Agile, Scrum & Kanban

What to Do When Joining a Non-Structured Team

When joining a team in an outsourcing company, the engineering manager found that there was a lack of consistent workflow and structure. To address this, the manager proposed an agile approach to the team and the client, which would involve working in two-week increments rather than quarterly. This allowed for more transparency and consistency in the team's workflow, and ultimately resulted in a successful switch from waterfall to agile.

The Hidden Value of Agile Processes

After becoming popular to deconstruct Agile and not use Scrum or XP anymore, the author attempted to keep their team processes as lightweight as possible. However, they failed to acknowledge the hidden benefits of Agile processes. After experimenting with processes, the author learned to understand the second-order effects of the processes they use, limit the scope of experiments, and not follow processes blindly.

V2 infrastructure project

Multi-year infrastructure overhaul (V2) projects are complex and require a clear business driver and customer-facing value. The engineering leader needs to work closely with business leaders and stakeholders to ensure there is consensus on making the long-term investment. The team needs to go through a prototyping phase to identify components that need refactoring/re-architecting, risks associated with the proposed architecture, and the resources/time required to deliver the project. The engineering leader must also decide how to organize the team for success, either by embedding the V2 team in the V1 team or by spinning up a new V2 team. The project plan should include deliverables, budget, resources, and time, and the team should identify risks early and have mitigation plans. The team should also set KPIs and OKRs and celebrate small victories and demos to stakeholders.

Streamlining Product Processes After a Reorganization

As program manager, the author faced the challenge of unifying a newly acquired team of 150 people who had no experience with program management. The author's strategy included unifying the toolset, getting leadership buy-in, informing the teams, and executing the plan. The author was successful in achieving the goal, and the teams began to collaborate and share knowledge. The author learned that it takes time for people to get used to new things, and it can be challenging to change people's opinions.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Agile or Not Agile: That Is the Question

This article discusses the challenges of working in the traditional healthcare sector, particularly in insurance, due to the lack of continual feedback and slow development cycles. To address this, the company adopted the Shape Up framework, which allowed for longer cycles, more resilience to the lack of data, and the ability to ship asynchronously to the code. The company also modified Agile to serve their needs and learned how to separate shipping from delivering features to customers. This allowed them to move onto the next thing while their program management and marketing teams worked on the actual deployment of the feature.