Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Presentation at Mexico's Central Bank

Mexico's Central Bank (Banco de México) asked me to give them a presentation on Lean-Agile today. The experience was awesome starting with the venue. The Central Bank counts with a cluster of Colony Epoch buildings within the downtown Mexico City area (see photos for an example), which are as beautiful on the inside as they are from the outside. The presentation took place at a small but well-equiped auditorium and I had an audience of roughly 60 people. The audience was great and attentive during my 60-min talk, which consisted of Lean Agile fundamentals, case studies, hard data on agile benefits, reflections, and short speech about my services. I was then asked a series of good questions on some lean-agile aspects, on governance, and on comparison with other methodologies.



Next I had lunch with 11 executives and managers from the Bank at its private restaurant, which gave me the opportunity to have closer conversations with them and gave them the opportunity to ask lots of questions. To my surprise I received a limited-edition art book on Frida Kahlo (a famous Mexican surrealist painter) sponsored by the bank.

I have to admit the people I met and the bank itself exceeded my expectations and it would be great if I get to have the opportunity to work with them.


Saturday, January 23, 2010

mute-deaf at Innovation Game online

I was all exited about the opportunity to participate on an online Innovation Game with folks from APLN and BayAPLN while still abroad on business. I logged in and proceeded to dial in to the conference from a telephone only to come to a halt because the conference call requires a "#" at the end of the code and the long distance service at the place where I am staying interprets it as a call to operator so there was no way I could reach the conference call.

But where there's a will there's a way. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how effectively I could go about participating on the game while on a mute-deaf state. The game started and I felt I was at at real disadvange at first but soon after I realized that the entire environment provided an quite complete and friendly environment such that I soon forgot all about the audio feedback. For sure there were interesting conversations going on that I was missing, but the information I was getting through the game board itself, the text tab, and the actions tab were providing enough information for me to not only follow through but to also contribute!

Comparing the online experience with a face-to-face experience I would say that:
  • Face-to-face has the benefits of not only more effective verbal communication but also body language and higher encouragement for all stakeholders to participate.
  • Online has the benefits of counting on a log, making it easy for people to think more carefully about something or re-visit something without breaking the rhythm or distracting others.
Also, my being mute-deaf throughout the exercise proves the effectiveness of the playground experience that innovation games bring to the matter being discussed.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

MexAPLN meeting: January 2010

The second meeting of the MexAPLN was way better than the first one. The meeting was at the IDS offices. IDS is one of the two oldest sw dev services businesses in Mexico. Its building has a beautiful view of the 4th and 5th highest mountains in all of the American Continent.

This being the second session it was obviously very org related and the main subjects were:
  • Alejandor Escamilla from Software Guru reported that they received over 400 responses from a member's blog posted on its website
  • 12 people (including myself) attended the meeting, 5 of them first-time. One person actually drove 180 miles one-way just to be there and headed back to his city of origin, Morelia, the next morning! ...and I used to think my 60-mile drive was significant.
  • We talked about what we need to do to be accepted as an actual chapter, about sponsorship and about logistics on meetings.
  • I reported that VersionOne showed a lot of enthusiasm about becoming an sponsor once we are ready for it
  • Main topic was Chartering. Since we were running out of time we decided to do some off-line work, discussing via web-conference to get more done and by the next meeting at which time we'll give it thumbs-up or down.
  • We decided to use Google groups instead of Yahoo groups as one of our comm tools.
  • Next meeting is at the offices or Software Guru.
Too much material for one session, of course but there was good progress.

Once this is done we'll have the foundation and a good start to become a relevant chapter.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

*** Important Note:
Paul Culling from VersionOne wrote a comment on the original posting, on which I used the workd "demands". My response is: Paul, I apologize if the word created some interpretation. One of the definitions of "demand" is "the requirement of work". The communication through Cesar has been quite clear and I informed at the meeting that VersionOne will be happy to become a sponsor, but first we have to prove that we are an active community of practitioners of agile and lean, and that is what is the requirement of work we have to do to earn your sponsorship.
I edited the posting in hope that you agree with the new wording, otherwise let me know and I'll be happy to rephrase it.
~Masa K Maeda

Monday, January 11, 2010

MexAPLN meeting: January 2010

The January 2010 meeting of the MexAPLN meeting will take place at the IDS offices at 7:30 PM on January 19 (Tuesday). Theme of the meet is Chartering.
Adddress: Av. Insurgentes Sur 1388, 11th floor.

See you there!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Book review: Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

Agile testing is a great book to both new and seasoned test engineers and test managers. At 533 pages, the book might feel a bit heavy but it is actually a pretty light and practical read if you read it to get a solid foundation on agile testing and then as reference. Note that the book is not about test coding techniques.

