Crystal Clear - A Book for Small Teams

I recently started writing a book review on Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn. I have read Chapter 1 entitled Explained (View from the Outside). It was a very interesting chapter that set Crystal Clear as the answerer to Alistair Cockburn. It made many aspects of the Crystal family clear in my mind. I enjoyed the questions, and the answers were insightful and helped me to put the ideas into a whole picture. It is an intriguing Agile book!

At the moment I am reading Chapter 2 entitled Applied (The Seven Properties). Frequent Delivery, Reflective Improvement, and Osmotic Communication made sense to me and aligned somewhat to my own beliefs. When I started reading the fourth property, Personal Safety, certain parts seemed fine, while others set off warning bells. I believe that the purpose of any team is to progress. This is achieved through trust, respect and unity.

Cockburn says “Once personal safety and amicability are established, a useful, playful dynamic may emerge. People may wage competition with each other. They may argue loudly, even to the verge of fighting, without taking it personally. In the case where someone does take it personally, they sort it out and set things straight again.” – page 31.

The statements above concern me. Cockburn addresses trust by saying that people will not take it personally. Respect is lost because they “… May argue loudly, even to the verge of fighting”. I would be unable to say that I respect someone if I yell at them or even raise my voice. Now unity is completely destroyed. For some reason our society and many societies around the world not only condone competition, it is seen as a way to judge attributes of excellence in an individual. This is not a good sign for our progress towards unity in human civilization.

I agree that being polite and not stating one’s opinion is harmful for trust. However, it is preferable to use consultation instead of competition. Imagine that a team is encouraged to compete with itself to achieve better results. Would there not be feelings of resentment or heightened levels of stress? Now imagine a team that is encouraged to consult and raise the team together without focusing on individual success. Would not this team feel excited to be around each other? Would they become fast friends and grow as a unit? Would family members of the team be enthusiastic to be included in picnics and socials?

Now the big question:
What is better, individual success or team unity, to add value to all who interact with them?

Agile Tools & Agile Books

I have been working with Agile for a few months. At Berteig Consulting we are using Agile to run our small business. As such we try to use various tools to make our life easier. I have already mentioned that we use CardMeeting for our cycles and tasks. I have tried using PlanningPoker for online estimation. It seems useful, but maybe our team is too small to make great use of it. I am also looking for other ways to manage the reflections and learning from each cycle.

I have received an email from David Wolrich of CardMeeting that states: “Anyways, I rely on the trickle of news from legitimate organizations like yours to let users know that CardMeeting is still around, that I am still adding features, and to generate interest; thanks again.” So maybe some of you could try it and give him a shout. Much like other free applications on the net such as Drupal and Neo Office this one could become more robust and useful.

I am wondering if I am spending too much time on tools and not enough reading and researching Agile methods. I am enjoying reading about Agile success stories. Anybody know of small businesses that have documented or written about achieving success in Agile? Is there an Agile bible or maybe a book about the best ways to succeed using Agile?

So this is the question that I am wondering: Are tools better than books when it comes to Agile?

Agile Project Management with Scrum - a very technical book

I have been reading a book entitled “Agile Project Management with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber. It is an interesting read. The examples and stories that he shares of companies who have struggled with Scrum and those that have succeeded are fantastic. The way Schwaber breaks up the book and explains all the roles then gives example makes it a great learning tool. It is also really funny and clever.

One complaint I have with the book is that it is very technical, it seems that the reader is assumed to have many years of software development experience. It is interesting that the projects that Schwaber discusses that have the most trouble with Scrum are those that are “stuck” in their old ways of working. It’s almost as if the old saying of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is true for Scrum implementations. “Scrum means doing things in small cycles – so I will do everything the same except in shorter cycles.” Anybody ever heard of that type of reasoning?

I definitely recommend this book for those who have considerable experience in the technology field. For those who don’t this book might be challenging at times, espcially with the computer language words that are used.

I want to continually learn for my own personal and professional growth. So I  would like to know which books do you suggest? Are there any books that share examples and stories that are not focused on software development? If you disagree which my review of the book please comment.

First Try with Agile in my Home

I have been practicing Agile for the last few months for my job. With Mishkin we have been following many of the Agile rules as a small team. It has been very successful, and the learning is tremendous.

So, like Mishkin, I wondered if I could use the same practices at home. A few days ago I asked my wife (Laila) if we could try using cards, a list of work (work queue), and cycles. She thought it would be great idea to put all our tasks on post-its so we wouldn't have to remember them.

Yesterday we made the work queue, did some estimation, and decided what we would commit to for our first cycle. We consulting and decided that one week cycles would make the most sense for our schedules.

