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Date
In my experience coaching teams, I've found that some stand out in terms of productivity.
Cathy Baker, PMP, is the certified ScrumMaster for one of my favorite agile teams. She has managed projects for 11 years, currently in the healthcare industry. Her team is a good example of a group that has learned from practical experience.
I interviewed Ms. Baker to get her take on how her team improved efficiency and quality.
Your team seems to really 'get' agile. What do you feel are the key success factors for your team? Ms. Baker: Strict adherence was certainly one. Rather than trying to bend the rules we were learning, we followed the practices by the book at first. We are gatekeepers of the process with each other. It is not me, the ScrumMaster, doing it. The whole team monitors the process. They challenge each other with questions like, "Is that what we should be doing?"
So you didn't stray from the agile books?Ms. Baker: After we became fluent in agile, we changed our stand-up meeting to go task by task instead of person by person. Good retrospectives were also a key factor. Creative ideas helped us take agile beyond where we started and made it a custom fit for our team.
So your team didn't start out as agile experts? Ms. Baker: Oh, no. They weren't born that way. They were tried and true waterfall folks. They were used to heavy plans that left little flexibility for change. Most of them had 15-plus years experience each using waterfall methodologies.
What prompted you to go agile? Ms. Baker: Management wanted development to go faster and to produce more in less time.
Was there resistance to agile at first?Ms. Baker: Yes. We heard "This is not going to work," "We'll be back to waterfall in six months," "Why are they making us do this?" "This is just a fad that's going to pass."
What benefits do you find using agile?Ms. Baker: Agile is definitely more fun because we are so self-organized. We are more efficient and have moderately increased our quality of projects. We have such high buy-in among the team now; people get more and more out of the process as time goes on.
I notice you use a physical taskboard to track tasks? Ms. Baker: It works. It's clear. 'If it isn't broke, don't fix it.' Of course, the taskboard has been a handicap with the one team member who meets with us by phone, but she can see a related spreadsheet.
I do feel like one of our reasons for success is because all but one of us are located in the same place. Most members have worked on the same team together and average eight years of experience. There is a lot of respect.
Thanks, Cathy for sharing your recipes for success: adherence, retrospectives, taskboards and self-organization.
Posted
by
William Krebs
on: February 08, 2011 04:22 PM |
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