TAKE NO PRISONERS - Jeff Sutherlandjeffsutherland.com/scrum/takenoprisonersscrumday.pdf ·...
Transcript of TAKE NO PRISONERS - Jeff Sutherlandjeffsutherland.com/scrum/takenoprisonersscrumday.pdf ·...
© Jeff Sutherland 1993-2009
TAKE NO PRISONERSHow a Venture Capital Group Does Scrum
With help from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, MySpace, Adobe, GE, Siemens, Disney Animation, BellSouth, Nortel, GSI Commerce, Ulticom, Palm, St. Jude Medical, DigiChart, RosettaStone, Healthwise, Sony/Ericsson, Accenture, Trifork, Systematic
Software Engineering, Exigen Services, SirsiDynix, Softhouse, Philips, Barclays Global Investors, Constant Contact, Wellogic, Inova Solutions, Medco, Saxo Bank, Xebia,
Insight.com, SolutionsIQ, Crisp, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Unitarian Universalist Association, Motley Fool, Planon, FinnTech, OpenView Venture Partners,
Jyske Bank, BEC, Camp Scrum, DotWay AB, Ultimate Software, Scrum Training Institute, AtTask, Intronis, Version One, OpenView Labs, Central Desktop, Open-E, Zmags, eEye,
Reality Digital, DST, Booz Allen Hamilton, Scrum Alliance, Fortis, DIPS, Program UtVikling, Sulake, TietoEnator, Gilb.com, WebGuide Partner, Emergn, NSB (Norwegian Railway),
Danske Bank, Pegasystems
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© Jeff Sutherland 1993-2009
Jeff Sutherland, Ph.D.
Chairman, Scrum Training InstituteCEO Scrum, Inc. and Senior Advisor, OpenView Venture Partners
Igor Altman OpenView LabsOpenView Venture Partners, Boston, MA
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Agenda
Introduction
Getting Started with Scrum: Trial by Fire
Scaling Up: Finding the Rhythm
Where we are in November, 2008
Key Lessons Learned
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Changing the World of Work
Scrum is useful for improving productivity, quality, and life style of any team.
It can deliver twice as much for half the work
Siloed specialists become cross-functional team members
Working together and helping each other is more satisfying to team members and the customer
Extensive Scrum knowledge is available from thousands of IT teams, but little is known about how Scrum works outside of software development
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Scrum for Organizational Transformation
The Agile Manifesto is more than software principles. It is about organizational transformation.Aggressively implementing Scrum with cause the organization to tune itself for high performanceOpenview Venture Partners strives to remove all impediments. This causes complete reorganization about every three months.Studying the venture group is like studying fruit flies in the laboratory. Cycle time of generations is very fast.
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The Goal
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Context
OpenView Venture Partners was founded in 2006 with an initial fund of $107M. A second fund was closed in 2009.OpenView mission:– Build great companies by providing hands-on strategic and
operational assistance to each and every portfolio company– Deliver top investment results
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Rapid Growth
September, 2006 September, 2007 September, 2008
Employees: 9 Employees: 13 Employees: 22
Portfolio companies: 0
Portfolio companies: 6
Portfolio companies: 10
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OpenView Labs
Created to provide strategic and operational assistance to portfolio companiesMission:– Gather, Create, Store, and Disseminate Best Practices and
Expertise for the benefit of OpenView prospects, portfolio companies, the OpenView team, and our community
– Provide high impact execution assistance to OpenView portfolio companies
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• Product Development- Product Management- User Experience Development- Development (implementation)- Fulfillment Management
• Go-To-Market Development- Marketing - Direct sales- Channel (indirect sales)- Professional Services- Customer Service- Training
Organizational and Operational Development– Finance– Human Resource Development– Legal– IT– Administration– Senior and functional Management
Development– Team development– Management System Development– Business Development– Corporate Development– Board/Governance– Investor Relations– M&A/IPO
OpenView Execution Assistance
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OpenView Labs Work
• Workshops / Forums- OpenView Development Forum on TTD and CI - October 9-10, 2008- OpenView Product Management Forum - January 21-23, 2009- OpenView Extraordinary Execution Workshop – May 13-14, 2009
• Onsite Work and other Best Practice Transfer- Sales Management Recruitment, Training, Coaching- Sales Forecast Development- CRM Implementation and Customization- Compensation Plan Creation- IT Infrastructure Implementation- Development process training and coaching- Product Management training and coaching- Financial team and process development
• Framework Development and Training- Customer Acquisition Framework- Channel Approach Framework- Product Management Framework
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What Next?
How do we scale?
That is, how do we add MORE value to MORE portfolio companies with LESS management overhead?
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OpenView Meets Scrum
By mid January, 2008, the entire OpenView team and OpenView’s portfolio are ScrumMaster Certified by Jeff Sutherland.
