Sunday, September 21, 2008

Planning Poker - the problem continues…

3 comments
Sorry guys still I didn't find sufficient answers to post here for the previous post I posted about problems when playing Planning poker.. I will provide answers once I find some good and logical explanations..
Now I have a new problem…. There you go… :
When Playing planning poker the team express ideas in front of the product owner to come in to a conclusion about the weight of user stories, clarifications, etc.
We do not have programmed robots in our teams to have same level of knowledge and skills. Though SCRUM is for good for good developers, ( Or even Software development is good for good developers according to Ken Schwaber - SCRUMforTEAMSYSTEM) in reality we get a mix to our teams..
So after observing the discussions going on …there is a product owner who says… Look I don't want guy X and Y in this team.. I need another like guy Z instead of X and Y . then we can burn down the back log more faster in sprints.. You guys agree to burn down only this amount in this sprint because your guys are not experienced. In traditional Project management what we do is we colour all our user front ending with really experienced and good guys and get the project delivered some way or the other. In SCRUM as we produce this much of transparency, Anybody who faced this issue and could you please explain how to overcome this issue..?

Saturday, September 20, 2008

101 post

2 comments
Oh I really cant believe this .. Today Im writing my 101 post and its about something really cool..

Its hard to believe that I have earned some money from the blog.. And I received a gift card from Amazon :-).. So I can look forward to own some very good books..

Thanks to all you readers for reading my posts..Clicking the adds, Purchasing the Podcast.

More than anything Im so grateful for having patience with me for all my never delivered promises.. and specially reading not perfect language..

This blog helped me to network with most the known professionals around the world.. Im so happy about that. The knowledge we share is so valuable.

Thank you blog! Kiss kiss.. :-) Hug too... !! you are 100 posts rich.. ! ( some of them must be crap though ;-)


Friday, September 19, 2008

Problem I faced with Planning Poker

2 comments

I copied this cartoon from www.implementingscrum.com.. Im a cartoon freek.. and thrilled to see SCRUM in cartoons...:-)

We played planning Poker for the 1st time and following are the problems I faced.. I will find the answers for these questions from experts and post them here later..

1. When Moderator reads 1 story we kept playing Poker and came out of an estimation to that specific story., But when we went through the PB more and more., team wanted to revise the previous story estimates again as its a comparative thing., How do you handle this situation?
Do you get the team to analyze the PB before coming to Planning poker so they will be more or less accurate with their comparative guess with other user stories in the rest of the product backlog?

2.There was one user story which we had to purchase some device for that. Scrum master ask where do we do the procurement management, planning , Cost estimation etc, Will SCRUM has some guidelines for procurement management for the project.

3. Customer who acted as the product owner didnt have answers for some of the questions.. there were situations such as I need to check with my infrastructure guys.. I need to ask my BI manager etc. How do you tackle that situation?

4. for certain stories we felt that we need the use cases or further analysis before thinking of their weight. ..

5. Looking at from the Project Office I saw many team for many projects they had different type of assessments. As an Example., same story "User needs to log in to the site and fill the registration form" was rated by the Team A as 5 and Team B as 20.. so how do I compare and see each team performance from the top when I look at my teams product burn down charts?

Comparison of SCRUM Vs PMBOK

5 comments
Comparison Of Pmbok And Scrum
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: backlog scrum)
* credit http://projectized.blogspot.com as the source
* do not publish it (in print or on the web)
* do not circulate it (please direct people to this address)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

How to play Planning Poker

0 comments
Planning Poker is a game which help us to do planning in Scrum. We can use it for adding the weight to the user stories.
Ok this is how it is played..
1. Scrum master get ready with the Planning Poker card pack for each member of the team who participate this session
a. Those cards should have numbers such as 0,1/2 ,1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100. (Why these numbers ? Let me find out and tell you .. : )
b. Write the Numbers large so it is visible when needed.
2. Appoint a moderator (Can be anybody)
3. Ask the Product Owner to come to the Session ( He doesn't play Poker)
4. Moderate Read out the 1st User story
5. Team members question the Product Owner about the story and Product owner answer them
6. After all questions are answered, each estimator privately selects a card representing his or her estimate.
7. When everybody is ready all the members put selected card to the table.
8. There can be major variations., one member may have selected 2 while the other person has selected 5
9. Then they give reasons for selecting those numbers. One may think there is some additional research needed to perform the task., another may have thought much more easier way to do that task
10. Once all these points are discussed and asked the questions from the product owner, again the team play the Poker - This time its expected it to be more similar numbers
11. Of the numbers are not quite satisfactory it goes through another round. In normally you play the game for 2 rounds per story point. But there is no rule for that.
12. In last round if everybody comes with 3 and only one person comes with 5., we ask him or her whether she is agreeable to estimate the weight points as 3. If she agrees , we have no issue., if she doesn't agree we need to listen to the reasons.
i. Planning Poker brings Multiple experts opinion to the table
ii. It has the team buy in for the final decision
iii. Averaging Individual estimates lead to better results
iv. Its more fun than just traditional project estimation by Project Managers and few senior members of the team

- This idea is extracted from Mike Cohn's Agile estimation and planning.

