Finally back!

Finally back on my original (alter) ego. 

         How can I help You?

            My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.

Better Criticism

Criticism is an attempt to influence

• Do not afraid to give feedback.
• Choose the appropriate time for feedback.
• Do not blame. Instead tell what  could be done better and suggestions of how to achieve it.
• Give criticism about work. Do not critique the worker.
• Present the benefits of improvement, rather than scare about risks and disadvantages of mistakes. List of failures does not motivate people.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. -Ken Blanchard

kanban - how we implemented it

Kanban (看板) for Software Development

The word "Kan" means "visual" in Japanese and the word "ban" means "card". So Kanban refers to "visual card", "signboard" or "billboard".

There's excellent articles describing kanban boards and methods for software development . For example InfoQ has two free e-books that are quite useful for bootstrapping kanban board.

• "Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both" by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin
• "Priming Kanban" by Jespre Boeg

But if you want go beyond and learn more than just sticky notes on board, you definitely need to study The Kanban Method as formulated by David J. Anderson in his book "Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business". The Kanban Method is "an approach to incremental, evolutionary process and systems change for organizations. It uses a work-in-progress limited pull system as the core mechanism to expose system operation (or process) problems and stimulate collaboration to continuously improving the system." Definitely more than just the kanban board (which you should always start with lower-case to distinct it to upper case the Kanban method btw).

But how we implemented kanban board?

I am not going to go general details covered by mentioned source. I just present some of our policies.

The Board

The Board

This board was actually used by one of our teams... Today it looks quite different but basic elements are there. Basic set of columns; Baclog; Selected; Develop; Testing; Done. And some WIP limits and avatars.

We are just installing automatic testing and staging environments and creating the separate end-user testing team. While doing, we separate developer testing and user testing to their own columns. Going away from multi-functional team, but the testing team also writes and updates the end user help documents and manuals on multiple languages while testing. And testing team will also do semi-automatic (at least minor) updates to selected production environments and pulling the tasks to final done column.

Visual Card template

Nothing very unusual here I think. Bug id is written if it exists on bug database. Harsh classification to Bug/Feature/Maintenance items. For Fixed Delivery Date (see below) items the obligatory delivery date and estimates are written to top-right corner.

Started On and Dev Done dates on bottom are for statistics and they are written on normal ballpoint pen instead of ink pen which is used for other items.

But one note; use the best sticky notes you can get. Otherwise you might end up having automatic expiration of items not handled in certain time when glue just expires. We have found that nothing compares to Super-Sticky notes from Post-It.

Class Of Service

We use quite directly the Class of Service concept from Anderson's book. Class of Service defines how items are pulled through the system. It determines priorities within the system. Currently we use 4 different levels which are visualized by color of the note. Later we are going to allocate capacity separately for different classes, but before that we can collect some statistics with just implementing the classes. 

Expedite

• Red cards
• Can break WIP limits
• Only one allowed at any given time per board or swim lane
• Anyone qualified have to pull the task immediately
• No estimation unless someone specifically request it

Fixed Delivery Date

• Purple Cards
• Obligatory delivery date is displayed on top-right corner of the card
• Estimated by T-Shirt sizes
• Started in "Good Time" so that delivery time can be respected 

Standard Class

• Yellow cards
• FIFO handling
• Usually no estimation unless "seems to be bigger than usual" 

Intangible Class

• Green cards
• common-sense / ad hoc handling

Swim lanes

We are working on multiple products of our own with multiple projects on each product. Problem domain for products are quite different. Even that basic code base for server development is same, the context where it is used needs special knowledge for development. So we have 2-3 more or less overlapping teams. And one separate mobile development team doing parts for all products since the actual coding is completely different than server based development. So currently we have 3 different server development boards and one mobile development board. No swim lanes. And it feels quite complicated.

But at the end of the year we are moving to new office and we are already thinking whether we move to one or two boards. And maybe swim lanes to different products. Suggestions are welcomed :)

Done Policies

Current Done-policies for columns are presented in quite general terms. No point to repeat them here since there is lots of room for improvements. But we have procrastinated fine-tuning them until the next set of column changes are done. But we have noticed these policies should be visible even if all think they are well-known. It's much easier to explain the board for stakeholders and newcomers.

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. -Goethe

XY Problem

XY problem seemed to be theme for many conversations I participated this week.

Someone asks how to do X when they really want to do Y. They ask how to do X because they believe it is the best way to accomplish Y. 