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Getting Started with Scrum:
Trial by Fire
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Scrum is a Simple Framework
Scrum
Meetings
Sprint Planning
Daily Meeting
Roles
Team
Product Owner
ScrumMasterArtifacts
Burndown Charts
Sprint Backlog
Product Backlog
Sprint Review
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The Components of Scrum
RolesProduct Owner: Scott Maxwell, Managing Director and FounderScrumMaster: Igor AltmanTeam: Igor plus 3 specialists
MeetingsSprint Planning: Monday for half day. Team tends to preassign work before sprint planning.Daily Meeting: Daily Scrums last 45 minutesSprint Reviews: Retrospectives are held Monday morning and generate impediment lists.
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The Components of Initial Scrum
Artifacts
Product & Sprint Backlogs: The Labs Product and Sprint Backlogs are housed in Central Desktop, an online collaboration platform. The stories are each Labs team member’s individual projects.Stories are vague, with no clear definition of done.A lot of back and forth with Product Owner is required during the sprint to clarify what is actually needed. Burndown Chart: There is no burndown chart
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Measurement of Scrum
Sizing Stories are sized using ‘perfect hours’ using an approach similar to planning poker, with fingers on hands instead of cards.
A story’s size is defined as the amount of time it would take the average team member to complete the story assuming ideal conditions (100% focus, no interruptions).
A ‘perfect hour’ is only counted as done if the entire story is done.
‘Perfect hours’ are used instead of story points because: •They are easier for the team to understand conceptually•Many Labs stories are already time-based (meetings, calls, time-boxed research stories, etc.)•Many Labs stories, especially early on, are really smaller Tasks
This makes it impossible to track velocity properly.
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Measurement of Scrum
Velocity (not possible to calculate in perfect hours)
Each team member pulls 20 perfect hours of stories each Monday, assuming a 50% focus factor on a 40 hour work week, for a total team commit of 80 perfect hours
Unplanned story points are counted separately, so that velocity only captures points against the committed stories, or those pulled forward from the product backlog
The team does not always complete the sprint successfully
Trying to improve, the team starts taking on more perfect hours, more stories, and fails sprints
Perfect hours completed stays flat at 80 or lower
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Benefits of Scrum
The team starts to become more self-managing
Communication within the team rises drastically
Low value work is eliminated (30% of the original workload)
Impediments around lack of clarity, lack of communication, and poor requirements are surfaced and removed
Some collaboration begins to emerge
Individual stress is reduced
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ChallengesTeam is still mainly a collection of individuals working side by side
Scrums and Planning meetings are lasting a long time
The team is working long, intense hours on too many projects and is failing sprints
There is bad communication between the team and the rest of the firm, especially those people who originate the stories
The impact of the stories is unclear
The entire team is not fully sold on Scrum, picking and choosing elements that fit them well and discarding the rest
Some people, especially one individual in particular, are feeling discomfort in response to the new team environment and the transparency and mutual accountability that goes with it.
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A note on points versus ‘perfect hours’
The entire team is aware of the shortcomings of using ‘perfect hours’
It is impossible to improve velocity without improving the focus factor or number of hours worked
Productivity improvements that allow the team to complete the same stories with less effort go largely unnoticed in the velocity, since the perfect hours size is accordingly reduced
There is disagreement on how long something would take the “average” team member, since the team is diverse
Still, the team struggles with the story point concept, and finds that ‘perfect hours’ generally suit their needs
This issue comes up for debate several times through the course of over a year of Scrum, and the team continues to stick with perfect hours
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A note on the long, intense hours
Within months of Scrum implementation, Scott Maxwell and his team recognize that Scrum creates a much more focused, intense, and ultimately productive work environment.
As such, working the same long hours the team was doing before Scrum no longer makes sense. It can get more done in less hours!
Scott draws the Maxwell Curve to drive his point home with the team, setting a new culture of working less than 50 hours per week, no weekend work, and shutting down during vacation.
Working late hours becomes a negative sign of working too much and being unfocused.
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Scaling Up: Finding the Rhythm
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The Components of ScrumRoles
Product Owner: Scott Maxwell, Managing Director and Founder
ScrumMasters: Igor Altman and Brian Zimmerman
Team: As the team grows from 4 to 6, to 9 members, it splits into two teams for easier self-organization.
Meetings
Sprint Planning: Sprint Planning now takes half as much time as before on Monday, even though the team now truly plans work as a team. It is also now done using post-its on a wall in the ‘Scrum Room’, rather than huddled around an online spreadsheet as before.
Daily Meeting: Daily Scrums now last 15 minutes
Sprint Reviews: Retrospectives are held every Monday morning, covering the previous sprint, and are used to generate impediment lists. There is now a tracked Impediment Backlog for impediments not immediately removed.
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The Components of ScrumArtifactsProduct & Sprint Backlogs: The Product Backlogs are still housed in Central Desktop, but the Sprint Backlog now consists of post-its on a wall in the ‘Scrum Room’. Product Ownership is beginning to take more form:
Each portfolio company has a product backlog, owned by a Senior Point Person, the Product Owner for that company.Each functional area within OpenView Labs is designated as a Practice Development Area, has its own product backlog that is owned by a senior Practice Development head (or one in training).
Stories are now much clearer, and less communication is required during the sprint to get things done. The definition of done is clarified and standardized across every story
A story is done when its deliverable has been posted to Central Desktop, along with clear next steps, and the project stakeholders and backlog product owner have been notified.
