Kovacs remembers what he was told on his first training day to be come part of the Envoy: "Since it is logistically impossible to train you to deal with the unexpected, we will train you to not expect anything. This way, you will be ready for it!"

Now, in a subbtle way, that sentence resonated with me in terms of how XP approaches planning : there are two types of planning.

- plan for everything, including the unexpected (Waterfall)
- plan for the outcome, expecting nothing from the start (Agile?)

Waterfall will try and analyse everything, design everything, spec everything, document risks for everything, plan mitigation action for everything, action plans for everything. The problem we see with this nowadays is that the level of "unexpected" events (external and internal environment changes mainly) is increasing (both in number and frequency), and that to continue doing waterfall in this setup is harder and harder and requires more and more Knowledge people, trained in Change Management as opposed to Value delivery.

Agile on the other hand allows organisations to become ready for the unexpected. Agile is the equivalent of the Envoy Corps conditioning, at organisation level. "Since it is logistically impossible to plan budgets and resources for the unexpected events we will encounter in this Programme, we will train you to not expect anything. This way, the organisation will be ready for it".

Iteration 7: Planning Game

2005-06-03T09:30:00.000+01:00

"I am reading a few books at the moment, and I am also gearing up for some events for the end of the year. I will talk about both these things in this iteration".

New stories:

Story ID: 7.1
Estimate: 5
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 5

Description:

There are some books that I am reading at the moment that have content that might be of interest for the Agile community. I want to share some of the ideas they present on this blog so that a/ I can remember them in the future and b/ see if my perception of their possible relation with XP is shared with other people.

Acceptance criteria:

- The source of the concept is stated
- The concept is explained
- My thoughts are explained

Tasks:

- Do list of books/articles I am currently reading
- Retrieve quote/concept from each of them

Story ID: 7.2
Estimate: 5
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 5

Description:

I am planned to go/participate to a few events. This is a good way for me to make sure that people who read this blog know where I will be so that maybe we can plan to have a chat there.

Acceptance criteria:

- Where and when I go is stated
- What I will do there is explained

Tasks:

- Do list of events I am planned to go to between now and end of the year
- Describe what I go there for
- Describe any other outcome I intend to achieve there

Iteration 6: Retrospective

2005-06-03T09:20:00.000+01:00

Outcome:

I have created a few blogs about what delivered value for me during this training, which was basically what story 6.1 stated. I don;t think I have forgotten anything from what I want to remember, so I'd say the outcome of this iteration is pretty positive.

Writing this also brought me to realise that I wanted to learn a bit more about Ben Zander, so I went and get his book "The Art of Possibility", which I am currently reading. If there is anything in there that I do want to capture and share, I'll post a few more things here.

What worked well:

I had no problem coming up with some ideas for posts, which was good... It was also a nice change from some previous iterations ;-)

What did not work so well:

Nothing crosses my mind.

Puzzles:

I still wish I could find a bit more time to work on this blog....

Release 6: Behaviour and Motives

2005-05-24T09:05:00.000+01:00

Following on this training, I have been thinking some more about the main concept behind the whole exercise: Behaviour and Motives - a theory developed by McClelland. Basically, it provides an insight and offers a model to the fact that each behaviour we exhibit can be tracked back to 3 social motives (Achievement, Affiliation, Power).

The entire Theory is more complicated than what we (the participants) could see in 2 days, but some of the exercises we did around this theory had a significant impact on me and highlighted some of the reasons I feel about my current job the way I do...

Bottom line is, knowing about this theory has allowed me to take a new look at what I really like doing, where it comes from, and how to make sure that I can optimise the capacity that I represent depending on the type of role I am asked to play in an organisation.

Using it at (XP) team level:

It is also extremely helpful to keep this concept in mind at team level...

Of course the coach's role is to ensure that the team follows the defined and agreed technical practices, that the whole delivery heartbeat is preserved, that communication is flowing... Behaviour pattern matching is used to "spot" any disfunction within the team and resolve this before it starts having an adverse effect on the delivery, the velocity, the morale.

In light of what the Behaviour and Motives theory brought me, I am reinforced in the view that it is completely unfair to expect the same behaviour from everyone on a team. Instead, I am now looking at how to ensure that we get the best out of people depending on what really motivates them and what they really value.

By making this statement explicit to the entire team, the result is that any behaviour is accepted (within working environment limits of course) within then team and is understood for what it is. That is the step 1.

Step 2 is to look at ALL the behaviours exhibited by ALL of us and to filter the positive ones and the negative ones: from there, we can ensure that all team members end up showing positive behaviours that they actually feel comfortable with and contributes to the team and the whole XP stated synergy.

Release 6: Want Power? Give it away then!

2005-05-06T12:11:00.000+01:00

Last bit on Ben Zander, promised...

One thing that Zander uses to get the best out of the people he directs is to apply the "If you want more power, give it away" rule.

I have been running an Team organisation SPIKE for the last 2 weeks to try this one out.

