Agile Tour 2012

The "Communauté Agile de Montréal" organize for the 4th year the Agile Tour 2012!  Registration are now open for this event.  Special prices are available for all of you early birds.  Register now to have the chance to participate to the biggest Agile event of Montreal!

http://agiletourmontreal2012-es2.eventbrite.ca/?rank=1&ebtv=C

Can you build a car using agile and scrum?

Yes it's possible!  This short video show a team of people building a car using Agile and Scrum.  So next time someone in your organisation tell's you it's impossible to do it in Agile and Scrum you can point them to this video!  Enjoy!

L'agilité de l'Individu à l'Organisation en passant par l'Équipe

Le côte humain de l'agilite est souvant sous estimer et pourtant nos equipes realisent des projets depuis déjà plus de 10 ans, c'est le sujet que François Beauregard a presenté lors de la derniere rencontre de la Communauté Agile de Montréal le 25 janvier 2012.  Sa presentatin, remplis de constat, a fait ressortir des faits qui font encore partie integrante de nos projets tel que les équipes agile qui émergent dans des entreprises dont les valeurs sont en contradiction avec le manifeste.  La conférence intitulé : L'agilité de l'Individu à l'Organisation en passant par l'Équipe, a présenter les différents ouvrages du domaine traitant de la manière dont les gestionnaire gère les entreprises.

Je sort de cette conférence avec différents outils dont un outil en particulier celui de faire une introspection de nous même afin de trouver notre "gros bloqueur".  Afin d'améliorer leurs types de gestion, Pyxis offre maintenant la formation Management 3.0 qui propose des alternatives a la gestion traditionnelle.  Je vous suggère de vous informer par rapport a cette formation et même demander a François de venir dans vos entreprises pour présenter cette conférences.

En résumé, c'est le meilleur investissement de 1h 30m que j'ai fait depuis les conférences du Agile Tour 2011!

Using Lego with Agile, a practical example

During the last Agile tour 2011, I had the chance to participate to a workshop to use Lego with Agile!  Unfortunately I did not capture this experience on video.  One of the presenter friend recently put on a new post with some video of a similar workshop.  Take a look a this :  http://agilitrix.com/tag/lego/

Is Scrum Master a part time job?

Is Scrum Master a part time job?  Not if you want to do it completely...

Check it out : http://agiletrail.com/2011/11/14/42-tasks-for-a-scrum-masters-job/

How to promote continuous integration...with LEGO of course!

For years one of my battleground in coaching new teams was the creation of a continuous integration environnement.  For years, I was wondering how to show people the value of before putting together this setup, and never found how beside explaining everything on the white board.. 

It seems that I was not alone and one person finally figure out a way to promote it within the team, and it looks like a lot of fun!

Check it out :  http://tastycupcakes.org/2011/10/continuous-integration-with-lego/

Guardian of the process...

Yesterday I had the opportunity to witness something that most Scrum Master has to face.  A situation arise in a team where the PO had ask a task to one of the team member, there fore bypassing the SM.  Don't get me wrong self organize team is one of our goal as SM, even more that task was important enough for the PO to ask the team member directly! 

The thing to remember is that each role in a Scrum team is important, and each role has to know their responsibilities.  The whole team has to know the boundaries of the Scrum process.  As a SM we have to educate people to the process and, most of all, remind them of the process when they are out of line.  In that situation, the main problem is that some activities were planned for the whole team during the day.  The fact that this team member was doing something outside the planned activities, disturb the team and even stop it's evolution.  What the team member should have done was to tell the SM about this task ask by the PO.  Even better, the PO should have talk to the SM about that task and planned it for the next sprint.

The PO has to work continuously with the SM and vice versa, they have to work for the same goal.  The PO has to know that when the team engage themselves  in a sprint he doesn't have the right to interfere with the team.  If he wants to interfere with the work the team committed themselves on doing he has to discuss it with the SM (who should say no!).   Whatever the reason, most of the time the work can be postpone to next sprint.  (I will discuss this at a later date, for this is a subject for a blog entry on it's own)

What I want you fellow SM to remember is that we should never assume that the team know the process or even theirs role.  The situation I brought up in that blog happens to a team doing scrum for the past year and more.  I personally think the we have to continually remind the team about theirs role (the PO included).  We are the guardian of the process and we should always be ready for any intruder!