Social Experiment : Do we need a Scrum Master in a self organising team?
 

In a typical agile team, the scrum master is the coordinator/facilitator who makes everything going in the team properly. However, when the team is highly self-organising, do we even need a facilitator? We have a detailed post on the role of a scrum master here.

We have asked this question to a group of experts in different social forums and we have received around 1200+ responses. Here is a quick stats around the same.

  • 9% feels we don’t need scrum master at all.
  • 14% believes that the SM is a full-time role.
  • Rest 77% strongly believes that full-time SM is effective in the start, or in an immature team.

This survey reflects what we have observed in our agile projects.

When we are building a team or team is immature(staffing changes etc), we need SM to help and coach the team by asking right questions.  As the team grows up in maturity, the individual team members know how to organize themselves and hold each other accountable. This is one of the important reason why SM role becomes redundant after some time. And this is also the reason why organizations prefer to hire technical people who can play scrum master role. But in order to attain this maturity, the team members will have to be open for new learnings and continually improve.

Here we have picked some (not limited to) of the comments from the experts we did experiment with. The question being asked was

Do we really need a scrum master in Scrum project? If so, does it have to be full time? Isn’t self-organizing team killing the concept of SM? 

Comments from experts

1. Yes….as much it seems like an oxymoron to have both concepts in concert with each other, you need to have the “check and balance system” embodied by having a separate SM from the team. The team is made up of humans, who are fallible and will attempt to take shortcuts over time. The SM is a check against the scrum team’s desire to “get things done” and circumvent the scrum process.

2. Ideally any team member can be called as a Scrummaster. I can only call the SM designated as a process expert contributor.
The key responsibilities certainly needs a defined role to drive it so it reduces the burden on either the Manger or team.

Also , with value and business ask in mind its challenging for the Manager to inspire, create value, and follow the princple 5 ” build projects across motivated indivduals and trust them that the job can be done” whilst if it can be done, it can be tried out.

3. Scrum is a smallish change to jow people work. 5 hours a week. That said…if you’re running scrum in a not friendly to agile work environment….scrum is essential. However, if you’ve got a long term agile team, whose environment lets them work, the role is less necessary.

Really…the scrum master role as practiced is NOT about scrum, but rather about making the team work effectively together. Once that’s good…?

The XP model creates agile team functionality differently, by shifting work patterns for 35 hours a week, rather than scrums 5 hour change. Honestly, that changes team culture far faster than scrum, and the tech practices shops dont find the role necessary.

Without a deep established culture or hardcore paired-tdd-ci practices, you want a scrum master.

4. Real professionals don’t need a SM. It will save them time.

5.  Once the team is self reliant, scrum masters role becomes redundant.. Either scrum master has to be one of the tech leads or a contractual role to train the teams.

6. Looking at this link, we need SM to fix these scenarios.

7. That depends on the nature of the project. If it is a fairly large sized project with multiple dependent upstream and downstream systems, there would be a fair amount of communication and coordination required. This should happen before, during and after sprint planning. Team members do not need to worry about all these administrative work. They can concentrate on actual tasks. Also, in my personal experience, however well planned you are, things do not go smooth as planned. In that case, there is a need to capture details around any delays by our own team or any other dependent systems and review and revise the integration tests, release plans, deploys to higher environments and finally present the cost of delay and value being delivered to business. This is all just a few tasks for an SM when the project is fairly large sized with up/downstream dependencies. Other typical tasks include, communications with end users whenever required, challenging and motivating teams, conducting team building activities which helps team not only build relationships but provides some relief from day to day and hour to hour work.

8. However mature teams are, if a candid discussion happens during grooming, planning team members need someone else to facilitate their conversations, disagreements and help them come to an agreement. SM can apply various techniques in these situations and it would be totally unreasonable to expect a participant team member to play that facilitator role and be neutral (just not practical)

9. I’ve had the great pleasure to work with many different teams across many organization types, development processes, and industries. Whenever a team loved Scrum Masters, it was because the Scrum Masters were properly performing their role and getting things done, removing road blocks for the team, facilitating effective meetings and conversations, and so much more.

All of the projects I’ve been on where there was no formal Scrum Master role were teams that had one at one point, but dropped them because they were not effective. They blamed the role instead of the individual.

Find effective Scrum Masters and hold them accountable just as you would any other team member. If they aren’t getting the job done for you, find one that will!