The setup: I am currently accountable for the delivery of 2 projects that are both important to the Business in a way that has made me allocate a set team capacity for each project.

I have decided to focus primarily on one of these projects (ie: to ensure that all conditions of satisfaction for this project are met). Which only left me with a personal remaining capacity well under what is required to satisfy the conditions of satisfaction for the second project.

I have therefore decided to give some of my power away. Some people call it to delegate, but actually, I think I am doing more than that.

Yes, I have "given" the accountability of the delivery of the second project to somebody else, and that is delegating, and this person is still reporting to me, still is a member of the team I manage.

On the other hand, I have been extremely clear from the start on what I will and won't do:
- I will provide you with the road map of how to start, who to talk to and set some short term objectives for you
- I want your word that whatever I ask you to do you feel comfortable doing them, or trying to do them
- I will not be behind you to check what you are doing
- I will be clear on the longer outcomes I expect, not on how you get there
- I will ALWAYS be availble to help you whenever you need help
- I will ALWAYS be availble for advice would you need them
- I will NEVER turn my back on you if you make a mistake
- I will take the political heat away from you: dealing with politics is not an outcome I want you to manage

All in all, this SPIKE has been running for the last 2 weeks. I go to the planning games, stand up meetings, retrospectives and steering committees with that person, not as is shadow, but more has a member of his team (if that makes sense).

He does lead that piece of work, in which I have tasks to deliver, and I report to him in this respect.

The relationship has been working quite nicely, both projects are starting to come back in line with their respective release plans.

Customers and my peers now engage with him in a different way to the way they used to only 2 weeks ago. His peers also have changed attitude and look so much happier now that there is actually somebody to concentrate on helping them full time, and who actually has the power to take decisions without having to get back to me to check that they can do so and so. Bloody hell! I am pleased with the result!

Conclusion:

In the past, I did manage to get pretty much the same type of result with somebody else in another team, and for different reasons. What I found with the latest SPIKE I describe here is that I think I now partially know why it does work: the Giving the Power away... definitely.

Does that give me more power? As a manager, I am definitely being more powerful by having done this. In a bizarre way, it also makes me less powerful, because I have proved that other people, given the right opportunity and power attributes could do my "delivery" job just as well as me, and probably for less money.

mmh... maybe I should stop this SPIKE right now ;-)

Release 6: Everybody gets an "A"

2005-05-06T12:10:00.000+01:00

From the same Ben Zander mentioned in previous posts...

Ben Zander is also a tutor/teacher for young (and less young) musiciancs.

At the beginning of the course, he wants to avoid the behaviour of participants which is to compare themselves to the others. He believes that progress by comparion does not allow people to reach their actual full potential.

And yes, in the end, some people will perform better than some others, but at least he wants everyone to have developped to their streched limits.

How does he do that? On the first day of the course, he gives everybody and "A". Everybody gets the same mark for the course! And the even have sarted!

But ahhh, there is a condition... In order to get an "A", everybody has to write the story of who they will be at the end of the course, and how great they will be.

This in effect create the right conditions for people to focus on comparing who they want to be with who they are today, and apparently it works. Zander says that it allows people to see the world as a "world of possibility".

When introducing XP in an organisation, comparing XP with the existing approach will happen. What is damageable for XP is if its implementation is driven by this comparison as opposed to being driven by the results we know it can produce.

Give everybody an "A" on your team, ask them to write the story of what the results will be in 1 year,and see what happens.

Some time ago, I ran a "past and future future retrospective" with one of the team I was working with (mentioned by Rachel Davies in the Retrospectives Yahoo Group).

The results were really interesting, and what we found is that some things that people wanted to see happen in the future, although they could be seen hard to achieve actually happened.

Release 6: Listening from full...

2005-05-06T12:09:00.000+01:00

The first thing I want to talk about is the concept of "listening from full".

What is this?

Basically, it refers to the fact that when we enter interpersonal interactions, a number of conversations actually occur on top of the obvious audible one.

For instance, 2 people start having a chat about something.
The first conversation that happens is the one we could hear. What people tell each other. This is the public conversation.
There are in this example 2 more conversations happening.
Two other conversations are happening at the same time: each of the involved individuals will actually have a private conversation, that is “in their head”.

So now we have Private and Public conversations. How important is this for us?

Well, people are at the very foundation of anything we do in Agile. And the way they interact, exchange ideas, raise issues and solve problems.

In XP, a formal interaction heartbeat is started and maintained through Planning Games, Stand Up meetings, Show and Tell meetings, Retrospective meetings, and other important interactions happen in a less formalised and monitored when pairing, talking to team members or the customer during the day.

During the personal development course I have recently been through, we did some exercises to demonstrate how much our attention can shift from Public to Private conversation. It is remarkable how much we actually focus on the Private part and how little we will focus on listening.

One of the reasons for this is that the Public conversation is about understanding the other, the Private conversation is all about planning what we will say next and “how to look good” (ie: not say anything stupid, convert the other to our idea or point of view, etc…).

