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Tag: scrum

  • WTH? WFH is 6× Pre-Covid ¦ Plus: Agile Sucks (Redux)

    WTH? WFH is 6× Pre-Covid ¦ Plus: Agile Sucks (Redux)

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Working from home is here to stay, and Agile is still a failure. (more…)

  • Best of 2022: Agile/Scrum is a Failure – Here’s Why

    Best of 2022: Agile/Scrum is a Failure – Here’s Why

    As we close out 2022, we at devopsy.kinsta.cloud wanted to highlight the most popular articles of the year. Following is the latest in our series of the Best of 2022.

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week, something a bit different: I’m devoting my entire column to Agile and Scrum. They’re increasingly getting a bad reputation, being associated with the worst aspects of toxic workplace culture: Sexism, racism, burnout, micromanagement. (more…)

  • Agile Sucks (Redux) | Plus: DevOps on Mars

    Agile Sucks (Redux) | Plus: DevOps on Mars

    Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

    This week: Agile is bad, but “Wagile” is worse.
    Plus: This prod is even worse than yours. (more…)

  • The Need for Agile, Adaptable IT Infrastructure

    The Need for Agile, Adaptable IT Infrastructure

    Through the adoption of Agile concepts and new best practices such as automated testing, organizations can move beyond the innovation curve and bolster their IT infrastructure. In fact, the need to build agile and resilient IT infrastructure has become increasingly pertinent over the past 18 months. 

    From remote working and managing the diverse needs of employees in remote locations to the growing rates of cybercrime, the move from the physical world to the virtual one has seriously impacted the ability of organizations to operate. It comes as no surprise that business leaders are increasingly investing more in new tools and technologies to improve their IT infrastructure, transform operations and drive business value. 

    That said, it still remains relatively rare for enterprises to wholly adopt Agile approaches and techniques, despite the fact that doing so can help improve the efficiency at which goods and services hit the market. The fact is that many technology companies still do not use Agile as it is difficult to implement at scale. In addition, Agile transformation demands a cultural change, which can often take time. 

    Nevertheless, sooner or later, Agile IT will need to be implemented across businesses in various industry sectors, as well as across all branches of an organization. Our experience has been that Agile transformation will help your business grow and succeed. 

    What is Agile IT? 

    Agile is a philosophy—a mindset that can be applied to improve the provisioning, management and operation of digital infrastructure. Agile promotes business-led development, whereby a product owner and software development team collaborate as a single entity to deliver tasks that are prioritized based on business value. These tasks are also delivered over a short timeframe, such as via two-week sprints. 

    Essentially, your infrastructure is far more likely to be both secure and resilient if Agile concepts are implemented throughout the software engineering process. As a result, new digital products can be delivered to customers more quickly. For example, Agile ways of working include making small, iterative changes to deliver high-quality results with speed. You can also spin up infrastructure when needed, which keeps the cost of innovation down. 

    The Differences Between Agile and Traditional IT Infrastructure? 

    Infrastructure agility is best achieved using modern solutions such as cloud technology. This significantly differs from the traditional approach of having on-premises infrastructure, which cannot be scaled up or down as needed. In fact, on-premises solutions often require extensive upfront capital, while investing in cloud resources works on a pay-as-you-go model to deliver flexibility and elasticity for strategic needs. 

    The conflict between adaptive software methods and predictive methods is another significant difference between these approaches. Development teams follow a comprehensive plan in traditional waterfall approaches, and any changes must go through stringent change control management. Agile requirements, on the other hand, require flexibility, allowing teams to adjust to changes as soon as they occur. This method is suitable for smaller projects that must be performed quickly and efficiently. 

    Benefits of Implementing Flexible IT Infrastructure

    The advantages of having Agile IT infrastructure are numerous. In fact, the adoption of Agile methods not only promotes business growth but is also a great way to reduce costs and improve team performance. By working in sprints, teams can turn around features more often and nurture their value throughout the business. Agile transformation also enables organizations to offer new products or solutions to customers faster, gain early feedback and make changes if necessary, thus avoiding error from the very beginning. 

    Cost optimization is another benefit to consider. With Agile infrastructure housed in the public cloud, IT leaders can expand or decommission resources based on consumer demand. Cloud companies’ pay-as-you-go strategy also ensures that costs are kept to a minimum viable level. For example, maximum limitations can be set for the scaling out of resources. Most importantly, agile working methods eliminate the need for substantial upfront investments, resulting in a higher return on investment (ROI). 

    How to Achieve Agility

    The benefits of Agile transformation are clear; however, the journey to achieving this can take time. First and foremost, becoming Agile requires a clear understanding of what it means and why it is important for your business’ competitive context. Once the ‘what’ and ‘why’ are defined, the ‘how’ becomes easy. The three core steps to achieving this agility are: 

    1. Implementing new methods
      Instead of trying to rework existing IT management tasks and procedures, it is often better to think of new ones as part of the Agile journey. This will ensure that your system’s performance and availability are in line with your core goals. 
    2. Investing in the right tools
      Agile is all about delivering smaller outcomes quickly. To achieve this speed, automating key stages of the software development process is key. There are a host of tools available to undertake this automation, including hybrid cloud solutions that can seamlessly switch between the public and private cloud. A careful selection of the tools that best fit your needs and the correct implementation of these throughout the organization is paramount to achieving success. 
    3. Changing the culture
      To become an agile business, the entire organization requires a cultural change—from how the business discovers a problem to how that problem is resolved by technology teams and monitored in production to enable a faster feedback loop. At every stage of the process, team members need to perform tasks differently, which often requires training, buy-in from the wider team and a collaborative approach. 

