Most of what is published about agile/scrum methods doesn’t talk about this area very much. It tends to be focused mainly on a team dedicated to getting a single product to market. As an internal team, we often don’t have that luxury. We run multiple concurrent projects, some with different members, as well as numerous operational tasks & enhancements.

We manage our work, we looked at having multiple Product Backlogs (basically a prioritised list of work the sponsor would like us to complete). This naturally led to multiple Sprint Backlogs (which contain the work the team has committed to doing in the next 2 weeks). This was going to be very difficult to manage. Particularily when it comes to the team keeping focus on their activities. Multiple projects and backlogs all over the place.

What we really needed was multiple Product Backlogs that each project sponsor could manage, but one pipeline for the team to work off during their 2 week sprint.

Mingle to the rescue!

We’ve been using this tool by Thoughtworks for a few months now, and the more I use it, the more I love it. We’ve pretty much ditched Microsoft Project completely as this tool is powerful and simple enough to do all that and more (albeit very differently).

It was quite easy for us to create a number of “card walls” to filter out the work for each project or operational area. We then use these separate lists when we sit with the sponsor to have them prioritise the work.

From that, the team picks off the top ‘x’ stories and commits to delivering them during the next sprint. Mingle makes this very easy for us to manage.

The tricky part is knowing how much from each project we can commit to. Currently, I communicate the number of hours we should be dedicating to each project each week. Hours are one thing, but I’d like to get to the stage where we track our overall velocity. This way, we can more easily determine how many “points” we can take off the backlog from each project and commit to doing.

We’re not there yet, but should begin getting some metrics in the next few weeks. I’m keen to see how this pans out and whether the idea above will work in practice.

Advice: Don’t buy from DigiDirect.com.au.

A month ago I purchased a new Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W300 camera from DigiDirect. I did my research and decided that this was the best buy for my budget and gave me all the functionality and quality I would like.

Since then, I have spent the month making numerous phone calls and sending emails to figure out where my camera is. The last time I called, it was sitting on their desk and was about to be shipped off that day. Two weeks later, here I am, still waiting.

In today’s phone call in which it seemed their staff don’t begin work until 10am, I discovered my order was flagged for “security.” Because I used digidirect@carljoseph.com.au as my email address and didn’t have a land line number.

Using companyname@mydomain.com is my standard practice when purchasing from an unknown company. It allows me to track whether an organisation sells my email on to someone else. Similarily, GMail users can do something similar by using the account.name+whatever@gmail.com format.

Even with these concerns, they still took my money and sat on it for a month!

My complaint isn’t only about the time it has taken or that my order was flagged as potentially fraudulent. My complaint is that I have had no communication from DigiDirect at all during this period. Were it not for me continuously bugging them, I wonder how long it would’ve been until they told me there was an issue.

Lesson to be learnt: Even if there is a problem, communicate it. It is far better to know that there are issues with something (even potential issues), than to be left in the dark believing it’s all okay, or worrying that you’ve been had by a crooked company.

Update 5th June 2008: Finally spoke with the MD today. He was somewhat apologetic and I now have a tracking number to show that my digital camera is en route. I find it unfortunate that I needed to escalate this to the company owner/manager in order to get action. Not only is it painful for the customer, it’s an extremely unsustainable business practice.

I’m a tool/model addict. I love them all. Anything which makes my thinking easier is a bonus. I sometimes struggle with forming my thoughts into cohesive structures, so I find models an invaluable additional to my arsenal.

One of the major benefits to an agile development process is the Inspect-Adapt loop. Reflection, or retrospective as it’s usually termed, is an integral part of continually improving what we do. In a Scrum Retrospective, the standard questions to ask are:

1. What did we do well?
2. What could be improved in the next sprint?

I believe these fall short in many ways. These two questions aren’t targetted enough to generate any real actionable outcomes. Instead, I would use the reflection model. We used it today in our Scrum Retrospective and I think the result was quite good for a first shot.