Sometimes, we have private conversations about completely unrelated subjects to the Public conversation going on. Altogether, Private conversations start because we are “listening from full” (pre-occupied, have no time, can’t be bothered, etc…)

During the same training course, we also practiced the opposite art which is to “listen from nothing”. I am not going to go into more detail about the exercise, but the result I experienced were quite extraordinary: the level of information I could pick up, the emotions, possible motives of the person talking to me where truly enhanced.

How does that help us? As mentioned, Agile relies on human interactions, and it is very likely that most of us have Private conversations during these. What type of result could we expect if, as part of method, XP practitioners could be brought to listening from nothing…

I will try and experiment with my current team, and hopefully come back to these subject later on with some findings.

Release 6: "Rule number 6!"

2005-05-06T12:02:00.000+01:00

We saw some great clips from Ben Zander during the training I keep refering to form a guy called Benjamin Zander. Benjamin Zander is an Orchestra Conductor, Music Teacher, Speaker on Motivation and Leadership, and has co-produced various IP products (books, videos) on these subjects.

This is the first post in reaction to Zander's message. More will come in this iteration.

So, "Rule number 6" then!

Zander tells this story of people bursting into the prime minister's office shouting and screaming, completely disorientated and obviously quite concerned about important things... The Prime Minister happens to be in a meeting with the President of another country. Every time somebody enters the room in such a style, the Prime Minister says "Please, remember rule number 6 will you?". And every time he mentions that Rule Number 6, people who were 1 minute ago in a real state instantaneously calm down and leave the room.

At the end of the meeting, the other President asks the PM, but what is Rule number 6? The PM replies "Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously". The President then asks "But what are the other Rules?", to which the PM replies "they aren't any".

Zander has lived and witnessed events in his life, and the whole relativity of how seriously we take ourselves has appeared to him as a real blocker to becoming what we could become.

In XP teams, we take ourselves seriously! We have to. It is all about money! Our customers want us to be serious, our peers require seriousness from us, we impose on ourselves to be serious in order to impress others, progress in the hirearchy and get better paid (;-).

On the other hand, seriousness creates a barricade between us as we are today and a world of possibilities.

If anything, this post is an advice for you to go and buy Zander's book: "The Art of Possibility"

Iteration 6: Planning Game

2005-05-06T11:44:00.000+01:00

"I have been on a personal development course for 5 days over the last 3 weeks. Some of it has been highly inspirational. This iteration is devoted to talking about some of the things I have learned and which could be used within the Agile world."

New stories:

Story ID: 6.1
Estimate: 10
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 10

Description:
As an XP practitioner, I want to record some of the aspects of the course I have just been through in terms of leadership and people management. This is so that I can consciously re-use some of the concepts and techniques we saw as part of my job, eventually making me better at what I do.

Acceptance criteria:

The concept/theme/technique must be explained or additional resource must be provided.
Use of the concept/theme/technique must be explained in blog entry.

Tasks:

Do list of concept/theme/technique that need to be discussed on this blog

Draw original comments or findings or SPIKE stories if needed
Post Blog entries

Start using some of the concept/theme/technique and feed back on the blog

Iteration 5: Retrospective

2005-05-06T11:36:00.000+01:00

Outcome:

Writting story 5.1 allowed me to focus on finding/reading other people's work (which I would normally not find the time for naturally). I managed to find some external posts and articles to comment on.

What worked well:

I reckon some events and views used to create these posts have "related" interests with XP and Agile in general.

What did not work so well:

Nothing really ground breaking in this iteration and the posts generated. I also find it easier to write posts based on my experience and feelings rather than commenting on other people's work.
I did not find 1 piece of material to comment on per day...

Puzzles:

What shall my next Iteration outcome be...

Release 5: Capital Venture and Programme Management

2005-04-05T09:43:00.000+01:00

I have been reading about Venture Capital lately, and I also found 2 nice articles on Programme Management (the first one by Anthony Plewes tries and sell the virtues of Programme Management and how control is "good", the second one by Martin Brampton is quite opposite and reviews the reasons why Programme Management is "bad").

Eventually, we can argue that VC and Programme Management are basically trying to achieve the same goal: generating value.

For a VC, the value is calculated in strict monetary ROI terms, where a Programme Management board may have to take into consideration more that one value type for its prioritisation and planning (although once again, we can argue that any value type will/should eventually convert in monetary terms). But essentially they have the same constraints (finite budget per time period), and the same goal.

In my view, VC is probably the most evolved organised and institutionalised way of generating value today: a company or person with availble funds will look at ideas and capabilities of others that do require some funding that they do not currently have. According to the state of the idea, the VC will agree to fund value generating activities to make this idea a reality, grabing shares and future profits in the process. Typically, an idea will go from SEED to STARTUP to ROUND 1, ROUND 2... In this post, I will not talk about the exit strategies that need to be considered when a one requires access to VC funding.

