Agile Animal Farm - Pigs, Chickens, and more

Once upon a time there was a chicken and pig walking down the country road. The chicken turns to the pig and says, “I have a great idea! Let’s start a breakfast restaurant called Ham-n-Eggs”. The pig thinks for a moment, and then says, “No thank you. You would just contribute (your eggs) and could leave when you wanted to, while my bacon would be on the line”.

This humorous yet telling analogy from the Agile world helps us distinguish those that are just involved from those that are truly committed on an Agile team. However, in the real world, pigs do have to work with chickens and even other animals around the farm. Let’s take a look at each animal more closely. I have seen or heard about the Pig, Chicken, Fox, and Seagull before and I will also introduce a few more new animals (e.g., Rat, Cat, and Bull) to this interesting analogy. How many of these have you seen in your Agile workplace?

Pig - They are fully dedicated to the project. This would include the Agile team (aka, Scrum Team), ScrumMaster, and Product Owner. They are committed to the work. They work in a pig-pen with other pigs who love their work and environment and love to pitch-in. If Agile is being implemented correctly, they are more than willing to put their bacon-on-the-line every day because they feel ownership of the work. They are assertive and accountable for the success of the project and have a majority (if not all) of their performance goals linked directly to the success of the project and their specific Agile team.

Chickens – They come and go on the project. While chickens are mostly helpful, because they are contributing their eggs, they don’t always understand the full context because they are not a dedicated team member. So occasionally they may accidently contribute a rotten egg. They are not accountable for the success of the project, although they may have a small portion of their performance goals linked to the success of the project.

Fox – They like to stealthily move into and through the team seeing who has certain skills and ideas. Then they like to steal not only resources (Agile team members) for their own teams, but they also steal ideas. They are not necessarily negative, because they are often so quiet in their manipulative work. They are dedicated to their own success.

Seagulls - They like to fly around the project and not really contribute in any manner. They enjoy “talking” (mostly hearing themselves speak) and pretend they are adding value, but they are only annoying the pigs (Agile team members). Often, they like to swoop in so it can look like they are involved (and they’ll tell others this). They are often quite negative, squawk a lot in a “know it all” manner, and often poop on people and their ideas.

Rat –They are deceiver types who will use the trust of the team to gain insight into topics so they can then “rat” on what is going on to others. Often on Agile teams, they are really deceivers because they are really anti-Agile or just plain negative people. They often know the decisions that are made based on certain contexts that the team is in, but will twist the truth in order to bring the project down. It is important to identify these deceivers as quickly as possible and get them off the team.

Cat – They are a lazy type on an Agile team that really do not pitch in but instead like to sleep instead. They are almost purposefully not assertive, have been used to just “getting by” on projects for years, and are not really interested in feeling ownership of the work. They typically neither positive nor negative and simply like to be left alone. The other team members will begin to notice this behavior and realize they are not really interested in becoming part of the team.

Bull – They are command-and-control types who think they can continue to tell their folks what to do even though they are dedicated to their Agile teams. Sometimes referred to as bullies, they charge right into the team and attempt to direct them to their own work and often deviate the team from building product functionality. Typically, they are not interested in the Agile mindset because they see it as a challenge to their authority (technical or managerial) or don’t really understand or care about the business benefits of Agile, but instead want to maintain their own status.

And finally no farm is complete without the Farmer.  However, on an Agile farm, it cannot be just any Farmer but instead a benevolent Farmer who is good to his animals and ensure the animals have what they need to grow and prosper.  The Agile Animal Farmer encourages, inspires, and allows for team autonomy and self organization.     

I hope you enjoyed these animal farm analogies. Did you recognize any of them? What Agile animals are on your Agile farm?

Here are few more links to other Agile animal references:

• Chickens, Pigs, & Seagulls - http://www.scrumology.net/2009/06/10/chickens-pigs-seagulls/
• The Chicken and the Pig - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig
• The Classical story of the Chicken and the Pig (cartoon) - http://www.implementingscrum.com/2006/09/11/the-classic-story-of-the-pig-and-chicken/

Enjoy!

Holistic view of Continuous Integration & Build (Bite-size Stories) – Part 4 of 9

In the last episode (e.g., Part 3 of 9) of this series, I introduced the importance of the Agile and CM mindset.  One of the key elements in CIB involves an Agile and CM mindset change to think more continuously.  For Continuous Integration and Build to work effectively it is also important to ensure we are breaking down the work into bite-size stories and/or tasks to ensure we can have a potentially shippable increment.  Let’s examine this in more detail. 

In order to do continuous integration, you need to have the work broken-down into a size of work where you can integrate and build frequently.  The ability to specify the right ‘‘bite-size’’ level of story represents change that allow for granular and frequent code changes. This implies that the Agile team has the skills to understand the stories well enough in order to effectively break them down into small and consumable chunks.  This allows the team to make codes changes frequently and incrementally. 

But what are some techniques that help you break down work into bite-size stories? Here are a few ideas:

• Phrase your stories following the Canonical form.  A canonical form for a story is expressed as "As a I want to a so that ". This allows work to be segmented into actor, action, and benefit which helps in breaking down the work.

• Utilize the INVEST approach which stands for making a story Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable (established by Bill Wake). This approach helps us split larger stories or work into smaller bite-sized stories. Here are more details:

• I - Independent can stand on its own and could be demo’able
• N - Negotiable indicates that stories are negotiable and can be adjusted
• V- Valuable to the users and customer
• E- Estimable so that the stories can be sized
• S – Small enough to be bite-sized
• T – Testable so they can be verified and validated to work as written.

• Utilize the Use Case method that helps you break down work into functional steps. Each step should produce a piece of functionality. By using this approach, it provides you a basis for reviewing and determining the value of the functionality from each use case step in the flow. This then allows you to establish a more bite-sized approach to the work using a value and/or priority approach.

As you move to Continuous Integration and Build, your team must have the skills to chunk out the work into bite-sized pieces, in this case into stories that can be done within half the size of a sprint.  This makes continuous integration and build meaningful and allows for more frequent merging and building of the work.  Stay tuned for the next episode where we will focus on the Right-sizing your Branching and what this means in a Continuous Integration and Build process.

Note: If you started with this entry (Part 4), consider reading the first 3 earlier blog entries in this series.

• Holistic view of Continuous Integration & Build – Part 1 of 9
• Holistic view of Continuous Integration & Build (Elements of CIB) – Part 2 of 9
• Holistic view of Continuous Integration & Build (Agile and CM Mindset) – Part 3 of 9

Note: consider reading Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams, consider by Mario E. Moreira Wiley Publishing, 2010 for more information on this topic.