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The Measurements of Scrum
Sizing
Stories are still sized the same way, with sizes of many stories going down with improved productivity.
Velocity
The team now commits to the same number of ‘perfect hours’ it completed last week, less unplanned stories for a buffer, following yesterday’s weather, and lands almost every sprint.
Through trial and error, the team learns that the more it takes on the less it completes, and the less it takes on, the more it completes.
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The Measurements of Scrum
Velocity While we do not have true velocity to measure improvement, we can estimate a significant improvement from the following data points:
Velocity went up from: 4 people completing 80 ‘perfect hours’ working 50-70 hours/week/person, to 9 people completing 190-200 perfect hours working 40-50/hours/week/person
Story sizes have on average been reduced, with some stories going from 1 perfect hour to 0, others from 5 to 1, and so on. We can conservatively assume a 20% decrease in story size. The definition of done increased the average story size by at least 10% This represents an approximate velocity improvement of 80-100% from January to October 2008.
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Benefits of ScrumThe Chief Product Owner, Scott, feels that the value produced by Labs has increased by “150%, bare minimum”, and the team has higher morale as a result. There is transparency and accountability within the Labs team and between the Labs team and the portfolio company point people / product ownersEvery team member now knows exactly what they need to do and why at the beginning of every weekMore work is done in less hours. Late nights and weekend work are rare and frowned upon. Sustainable pace is the goal.The Labs team has gone from working with six portfolio companies to working with 10 without getting overwhelmed or drop-off in qualityNew team members are integrated into the team and workflow extremely quickly via ScrumTeam collaboration and cross-training increaseLess outside management is required
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Challenges
One Labs team member cannot work within the team. He is a strong individualist and prefers answering to one clear manager rather than a team of peers. He leaves the Labs team to work for OpenView outside the Scrum process.
While overall output quality and quantity are higher, the Labs team oscillates between focusing on velocity and focusing on quality, with spikes in velocity leading to reduced quality and focus on quality leading to reduced velocity
While the impact of most stories is now clearer, the big picture context is still lacking for some team members
Some team members become too focused on getting ‘perfect hours’ done and driving velocity rather than on the ultimate story impact
While team collaboration has grown significantly, a good number of team members still work as individuals within the team on many projects
Insufficient cross-training among the Scrum team members is still a bottleneck, especially with three brand new team members
Long-term projects drag out over long periods of time because too many projects are being done in parallel
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Where We Are in November 2008
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As of November 2008
Two teams, 4 people each, with a combined “velocity” of approximately 180High moraleContinuous improvement22 full time employees10 portfolio companies10 practice development areas
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Initiatives in November 2008 and
BeyondFocusing on higher impact Initiatives / Epics and stories rather than tasks
Focusing on FEWER goals and long-term projects at a given time and working to complete them more quickly
Weekly lunch-and-learn sessions allow senior team members to educate the newer ones on topics chosen by new team members
Each Friday, all the portfolio company point people / product owners attend a debriefing meeting with the Labs team, discuss results of the sprint’s stories, and get sharper on next sprint’s goals and stories
Implementation of the Scrum tool VersionOne (www.versionone.com) to meet the need for a more sophisticated backlog/sprint management.
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Key Lessons Learned
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FourKeyComponentsPart of successfully implementing Scrum is realizing that there are four key components that need focus.
Direction (the backlog) Speed Quality Sustainability / Predictability
Major challenges emerged when the team focused on just a single area.
BALANCE
Direction
Speed
Quality
Sustainability/Predictability
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FiveDysfunc4onsofaTeam
Trust – Team members must trust each other, allowing for open, transparent discussion of difficult issues and personal weaknesses without defensiveness.
Conflict – Team members must embrace conflict as a path to issue resolution
Commitment – Team members must commit to team and personal goals
Accountability – Team members must hold each other accountable for achieving goals
Results – Goals must drive toward measurable results, and ultimately that is what the team is accountable for
A Team’s Culture must have the following Elements to successfully implement Scrum:
See Patrick Lencioni’s ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’
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NotforEveryone
Scrum is not for everyone.
Some very capable people are so individualistic that Scrum kills their productivity and causes them to hurt the productivity of the Scrum team.
If they cannot change, it is best to remove them from the Scrum team.
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RootCauseAnalysis
Aggressive removal of impediments without doing root cause analysis leads to extra work.
Impediments come back in the same or modified form until root cause is eliminated.
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Key Observations
Aggressive removal of impediments caused complete reorganization about every four monthsEach refactoring of the teams addressed growth issues and key impediments relevant to stage of maturityEach led to a more mature implementation of ScrumBy the end of 2009, Openview will have completely reorganized six timesTeams with poor performance are disbanded and members are moved to high performing teams
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Take No Prisoners
This strategy will radically transform your organizationIt will move your teams from the minor leagues to the major leaguesNothing will ever be the same
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Questions?
High Performing Teams
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SpeakerContactInforma4onJeff Sutherland, Ph.D.Scrum Training Institute www.scrumtraininginstitute.comBoston, [email protected]
Igor AltmanOpenView Labs & OpenView Venture Partnerswww.openviewpartners.comBoston, [email protected]
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