Now, isn't the value game the same that we are trying to play in organisations?

Although the philosophy of Programme Management say it should support ideas from inception to delivery, I have seen very little proof that this is commonly implemented in large organisations. The way most Programme Management approaches are implemented today do no encourage SEED, they don't really support STARTUP ideas, they will focus on ROUND 1 and not thinks that there could be a ROUND 2, 3, 4...

VC and the ways to get access to it follow an iterative process!

The day we get Programme Offices to act like VCs in their respective organisations, the need to execute each phase within the time frame of each Programme Iteration will push forward Agile delivery practices.

Venture Capitalism is probably perverted nowadays (see and example of this in Peter Cochrane's article "The decline of Western technology?". There is very little or no risk taken by those boys. They will go after the no-risk high ROI opportunities: they will go for the obvious and forget the revolutionary. mmmhhh.

After all, they are behaving like Programme Management Offices do...

Release 5: Downward Nobility and XP

2005-03-31T11:14:00.000+01:00

I like this article from Watts Wackers...
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/11/futurist.html

In the Futurology Decoder Key section, he goes:
" A good futurist is a good historian. So, to envision the downwardly noble future, I frame the five eras of humanity -- hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial, information, and coming soon, the dream society -- with societal templates. How are interactions organized in each of those eras? Tribes, families, hierarchies, networks -- and now neo-tribes. What's the dominant physical structure? Tent, farm, factory, office -- and theme park. Dominant person? Chief, head of household, capitalist, knowledge worker -- and storyteller. Now, take status. What are the status symbols? Being old, owning land, material possession, access to information -- and now spiritual experiences. Try it with any category -- weapons, modes of travel, mission of life -- and you'll begin to build a detailed picture of the future. "

What are the dominant Organisation forms in each of those eras?
Dictatorial, Collegiate, Bureaucratic, Innovative --- and now?

What would be the downward nobility attribute for today's organisations?

And how would XP fit in this new organisation?

Whatever it is, I believe that practicing XP in an organisation that allows and encourages it is on the way to be able to enter a room and state "I am a happy person!"

Release 5: We need Jamie Oliver!

2005-03-31T10:29:00.000+01:00

Project methodology and School Dinners have one thing in common: "they have been done a certain way for so many years that it has become a routine for the doers and a cost saving exercise for the deciders...".

For those who do not know who Jamie Oliver is, he is a Chef, and has become famous in the UK through various TV programmes (see http://www.jamieoliver.net/).

His most recent broadcasting venture was to try and change the eating behaviour of young kids at school >> they are served crap, they eat crap, and they only want crap, mainly because that's all they know.

The whole experience lasted a few months but was concentrated for TV into a series of 4 episodes of 1 hour each.

I won't go into more details here. You can read and learn more about it at:
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/J/jamies_school_dinners/

Now, there are 2 things I find really interesting in all this:

The effect the "new" food will have on kids in the long run is predicted by nutritionists to be great >> far less health problems when they are adults and a longer life expectancy in general
The whole experiment fell right in the middle of the general election campaign, and political parties are now making healthier school dinners for all a KEY SELLING point and differentiating factor of their respective programmes!!!

Jamie Oliver has triggered a change in school dinners in the UK: Kids are happy, dinner ladies are happy, parents are happy, politics are happy (well, the one party that will win the general election based on this will be!!).

What is this post doing in here?

Well, maybe we should consider ourselves as the Jamie Oliver's of XP/Agile. Wherever we go, there are kids to feed, dinner ladies to educate, parents to convince, and politics to please... and looking back at point 1 and 2 above, don't we do what we do in the same context and for the same reasons as Jamie did his stuff?

I believe we are! Now, show me the way to 10 Downing Street ;-)

Iteration 5: Planning Game

2005-03-31T10:27:00.000+01:00

This iteration will be geared towards commenting on other people's stuff!

New stories:

Story ID: 5.1
Estimate: 10
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 10

Description:
As an XP practitioner, I want to spend a bit of time reflecting on other people's thoughts on areas that are related or not to XP/Agile/software delivery or project management. This is so that I can step back from what I am immerged on a day to day basis and learn or propose new tricks to make the XP world better known and accepted.

Acceptance criteria:
External sources must be named and located wherever possible
Interesting idea or concept must be provided in blog entry
Additional XP driven insight must be supplied

Tasks:

Find interesting material (minimum 1 per day for next 2 weeks)

Dissect material

Draw original comments or findings

Post Blog entries (minimum 5 for next 2 weeks)

Iteration 4: Retrospective

2005-03-30T17:54:00.000+01:00

Outcome:

Only 1 blog entry created over the last iteration.
I have submitted 3 session proposals for XP 2005: 1 XP Game, 1 XP Challenge session, 1 panel. The XP Game proposal has been accepted. Still unsure about the 2 others.