Right away I noticed a relaxation that came over Laila. I guess that it is very tough to maintain a work queue in your head day-in and day-out. I will continue to post my thoughts on our progress.

Has anybody else used agile practices outside of your work? How did it work? What did you learn? Maybe my wife and I can learn from you and avoid those challenges.

An Agile Tool for a Distributed Team

For the last 3 months I have been lucky to work in an environment that is Agile. My job requires lots of small projects and tasks and my job title is clear but my work is every changing. I like new challenges and creative tasks.

Recently our small team has been using http://cardmeeting.com/ an online tool to add ideas, set up tasks, and keep track of what the whole is doing and what still needs to be done. We decided to use this tool because of how much we are a distributed team most of the week. I would rather be all together in one place. However, this is not possible for the near future. What I like about this tool is that it works just a like a physical wall with sticky notes that can be placed wherever you like. It also expands as required.

I am looking for more tools to make our agile practices more streamlined and efficient. Any suggestions or ideas?

Being a ScrumMaster is Hard

As a Certified ScrumMaster, I need to do many things to help my team. Not only do these things include practices but principles as well.

Practices of a ScrumMaster

• Ensures that the team follows the rules of Scrum
• Removes obstacles that stop the team from delivering value
• Facilitates the meetings in Scrum

Principles that are important for a ScrumMaster

• The Agile Manifesto, which states
• individual and interactions over processes and tool
• working software over comprehensive documentation
• customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• responding to change over following a plan
• Inspect & Adapt
• Stages of a Team
• forming
• storming
• norming
• performing

With all of this in mind and much more to consider, I can see why a ScrumMaster is a full time job!

Attended My First ScrumMaster Seminar

I recently joined Berteig Consulting, with a focus on marketing, and Mishkin Berteig suggested that I attend his 3-day Certified ScrumMaster training seminar.

Wow, what an experience! Mishkin blew my mind wide open with concepts such as an empowered team who handles its own work, visibility of work to all, and a learning framework that helps individuals and teams become hyper productive.

All should attend a Certified ScrumMaster seminar to open their own minds!

Link: my Scrum Alliance Profile

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With Clear Vison and Inflexible Determination, corporate executives, sales managers and sales professionals, and indeed, all corporate employees can achieve their personal and corporate objectives. Our corporation is set up to help your company achieve its' goal through programs of classroom training balanced with field experiences.

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February 18 - 23, 2007: Cat & Family

These are some pictures of my family cat Tigger, some Gopauls and some Heidema's and Laila's cat Rahja.

February 15 - 17, 2007

Valentine's day, Kianfars, and friends.

February 11 - 12, 2007

Always on the lake.

February 6 - 8, 2007

This was a fun week of bowling, lobster, my mother's boutique, and fun on a frozen lake.

Birthday Song on my Birthday

Laila and I went out for coffee and then picked up my mom from her barbershop chorus group. You can check out their site by clicking here.

They sang Happy Birthday for me and Laila filmed it. So I put it on youtube for all to see.

Click here to see it for yourself.

Tigger in the Bag

My family cat Tigger is quite the explorer. She likes to get into anything that she can fit in. So today she noticed that I was cleaning my old room... the obvious thing to do was to be curious as a cat and visit the exotic garbage bag. Tigger is the toast of the trash!

My 30th Birthday

Today was my party for my 30th birthday. It was great! So many people showed up, even people that had exams the folowing day... a shout out to Prince.

We ate some good food and played a ridiculously long game of president. If you don't know what that card is then post a comment and I will explain.

Excitement on the Highway

My parents came to pick Laila and I up from her parents home. On the way we saw what seemed like a drunk driver in front of us. So my dad, who was driving, followed him for a long and I called the police.

It turned out to be a sleepy man who needed to stop and get some coffee. The 911 people were so nice and the cop was great too.

Pic -> Watching the cop car in front of us as he talks to the "crazy" driver.

Game and Chat

Today was all fun. Laila, Sanjiv (Laila's brother) and I played a game called 13 Dead End Drive. It is somewhat like Clue but you have to get your player of the house with the loot without getting killed or caught by the detective. Later in the day Laila and I went to chat with our good friend Faran. A delightful day.

Devotional and Brunch

Today Laila and I went to a devotional. This is where people come together to pray and socialize after. It was quite good, especially the food.

Cora's Breakfast

Today Laila and I went out to Cora's for breakfast. We had a coupon so we didn't have to spend much. The food was fantastic and the waitress was quite funny. Notice how cute Laila is with her fruit crepe and how greasy I look with my dish.

Out in the Cold

Laila and I have been doing many errands these last few days. At this point in the pictures we were waiting for a bus in the dreadful cold weather. So we decided to pose for pictures to share the stupendousness that is Newmarket, Canada