10. When a team is mature enough, this is true that need for a Scrum Master is over.
If the team is self-organizing, cross-functional and respects naturally Scrum ceremonies ; if communication with the PO is smooth, there is no misunderstandings, it means that a Scrum Master would be superfluous.
On top of that, the role of Scrum Master still exists: the difference is that it is endorsed by team members, with no prior assignation, but spontaneously, depending on the context.

11. The need of a SM depends on the tasks that he performs. So whether a SM will be required or not will be determined by the availability of resource to perform that role. So if there are skilled resources who is available to perform those tasks then I think the need for SM is already fulfilled.

12. Although SM role is critical but if thats the case all the times it means your team in not improving. If the team is improving, you need to assign other work to SM (Assign other projects, ask to contribute on technology, design etc). If that is not happening, you should plan to bring new SM.

13. Scrum master is ‘Servant Leader’ in practice. Which means he/she has to adapt to leadership style based on ‘Team’ is at what stage. Whether ‘Forming’, ‘Storming, ‘ Norming’ or ‘Performing’. Once the team reaches ‘Performing’, SM job becomes redundant. And at ‘Adjourning’ the last stage SM is no more needed team to do its function effectively, independent and consistent performance. At this SM would also reach its peak of leadership ‘Pinnacle’.

14. A team can gel despite all kinds of organizational impediments to agility. The SM is not obsolete until those impediments are identified and addressed effectively.

15. For a program with multiple streams and releases, a dedicated SM is more or less a necessity. With obvious(more) focus during the initial stages, the SM involvement can reduce as the team imbibes the mindset that is expected of a proper self organised team. He or she will ideally bring in the culture that sets the team on the progressive path

16.  A dedicated Scrum Master is not needed in a Performing team. However, it is frequently the case that a team degrades over time after the Scrum Master leaves – so unless the team is able continuously keep focus on improving they might at least need regular check-ins from an agile coach (could be an actual agile coach or a leader in the organization or a Scrum Master from another team).

17. I don’t think need of SM can be completely eliminated, whether it is performing team or not as there are lot of things SM take care of such as improvement in processes, removing impediments, taking care of backlog, running sprint etc.

Someone from team should not be SM as this is independent role and it has to be a specialist for the job.

18. A team does not mature takes the time to mature. In a mature team, Scrum Master may not require, so a lot of other things e.g. sprint planning and refinement sessions merging, On demand retro instead of one retro per sprint, time boxing of sprint ( may be kanban), etc.

19. I don’t think the role of SM can be completely eliminated and not at least until the team is mature enough to identify impediments and able take actions to remove them or retrospect themselves. Yes, it would be a good idea to have a team member with willing to serve as SM as well, but that should happen at a later stage only as in SCRUM SM is a separate entity and can be supposed to serve multiple teams at the same time.

20. I think a SM is need at the start of the POD, but as stated above once the team starts moving and has proved they can produce and become self serving then the SM has be become obsolete. Now this can only happen if your product owner and B.A. are in tuned with the POD.

21. Instead of picking SM from outside, you can identify a good fit for this role within team and keep rotating. This would certainly increase your chances of getting better results and at the same time you are helping you team member to play interesting role who aspire to get into management.

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DAR – How to find a better option when you have multiple solution for a given problem?
 

“You must choose … but choose wisely”   Your decisions play a critical to make or break your future. The company you choose, the girl or guy you marry, the house you buy, the career option you choose. Isn’t it a great idea to have a tool or intelligent mechanism to make the life easy which would help you to choose the best possible decision based on some real facts rather than some random decision?

DAR

DAR is a process to make key decisions in your organization and even in personal life more objectively and wisely. Just to add more clarity, what do you do when you have multiple solutions for a given problem? How do you decide to pick one that most suited and obviously wise?

Human psychology plays an important role while using this technique. We have a lot of information which we don’t really process rather we just go by Halo effect which is nothing but taking a decision based on what you have in your mind at that moment instead of considering all the inputs

Let’s take some examples

Business Decisions

Should I outsource or not.

Is it a good idea to start an XYZ office in Pune or Mumbai?

Technical Decision – Which technology to choose – C++, Java or .NET

Which technology to choose – C++, Java or .NET

Architecture decisions.

Alright, seems boring. Let me get on to more personal stuff.