Measured Velocity: 8 points
Measured Value: 10 ++

What worked well:

I have actually delivered the primary story for iteration 4 (Story id 4.1) within acceptance criteria. However, it took me a fair bit of time, probably outside the boudaries of the normal duration of my iteration length.

What did not work so well:

I exceeded the duration of my iterations to deliver this... I have been unable to devote enough time to get this out the door more rapidly.

Puzzles:

Same as last time: Need to be more effective on all communication medias without impacting my day job...

Actions:

Revisit Outcomes priorities,
Plan/book time to work on blog more effectively

Release 4: Lessons learned and Programme Management

2005-02-21T13:31:00.000Z

Pretty obvious but I just want to highlight this:

I already mentioned that I am managing this blog using the management practices of XP. I write my stories (ie: what do I want to talk about on this pages), I run my mini planning games for each iterations, then I write the blogs themselves (deliverables of my iterations), I do my iteration restrospectives and try to measure my velocity.

So, what is obvious?

Well, I don't just have this blog to manage, I also have a day job, a familly and social life as well as other extra work projects... My priorities change from one day to the other and I adapt my capacity to deliver according to these priorities.

Currently, my personal "programme of work" is pretty busy and the priorities I have set on some of the outcomes I am trying to achieve are higher to the ones I have set for this blog.

Where am I getting at?

This is my way to apologise for not being able to post more often. However, the outcomes I have set for this blog are still pretty important for me to keep it on the radar.

It is also a message to all project and programme managers out there: it is possible to manage a programme of work using XP management practices. I know 'cause I do it.

Release 4: The "XP Challenge" session - proposal for discussion

2005-01-07T11:49:00.000Z

I'll start this post by being controversial ;-)

Everytime an Agile or XP conference is organised, pretty much the same people turn up, sharing pretty much the same stuff as last time they met (just updated versions of the same stuff).
There is hardly anybody from outside the technology world coming to these events, and those who do don't come back and it does not seem to generate that much "business"
Conferences are quite restrictive on the format of events (in terms of time, resources, etc...) that they want to propose, which can actually restrict the type of ideas that can be put forward.

I have an idea about an event, as part of conferences that could - in my view - really be exciting...

Here is the first draft of this event, please let me know if it does appeal to you, or what you would like to see modified, or any other idea that are not constrained by conference guidelines:

------------------------------------------
Basically, over the duration of the XP 2005 conference (http://www.xp2005.org/), I would like to show that it is possible to create Business Value using XP... by actually creating Business Value in 5 days!

To be clearer, in 5 days, I think it is possible to create a software product that has genuine market value, and I am certain that a lot of people that this conference targets would enjoy doing that and would learn quite a few things in the process.

So, my initial idea looks like this:

--------------------------------------------
Day 1:

1.1/ Workshop introduction: The content and goal of the session is explained, schedule is made clear and explicit.Duration: 30 mns max

1.2/ Idea presentation: Some Attendees come with a company name, an idea about a piece of software that they feel would carry value in the real market place (ideally, these people should be from the Business community as opposed to being from the technical community, although everyone can have an idea ;-). These people with an idea will be referred to as Company CEOs. Duration: 30 mn max

1.3/ Business Case preparation: all attendees are asked to join a company for the business case preparation. They are asked to contribute to defining and writing the Business Case for this idea, driven by the CEO vision. A short presentation is produced which outlines the outcome aimed at. Duration: 45 mns max

- 1.4/ Business Case presentation: CEOs present Business Cases back to the audience for project rating and selection (where we will select project(s) that we will deliver in 4 days) Duration: 30mn max

1.5/ Enrolment: each attendee is asked to join a company for next days' sessions. Duration: 15 mns max

1.6/ Team setup: people will have joined companies by now, and a basic organisation needs to be defined: CEO, Customers/Analysts, Coach/Project Manager, developpers, etc...Duration: 15 mns max

Total required duration for day 1: 3 hours (includes a 15 mns break)

Day 2:

2.1/ Customer stories writing: driven by CEOs, each company has to write the customer stories and acceptance tests in line with the idea, as well as defining each story value in the overall outcome. Everyone is involved.Duration: 1 hour max

2.2/ Initial planning game: the entire company runs a planning game and sets the team velocity >> that produces the release plan, value release plan, as well as iteration 1 plan.Duration: 30 mns max

3.3/ Iteration 1: the remaining of this session is for iteration 1 deivery >> stories selected for iteration 1 are delivered using all XP practices!!!Duration: Rest of the session, including 15 mns for iteration retrospective

Total required duration for day 2: 3 hours

Day 3:

3.1/ Iteration 2: starting with planning game, finishing with retrospective.

Total required duration for day 3: 3 hours

Day 4:

4.1/ Iteration 3: starting with planning game, finishing with retrospective.