Planning Poker for distant team members

0 comments
This is a great Idea.. How do you play planing poker if some or all the team members have a problem of getting to one location physically.. Which is always the situation in my case

I found this online Planning Poker game.. .. :-)

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/page/26

WOW !! will it really work.. ? I think soo...

Problems when playing Planning Poker.

0 comments
We played Planning Poker for the 1st time and I experienced the following situations.
But It was really great. I think that does the purpose. I will try to find the answers for the following problems I faced and post them in the blog..


1. When Moderator reads 1 story we kept playing Poker and came out of an estimation to that specific story., But when we went through the PB more and more., team wanted to revise the previous story estimates again as its a comparative thing., How do you handle this situation?
Do you get the team to analyze the PB before coming to Planning poker so they will be more or less accurate with their comparative guess with other user stories in the rest of the product backlog?

2.There was one user story which we had to purchase some device for that. Scrum master ask where do we do the procurement management planning, Cost estimation etc, Will SCRUM has some guidelines for
procurement management for the project.

3. Customer who acted as the product owner didnt have answers for some of the questions.. there were situations such as I need to check with my infrastructure guys.. I need to ask my BI manager etc. How do you tackle that situation?

4. for certain stories we felt that we need the use cases or further analysis before thinking of their weight. ..

5. Looking at from the Project Office I saw many team for many projects they had different type of assessments. As an Example., same story "User needs to log in to the site and fill the registration
form" was rated by the Team A as 5 and Team B as 20.. so how do I compare and see each team performance from the top when I look at my teams product burn down charts?

Monday, September 15, 2008

PMBOK or RUP ?

0 comments

Im sure you are one of them... Just like me.. Just lost in between SCRUM and PMBOK ways.Which way to go.. Both are good .. Both have its - points too. This is a great article which I found and I'm sure this will help most of you readers up to an extend..

"Many organizations wish to standardize their software engineering practices as well as their project management (PM) practices, and two well-known processes are available to help in both these areas, respectively. The IBM® Rational® Unified Process,® or RUP®, offers a prescriptive approach for standardizing on software engineering best practices, and the Project Management Institute® (PMI®) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge® (PMBOK®) offers a descriptive approach for standardizing on project management best practices. With both these approaches available to organizations, the question becomes: Are they compatible? The simple answer is, "Yes."

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/4721.html

But have you seen RUP is practiced as RUP anywhere.. I haven't seen..Because RUP does not cover all the aspects of Project management as a whole. There are many specific agile PM methodologies which are elaborated from RUP which is practiced successfully in the industry.. SCRUM is almost every agile lovers favorite toy at the moment...

I will post a presentation about the comparison between both methodologies in near future.. ( Yeah I hear you I promise a lot and never deliver .. Bad Me!!! ) But this is something which Im working on right now..so I will keep up to my word :-)





Thursday, September 04, 2008

Explanation about Chrome

0 comments
From the start of this week, the talk of the town is Google Chrome ! :-) Chrome ..Chrome..... I can hardly find a blog which doesnt talk about it..

Im using it right at the moment.. Its beta....Cool..! I like it.. Bye byeee Mozila.. IE.. Had a good time with you :-) he he just kidding.. some times I need all of them..

BTW I love their presenation/explanation about Chrome.. Did you see that ?


See how clearly and simply they explain techie things to normal web browsing people.. We can learn from that ..



Tuesday, September 02, 2008

The Program Management Office: Establishing, Managing And Growing the Value of a PMO

2 comments
I always love the excitement of ordering books from amazon and waiting impatiently till they arrive at my door steps.. So I experienced it again . This time I bought the book "The Program Management Office: Establishing, Managing And Growing the Value of a PMO " Just glanced through the book and seems its interesting. Now the biggest challenge is to find the time to read it.. ! I will keep posting some of the important factors I learn from it..
Be a PMP
 

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