    Investment in Agile IT is a smart decision for business leaders hoping to transform their operations, ensure resilience and drive business value. By choosing infrastructure that caters to these needs, you can save money and ensure confidence at critical moments. 

  • The Top Benefits of a Scrum Certification

    The Top Benefits of a Scrum Certification

    The Scrum framework is a staple part of many businesses – and for good reason. The agile process is used to construct, deliver and iterate products and has proven to boost cross-functional teams’ productivity, as well as product quality. And, like most processes, Scrum can be mastered with the right training and commitment. Specifically, a Scrum certification teaches the fundamentals of the framework and serves as proof of qualification for a particular role within that framework.

    Scrum certifications vary, but are typically awarded for the roles of Professional Scrum Master, Product Owner and Scrum Developers. These positions have become increasingly more popular over the years; one report reveals that 24% of organizations have ten or more Scrum Masters or Agile Certified Practitioners, while in a sample of 500,000 certified people, 85% correspond to a Scrum certification program.

    Having a Scrum certification opens many doors, both professionally and personally, as it provides a competitive edge and demonstrates an in-depth understanding of contemporary workflows. Whether you’re considering taking a Scrum course through your company, or pursuing a class independently, here are a few of the top benefits.

    Adapt to Changing Conditions

    Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and its significant disruption to businesses, organizations had to swiftly adapt to new ways of working. Operating remotely, adopting new digital tools, complications in supply chains, just to name a few, are all challenges met with patience and proactivity. People who work under the tenets of the Scrum mindset tend to be more resilient and better able to respond to unexpected events in a practical manner.

    Rapid fluctuation in personnel, technology and working practices have less of a negative impact on employees, and especially leaders, that are Scrum certified. In shifting environments, the larger organization can be confident that their teams are being guided by Scrum principles and constantly progressing.

    What’s more, people with a Scrum certification can help their teams better adapt to sudden changes without compromising business goals. Scrum emphasizes prioritization of tasks in order of importance; placing the task with the biggest impact on ROI at the top of the list. This method not only maintains productivity but can actually increase it, despite external disruptions.

    Master all Things Scrum

    A Scrum certification highlights that a person is dedicated and hardworking, and is committed to continuous learning and improvement. It is a reflection of the certificate holder’s expertise in helping others and meeting goals. On a more granular level, the certification can help people discover and become familiar with concepts like product backlog, sprint backlog and burndown charts – elements that are common across businesses and industries.

    A Scrum certification can also boost personal communication skills, as it forces people to regularly produce and share relevant reports, deadlines and calendars with their team. These exchanges demand clarity, timeliness and emotional intelligence, which are core soft skills that contribute to the collective success of a team.

    Certified Scrum holders also benefit from their inclusion in a network of qualified Scrum authorities where they can leverage others’ exclusive guidance and knowledge. They can subsequently bring innovative ideas from fellow Scrum experts to their workplace, and leave a powerful legacy through the changes they implement.

    Gain an Advantage in the Hiring Pool

    A Scrum certification also makes a person a much more appealing candidate in the recruitment process. In a competitive hiring landscape, a Scrum certification demonstrates that a candidate is willing to devote time to solving complex, adaptive problems – a quality that will always catch employers’ eyes.

    In fact, 87% of people agree that Scrum improves the quality of work life for teams, while 81% of people believe certifications improve their use of Scrum. A certification shows that someone knows how to manage dynamic priorities, how to deliver products to market in a short space of time and how to increase project visibility. The Scrum qualification is particularly useful for managing large, cross-functional teams. For these reasons, a person with a Scrum certification will be a prime applicant in any hiring pool.

    There can be financial benefits too. Possessing a Scrum certification can lead to higher salaries, because these credentials are so highly sought-after. Certified Scrum Managers tend to earn more, on average, than their non-certified peers, so Scrum candidates are in a stronger position when negotiating compensation.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has presented new opportunities for professionals to invest in their careers on a long-term basis. Scrum techniques and methods prepare workers to generate ideas that make sense in an uncertain sphere, and those who invest in Scrum are making themselves invaluable in today’s workplace.

    A Scrum certification is a way to develop business ideas, projects and services in a smarter, more agile manner. But more than that, a Scrum certification also leads to heightened personal skills, employment desirability and resilience.

  • Working with SAFe and Microservices: Learnings from Developers

    Working with SAFe and Microservices: Learnings from Developers

    As developers, the prospect of working for a big company might bring about feelings of oppression, rather than opportunity. Envisaging endless team syncs, pointless meetings and processes wrapped up in bureaucracy inside a set of procedures. It’s easy to imagine why some are put off. For many though, the fear comes from the thought of being lost in a corporate structure where input is not valued, and skills are wasted.