Total required duration for day 4: 3 hours

Day 5:

5.1/ Iteration 4: starting with planning game.Duration: 2 hours max

5.2/ Project Retrospective, including product demo, expected value generated, product state assessment, next phases.Duration: 1 hour

Total required duration for day 5: 3 hours

-------------------------------------------

This is only the first draft for this idea, but I am sure it could turn up into a major feature of XP conferences (like the "XP Challenge" or something...). Such a session, well marketed and communicated might also bring to the convention some of the target audience that we have problems to reach at the moment (Business Community for instance...).

Let me know what you think, I'll keep refining the idea in the meantime.

Iteration 4: Planning Game

2005-01-07T10:59:00.000Z

I will focus on promoting eXtreme Analysis for this iteration (at least).

New stories:

Story ID: 4.1

Estimate: 8
Type: SPIKE
Status: Started
Value: 10

Description:
As a member of the XP community, I want to submit a session for XP 2005 conference that will really appeal to xp practitioners as well as a different audience, ie Business type audience in order for the conference organisers to be able to invite new audience type to the conference and start making XP "wanted" as a viable option for more organisations.

Acceptance criteria:

A session description must be provided
Some feed back needs to be received from XP practitioners as well as other targets
Format needs to be discussed and agreed with XP 2005 organisers

Tasks:

Release some ideas on blog for discussion (Estimate 2) (Status: Started)
Probe XP 2005 organisers on ideas (Estimate 3) (Status: Started)
Formalise session proposal and submit(Estimate 3) (Status: Not Started)

Iteration 3: Retrospective

2005-01-07T10:45:00.000Z

Outcome:

1 blog entries created on eXtreme Analysis,,, and a lot of discussions outside this blog ;-)))

Measured Velocity: 0.3 points
Measured Value: 10 ++

What worked well:

Have managed to make the XA slides available to a big number of potentially interested people
Posting the XA presentation and introducing it on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/ (post number 100204) generated a lot of discussions

What did not work so well:

As far as this blog is concerned, I have not managed to update it for at least 1 month!
not enough time to work on the blog (yahoo groups discussion + day job ;-)

Puzzles:

Need to be more effective on all communication medias without impacting my day job...

Actions:

Plan/book time to work on blog more effectively

Release 3: The eXtreme Analysis proposition...

2004-12-02T08:24:00.000Z

Here is a case study I have presented at the last XP Day in London.

It is about helping projects being agile from start to finish... XP expects stories, but no story can be produced without some analysis being conducted. This is not the "start to finish" solution yet (missing the initiation stage and integration at programme level), but it is a step in the right direction.

The basic case study description is as follows:

Problem: we only know how to do waterfall type analysis (so far)
Solution: use XA (eXtreme Analysis).

The presentation can be found and downloaded at http://www.xpdeveloper.com/xpdwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=OlivierLafontan. (note: Download it and open it locally rather than using your browser)

If you have problems getting to it, drop me a mail mailto:olafontan@hotmail.com&subject=eXtremeAnalysis and I'll send it direct.

Iteration 3: Planning Game

2004-12-02T06:56:00.000Z

I will focus on promoting eXtreme Analysis for this iteration (at least).

New stories:

Story ID: 3.1

Estimate: 0.3
Type: BAU
Status: Started
Value: 10

Description:
As a coach, I want to share and get feed back on the eXtreme Analaysis concept I presented at XP Day last week so that I can get a feeling of how urgent for practitioners and project sponsors it is to focus on value rather than IT product or feature based deliveries.

Acceptance criteria:

Post must incent people to want to know more
Case study must be downloadable
Feed back can be received

Tasks:

Upload eXtreme Analysis presentation to public location (Estimate .1) (Status: Done)
Create post and provide link (Estimate .2) (Status: Started)

Iteration 2: Retrospective

2004-12-01T09:56:00.000Z

Outcome:

2 blog entries created. Still a lot more to say on the subject.

Measured Velocity: 3.5 points
Measured Value: 5

What worked well:

Still managed to create 2 entries
have started to work on network to make blog a bit more public. Tim Bacon's blog link in now available from this site, and Tim's will do the same from his. More syndication in the pipe
Outside the blog world, my intervention on eXtreme Analysis at XP Day in London was well received and generated quite a lot of interest

What did not work so well:

only two entries
not enough time to work on the blog

Puzzles:

I need to find a way to publish my work on XA to a widder audience. It may be that blogs are not the best appraoch. I need to find out and estimate the time required to publish.

Actions:

Plan/book time to work on blog more effectively
Research best publishing strategy for XA findings and next steps

Release 2: the NoVNoS framework...too radical?

2004-11-10T17:06:00.000Z

What about the NoVNoSNoP (No Value - No Story - No Product) approach? Would that be too radical?

I am spending a bit more time going over the case study I will present on the 25th November at XP Day 2004, and frankly, I can see some real added value in what we managed to achieve during this project.

For those who cannot attend the conference, here is in substance what I demonstrate:

Because our IT function declared it was "Agile", the "Business" thought they could throw anything at it and magically transform it into golden outcome. In other words "we don't really know what we want, we don't really know how much value there is in there, we don't really know if it plays towards our strategic corporate goal... but, we know how much budget we can give you (with capitalisation vs revenue split!!!), and how long you have to do it.

