Right-sizing Documentation in an Agile World

Within an Agile context, there is a focus on right-sizing documentation.  This is a response to the bureaucracy that has led to large volumes of project and product documents which are often left unread, are out-of-date the moment they are complete, and seem to have little value to the team.   On the other hand, I have heard folks who are in an Agile context say that no documentation is needed.  The truth is somewhere in between.    

One of the values in Agile is “working software over comprehensive documentation”.  This does not mean that there is no value to the item on the right, but there is more value to the item on the left.  The key is right-sizing the documentation.  Right-sizing means that the level of effort applied to write and maintain the documentation plus the value of that written document should have a greater return on investment (ROI) then not having that information readily available (i.e., the effort it would take reconstruct the information and impact of not having that information for current decisions).   With that in mind, here is some high-level guidance on right-sizing documentation. 

• Documentation should be living and evolutionary and not “sitting on the shelf”.   Move away from the notion that document is “final”.
• Consider some documentation to live at the product level where it may naturally evolve from both sprint to sprint and from release to release. 
• Documentation should take on a collaborative nature.  It should not be written by one person to perfection, and then shared with others.  It should instead be shared often during draft to gain input   
• Update your documentation continuously as new things are learned.  If you learn something that can impact the team or help with decision-making, go to the document and update it. 
• Focus on just barely good enough documentation and avoid big upfront details which typically means a lot of guessing and wasted time.   Barely good enough means document what you currently know.  If you no longer need the document, it is reasonable to retire it. 
• Be concise and lean.  Write in succinct prose and add bullet points if reasonable.  Avoid long and flowing prose which may lose the reader’s attention.
• Documentation can take many forms.  It is not only a Word document, documentation can live on a wiki, in the Agile planning tool, as comments in code, and much more
• Document decisions.  Knowing the decisions helps those who must maintain the product and understand why things were decided or done in a certain way.   
• Realize that there is a difference between internal and external documentation.  External documents may be a User Guide or document that gets delivered to the customer.  These should be considered as “working software” and follow the rules of the done criteria.    

What might get documented in an Agile world?  The major documentation comes in the forms of user stories and epics.  This includes writing the user story in canonical form, with details, and acceptance criteria.  Technically, another significant form of documentation is the code itself. It should be written in team agreed coding standards with appropriate comments that specify what the code does (or simply and clearly enough that don't need explanation) and why it was written a certain why.  Remember that code needs to be maintained so if someone has to "figure out" what you wrote and why in order to support the code, then it is problematic.

You should consider lean versions of your architecture, coding, and test strategies that help inform the team of ways of working. Impediments that require effort to fix should be documented.  Items such as coding standards, an overview of your working processes and policies, done criteria such also be documented and shared. 

What do you think of this guidance?  Do they make sense?  Do you have any other tips?

A Path from Command and Control to Agility

Have you ever noticed a team where little engagement, a lack of ownership, and team decisions are scarce?  One reason could be the amount of command-and-control from management that is occurring.  Often times this is one of those unspoken elephants in the middle of the room.   Command-and-control bosses and leaders are a sure way to kill the feeling of ownership, engagement, and empowerment in team members. 

Agile comes along and promotes self-organizing teams, transparency, and team decision-making.  It also helps companies bring more value to customers and adapt to the market conditions, ultimately leading to making more money.  Within an Agile culture, it no longer requires a manager to tell a team what to do.  The number of organizations following Agile continues to increase. They realize that they no longer need directive managers but leaders who act more as coach and mentor, then the traditional boss.  So what is a command-and-control manager to do?   

• If they feel they have command-and-control traits and are willing to make that move to Agile, they can test their comfort level with collaboration first.  When a team decision is needed, consider an experiment.  Ask the team for their thoughts.  See if the command-and-control manager can be just one voice of the many that are on the team instead of forcing a direction.  Better yet, see if the manger can remain quiet and let the team arrive at a decision.  If this works, next they can test their comfort level with self-organizing teams.  The next time there is a decision that impacts the team, ask they can ask the team to discuss it amongst themselves and decide the course of action.  Stand back and let them decide. 

• If the manager is inquisitive about Agile, provide them some education on the Agile values and principles.  They should consider what they think each of the principles mean and if they believe in them.  A bolder move is having them share the Agile principles with their team and ask them what they think it means.  Also they can ask the team members how it can be exhibited on a team.  Ask the team members if they think we would be a good idea to exercise some of the principles. 