Like all useful models, it is extremely simple…

Spend a few minutes in each quadrant and ask yourself (or your team), what you should do more of, less of, and what you should keep, add and delete. You can work around them one by one or take random suggestions and add them to the appropriate box.

A nice outcome for the visuals amongst us is that you can see right away which areas you haven’t spent enough time on. I find it useful to focus on these for a few extra minutes  little more and force yourself to stretch your thinking.

It is also a way to subtly celebrate the things you’re doing well and come up with practical suggestions for those things which aren’t so great. When reflecting, it is important to phrase your words in actionable terms. “More communication” won’t get you anywhere, but “Update Jane once a week on progress” is much more useful.

The best thing of all about this model is that it is not only useful for work. When it was first presented to me, it was used for personal reflection. What in your life do you want to do more/less/keep/add/delete. You can really use it for anything you need to reflect and improve on. The more specific the topic, the better the results.

I liken packing supermarket bags to playing tetris. You somewhat randomly take the items out of your trolley and place them on the conveyer belt. The checkout chick/person then uses their skillz to scan and pack items nice and quickly into the bags. Packing these bags is definitely an aquired skill. The less experienced tetris players will put things in whatever order they arrive. The better ones will pick and chose appropriately to get the best fit. These are the Master Tetris Players.

I had my first self service check out experience today, and I realise now, that I am not a Master Tetris Player. This new system has its fair share of flaws as others have explained.

The general concept …

• You roll up your trolley,
• scan in an item, and
• put it in the bag.

The bag rests on a scale so the machine can tell if you have placed an item in the bag which you haven’t scanned in. If the item doesn’t have a bar code you can look it up on the list of pictures, it gets weighed calculates the cost for you.

• Hit the “finish” button,
• swipe your card,
• enter your pin, and
• go home.

The problems …

They started when I decided to use my own enviro friendly green bags. Once I placed it on the tray the machine warned me that there was a foreign object in the bag. It obviously weighed more than the usual plastic. To continue it required the assistance of a hovering staff member to wave her RFID card at the machine. This had to be done with every bag I placed on the tray.

I also had trouble packing my own bags. Because there was no conveyer belt on which to prepare your items, I found it insanely difficult to pack the bags nicely. It was like the final levels of tetris where they come flying in too fast. I ended up with items on all sorts of angles and arrived home with squashed bread and a leaking container of antipasto mix.

The additional pressure to scan and pack as fast as the Master Tetris Players is immense and doesn’t help the experience.

I finished my first bag and quickly snatched it off the scales. The machine freaked out because it musn’t have had enough time to weight it properly. After another swipe of the magic RFID card, I was onto my second bag.

Some good points …

Muddling through some more items, I finally got to the fruit and veg. Finding an item on the list of images was pretty easy. This part I was pleased with.

Finally, the paying options were straight forward. They obviously spent a lot of time making sure they could get your money, but not as much on the rest of the experience.

Gaming the system …

Through this debacle, I realised that I could cheat this system quite easily.

1. Don’t scan items and just place them in your bag

Place an item in the bag without scanning it, wait for the machine to complain about foreign items in the bag, look confused, hail the now retired Master Tetris Player, and have them wave their magic card.

I would guess that the more often you did this during your checkout, the more likely they would think you were just incompetent with technology and the more you were likely to get away with. If they catch you in the act, just return to that confused look and you’re home free.

2. Selecting a cheaper item

With fruit and veg, you need to weigh in the items and select the picture on the screen. It wouldn’t take much to select a cheaper per kilo item. If you get caught – “Oops, sorry maam. I thought I hit the picture of the avocado. This thing is so confusing.”

3. Walk out without paying

If you’re really game, it wouldn’t be difficult to do. Hit a few random buttons, get confused, swipe your card in some random slot and walk away. You may need to move your items past a certain area to demagnetise the barcode. As usual though, if you get caught, put on your confused face and pay up.

All in all, I hope these don’t become common practice. I much prefer leaving the professional bag packing to the well practiced Master Tetris Players. It’s not a skill I wish to aquire myself.