Work Different

As usual, these are my raw notes

Paper to read: Jeff Sutherland and Scott Downey “Scrum metrics for Hyper-Productive Teams” July 2010

Qualytic Consulting is Andrew’s company; works as a coach

Metrics and anti-patterns:
– Root causes
– Coaching goals
– Behavior change

Anti-patterns > root causes > coaching
Visibility. Inspection. Adaptation.

Talked about an example of being with a group that had all stakeholders present.

Looking at turndown charts. When there are exceptions – what does it say?

To improve estimates, make sure whole team is part of estimating process.

“Found Work” affects estimation accuracy.

Commitment ratio – affects road map reliability and pace. Teams become over-cautious. Reminds me of when Jeff Patton did the ball exercise. Our teams were hyper-cautious.

Also, important that the work is done-done. Not “done.” Technical debt is a nasty creditor. Causes a clean-up Sprint.

Make sure stories are closed in sprint.

Effort focus:
– team at beginning estimates capacity
– can live with this providing does not change
– team members not continuously pulled off for problem fixes

Minimize context switching, enable capacity commitments to be met, make capacity commitments realistic.

What does management relate to? Does not relate to burn-down charts.

They relate to how much usable work have we done? Completed usable features or running tested features.

Quick notes on talk by George McMonigle and Matthew Groner which I enjoyed. Ironically had *just* said with Anupam Kundu Of Thoughtworks about how at times presenters have gotten too far from the actual work. These guys were talking, no blemishes hidden, about what had worked for em, what they could do berthed.

Had a great slide:

In order to….
We used to…
But now we…

For example:
In order to measure performance we used to focus on burndowns but now we focus on story points.

Agile effectiveness over orthodoxy.