• If they have directive tendency and their current role has them interacting with customers to understand customer needs, then they may consider becoming a Product Owner (PO) for the team.  While they should no longer be manager, a PO helps shape the product through the collection and grooming of the requirements.  The PO also shares the need with team members during the Agile-related planning events (e.g., Sprint Planning).   

• Learn about the concept of bounded authority.  This is where the team can make their own decisions, organize, and commit to their own work.  It does not mean that teams can do whatever they want.  The balance is that the manager keeps limited responsibilities to provide vision and support for their staff while allowing the team the ownership to self-organize around the work.  

So I will leave you with this question.  Which approach will lead to more productive and high-performing teams?   Is it a culture where managers tell employees what to do or is it a culture where employees are self-organizing, feel ownership of the work, and are able to use much more brain power?   If managers exhibit command-and-control tendencies, it is in their best interest in the long run to adapt toward and Agile mindset and allow for self-organizing teams.  Since Agile is pervasive in many companies, it is an opportunity to adapt and help the organization toward better business results.  

Scientists Find evidence against Big Bang and for Continuous Adaptation of the Universe

The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation.  In a new revelation by leading Quantum Scientists from CERN, they surmised that the universe had used more of an adaptive approach. In re-investigating Vesto Rugby's study that measured the first Doppler shift of a spiral nebula, they found evidence that an adaptive approach was used to in the expansion of the universe. 

Further investigation found the singularity known as Big Bang, was really a series of cosmic inflations that align with a plurality approach that caused the universe to iteratively unfold.  While initial observations best fit the theory of Big Bang, after the discovery of cosmic microwave radiation, this promoted a continuous epoch approach where spectral waves align much more clearly with an adaptation of wave expansion. 

This came to the attention of the Agile Alliance.  They are now backing the scientists and aligning with the newly termed Continuous Adaption theory of the universe.  They recently supported the Evolution of the Species Theory promoted by Darwin.   The Agile Alliance says continuous, adaptive, and iterative are all components of Agile and now believe that Agile is really the essence of the universe.  The Alliance is now in funding NASA and CERN research in their Agile endeavor.    

April Fools...

Do you bring the “Semper Fi” mindset to your Agile Teamwork?

When I think of a strong example of an Agile team, I recall teams that would help each other out, would watch each other’s back, and would focus on the project at hand, working strongly in a collaborative manner to achieve the common goal. 

Interestingly enough, this is what it takes to achieve the ideal Marine mindset.  Semper Fidelis is Latin for “always faithful” and has been the Marine motto since 1883.  This motto guides the Marine to remain focused on the mission at hand and stay focused on each other as part of the unit, as part of the team.  The intent is that once you commit and become a Marine, you transform to something new, something better, where you don’t worry about yourself.  Instead, you worry about the guy next to you and to the success of the mission.  You live a life with personal integrity, courage, determination, and commitment.  These are the same attributes that make a member of an Agile team successful. 

   

Another mindset within the Marine leadership is “to lead by example”.  In Agile, we don’t need people telling us what to do.  We need people who lead by example and who live the Agile mindset.  This is the best way for the team to absorb what is expected by the Agile values and principles and is another way to grow.  

If you want to learn about the importance of teamwork, spend a moment learning about the mindset of a Marine.  As I would illuminate the attendees of my numerous Agile workshops, one strong attribute of teamwork is “no one succeeds unless everyone succeeds.”  Agile team member should bring encouragement to each other, integrity to do what is right, courage to challenge the bad habits, and commitment to see the work through.  This is teamwork and beyond.    

You may be FrAgile if...

Moving to the Agile can be challenging.  It implies a behavioral change to the Agile mindset supported by the Agile Principles found in the Agile Manifesto. However,  many find themselves in the land of FrAgile (i.e., fake Agile), Scrumbut (i.e., we are doing Scrum but not some of the practices), Scrumfall (i.e., some elements of scrum within a waterfall lifecycle), and even Kantban (i.e., Kanban without respecting the queues). 

What is FrAgile? This is where there either isn't really a commitment to go Agile, there isn't an understanding of what "being Agile" means, there isn't the talent like an Agile Coach to help bring about that change, or an incremental deployment approach stalls along the way. And most importantly, frAgile is when Agile very quickly becomes brittle, lacking in vigor, and shatters once there is tension applied leading to a regression to past ways of working.    

When "Fragile" happens...

Some may ask, “why do I care if Agile is not quite right”.  When a form of Fragile is applied, you will not gain the business benefits of aligning better with customer value and the many other benefits Agile can bring. When you see that you are not gaining the business benefits of Agile, instead of blaming Agile, look to see how you have implemented Agile and whether you are really aligning with its values and principles. 

