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.

       

Why scrum can feel like a Overhead?

I had published this entry on some other blog, also publishing it here since i think its worth it.

Scrum an agile development methodology framework, many people might not agree and would say its a methodology. As Uncle Bob has commented scrum is deliberately incomplete and can be adapted and makes it best fit for each team.

Then in this scenario can it be really a overhead??

There can be various reasons of why scrum can be felt as burden or a overhead, let´s jot jolt down some of them..

1) Scrum has been imposed on the people and they feel its more to control them than to make life easier. This kind of sensation can be noted when it was only management´s decision to implement scrum and no adequate process of adaptation was undertaken. This can make people think that scrum is overload, its bringing more responsibilities. But really speaking there is only 15mins daily and 3-4 hours bi-weekly. if you hear its a overload/ Overhead, one of the things you can be sure is team is manifesting that the decision is being pushed on them.

2) The case also can be that team doesn't like to follow processes or was not following any formal process of development. In these situations the sprint planning, the daily meetings and the important aspect of iterative delivery can be result like a overhead for the team.

Most probably results from previous development process were late delivery, not meeting user requirements and unmate commitments.

3) The most probable reason is the team only looks at the things they have to do and not what are the improvements/ benefits such as greater visibility into progress, closer contact with customers and users who can validate that the most-desired features are being built, closer coordination and greater communication with coworkers to ensure all team members are heading in the same direction, and so on....

4) The other possible reason can be that the scrum principles are not being followed correctly. The daily meeting are not limited to 3 answers and are being done for extended period of time. The planning meetings are uninformative and also extended period of time. The sprints and teams are not blinded. and so on...

5) Feeling of scrum overhead can also be existent if the team doesn't feel integrated. If there is non-existence of common projects or common Goals. This situation normally arises in the companies which are oriented towards services rather than products.

Said this a team can work its progress towards a scrumbutt most probally goes through one of these reasons. The most important part of implementation teams believing in scrum and understanding how it helps them to improve the work environment.

In my own experience Scrum is lightweight, the management is low and it gives more productive time and helps us in improving our focus on the planned work, reducing the deviations and raising the alarms in early stages.

There is a Spanish phrase "El sentido común es el menos común de los sentido" means the common sense is the least common of all the senses. But Common sense is most important aspect of Scrum.

The Information in Daily Stand-ups

I know, many people have written down whats the importance of the Daily Stand up meetings in scrum, but there is always something new happening which makes you write down a few pointers for whoever wants to read it.

Sometimes when I attend the daily stand ups as a listener, it seems like they are doing the Daily stand-ups just because they are asked to do it, i get the sensation that they are not able to extract the value out of the information which is being exposed in these meetings. In some cases these meetings are converted in status update meetings but these cases are rare.

The information which is provided should be useful, in most of the cases i see that people explain I worked on "X" project yesterday, will continue today and no blockers. Is this really useful for the TEAM, in my opinion its not, may be a bit useful for a Product owner but no sufficient. we don´t need to give a status update here guys, we need to inform the team mates and Scrum master on what i am working on, what i will work on and if there is anything which can block my work.

I have heard people saying but i answered the 3 questions..... its not enough since the team and the Scrum master and most important product owner doesn't have a vision of what tasks were done and what is next in line, the member of the team which takes care of the testing doesn't have info on what he or she should start preparing to test.

So how do I see that information provided in the daily meetings should be.

1) I was working on task x1 and g2 yesterday, x1 is done and is ready for testing, g2 is taking more time that expected due to "abc" issue.

2) will continue working on g2 i expect to finish it in next 4 hours and then will take up task j4.

3) "abc" issue which was blocking is resolved, task n5 might get blocked if the design is not submitted by client today EOD.

So now the information provided here is telling me exactly which tasks to expect that they will be done, that one of the tasks presented a blocker yesterday but its resolved (and i know to whom to talk to get more info on solution) and that one task planned might get blocked (this is a message for SM and PO) and needs to be resolved beforehand.

There is a take away for each actor from the information provided.

As a product owner i know what is health of my project, i can know if the planned functionalities would bedone done by end of the sprint (having the scrum board in the same place where the daily meeting is done, also helps) and that i need to move things to get the page design and related material for the planned task to start and in turn finish. As a Scrum Master i know that there were impediments which were solved and they will need to be documented. and communicated in Scrum of Scrum. And as a team member, i get the info of who is working on what and what and this will helps me to find out dependencies of my tasks on others.

This information becomes useful when all this processing of the information is done.

Horowitz, Lois quotes "Not having the information you need when you need it leaves you wanting. Not knowing where to look for that information leaves you powerless. In a society where information is king, none of us can afford that."

Lets try to give correct information and get most out of the information which is being provided during the daily stand ups.