It's a pattern of miscommunication where questioner seeks premature closure with wrong assumptions. It's quite hard to convince questioner to accept any other solution than he originally considered the best. Usually the questioner have I-Know-It-All attitude, they just need help for doing their X.


XY problem can even be extended to XYZ problem

There may be a solution Z that is even better than Y, but nobody can suggest it if Y is never mentioned.

This is quite common time-wasting problem especially on customer support and help-desk work, but there have been documented cases even on project work.
It would be great that everybody would take time to learn  How To Ask Questions The Smart Way by Eric Steven Raymond :
"

Describe the goal, not the step
If you are trying to find out how to do something (as opposed to reporting a bug), begin by describing the goal. Only then describe the particular step towards it that you are blocked on.
Often, people who need technical help have a high-level goal in mind and get stuck on what they think is one particular path towards the goal. They come for help with the step, but don't realize that the path is wrong. It can take substantial effort to get past this.
Stupid:     How do I get the color-picker on the FooDraw program to take a hexadecimal RGB value?
Smart:     I'm trying to replace the color table on an image with values of my choosing. Right now the only way I can see to do this is by editing each table slot, but I can't get FooDraw's color picker to take a hexadecimal RGB value.
The second version of the question is smart. It allows an answer that suggests a tool better suited to the task.

"
But it could be inconvenient to RTFM the customers. If the question sounds strange one can apply simplified root cause analysis methods. Specially 5 Whys works quite well. You just keep asking "Why?" until the questioner actual tells the Y he wants to accomplish. It may sound childish and silly, but in the end save you both time.

Asking the right questions is much harder than giving correct answers

Silent Hour - Experiences

Week ago I blogged about our new experiment - Silent Hour.

Our team has just one room, people sitting next to each other and even if you are discussing with only one team member, others are also easily distracted. Headphones do help a little, but we decided to try something different. Between 12:00 to 13:00 we close doors of our team rooms to avoid all unnecessary disturbances both from internal and external origins.

For customer contacts we fortunately have first tier customer support which can handle easy tasks independently. Complicated tasks and problems are forwarded to developers, but during Silent Hour we encourage them to try little bit harder before doing that. Or they can take request for callback if the issue is not too urgent. But rules are not absolute; if they really needed help they can ask advice from developers anytime. Common sense rules.

On the other hand managers and salespeople tend to rush to ask questions from developers at any time. And just fiver minutes later they come back to ask follow-up question. Face to face communication is good thing -no doubt about that- but just when you are getting back to flow for programming, there is already new distraction waiting... With Silent Hour closed-door-policy should encourage people to at least think do they need the answer right away or could they wait 30 minutes.

This have been working quite well. After little over week of experiment I did questionnaire to all stakeholders including developers, customer support, managers and salespeople. Almost all answered. Results were quite encouraging. Nobody thought that Silent Hour-policy had made his own work more difficult. Even that sometimes people did not remember the policy and have to turn away when they noticed closed door, they did not feel that additional waiting time for their communication needs did do any harm.  Everybody understood the need for developers to have some time when they can just concentrate task at the hand. And naturally developers were quite thrilled for the uninterrupted time. Sometimes we got visitors even during silent period, but always with good reason. 

Conclusion was that we end this as experiment and make it as permanent policy.

Silent Hour

Agile puts great value for interactions and communications but sometimes too much communication can turn to waste. Interactions should not be part of WIP and should not have their own sticky notes on board.

The Agile principles embrace

Co-Operation

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Communication

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. 

But also

Sustainable Development

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Simplicity

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

In order to put more emphasis and improve the latter two we now are in progress of testing the new practice we call Silent Hour. Between 12:00 to 13:00 we close doors of our team rooms to avoid all unnecessary disturbances. We urge everybody to think at least twice before distracting developers during Silent Hour. Average waiting time is 30 minutes anyway, so it should not be any problem. Also developers avoid any unnecessary chatter. Some developers are also going to test the Pomodoro Technique® since there is just enough time for two pomodoros.


This is just ongoing testing and rules will surely evolve, but it has received quite good acceptance with developers and also with other stakeholders.

Edit: There is also followup post with more information and experiences: http://ikettu.blogspot.com/2011/11/silent-hour-experiences.html

Performance = potential - interference (P=p-i). Tim Gallwey 

Back in Business

I managed to recover my lost blogger password finally. 

So I'm back in business. 

Actually I'v been quite busy on "real work" :) 

But since autumn conference season is opening, it might be good time to restart the work.