A new rhythm of life is starting for me..

As I have been indicating on my tweets for last few days, a change in rhythm is approaching for me, due to changes in work conditions. I was an employee of a company for last almost 2 years in Barcelona, Spain and from 22nd of this month of May 2012 , I won't be...

So I will looking out for more assignments in agile/ lean world, helping teams grow (professionally and personally) and in turn help companies grow, help companies see why outsourcing should be KPO and not just BPO and cost saving and importantly help other entrepreneurs and startups to survive and grow

With current economic situation of Spain, I should be very very worried and uneasy.. the unemployment rates in Spain are around 24% (Source : eurostat), the Spanish economy is shrinking (Source : Valuewalk), People are talking about recession just starting in Spain. But frankly I am not that worried, I have made up my mind and I will try to walk the path which @marick showed in one of this lightening talks in ALE2011 in Berlin, Germany.

Brian Marick told us we working in Europe should be more open to entrepreneurship since we have free medical care from government (Even though we all know there are many cost cuttings going on in Health system of Spain and it takes for ever just to see a doctor... we still have it..) and I am going to take the way of entrepreneurship yet again after a few years of gap.

And I am sure I will be able to walk this path with help of guides like @jurgenappelo, @OlafLewitz, @yveshanoulle, @snowded and a lot more (they might not know it yet, so sshhhh..) and a lot of friends which I made in #ALE2011. I am learning from all of you a lot and I hope i would keep learning a lot more.

What I do hope is with this change in rhythm, i will get more time to read (I have like 4 paper books bought and unread... :( ), to be able to dedicate more time to my pet projects and @WIKISPEED and #ALE2012. And of course attend a few training courses that i have been wanting to do for last few months.. AND yes more participation in @AgileBCN events (i have not been able to participate much a lot in recent past).

As I said before I am also helping in organizing ALE2012 which will take place in Barcelona, Spain on 29-31 Aug 2012 and I hope to learn, share and welcome old friends from #ALE2011 with a open arms and hugs.

Of course if some nice opportunity shows up on the way, i wont say NO, but surely will try to keep the entrepreneurship flame glowing in some way...

Thanks to all co-workers, well-wishers and friends who have shown support and I really hope our paths cross again someday somewhere.

My experience on Scrum simulation with LEGO

During last week I was running the Agile coaching sessions for 3 teams from one of my clients. For this sessions we did the Simulation of Scrum with Lego which turned out to be very interesting activity for the teams.

I used the technics from a paper published by @alexeykri and some more from a blog post from agile42 and the mix turned out to be very exhaustive for teams and for me. For the simulation I used the Lego TM  5512 basic brick set which comes with 1600 pieces. Which were sufficient for 2 teams of 4/5 people in each team.







So how did we play...
We had a backlog of basic needs for a city like houses, school, shop, hospital, public transport, etc... which was presented to the team and the team was to estimate the time.
Once all was estimated, we planned for the iterations which took in to amount how many people each team and what they thought was best task for them...
Once the release plan was ready the team presented it to product owner and adapted it to the need of the business.
Then we started the iterations of 7 mins with 5 mins afterwords for review and 3 mins for Retrospective and this worked quite well.

                                              

I did introduce some sick leaves and rotating scrum master during the simulation and many people were wonder struck when they heard words "you are on sick leave" during 1st or 2nd sprints. Also rotations of scrum master role after each iteration spiced up the game a little as each one was able to understand the role. We also changed the Product owner role a few time.

I also did a few unforeseen addition like a Building Crane (Idea taken from Agile42 notes on the game) and it also surprised the teams (but dont we get new requirements in between the projects?)

In one case I even added a lake in the city and asked for a boat and port for the boat (wohoo!!) and the team did it (wohoo again)....

I am very happy with the results and the feedback doors were quite interesting mix.