Which car do you want to buy? If you are thinking in 1967 Shelby GT350, well it’s a good decision, admittedly, the GT500 is not a race car, but it contains the same big block V8 engine that was used to win victory at Le Mans.

The DAR – Decision analysis and resolution is an answer for above situations. It is one of the process area defined by CMMI but practically used everywhere. The reason DAR works most times

  • You think about every possible solution and list them out. Hence you consider everything before taking a decision over just thinking about limited core items.
  • You rank individual items based on comparison hence you have more clarity.
  • The template would give you amazing results.
  • You do consider Risk and constraints.

Essentially writing down everything and coming to conclusion. There is no guarantee that your solution would be perfect while you are increasing the chances of getting it right significantly.  It takes almost no time to use this process once you acquainted with it.

Please leverage attached DAR template. I have created it to have the better clarity.

Dar Template

Try few times and trust me you would fall in love with it.

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Stand up: Why you should talk about your next actionable?
 

Lots of teams that I work with generally follow the best practices of a Scrum stand up meeting. However, as time goes by team tend to fall into the slippery slope of just reporting what they have accomplished the previous or the current day and completely ignore the next actionable & impediments. This happens more when the team/scrum master is not very strict about the process. In this article, we will see the reasons why this is important and the benefits of the same.

Life without goals

Before we delve deep into practices of Scrum method, we will talk about few general principles how our subconscious works. As per the basic behavioral psychology, there are three parts of the self-concept.

a) Self-Ideal – Goals, aspirations, dreams etc.

b) Self Image – impression about self-based on previous experiences.

c) Self Esteem – Emotional component of how much we like ourselves.

When someone sets goals and achieves them, the self-image corrects and the self-esteem improves. And they start setting bigger goals and continues to go on an upward spiral.

How Psychology relates to Scrum

Whenever a team member talks about “What they will do ” before the next meeting, they are indirectly setting a time-bound goal for themselves. When they come and report the achievement of the same the next day, the self-image and the self-esteem goes up. This will bring more success as the time goes by.

The Sprint is systematically designed methodology using the basic psychology of commit and achieve cycle.

Let’s do an experiment. If you are part of an Agile team, state your goal for the day loudly to your team during the stand-up meeting. You would have that in your back of your mind entire day. At the end the of day, if you accomplish what you stated, you will have an amazing sense of accomplishment.  Otherwise, you feel that you have not done enough. This comes to most members as long as they care about the company and their career. All you have to do is take that seriously and you would find yourself growing much faster than your peers.

I have personally asked this to many people and every time I had the same result. Isn’t it amazing? How simple it is to grow in an Agile team. Isn’t it?

So Next time you are in a stand-up meeting, would you talk about “what you are going to do “?

 

If you like this article, please share and provide comments.

 

 

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The five dysfunctions of a team – How to build a great team
 

I got an opportunity to drive ‘team book reading’ with my highly competent team for one of the very critical facets of team building i.e. “What it takes to be successful as a Team”. The book chose was “The five dysfunctions of a team – A leadership fable” which I personally found very interesting hence thought of sharing the summary with you all.

Precisely the book talks about the five dysfunctions of a team that restricts the team to be successful. It is very important to understand and overcome them in order to be more effective as a team. The dysfunctions are

Absence of trust
Trust & respect are the foundation stones of any relationship be it a home or office. If the members of the team do not trust each other then they cannot be completely honest with each other.

Hence “Create Trust” by following but not limited to:

  • 360-degree feedback
  • Spend time together
  • Understand each other personal history
  • Believe in each other
  • Be honest

Fear of conflict – Without trust, team members will not have healthy debates that are necessary to arrive at better thought through decisions.
It’s very important to have open lines of communication (so that everyone is clear & aligned). Always remember

  • Open discussions. Debate leads to a better solution
  • Focus on the issue, not the individual.

Hence “Value Conflict” (It has to be in a healthy way!) by following but not limited to:

  • Straight talk
  • Calling people on behavior traits that demonstrate fear of conflict
  • Identify how we respond
  • The leader leads in behavior

Lack of commitment – If the team has not aligned to a decision then the individual members who did not agree with the final decision will ultimately be less committed to that decision. It is important to know that the “Alignment” is more important than agreement

Hence “Encourage commitment” by following but not limited to:

  • Summaries decisions made in group discussions or meetings
  • Come to consensus — Any decision is better than no decision – Timeboxing decisions.
  • Clarify all scenarios including worst-case ones.
  • Talk it loud, hear everyone’s opinion.

