Great news, I have been given the opportunity to translate David J Anderson's new book entitled "Kanban: Evolutionary change for you technology company". Needless to say I am thrilled by this.
:-)
Mar 18, 2010
Mar 17, 2010
Agile Training Game Board
Yesterday's talk at the BayAPLN meeting was on the Agile Training Game Board, proposed by David Chilcott from Outformations and Pat Reed from The Gap.
The basic concept is very simple. The same way that some of us actually use an agile dev board alike scrum at the training courses we offer, the ATGM shows the flow of stories from backlog to completion. What I think the contribution was is the emphasis on short timeboxes, 10 min in average and 20 min tops. This is particularly useful for training to executives because details are not necessarily important to them and they rather get the succinct version of things. They also encourage the thumbs-up-down-sideways feedback to consider stories Done. The board had extra columns at the end for value points and time, both important aspects to executives.
The talk included a stand-up game on self-organization to show how some concepts can be "explained" effectively and in shorter time through games.
The basic concept is very simple. The same way that some of us actually use an agile dev board alike scrum at the training courses we offer, the ATGM shows the flow of stories from backlog to completion. What I think the contribution was is the emphasis on short timeboxes, 10 min in average and 20 min tops. This is particularly useful for training to executives because details are not necessarily important to them and they rather get the succinct version of things. They also encourage the thumbs-up-down-sideways feedback to consider stories Done. The board had extra columns at the end for value points and time, both important aspects to executives.
The talk included a stand-up game on self-organization to show how some concepts can be "explained" effectively and in shorter time through games.
Mar 10, 2010
Lean-Agile editor for the Software Guru magazine
Software Guru magazine invited me to be the editor for its lean-agile section and I gladly accepted :-)
This is a great opportunity to help in contributing more effectively to the penetration of lean-agile in Mexico and hopefully Latin America as well; and at the same time increase de presence of Mexico within the global lean-agile community.
This is a great opportunity to help in contributing more effectively to the penetration of lean-agile in Mexico and hopefully Latin America as well; and at the same time increase de presence of Mexico within the global lean-agile community.
Mar 9, 2010
The best way to fix the Prius sudden-acceleration problem is by not fixing it.
Did I get your attention? Good!
Tonight's news included yet another case of a Prius sudden-acceleration problem, this time in San Diego where the driver ended up being assisted by a police officer who used his police car to stop the Prius by driving in front of it to slow it down to a stop. Toyota's engineers are really scratching their heads over this problem and that particular Prius is now being analyzed very thoroughly in hope to figure out the cause.
So, how to fix this problem? Probably Toyota's engineers already thought about what I am about to propose but here it goes anyway: do not fix the problem! Okay so, before those of you who are still reading on what I think should be done is two things:
Tonight's news included yet another case of a Prius sudden-acceleration problem, this time in San Diego where the driver ended up being assisted by a police officer who used his police car to stop the Prius by driving in front of it to slow it down to a stop. Toyota's engineers are really scratching their heads over this problem and that particular Prius is now being analyzed very thoroughly in hope to figure out the cause.
So, how to fix this problem? Probably Toyota's engineers already thought about what I am about to propose but here it goes anyway: do not fix the problem! Okay so, before those of you who are still reading on what I think should be done is two things:
- Verify the algorithm and its implementation. One very likely cause is the software that controls the car's acceleration and brake systems. If that is the case and engineers cannot find and fix the bug(s) then a better course of action would be to start from the beginning and (a) create a new algorithm, (b) analyze the algorthm quality as such, i.e. as an abstraction, (c) implement and test it simultaneously. Step (b) is extremely important because that is the best way to make sure the algorithm is robust. If we wait until implementation time to do testing then it will be harder to know if the problem is the algorithm itself or its implementation. I think this is the most viable, fast, and cost-effective course of action.
- Unit level testing is not enough. One well know problem with measurement, from the physics standpoint, is that any attempt to measure something will affect what is being measured and therefore the measurement will be inexact. This means that once the algorithm and its implementation are robust it will be more effective to test at subsystem and system levels instead of inisolation.
- Reproduce internal and external test conditions. The best way to reproduce a behavior is by recreating all conditions that triggered the undersired behavior. In addition to the car conditions this includes road, slope, weather, etc.
Mar 5, 2010
Presentaion on Lean-Agile and Innovation at the ITESM
This morning I gave a presentation on Lean-Agile and Innovation at the ITESM (Monterey Advanced Studies Institute of Technology), which was broadcasted to its 33 campuses nation-wide via satelite and was also webcasted.
I talked about the motivation to create better products and services considering Quality, Value, and Design, then moved on to talk about fundamentals of Lean and Agile. Last I talked about the advantage of using games to foster innovation and did examples on planning and estimating, group cohesion, and product analysis. More specifically I used planning poker, pair drawing, and prune-the-tree games.
The oopsy part was that I used all of the allocated time giving the presentation so Q&A had to be off-line. But it was possible to compensate at least with the local audience through 10 min. of Q&A.