In honor of Jeff Foxworthy and his "You might be a Redneck if" routine, I thought I would adapt his saying to fit the Agile message of this article.  I present several areas which can be problematic if they are not in place and you are serious about Agile.  So without further ado, "You may be FrAgile if": 

• ...you do not want to hire or identify a Product Owner (or similar) who works with both the customers to gather requirements and Engineering team to describe the requirements in more detail.  The result is that there engineering will build what they think the customer wants and then you will wonder why the customer doesn't want it.  
• ...you continue to have the Project Manager or Functional Manager assign the work to the Team.  The result is that your team will not be self-organizing and you will wonder why your team members are not engaged.  
• ...you continue to collect your requirements upfront and lock them in for the remainder of the project.  The result is that you may build the wrong thing for the customer and you will wonder why the customers are not very excited about the release and few are buying or upgrading to it. 
• ...you do not want to have a healthy balance of test/QA minded folks on the team.  The result is that the testing activities will become the bottleneck or worse yet, the testing aspects will become watered down (i.e., skip testing steps), ergo releasing a product with low quality and subject to many defects.  
• ...you mechanically know how to do the Scrum and XP events and practices but can't remember any of the Agile values nor any of the 12 Agile principles.  

Let me know what you think about the results of "You may be FrAgile if".  If you believe there are other Fragile, Scrumbut, Scrumfall, Kantban, and other related Agile challenges that could be non-starters or significantly impact the ability to "be Agile", please feel free to share.     

Benefits of Agile Coaches for your Agile Transformation

Many companies begin their introduction to Agile by trying it on a project or two.  If they believe they have ‘enough’ success with Agile, then typically more projects deploy Agile.  The challenge is that at some point the company is unclear on what level of Agile deployment has occurred and what type of Agile is really being adopted.  Senior Management may hear things like “we are Agile” and not really sure what that means.  Worse yet, because of the inconsistency of understanding Agile, some teams will say things like, “we don’t need to document anything because we are Agile”, other teams will say “we don’t need any management support because we are self-organized”, while others will say “we can’t tell you what we’re building until the end of the project because we are using Agile”.  Now what do you do? 

This becomes even more challenging when the company begins to realize the amount of effort they are haphazardly spending on Agile adoption.  Sometimes the company learns that they are spending twice for the same thing like training and/or tools and often overspending because they are not leveraging the volume discount strength of the whole company.  This is particularly relevant to medium and large companies.  

Whether you realize it or not, when you have multiple teams heading in roughly the same Agile direction, you have already embarked on an Agile transformation.  So the question is, do you want to let the change occur in an unorganized and ad hoc manner or do you want to manage that change in an organized way and gleam the most benefit from the effort.

I do not believe there should be a prescriptive way to deploy Agile.  However, there needs to be some way to ensure the teams are working on the highest customer value work. An enterprise level approach can help.  This ensures that the company reduces the muda (a.k.a., waste), leverages and reuses what it can, and ensures all teams are building the highest customer value work.      

When you find yourself in the situation where there are many in your company wanting to adopt a certain tool, process, method, and/or culture, or if it is already happening in an ad-hoc manner, it is highly recommended to initiate an organized approach to the enterprise change.  In Michael Spayd’s “Evolving Agile in the Enterprise: Implementing XP on a Grand Scale”, he recommends that an “effective Change team” is established.  In my experience, seasoned Agile Coaches and/or an Agile enterprise leadership team provides significant leadership for the change effort.  The Agile Coaches/Agile leadership team (aka, change team) provides the framework for the enterprise but still allows for adaptability and decision-points by the teams so they feel ownership of their working process.

The Agile enterprise leadership team should include talent that has experience in Agile enterprise change such as seasoned Agile Coaches and those who have organizational level change experience.  Some members can be matrix-ed in from internal organizations.  They should function as a team and can be distributed according to the areas within the organization that they will support.   It is often best to bring in either full-time regular talent or external long-term consultants to ensure that they don’t just make recommendations, but live through the challenges of the change as they help product teams, senior management, and others.