Part I is an introduction to agile testing and proposes ten principles for agile testers. What I don't know is if there are really 10 principles or if Crispin and Gregory forced it to be that specific number because it sounds better than 9 or 11. In any case, this chapter is a must read for all. Part II discusses organizational challenges, specifically cultural, logistical, and transitional from typical processes. This is a must-read for managers and team leads, and highly advisable for engineers if you want to have a successful test organization fully integrated with an agile organization. I personally encourage the division between development and testing to disappear completely. Part III is about he testing quadrants proposed by Brian Marick (one of the Agile Manifesto signatories) a while back. This is the first time I see the quadrants treated in larger detail and highly recommend it as a must for all.

Part IV is about test automation. It is a good read to understand the advantages of test automation and proposes a test automation strategy. This is a good starting point for test organizations that are new to automation but for mature test automation organizations it might add little value. Test code writing techniques are beyond the scope of this book. Part V illustrates the previous parts and then some by following a tester's activities through an agile iteration and the activities prior to it.

One problem I see way too often in test organizations and the way companies treat their test organizations is due to a lack of understanding not only of the difference between Quality Assurance and testing but also because of the place testing has hi people's minds. This book is a big help to create a cultural shift for the better.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Book review: Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd Ed.) by Jim Highsmith

Jim Highsmith is one of those few people that have really been-there-done-that and continue to be a pleasure to meet, accessible and down-to-earth. But anyway, this review is about his new book and not about him so I'll get to it. From my perspective Agile Project Management has two accomplishments: It fills in the gaps left by other books on the same subject and brings us one step further on different ways to see and approach the way we manage agile projects, within and outside software development.

Chapter 1 contains one of the best introductory chapters I've seen in any book on management. It is both a great motivation to read the rest of the book with interesting real cases. This chapter also refreshes the audience on the basics of agile, including the declaration of interdependence, which is explained in detail throughout the book, and provides some lesser known and relatively recent basis such as the Agile Triangle (not the Agile Iron Triangle).

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are a detailed study of leadership values: Value over Constraints, Teams over Tasks, and Adapting over conforming. Similar to the agile values in the manifesto, these invite a cultural change in the way we measure project performance, lead teams, and focus on customer needs. Highsmith explains how the quality of the product and the work environment is improved through these. He also emphasizes on the fact that fail-often-fail-early is of very hight value in building a successful agile organization.

Chapter 5 has two objectives, to introduce an agile enterprise framework consisting of four layers that is arguably more appealing to large organizations, and to introduce an agile delivery framework consisting of five phases. That Agile Delivery Framework is explained in higher detail within the following 5 chapters, one per phase: envision, speculate, explore, adapt, and close. The last part of this chapter provides important practical information on the delivery framework. Chapter 6 has one of the best prep work descriptions you might be able to find and includes a project data sheet and the Tradeoff Matrix, which you might find useful. Chapter 7 digs into the speculate phase. Its contents are useful for those new to agile but not necessarily for those familiar with its basics since it explains fundamentals such as the backlog and story cards. Chapter 8 is about release planning. It introduces some planning strategies and a product planning structure that goes from the roadmap to the iteration. I recommend everybody to read this chapter since it has a bundle of snippets of useful information. Chapter 9 explains the explore phase and includes iteration planning, estimating, management and monitoring. It also talks briefly about technical debt, continuous integration and refactoring at a level good for managers but too light for for technical people. A good portion of the chapter is dedicated to coaching, one of the best parts of the book. Chapter 10 deals with the last two phases: adapt and close. It discusses how diverse activities usually considered secondary are of great importance to successfully fulfill customer needs and rapidly adapt to add value, increase quality, improve performance, and have a realistic view of the project status.

Chapter 11 is about scaling agile projects. Scaling has been a hot topic within the agile community during the last couple of years and Highsmith takes the opportunity to introduce an agile scaling model within the software development organization (other areas of an organization are beyond the scope of the book). scaling is treated at both size and distance levels, which increase the level of uncertainty and complexity. The model has five components: business goals, agile values, the organization, the product backlog and processes. The last three of these are treated differently at product, project, and feature level. I recommend you to read this chapter even if you work with a small team because there is value in understanding what works in the small and what works in the large. It may help you improve what you do in the small.

Highsmith does a great job discussing on chapter 12 how to do governance within agile projects, an aspect most small companies might not have to worry about but most mid to large organizations have to. Chapter 13 is an overview of metrics at a high level. If you want to learn about this topic in technical detail you are better off reading other books such as the David J Anderson's book on agile management and conference proceedings. Chapter 14 is a rather motivational reading on the value of agile

In conclusion, this is a book of high value to get up to speed on agile project management and learn more, recent advances in agile that are useful beyond software development and both in the small and in the large. Although the book doesn't advocate a particular agile development framework it leans mostly towards scrum.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Good kanban tool

LeanKitKanban (http://leankitkanban.com/) is a simple but powerful tool to do Kanban. It is fairly good in that it allows you to create your kanban boards very easily as it is also to add users (with avatars if so desired) to it with different roles. Users can subscribe to board events via email or RSS feed.
It is at beta and collecting suggestions.
Check it out!