The Seapine View

In 2011, we released the Agile Essentials for Project Teams class for external pilot and it quickly sold out. The feedback we have received so far has been great and we are hard at work making the content even better for the 2012 classes. In this post and in the next two, I’ll write a total of three primers, each discussing a section from the class. Hopefully these primers will help you decide if the Agile Essentials for Projects Team class is right for you and encourage you to take the class.

What is Agile anyway? This question is answered in the Naked Agile section of the class. Many people have made the mistake of confusing Agile with Scrum. It’s important to understand that Agile is not Scrum—Scrum is one Agile methodology among many. While Scrum is a good method, it is unfortunately often sold as the Agile pill to cure all ills. To truly be Agile, teams need a deeper understanding of the philosophy behind Agile methodologies such as Scrum.

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The TestTrack Agile Task Board gives team the ability to work with project information via a web browser or mobile device. In a previous post, we discussed how to configure the task board. In this post, I’d like to share more information about how you can use the task board.

Mobile Meetings

The Task Board is a great way to enhance your existing meetings and stand-ups, whether they’re in a conference room or just outside of your cube. Meeting leaders can use an iPad or other tablet computer to give everyone insight into project status and make changes to project artifacts on the fly. Remote team members can get a real-time view of the same information, with the ability to view and update work items along with the rest of the team. Meetings become much more efficient, and the team isn’t left in the dark just because a member or two might be traveling and unable to reach a computer to provide their updates.

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The pilot program for our new Agile Essentials For Project Teams training program is wrapping up, and we recently announced special pricing on the class for teams in North America through the end of 2011. Now’s your chance to train up to 20 members of your development organization in Agile concepts, without the costs typically associated with private training. Seapine is offering 15 private classes at a greatly reduced rate through the end of the year. All-inclusive pricing starts at only $4,995. Contact Agile Services for more information and to sign-up.

Building a Lego dune buggy during Agile Essentials class

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Seapine will be exhibiting at the EuroSTAR Test Tools and Services Exhibition, which runs alongside the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2011. This year, EuroSTAR 2011 takes place from November 21-24 in Manchester, UK. The exhibition segment of the conference opens on Tuesday and closes after the last coffee break on Thursday evening. You can find Seapine at Stand 90.

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The TestTrack Agile Task Board is a fully configurable web interface, enabling teams to work with TestTrack in a streamlined interface configured to match the way they work.

Let’s look at how a team can set up the Agile Task Board to deliver the information they need for their project. Logging onto the Task Board presents a view of tasks to do, in progress, blocked, and completed. Configuration options can be accessed across the top of the page.

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Thanks to everyone who joined us for our Scaling Agile for Project Teams webinar. The recording is now available on YouTube if you missed the webinar or want to watch it again. Q&A from the session follows.

Agile methodologies are all about speed and simplicity. In the early days of Agile, simplicity was represented in the form of 3 X 5 notecards, which were used to record user stories, tasks, and feature backlogs, among other things. Even today, most teams exploring Agile will start off with a whiteboard and stack of index cards. After the novelty wears off, and the team gets into the thick of a release, they start looking for software tools that can maintain the collaborative nature of the whiteboard while adding the ability to automate some work and also add collaboration with remote team members.

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In a 2010 study, Forrester Research reported that roughly 88% of respondents had more than 10 members on a team. And, only 17% had the entire team co-located at the company headquarters. Join us for this 60-minute Agile XXL: Scaling Agile for Project Teams webinar on Wednesday, November 9, at 2:00 p.m. EST (North America), to learn more about scaling Agile. Alan Bustamante, senior Agile consultant, will discuss the people, process, and tools—what he calls “project support pillars”—that must be in harmony before you can successfully scale an enterprise Agile team. He’ll also share common challenges in solidifying each of those pillars, and early warning signs that a project team is at risk of serious issues as it scales.

You’ll learn:

• A model for understanding what happens when people, process, and tools are not aligned.
• Common problems faced by organizations struggling with scaling Agile teams.
• Proven solutions to mitigate the risk associated with scaling Agile project teams.

Register today and learn how to scale your Agile project team regardless of team size or team location.

Global Team

On November 9, I’ll be hosting the Agile XXL: Scaling Agile for Project Teams webinar. I haven’t ironed out the details of this webinar yet, but thought it would be good to write a primer for the event.  While I have been practicing many Agile techniques on large, distributed projects since 2002, I didn’t start formally putting them together as a collection of practices in the form of Agile projects until 2007.  It was in 2007 that I say my Agile journey and passion for Agile software development officially began. Since then, helping organizations adopt Agile practices for large and/or distributed project teams has been of particular interest to me because most of my clients have fit into the category. Let’s take a look at some numbers.

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Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Requirements and Agile: Keeping up with Change webinar. If you missed the event, take some time to watch the Requirements and Agile: Keeping up with Change recorded webinar. Attendees asked several interesting questions, all of which we weren’t able to address during the webinar. To follow up, and invite others to participate, we’ve included the Q&A below.

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