What are some of the benefits of Agile coaches and/or Agile enterprise leadership team?  This leadership can help you establish and manage the following: 

• Agile Vision - create a vision for where you can go.  A strong Agile coach has been to where you want to go. Without this experience, a company may never get there.  This may include a focus on the Customer to build the right thing and on the Employees to build the thing right" or similar.  By having a central Agile leadership team to focus you, you can better gain buy-in or at least get folks to understand why you are going in this direction.   
• Agile Transformation Roadmap - identify common activities to help a product team come up to speed with Agile.  This includes establishing a set of “ready for deployment” materials to help teams get ready for the change to Agile.  By having Agile Coaches help you, it will save time and effort from each product team having to figure out the adoption activities themselves
• Agile framework and practices - collaboratively establish an adaptable set of Agile methods and practices with the rest of the organization.  By having central Agile leadership coordinate this, it will save time and effort from each product team having to establish Agile methods and practices, although they will need to tailor them for their specific team. 
• Agile terminology – establish a common working language for Agile so that members from across the organization can communicate and interact effectively with each other.  By having central Agile leadership establish this, this reduces the miscommunication issues that will arise across the organization regarding various and sundry definitions of Agile terminology.   
• Agile training – establish a common set of Agile Training aimed at various levels of the organization (e.g., Scrum Team, Scrum Masters,  Product Owner, Middle Mgt, Senior Mgt).  By using a managed training deployment approach via the central Agile leadership team and education group, we will have consistent training and can get a better understanding of who has and hasn’t been trained.  By providing an in-house training approach, this reduces the cost of utilizing multiple vendors.  This increases common Agile understanding across the organization and product teams.
• Agile Communities – establish a common organizational Agile website with links to internal and external Agile communities.  Having the central Agile leadership team establish and support this, ensure that there is a managed approached to sharing online Agile related information and resources (framework, practices, etc.) across the company site that is kept up-to-date.    
• Agile Coaching - A key aspect of the leadership team is to provide Agile Coaching via the Agile leadership team to projects/product teams across the enterprise.  They may start with a small core of dedicated Agile Coaches and then can leverage existing Agile talent across the enterprise in establishing an Agile Coaching Circle.  Coaching significantly reduces the effort involved with “correctly” getting a team to adopt Agile and more importantly ensures they do not regress into their old traditional habits. 
• Agile Adoption measures – establish a common and reasonable set of adoption measures to see what progress is being made in the Agile adoption within the company.  By having the Agile leadership team manage this, we have common adoption measures to ensure that the leadership team and product teams are meeting the organization objectives for Agile adoption.  Senior management can more readily get a pulse of the Agile status across the organization.
• Agile Challenges Point of Contact (PoC) – establish a central point to manage Agile related challenges and issues.  This would include website, email PoC and the establishment of an Agile FAQ.  The benefit to having a go-to centralized Agile leadership team to manage this is that they can both become aware of these issues and then resolve the issues and challenges before they cause an impact.
• Agile Vendor Liaison PoC – utilize the Agile leadership team to become the PoC for managing the company relationships with the various Agile vendors.  By using a central Agile leadership team ensures that the organization or company is gaining the most leverage from the volume discounts and negotiations for Agile related materials and tools.  

Finally, when employees within a company see that many are going Agile, sometimes it is comforting to see that the organization is providing support in the adoption effort.  It is even more comforting when those employees that haven’t yet gone Agile see that there is ready support for their deployment.   It is particularly problematic when the employees are seeing wide variations of “agile” being deployed some of which is not really Agile, and they wonder when the organization may provide some guidance in this matter.  Introducing Agile really is a culture shift.  If you are thinking about adopting it or already are, then it can be a benefit to have Agile Coaches and/or a centralized Agile leadership team to help you navigate to a success adoption of Agile.  

Good luck on your Agile adventure!

Note: this was originally written in 2008 with minor updates in 2012.    

When the term Scrum moves into Politics and Media

While it is commonplace to see the term “scrum” in either Agile circles or when discussing the sport of Rugby, I have recently noticed that the term scrum is being used in political and media circles more and more (see three recent news articles below).  While I suspect that the usage of scrum is really coming from those familiar with Rugby, I wonder if there are those in the media or politics that have an affinity with those who work in Agile and Scrum related circles?  What do you think?

• Senate in last-minute scrum for deal - http://bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/12/30/senate-leaders-scramble-find-formula-avoid-fiscal-crisis/tCAbkkZhesZD5cq5vdN7BJ/story.html  - Dec 30
•  Judges scrum over 'double-dipping' for pension  - http://news.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20121224/NEWS010801/312240014/Judges-scrum-over-double-dipping-pension - Dec 22
• Chinese Media Digest includes the statement, "This media scrum should not develop into a political show" said the article..." - http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/752191.shtml - Dec 25
• Media scrum is now a Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_scrum 

Scrum

It would be interesting to see if more and more Scrum and Agile related terms become infused into our political, media, and other lexicon.  In any case, I wish you all a very happy and successful New Year!

Cheers to one and all!