Avoidance of accountability – If they are not committed to the course of action, then they are less likely to feel accountable (or hold other people accountable). Lack of clarity of roles & responsibilities and not holding individuals accountable leads to “Avoidance of accountability”
Hence “Promote Accountability” by following but not limited to

  • Open disclosure of goals, standards, and metrics
  • Continuous progress reviews
  • Reward for a team not individual

Inattention to results – If the individuals are not accountable, they are less likely to care about the group results (Instead they would focus on achieving their individual goals).
Hence “Celebrate Results” by following but not limited to:

  • Group declaration of results
  • The reviews to be based on results.
  • The leader should lead to behavior.

Disclaimer “This is a just summary of the book we read – In order to have more details, you are required to read the complete book”.

You can find the book at this link

or

Click on below

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100 Best Agile Blogging Websites – 2019 List
 

Top 100 Agile Blogs websites

Below is the top 100 Agile websites list published by AgileChamps team. The process followed to identify top 100 sites is:-

  1. Identified few core keywords used for Agile.
  2. These keywords are used against the majority of top search engines.
  3. The websites coming on first few pages are identified.  Approx. 1200 plus websites are shortlisted.
  4. Identified Alexa Rank for all of them.
  5. All the websites under 15 million ranks are reviewed individually.
  6. The websites which are heavy centric on Agile are marked and rest are removed.
  7. At this point, top 200 websites are shortlisted for final review and research. The top 100 are picked after spending a good time with each and every website.

The list may not be 100% perfect but it should be close as there are chances that some of the good websites on Agile are missed. If you think, you have an Agile Blogging site which is not listed here, please do mention in the comment section with Alexa rank and we would include that in below list.

Rank Agile Blogging Site Alexa Rank Comments
1 http://softwaredevelopmenttoday.com/ 1030 Improving the world with software
2 http://agilescout.wpengine.com/ 3078 Agile Software Development News
3 http://agile.dzone.com/ 4167 Agile and Technology
4 http://www.infoworld.com/ 11991
5 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/ 12181
6 http://martinfowler.com/ 29470
7 http://scrumalliance.org/ 36377
8 http://geekswithblogs.net/Default.aspx 36908 Agile and Technology
9 http://blog.scrum.org 62603
10 http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/ 65325
11 http://www.versionone.com 106619
12 http://www.lean.org/ 143610
13 http://blog.xebia.com 157824
14 http://www.romanpichler.com/ 180494
15 http://www.allaboutagile.com/ 181443
16 http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/ 257143
17 http://scrummethodology.com/ 269615
18 http://blog.crisp.se/henrikkniberg 279696
19 http://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/ 286285
20 http://www.scruminc.com/ 327659
21 http://www.shmula.com/ 345374
22 http://www.solutionsiq.com/ 359293
23 http://tynerblain.com/blog/ 392184
24 http://www.leadingagile.com/ 396993
25 http://management.curiouscatblog.net/ 420641
26 http://www.agileforall.com/ 451259
27 http://www.marcusoft.net/ 473266
28 http://alistair.cockburn.us/Agile+development 505811
29 http://www.agile42.com 529073
30 http://services.leankanban.com 540509
31 http://www.agileweboperations.com/ 563971
32 http://agilescout.com/ 574286
33 https://age-of-product.com 600556
34 http://www.jrothman.com/blogs/ 608049 Management and Agile
35 http://blog.retrium.com 681480
36 http://tastycupcakes.org/ 736304
37 http://www.netobjectives.com 767821
38 http://jamesshore.com/ 768661
39 http://ronjeffries.com/ 791006
40 http://www.klocwork.com 799097
41 http://www.personalkanban.com/ 806918
42 http://www.agileadvice.com/ 881368
43 http://benlinders.com 908226
44 http://www.scrumexpert.com/ 941122
45 http://brodzinski.com/ 950714
46 http://blogs.agilefaqs.com 979367
47 http://herdingcats.typepad.com 995606
48 http://scrumology.com/ 1105693
49 http://agilepainrelief.com/ 1210659
50 http://blog.3back.com/ 1300016
51 http://leadinganswers.typepad.com 1309169
52 http://www.implementingscrum.com/ 1340427
53 http://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/ 1454803
54 http://testobsessed.com/ 1567560
55 http://www.agilitrix.com/ 1590376
56 http://lithespeed.com/ 1674920
57 http://lisacrispin.com/ 1705271
58 http://guntherverheyen.com 1879037
59 http://www.betterprojects.net/ 1917210
60 http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/ 1917606
61 http://www.agile-ux.com/ 1948198
62 http://leansoftwareengineering.com/ 2054154
63 http://agilecoach.typepad.com 2064719
64 http://www.agilistapm.com/ 2302141
65 http://borisgloger.com/ 2332692
66 http://www.estherderby.com/ 2377232
67 http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/ 2522442
68 http://www.growingagile.co.za 2552857
69 http://www.ontheagilepath.net 2578280
70 http://www.cindyalvarez.com/ 2585993
71 http://www.jbrains.ca 2606431
72 http://www.scrum-breakfast.com/ 2632324
73 http://www.dkrimmer.de 2667951
74 http://leanandkanban.wordpress.com/ 2726139
75 http://blog.agilegamedevelopment.com/ 2726568
76 http://www.gettingagile.com/ 2729011
77 http://brainslink.com/ 2808821
78 http://blog.oikosofy.com 2893584
79 http://availagility.co.uk/ 3117999
80 http://www.leanessays.com/ 3134021
81 http://kellycrew.wordpress.com/ 3194994
82 http://scrumcoaching.wordpress.com/ 3397983
83 https://www.agilechamps.com 3420233 Based on real time experiences. Agile becomes simple.
84 http://www.coachingagileteams.com/ 3493804
85 http://www.derekhuether.com 3499622
86 http://www.axisagile.com.au 3630517
87 http://www.softwareresults.us/ 3658561
88 http://indigoblue.co.uk 3671917
89 http://www.agiletrainings.eu 3740017
90 http://hanoulle.be/ 3782502
91 http://lmsgoncalves.com 4120325
92 http://fragile.org.uk/ 4235666
93 http://theagileexecutive.com/ 4479652
94 http://scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/ 4543469
95 https://scrumfamily.wordpress.com/ 4603896
96 http://www.tinypm.com/blog/ 4815953
97 http://catenary.wordpress.com/ 5292497
98 http://www.agilecoach.ca/ 5352264
99 http://www.thoughtclusters.com/ 5547969
100 http://agilemindstorm.com/ 6605622

