Agile Open Day at Red Hat Beijing Office

On 17th Sept, during Agile Open Day at Red Hat's Beijing office, I had the opportunity to train, interact, connect and learn with teams.

Although the nature of the event meant to be open but we tried to keep our focus on following topics:

1. Introduction to Agile, Overview of Agile Manifesto and Framework
2. Agile Methods e.g. Getting Agile with Scrum
3. Agile Estimation
4. Story Writing
5. Agile Planning e.g. Vision, Roadmap, Release, Sprint, Daily
6. Agile Games
7. Agile Project Monitoring
8. Agile Adoption
9. Agile Quality
10. Best Practices

The event had remarkable turn around of 50+ people, who took time off to be there but I must admit I was mostly impressed with the audience for following aspects:

1. Variety and Background,people from different age groups and teams turned up e.g. Kernel, Product Engineering, QA, Project Managers, Leads, IT, System Admins  etc.
2. Remarkable enthusiasm
3. Being involved
4. Willingness to learn and share from their own experience.

We make use of Agile Games to ensure whatever I covered during presentations can be reflected by getting everyone involved. This has really paid off well as everyone held their own perspective but at the same time everyone performed as a team and had fun at the same time :) If you are an Agile Coach or Practitioner or Scrum Master, I recommend you to make use of Agile Games and you should consider it because [1]Games are fun [2]It helps to reach consensus faster by understanding everyone's perspective [3]Everyone's objective is common i.e. To Win.  For instance, we had played "20/20 Vision: For Understanding Customer Priorities"

 

You may register for such games at http://www.innovationgames.com/agile-teams/ and also there are many such websites which allow you to download content of games and play them live on their website, use it at your convenience. 

Playing and Learning with Agile Game

Game: 20/20 Vision [Understanding Customer Priorities]

After each topic, I had asked teams to highlight their experience about the areas, where they were expected to talk about [1]what went well so far ? [2]what didn't go well ?  This had paid off remarkably well as it helped each participant to learn from everyone else's experience, and allowed everyone to come up with solution and all I had to do is facilitate it. 

 

We continued this effort even after the event, as on today I have received about 90 emails from participants, the subject/content are pretty much common and almost everyone's tone were similar [1]they have described the challenges they are facing, [2]why they are facing such challenges they think, [3]they suggested solutions to overcome them using agile best practices and [4]all they were seeking from was reflection or confirmation if their plans were on the right track and we learnt to continue to adapt. I am extremely happy to receive such emails and I welcome more because from everyone's experience I am learning a lot. Also it allows individuals/teams to think about solutions and strategies, while keeping best practices in mind as ultimately the fun is to see everyone improving continuously and at their own.

Finally I published a survey to receive feedback about the event and I am immensely happy to see the NPS score on the highest side, people are willing to join such events again and this has triggered Red Hat Core Agile Ambassadors team to focus on APAC.

 

I thank everyone who had helped me to host the event at Red Hat Beijing office. Also I thank everyone for such grand reception, for participating and contributing to the Agile Open Day. 

 

Be Agile! 

Backlog Grooming in Scrum

In Scrum, the product backlog is the single most important artifact. The product backlog is, in essence, an incredibly detailed analysis document, which outlines every requirement for a system, project, or product. In simpler terms, it could be described as a comprehensive to-do list, expressed in priority order based on the business value each piece of work will generate. Philosophically, the scrum backlog is the engine of the business; it breaks the big-picture story down into manageable increments of work called Product Backlog Items (PBIs).

Backlog grooming (also called maintenance) is not a formal component of the Scrum process, Ken Schwaber, who founded Scrum, advises teams to dedicate five percent of every sprint to this activity. (As with Scrum’s other meetings, the grooming should take place at the same time and place and for the same duration each sprint.)

Who attends the backlog grooming meeting ? 

The Team
The Product Owner
The ScrumMaster. 

What happens there?


During the maintenance meeting, everyone helps prepare the scrum backlog for the sprint planning meeting. This usually includes adding new stories and epics, extracting stories from existing epics, and estimating effort for existing stories. 

Why is this helpful?

Because a groomed backlog will help streamline sprint planning meetings; otherwise, they can stretch on for hours. When product backlog items contain clearly defined ax acceptance criteria and are estimated by the appropriate team members, the planning process does not have to be tense or overly long. By dedicating a time to backlog maintenance, the team ensures that this preliminary planning always occurs prior to the SPM.