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Being The Manager Of An Agile Team
Jeffrey PalermoCTO, Headspring Systems
www.headspringsystems.com
www.JeffreyPalermo.com
Quarterly Giveaway
• Drop a business card
• Win iPod Touch
About me
• CTO, Headspring Systems
• Agilist since 2004, XPer since 2005, pragmatist always
• U.S. Army Veteran (Iraq, 2003-2004)
• Founding member, AgileAustin board of directors
• Microsoft MVP (Solution Architecture)
• Director, Austin .Net User Group
• INETA speakers bureau
• www.partywithpalermo.com
• Headspring’s Agile Boot Camp• Certified ScrumMaster
Agenda
• What does a manager do?
• How to deal with risk
• Predicting issues
• Forecasting
• Hiring and firing
• No broken windows (defects)
• Feedback and metrics
• Managing scope & setting expectations
• Questions up-front!
Overview
Extreme Programming has lots to say about the
customer, agile management, agile planning, agile
software engineering and testing. Scrum has a lot
to say about the process of iterating and organizing
priority. Lean has a lot to say about increasing
production and production quality as well as
eliminating waste.
Lots of clients, even with agile training, remain with
questions about where management fits in within an
agile culture. This session is a blend of project
management and people management.
Agile: agilemanifesto.org
What does a manager do?
Why is it different managing software
projects?
Why can’t we manage it the same as
managing a Taco Bell?
What does a manager do?
The best architectures, requirements,
and designs emerge from self-
organizing teams.- agilemanifesto.org
What does a manager do?
• Self-organizing does not mean self-directing.
– What is the size of the team?
– What do individuals on the team get paid?
– What type of office space will we pay for?
– What project will make us money?
• Teams will always self-organize, even in the absence
of management.
– How will we run the project?
– How will we involve stakeholders?
• http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group
/agilemanagement/
What does a manager do?
• Chain of command is important
• Authority must be delegated
What does a manager do?
Everything that is right or wrong with an
organization is managements’ fault
The “free love” hippie culture doesn’t jive with stockholder
expectations.
What does a manager do?
• How organized is the strategic roadmap?
• How are requirements coming?
• Is delivery on track?
• What about quality control? Defects?
• How is feedback getting absorbed?
• Are operations going smoothly?
• The right people
• The right things
• The right time
(what IF these things are challenged?)
What does a manager do?
How to deal with risk
Risk: What might go wrong
What does the Agile Manifesto say about dealing
with risk?
Agile risk management:
“Responding to change over following a plan”
-agilemanifesto.org
Predicting issues
As a manager, you cannot predict every issue
that may arise.
Individuals and interactions over processes and
tools-agilemanifesto.org
Forecasting
Which metric do you use?
1. Hours
2. Ideal hours
3. Function points
4. Story points tied to complexity
5. Story points tied to size
6. Man-days
Forecasting
Units tied to time/effort are a moving
target.• Similar tasks get easier over time
• Programmer skills increase
• Libraries/componentization
Forecasting
Choose a unit that remains the same in
the presence of improvement
• Function Point
• Story Point
Hiring and firing
“I don’t know exactly what you do, but I know
that problems arise when you are on
vacation.”
Hiring and firing
“I don’t know exactly what you do, but I know
that problems go away when you are on
vacation.”
Hiring and firing
• Topgrading
• It’s not a mystery who the weakest team
members are
• Staff ROI & opportunity cost
Hiring and firing
Senior/junior mix
• Highly repeatable processes
– More junior staff
• Novel or emerging processes
– More senior staff
No broken windows (defects)
• No bug database – The Art of Agile Development
• Stop the presses quality control
• QA as a strategy, not a job role
• Automation
• Define “DONE”
• Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.-agilemanifesto.org
No broken windows (defects)
Quality
• Strategic direction
• Requirements definition
• Architectural specifications
• Construction quality
• Functional test automation
• Operations monitoring & deployments
Feedback and metrics
As a manager, what are your metrics?
As a manager, what type of concrete feedback
do you receive?
Why is it difficult to measure management?
Feedback and metrics
Management is knowledge work.
Slack by Tom DeMarco
• Efficient secretaries
• Fully utilized highway
Feedback and metrics
Software delivery metrics
• Consistent # of points delivered per unit of time (not a
programmer metric)
• Number of defects released (ZERO)
Whatever you measure will improve
- keep all the plates spinning
- modify metrics as you see weaknesses
Managing scope & setting expectations
source:dsdm.org
Managing scope & setting expectations
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.-agilemanifesto.org
Managing scope & setting expectations
• Small team
– Whiteboard, throw-away documentation
– Verbal agreements
• Large team
– Written, persistent documentation
– Documented agreements
– Meeting minutes
– Requirements traceability
– Story specifications
Wrap-up
• Management is an enabler of an effective
software organization
• Beware of the pendulum swing
• Leverage Agile values and principles to make
your organization more effective
• Don’t implement “Agile”.
Implement effectiveness
Questions?
• Jeffrey Palermo• CTO, Headspring Systems
• www.headspringsystems.com
• www.JeffreyPalermo.com
