Applying the Agile Canonical Form to write Performance Goals

In most companies, employees have to do some level of performance management. This typically involves each person writing performance goals. For those of you in companies that are adopting Agile (or even if you are not), as you think about your performance goals, one of the things to consider is applying the Agile story writing canonical form as the approach to writing goal statements.

For those of you unfamiliar with the canonical form, it is a language construct that many in the Agile community use to document their requirements (aka, user stories). This includes the role (aka, persona or actor) you are playing, your action, and the business benefit.

In many cases, each of us has a primary role we play within an organization. However, we may also have secondary roles that we play. The canonical construct includes the role so the roles you are playing in your organization or your product team can be effectively added. This may help in describing your goal more effectively. For example:

• As a Scrum Team Member, I will size the work using story points with the team during Sprint Planning, so that we gain team buy-in for scope and size of the story

 • As a ScrumMaster, I will exemplify Servant Leader attributes (and not command-and-control attributes) in order to help my team become self-organized

 • As a Product Owner, I will continuously groom and prioritize the Product Backlog so that the Scrum Team has a solid list of stories in which to work through

 • As an Agile Coach, I will coach and mentor the product team so they can adopt effective Agile methods

 • As an Agile Educator, I will ensure effective Agile instructor-led training is occurring throughout the company

Once you have the performance goal written in this form, then you can list the tangible tasks that make up the goal underneath.  You may consider this another interesting way to use the canonical form (which is usually meant to describe User Stories within an Agile context) for other benefits.

In summary, it is a good idea within a performance goal to identify the role you will play in relation to that goal, what is the action you expect to complete, and why you plan to do that action (aka, business benefit).  Using the canonical form can be an effective way to articulate the performance goal. 

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.