Whoah! Wait a minute, that just does not work!

XP states (sorry, most of XP practitioners state) that XP is really good at delivering business value... well, sorry, but this is completely wrong.

XP is really, really, really good at delivering the value which has been built into the story pack. If the story pack or basket is full of stories that deliver virtually no value to the business, then XP will be really, really, really good at delivering nothing at all (apart from good quality software).

Now, let's imagine a world where no XP team would start delivering before the value in the pack of stories is in line with the strategic corporate goals, and that the overall value of this pack is to a level satisfying strategic milestone objectives. That would be a good idea... I think.

One way of ensuring that companies build this story pack value the as efficently as possible may be to apply the NoVNoSNoP principle.

ONLY WRITE STORIES THAT DO CARRY VALUE (this is to be moderated by the fact that there are Minimum Marketable Features that might not carry any value but still need to be story boarded).

I have managed to apply this principle to one of my projects, with distrurbing results. If you want to know more, please visit the http://www.xpday.org/ website (session slides section), and download the eXtreme Analysis slides.

Release 2: Pair Programming and Programming Outcomes

2004-11-10T10:02:00.000Z

One of the most controversial practice of XP is that it advocates the use of Pair Programming.

Why on earth would you want two people in front of one screen, sharing one keyboard. Surely this is a waste of time and money, and the capacity or velocity of the team would be improved if we did not do pairing at all.

Maybe, maybe not... In fact, probably not.

Some research has been done (http://www.pairprogramming.com/) to try and compare singletons and pairs in code production.

When somebody sits down to write some code,

they don't just code, they also "communicate"
there are more than one outcome to this action (ie: sitting in front of a computer to "produce code"). The first few outcomes I have in mind are code does what it is supposed to do + coding conventions are respected + it is the simplest thing that could possibly work + it is refactored + test is writtent first + integrated at often as possible...
nobody can for an extensive period of time keep more than one primary outcome in mind and deliver to all of them (see above, there are probably more outcomes actually).
we are after all human and can make mistakes
we are after all human and need a bit of encouragement and recognition when we do something is always welcome. A pair can provide this.

So, why is it so difficult for the teams who want to pair to be able to do so?

One of the reasons is that whatever we say, we are bums on sits, and we cost money. The source of this money is largely the "Business". They mandate the IT function to do stuff, and there is no metric that exists to actually convert them to the fact that it is not how much code you write that matters, it is how good your code is for the project and the rest of the organisation.

The "Business" speak about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as a measure of how much a project will really cost. Needless to say that this measure is most of the time based on finger in the air calculation, that nobody really endorses and signs up to.

There is yet no plan to introduce the notion of Total Value of Ownership, where the utlimate value of a programme/project/storie and eventually how it is delivered comes into play. If this did exist, pair programming could be "sold" to the business. One of the main "Business" and "IT" disconnect regarding XP could be overcome...

Iteration 2: Planning Game

2004-11-02T08:53:00.000Z

This week, I plan to deliver posts on the disconnect that exists between the "Business" and "IT" when it comes to XP.

Still in the story pot:

Story ID: 1 (from Iteration 1 Planning Game)

Create blog (Estimate: .2) (Status: done)
Publish blog (Estimate: .2) (Status: done)
Communicate blog address to trusted contacts (Estimate: 1) (Status: done >> will need V2 for increased value though)
Publicise blog (Estimate: 5) (Status: done)

New stories:

Story ID: 2.1

Estimate: 3.5
Type: BAU
Status: Complete (will require V2 for further value release)
Value: 5

Description:
As a project manager, I want to highlight some of the disconnect I have witnessed between the "Business" and "IT" when it comes to using XP so that I can compare it with other people's experience.

Acceptance criteria:

Posts must clearly have both Business and IT as central stakeholder's
Posts should present disconnects

Tasks:

Do retrospective on the last 2 years in terms of disconnect between Business and IT (Estimate: 1) (Status: done will need V2)
Break down output into themes (Estimate: .5) (Status: done will need V2)
Create and post blogs (Estimate: 2) (Status: done)

Iteration 1: Retrospective

2004-10-29T15:24:00.000+01:00

Outcome:
Small first iteration, but I have managed to post a few things, so, take a look at the release 1 stuff, and leave your comments:

Measured Velocity: 7.5 points
Business Value Released: 15

What worked well:

I found that I had quite a bit of time to do all the tasks I had to do
Posted a few things (hope they are good)
There are quite a few areas around XP that I find I have things to say about

What did not work so well:

did not get any comments so far - the blog has been up and running for 2 days only!
editing the posts is quite time consuming 'cause service is slow...

Puzzles:

how can I publicise this blog to a widder audience without being uber-spammed to death? (ideas welcome!)

Actions:

Go home for the week end ;-)

Release 1: XP is not mainstream... no sir!

2004-10-29T13:55:00.000+01:00

Hey, that's not new either!