I would really appreciate if you can provide a link to this blog to your website if your website is listed above.

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BDD (Behavior Driven Development)
 

In the previous article we looked at how to do Test Driven Development (TDD) while doing the XP (Extreme Programming). In XP, the implementation of the tasks are done in the steering phase of the iteration planning. One of the tenets of the steering phase is “functional tests are run”. In this article we will see how to create functional tests using Behavior driven development (BDD) and its benefits.

Following are the some of the benefits of automated functional tests.

  • Functionality experienced by the User is tested
  • Saves testing time for the developers
  • Test in every environment (Dev, QA, Stage) without much effort
  • Generates confidence in every stake holder

Tools required for doing BDD in .Net

There are various tools available to do BDD in .Net. I have listed few of them below

SpecFlow is one of the most popular tools used in the .Net/C# community. And in this blog lets use the same. The tool comes as a Visual Studio Extension and can be downloaded directly from VS.

Creating a SpecFlow Project

Once SpecFlow extension is installed, the template required for doing BDD will be installed.

  • Create a simple “Class Library” Project in Visual studio
  • In the project, create a SpecFlow Feature file

Selecting the test framework

Before we Create/execute the scenario, we need to wire the SpecFlow with a compatible test framework. To do that we need to make changes to the app.Config file of the project.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="specFlow" type="TechTalk.SpecFlow.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionHandler, TechTalk.SpecFlow" />
  </configSections>
  <specFlow>
    <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config -->
  <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config -->
    <unitTestProvider name="xUnit" />
  </specFlow>
</configuration>

In this example we are using XUnit as the testing framework. SpecFlow supports a series of testing frameworks and more details can be found here.

Creating the Behavior

Now, let us look at how to create a functional test using behavior driven approach. Let’s consider the following story while creating a POS (point of sale) application for a super market.

“As a Supermarket POS app developer,  i would like the API to Give the total amount while billing so that I can wire up API against the UI.”