BTW, the ITESM staff did an extraordinary job with logistics, production, etc., and the campus is impressive and functional.
I talked about the motivation to create better products and services considering Quality, Value, and Design, then moved on to talk about fundamentals of Lean and Agile. Last I talked about the advantage of using games to foster innovation and did examples on planning and estimating, group cohesion, and product analysis. More specifically I used planning poker, pair drawing, and prune-the-tree games.
The oopsy part was that I used all of the allocated time giving the presentation so Q&A had to be off-line. But it was possible to compensate at least with the local audience through 10 min. of Q&A.
BTW, the ITESM staff did an extraordinary job with logistics, production, etc., and the campus is impressive and functional.
Feb 26, 2010
MexAPLN Feb 2010 meeting
MexAPLN Feb 2010 meeting took place last night at the offices of Software Guru Magazine, a modern looking floor with cool artwork on the walls. Definitely a nice place to work. We had 10 people, three of them new with one of them from the city of Puebla. The central topic was to thumbs-up our charter's vision, mission, values, and principles and will be available before the end of this week. The discussion was rather short thanks to off-line work by 7 members in that most of the discussions took place before the meeting. We did a first-pass at the objectives and will be discussing them further as well as the other parts of the charter with the intention to finalize it at our March meeting.
There are numerous ideas and enthusiasm to start executing. I don't see a reason for MexAPLN to become of of the best!
Note: Software Guru has been making reference to a blog in Spanish written by Armando Peralta, check it out!
There are numerous ideas and enthusiasm to start executing. I don't see a reason for MexAPLN to become of of the best!
Note: Software Guru has been making reference to a blog in Spanish written by Armando Peralta, check it out!
Feb 24, 2010
Second presentation at Congress in Mexico
This morning I gave a second presentation on lean-agile at Mexico's Congress aiming at medium and small industry. It was probably not the best day to schedule it because today is Mexic's Flag day and logistics got a bit complicated. The presentation was successful in that all attendants got very enthusiastic about lean-agile and the Q&A session lasted over 1/2 hour. There were three nice outcomes:
1. The Deputy I started doing all this with concluded is time to bring my ideas to the Secretary of the Economy. I will be meeting two of its members either next week or at my next business trip.
2. An entrepreneur wants us to talk about how lean-agile can help his new life-science business.
3. I was asked to give a presentation at the School of Economy at the National University of Mexico.
One very cool thing that also happened was a person from an indigenous area in Mexico was there and asked me about how to use lean-agile principles to help the community of craftsmen better their business. This is obviously a very different context but after hearing details on how they are working to create and sell their crafts I gave her some ideas and advice I hope will help them. Of course I would love to get a chance to go there for a few days and create a direct positive impact.
1. The Deputy I started doing all this with concluded is time to bring my ideas to the Secretary of the Economy. I will be meeting two of its members either next week or at my next business trip.
2. An entrepreneur wants us to talk about how lean-agile can help his new life-science business.
3. I was asked to give a presentation at the School of Economy at the National University of Mexico.
One very cool thing that also happened was a person from an indigenous area in Mexico was there and asked me about how to use lean-agile principles to help the community of craftsmen better their business. This is obviously a very different context but after hearing details on how they are working to create and sell their crafts I gave her some ideas and advice I hope will help them. Of course I would love to get a chance to go there for a few days and create a direct positive impact.
Feb 20, 2010
Effective employee performance assessment via lean-thinking
An eBay executive once asked me how I would go about doing individual employee performance review if lean-agile are team oriented. Effectively, in agile-lean thinking, we value team effort more than individual effort and consider individual rewards to hinder teamwork improvement. That doesn't mean, however, individual performance cannot be measured. As with enterprises, what we need to do is know what to measure.
We must use measurements that encourage the employee to improve teamwork through individual efforts for the benefit of the business and the customer. For example:
Measure sales executives in terms of the number of successful deliveries instead of the number of sales deals closed. That way the sales executive can't forget about the customer once the sales deal is closed. It is necessary to make sure the client gets what was paid for, and to do that it becomes necessary to work as a team with other groups in the company.
Measure developers in terms of how many stories got completed with good customer satisfaction instead of how many lines of code were implemented but rather . This developer has to interact with QA, the scrum master, the product owner, and customers to fully understand the stories and customer needs to ensure the code meets customer needs and has the quality required.
Measure QA engineers in terms of reduction of bugs in the code and increase of product quality instead of number of bugs found. That way the focus becomes building quality, as compared with showing how bad the product is. Activities are proactive, including higher interaction with customers and other teams instead of only the reactive activity of bug hunting.
Under such lean thinking the employees increase teamwork, quality, and customer satisfaction; and executives have an effective way to measure individual performance without fomenting individualistic work.
We must use measurements that encourage the employee to improve teamwork through individual efforts for the benefit of the business and the customer. For example:
Measure sales executives in terms of the number of successful deliveries instead of the number of sales deals closed. That way the sales executive can't forget about the customer once the sales deal is closed. It is necessary to make sure the client gets what was paid for, and to do that it becomes necessary to work as a team with other groups in the company.