Nope, just wanted to say that I have heard this for quite some time now, and franckly, what's the point...

Mainstream methodologies have one thing that XP does not have yet: a process that certifies that people have attended courses, used them (to some extend, if you have not used them, you can say what you would have done if you had to use it) or would be ready to use them.

In the end, you get a certification in the form of a nice (sometimes not so nice) diploma that you can put away in a drawer and forget until you are looking for another job. What else, you don't even have to use what you've learnt!

Look at SCRUM, there are a growing number of Scrum Masters around: I predict that SCRUM will become Mainstream before XP! Why? Because when you get certified for something, you put it on your CV, you make it visible for people to see it, you raise there awareness of what it is, you generate interest for what it delivers, you belong to a group and can prove some sort of power from above ("thee" who certified you).

But once again, what's the point? The point is, what is the point?

what would being part of the Mainstream methodologies bring to XP anyway?

XP practitioners would be recognised? they would be paid a lot more money? Managers would listen to them more? They would have better tools? They would be happier in their jobs? Or is just that we believe that it is the only way for companies to take XP values and practices seriously?

Utlimately, becoming mainstream may result in a complete halt to the entire XP community thinking about improving how XP works and delivers. Not being mainstream is the trademark of something evolving, avant-garde, and some organisations are looking for these.

Maybe we should be looking at which organisations are in the XP stream instead ;-)

Release 1: XP and Business Value...

2004-10-29T13:34:00.000+01:00

Recurring subject indeed.. But is XP really addressing Business Value delivered through technical change?

The answer is no, not on its own.

What XP does is that it allows the maximisation of the Business Value which is in the customer story pot, that's all it does.

If you have a set of customer stories that together carry 0 in terms of business value, then XP (or any other methodology for that matter) will deliver 0. XP will only do it its own particular way, which I happen to believe is one of the best approach for producing and releasing software.

So, how can we ensure that XP maximises business value? Simple, ensure that the story pot carries maximised business value itself.

Anybody done that yet? Come along to XP Day (London, November 2004, http://www.xpday.org/) and we'll discuss this. I will presenting a case study of a project where I think we have managed to do that.

If you can't make it, no worry, this blog is open for questions and comments ;-)

Release 1: The MATRIX(P), it's everywhere!

2004-10-29T10:12:00.000+01:00

What do I mean by this?

Well, I have been using some XP principles for the major part of two years now, and I must admit that these principles, especially the Management Practices are pretty generic and not only valid for the IT geeks (apart from the technical practices...).

In fact, I see these principles working everywhere, just like Neo in "Matrix" sees the Matrix world as it is (that green slime of numbers) after he has been shot by Smith ;-)

OK, OK, I am not saying I am the one here! Everybody can see the same thing as me, and it is very unlikely that I will start flying tomorrow and be able to kick butts in a variety of martial arts.

However, my life is now heavily tinted by reflexes that XP has given me, even outside the context of managing the production of software, 'cause at the end of the day, everything we do requires capacity monitoring, planning, delivery, integration, testing and aims at generating value.

"There is no waste of time, there are just different ways to use it"

Iteration 1: Planning Game

2004-10-28T10:47:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in the introduction, this blog will be managed as an XP project.

I will not use the technical practices (I am not coding here!), but will try and stick to the management practices (writing stories, acceptance criteria, tasks, having planning games, stand ups - ie: this page is now my startup page on my browser - retrospectives, releases). By this, I want to check/demonstrate that these practices can be used to deliver a wide variety of outcomes.

So far, here are the user stories:

Story ID: 1

Estimate: 6.4

Type: Minimum Marketable Feature

Status: Complete

Value: 10

Description:
As an individual... I want the ability to share my experience and discuss XP and any other Agile methodology with the rest of the World... in order for me to enrich my knowledge on the subject as well as possibly enriching others.

Acceptance criteria:

The communication medium must be available to the entire World
There is no restriction concerning who can contribute as long as it is about XP/Agile
There is no restriction concerning what can be posted as long as it touches XP/Agile
Discussions/thoughts will be kept for future reference (Archive)

Tasks:

Create blog (Estimate: .2) (Status: done)
Publish blog (Estimate: .2) (Status: done)
Communicate blog address to trusted contacts (Estimate: 1) (Status: done)
Publicise blog (Estimate: 5) (Status: done)

Story ID: 2
Estimate: 1.1
Type: Minimum Marketable Feature
Status: Complete
Value: 5

Description: As the blog master...I want at least one release per week in order to keep this blog alive and people to want to come back and contribute.

Acceptance criteria:

There is at least 1 new blog entry per week
Each blog entry is relevant to subject
Each blog entries are open for comments

Tasks:

Record week's experience (Estimate: .5) (Status: done)
Write to blog (Estimate: .5) (Status: done)
publish (Estimate: .1) (Status: done)

Overall Iteration Value: 15

Let me know if you think of any additional acceptance criteria for this story.