Let’s write the Behavior required in order to implement the above API requirement .

Feature: SuperMarketProductsAPI
	As a Supermarket Biller 
	i would like the API to
	Give the total amount while billing
@SmokeTest
Scenario: Find the total amount while billing
	Given Shopping cart is filled with all the items required by consumer
	And Campaign information for the month is available in the system
	When I pass the cart to create bill API
	Then the total bill amount should be calculated

The above specification is written using the custom language (testing DSL) create by the specflow.org. (Please read about what is DSL here.)

There are 2 parts to the above Specflow specification

  • Feature – Denotes bigger context (description/story) of the application
  • Scenario – Specific workflow or behavior of the system under the feature. Each scenario has the following sub-parts
    • Given, And – describes what we already assumed available
    • When – The specific action which will trigger the workflow/behavior
    • Then  – expected behavior

 

Creating step definitions

When we run the unit test corresponding to the above test we it will fail as there are no definitions corresponding to the above scenarios.

Now Right Click on the feature file and select “Generate step Definitions”

You will see the pop-up like below, select “Generate” and then “Save” the file.

The file will have the details about “what SpecFlow should do when test is executed”.

using System;
using TechTalk.SpecFlow;

namespace SuperMarketFunctionalTests
{
    [Binding]
    public class SuperMarketProductsAPISteps
    {
        [Given(@"Shopping cart is filled with all the items required by consumer")]
        public void GivenShoppingCartIsFilledWithAllTheItemsRequiredByConsumer()
        {
            ScenarioContext.Current.Pending();
        }
        
        [Given(@"Campaign information for the month is available in the system")]
        public void GivenCampaignInformationForTheMonthIsAvailableInTheSystem()
        {
            ScenarioContext.Current.Pending();
        }
        
        [When(@"I pass the cart to create bill API")]
        public void WhenIPassTheCartToCreateBillAPI()
        {
            ScenarioContext.Current.Pending();
        }
        
        [Then(@"the total bill amount should be calculated")]
        public void ThenTheTotalBillAmountShouldBeCalculated()
        {
            ScenarioContext.Current.Pending();
        }
    }
}

When you build the project and execute the test corresponding to this, it will fail. This is because none of the parts of the test (given, when, then) are having implementation.

Writing code to make it work

Now that the behavior has been created, we are good to validate that with the team and implement the code/functionality corresponding to the requirement. Of course using best coding practices like TDD 🙂

Making the behavior test pass

In order to make the behavior test pass we need to write the implementation in the “Step Definition” file.

namespace SuperMarketFunctionalTests
{
    using Newtonsoft.Json;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Net.Http;
    using TechTalk.SpecFlow;
    using Xunit;

    [Binding]
    public class SuperMarketProductsAPISteps
    {
        Product P1 = new Product { Name = "test1", Cost = 5 };
        Product P2 = new Product { Name = "test2", Cost = 10 };
        ShoppingCart cart;
        List<Campaign> campaign;
        Bill bill;
        [Given(@"Shopping cart is filled with all the items required by consumer")]
        public void GivenShoppingCartIsFilledWithAllTheItemsRequiredByConsumer()
        {
            cart = new ShoppingCart { Products = new List<Product> { P1, P2 } };
        }
        
        [Given(@"Campaign information for the month is available in the system")]
        public void GivenCampaignInformationForTheMonthIsAvailableInTheSystem()
        {
            campaign = new List<Campaign> { new Campaign { product = P1, discount = 1 } };
        }
        
        [When(@"I pass the cart to create bill API")]
        public void WhenIPassTheCartToCreateBillAPI()
        {
            var client = new HttpClient();
            var response = client.PostAsync("http://myapi.supermarket.com", new StringContent(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(cart))).Result;
            var output = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
            bill = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Bill>(output);
        }
        
        [Then(@"the total bill amount should be calculated")]
        public void ThenTheTotalBillAmountShouldBeCalculated()
        {
            Assert.True(bill.totalAmount == 14);
        }
    }
}

Once the code is there we can see the behavior test pass.

Conclusion

BDD is very powerful way of ensuring high code quality in conjunction with business requirement. In Extreme programming (XP) , BDD is considered to be a very important practice where functional tests are mandated to run at least once during the iteration.  Is BDD/Functional tests helping your team/business in achieving success or not ? Do let us know your thoughts.