Measure developers in terms of how many stories got completed with good customer satisfaction instead of how many lines of code were implemented but rather . This developer has to interact with QA, the scrum master, the product owner, and customers to fully understand the stories and customer needs to ensure the code meets customer needs and has the quality required.
Measure QA engineers in terms of reduction of bugs in the code and increase of product quality instead of number of bugs found. That way the focus becomes building quality, as compared with showing how bad the product is. Activities are proactive, including higher interaction with customers and other teams instead of only the reactive activity of bug hunting.
Under such lean thinking the employees increase teamwork, quality, and customer satisfaction; and executives have an effective way to measure individual performance without fomenting individualistic work.
Feb 19, 2010
Some coming presentations
I will be in Mexico City the next two weeks (Feb 22 ~ Mart 5) and during that trip I will be giving the following presentations:
- Feb 24, Congress building. I will be giving my second presentation on lean-agile, this time to a larger audience that includes industry leaders and some congressmen. It is very likely that it will be broadcasted through the Congress TV channel.
- March 5, ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey). I will give a lecture on lean-agile and innovation which will be broadcasted to its 33 campuses accross the country via satellite and internet.
Feb 16, 2010
Jim Highsmith's talk: Beyond scope, schedule, and cost
I'm back home from the monthly BayAPLN meeting. This time we had Jim Highsmith give a talk entitled "Beyond Scope, Schedule, and Cost: rethinking performance measures for agile development". I read Jim's most recent book on agile project management and actually wrote a review on it (posted on by blog and on Amazon.com) and thought this talk was going to have as central point the new Agile Triangle as proposed on the book. I was very pleased that the presentation went beyond that. Jim exposed different ways in which we can measure performance by considering value and quality; and gave a good number of examples. 
He mentioned the importance on having a better standing point to evaluate and measure performance. A common factor on all of them is adaptability. The metrics must allow changes and be effective measuring under real-world variations. Quality could very well be the most important metric of all; but doesn't mean it should be the only metric to have.
He mentioned the importance on having a better standing point to evaluate and measure performance. A common factor on all of them is adaptability. The metrics must allow changes and be effective measuring under real-world variations. Quality could very well be the most important metric of all; but doesn't mean it should be the only metric to have.
Feb 5, 2010
Ikiru and why some lean-agile projects fail
Many years ago when I was in college I had the opportunity to see the movie Ikiru (生きる) by Akira Kurozawa. As a nice way to finish my work week, I just finished watched it again while having dinner. The story is around an elderly man, Watanebe-san, who is a public office head of department who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He immediately starts a desperate hunt to recover the 30 years he spend doing nothing as a public official, and after much soul searching he decides to help build a public park at a low income neighborhood. The park is finished shortly before his death, whose cause was unknown to his coworkers and family. At his funeral reception there are about a dozen other public officials of different ranks. It is there where an amazing display of bureaucracy is made clear, and after much drinking and discussing, those who remained at the room came to the realization of the reazon of Watanabe's death. Inspired by it they all determine to make their work as meaningful and really serve the public, only to get back to the same status quo once back to work.
There is a parallel to the story and why some lean-agile projects fail and, worse, why entire organizations fail in the adoption. Simply put, it is very easy to get back to the old habits. Many organizations claim to be doing agile, be it scrum, xp, kanban or whatever else, in reality they still do in good measure the same things they were doing before with minor modifications such as not sitting at their periodic meetings or using post-it notes for their use cases. This more often than not results in even worse dynamics than before the "adoption". If you want your organization to really adopt lean-agile then you have to fully embrace it and be willing to go through what it takes to really make the transition.
There is a parallel to the story and why some lean-agile projects fail and, worse, why entire organizations fail in the adoption. Simply put, it is very easy to get back to the old habits. Many organizations claim to be doing agile, be it scrum, xp, kanban or whatever else, in reality they still do in good measure the same things they were doing before with minor modifications such as not sitting at their periodic meetings or using post-it notes for their use cases. This more often than not results in even worse dynamics than before the "adoption". If you want your organization to really adopt lean-agile then you have to fully embrace it and be willing to go through what it takes to really make the transition.
Feb 4, 2010
Cutter predictions 2010
Cutter published its 2010 predictions back in mid December, which includes a prediction by yours truly.
Agile-lean will become the new mainstream approach to project management and software development. Latin America will become aware of this and will start investing heavily on its adoption towards the end of the year in an attempt to bridge the IT gap between developing and developed countries.
You can see the full list at:
http://www.cutter.com/predictions/2010.html
Agile-lean will become the new mainstream approach to project management and software development. Latin America will become aware of this and will start investing heavily on its adoption towards the end of the year in an attempt to bridge the IT gap between developing and developed countries.
You can see the full list at:
http://www.cutter.com/predictions/2010.html
Jan 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.
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.
Jan 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:
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.
Jan 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:
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
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.
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
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