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Kanban – step by step implementation
 

You are ready to leverage Kanban in your project.  At this moment you are convinced that Kanban works, it could be a good tool for your project and you understand when this is to be used. The big question is how to go about it.  Let’s discuss that in simplest possible manner.

Visualize your work and existing resources – You need to understand answers to following questions.  What kind of work or EPICs do you have? How long it to complete them?  How many team members you have? What are their capabilities? Customer priority? Release cycle?  What is the existing set of processes used at your BU or org level? How do you get work and what is the priority? The delivery expectations?

Setup Kanban Board – Once you have an answer to #1, you can set a Kanban board. For that, you need various stages, criteria (Definition of complete for that stage in order to be ready to move the item to next stage). You can have a white board and sticky notes to build your kanban board. You can leverage tools like Trello instead of leverage whiteboard/sticky notes.  This may change over a period of time hence starting with Todo, In Progress and Done stages can be a good idea.

Define WIP limit – The WIP limit is assigned to each stage (Represents individual column). The WIP limit restricts team to add more items in the specific stage. This literally removes lots of waste. It does not allow you to focus only on one stage instead encourages continuous production.

Identify and Define Roles and Responsibilities – Kanban doesn’t prescribe specific roles but it is a good idea to have a product owner, scrum master and team member roles. Although in typically Kanban projects, the role of SM is very limited.

Start working – Start working on the model. Don’t be rigid on the number of stages, WIP limit, roles, and processes. This gets better over a time. Do not break the WIP limit rule. If you think the limit you set is not right, change it. This is most adaptive process hence most learning will be on the ground. The processes can be adjusted as you move forward.

Matrices/reports – You can have utilization, productivity, cycle time and other matrices. Do watch it closely as this would help you to stabilize the process per company need.  The cumulative workflow diagram would be a really good choice to constantly monitor as it gives you very clear picture in terms of where the project stands.

 

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Kanban – Let’s get started
 

Kanban (refers to visual board or billboard in Japanese) is a lean scheduling tool that works on JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing concept. The JIT is a model in which products are built to meet pressing requirements over building it in excess.  This helps to improve productivity, reduce waste by limiting work in progress items, support continuous delivery and maximizing customer value.

Kanban board is a visualization tool as shown above.   The number of stages could of any number depends on your need. For instance, in my previous project, we were using

  • To Do – When the item is groomed and ready to be picked
  • In Progress – The item is picked and being worked on.
  • QA – The development is completed. It is ready for integration testing.
  • Done – Delivered to the customer.

The stages and conditions as I described earlier are subject to individual need. The Kanban process is highly Adaptive.  It does not prescribe any roles. Let’s look at some of the processes or tools in specific order (rigid to adaptive)

Waterfall – More rigid
XP
Scrum
Kanban – More Adaptive

The work in progress plays a critical role. This ensures there is nothing at any stage over produced which result in reducing wastage. There is not a secret formula to set a WIP limit. All you have to look at is how many members you have in time and how many items they can work for you to have expected utilization. When you start, it is perfectly alright to have wrong WIP limit. You can always change it as you move on.

Just to make it more clear, this is how I set up WIP limits for my previous project example where my team size was 11. All of them used to play the role of Developer as well as QA.

To Do – 5  – Wanted to restrict to a number of groom items as we had customer dependency to unblock individual item (Access and other dependencies). Once we get the access to customer environment, we cannot wait for a long time to get started on that.

In Progress – 6 – I always wanted individuals to focus on QA as well as unblocking backlog item to continue the flow hence I limit this to 6.

QA – 2 – Sound interesting. Isn’t it? Well, anything which is dev-done (typically takes 3-4 weeks of development), the QA work was limited to 2 days. Anything which reaches to QA, should be quickly completed and delivered to the customer so that I can recognize my revenue. The advance of two is, an individual must complete it in order to move dev complete items to QA. If the WIP limit is full, even an item is dev complete, it used to remain there.

In addition to above, I kept WIP limited to leverage pair programming benefit as well. I wanted on complicated items folks to pair program. The above number, I reached over a period of time. The initial WIP limit turned our to be wrong which was expected.

The Agile Methods explain some of the core frameworks or agile process tools similarities and differences.

Please refer the following blog for step by step process to implement Kanban in your project.

Kanban – Step by step implementation

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