    But every day, as developer concepts become further rooted into corporate behaviors, the line between the two worlds continues to blur. Products are no longer dreamed up in product silos, but from agile teams made up of a diverse cross section of a company. Marketing has dropped drip campaigns in favor of A/B testing, rapid iterations of messaging and data-driven analytics. Big companies no longer mean old school thinking, but fast-changing, inclusive places to really make an impact and be heard. 

    Working within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) with an agile architecture of microservices helps us to do our jobs, but the learnings we’d like to share in this article are universal. An organization may not require the SAFe methodology, but the experiences and methods of working can be applied to many roles and are based on three fundamental questions every developer should ask themselves. 

    How Do I Plan My Day? 

    As with any role, a good start for us is knowing that the previous day went well; that the code we wrote meets the standards required for deployment. Before that, our individual microservices teams will meet to discuss immediate priorities. We let one another know what’s top of mind for us, and any issues we might be facing — and we resolve them together before a midday Scrum meeting.

    The Scrum meeting involves the Scrum master, product owner and the developer team and gives us a chance to give feedback and dive into the wider challenges or blockers we’re facing with our own tasks. We might be thought of as solitary creatures, but we actually tend to solve problems together. So, while we have ownership of our own tasks, problem solving comes from collaboration.  

    Whether working within the agile framework or not, communication is a huge part of our lives. Our advice to developers everywhere is to be vocal about the need to engage within their organizations. And to business IT decision makers, we know that not every firm has the deep pockets to fund a dedicated DevOps team to implement new tools, change culture or break down silos, but there are many communications and open source DevOps tools that boost collaboration and improve workflows — most are well-known to developers. So, give them the chance to explore how they might bring efficiencies to their work. Help them help the business and maybe suggest trialing some new tools. 

    How Do I Upskill on the Job?

    Developers are problem solvers. We love the opportunity to help each other overcome challenges. Peer-to-peer communication doesn’t just allow us to get back on course quicker, it lets different teams share knowledge and pitch in to solve problems. We don’t mind being transparent with our peers when we face an issue – in fact, we quite like it, as the offshoot of working together often leads to new skills and technical knowledge. 

    Learning the interactions between each microservice, for example, helps us map out the architecture and understand how our own work fits into the bigger picture. The more we talk, the more we see where bottlenecks might occur — and the better equipped we are to achieve larger objectives. As we have complete ownership of our services, from initial coding to deployment, it is our duty to ensure our services perform as they should in production. 

    This ownership is something all developers should aim for. Even when working in a more rigid waterfall approach, opportunities to collaborate should be seized and encouraged — even if the only payoff is personal development. Implementing a system of peer code reviews, for example, not only delivers more robust releases, it fosters a collaborative mindset.

    Do I Need to Be in this Meeting?

    Working with SAFe methodology allows the job to be broken down into iterations linked to business objectives. The most significant of these is determined by meetings that occur every four months, where goals are set and roadmaps established to achieve them. Engineering teams then divide up the features that will be passed on to the developer teams, who break them down into two-week sprints. 

    The sprints are what the developer teams work to, under direction from the Scrum masters and product owners. Breaking iterations into smaller sprints ensures we have defined goals, which keep meetings and interactions on track (i.e., daily Scrum meetings and bi-weekly sprint meetings). Without this focus, there’s a risk of derailing the prep required to focus on writing and reviewing code. If we need a discussion about certain features, we make sure to identify exactly who needs to be in that meeting. Above all, we’re all about optimizing our time together. The longer we spend away from our desks, the less time we have to perform our core roles. 

    Whatever your part in the software development lifecycle, never be afraid of asking the question, “Do I need to be here?” Your energies may be best used elsewhere.

    As you can see, these three questions are critical to developers but can be applied to just about any role in just about any organization. Planning, learning and focusing – seems we’re not so different after all.

     

    Tomasz Rumpca

     

    This article was co-authored by Tomasz Rumpca, Java developer and team lead at Finastra. Tomasz works on FusionFabric.cloud, Finastra’s open development platform solution. He is passionate about Java-related technologies and building user-friendly software. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his friends and family.

  • Are Your Development Processes Truly Agile?

    Are Your Development Processes Truly Agile?

    Many organizations are making a move to agile-powered environments, but agile development is more than a name. How do you determine if your organization is truly agile? The evaluation starts with the Agile Manifesto. If you’re following the principles laid out in the manifesto, that’s a good sign that you’re on an agile journey.

    For those not familiar with the manifesto, however, let’s review its points quickly. The Agile Manifesto’s core is simple—the primary points of the manifesto include the following:

    Individuals and interactions take precedence over processes and tools. This means the organization and its leaders place more value on people than they do on processes. People respond to business needs and they drive the development process within the organization.

    Working software takes precedence over comprehensive documentation. This is not about not providing any documentation at all, but you should streamline documentation. Any documentation that does exist should be necessary only for current and future development.

    Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Engaging customers throughout the development process makes it easier for your people to meet the needs of your customers. Doing so means all business case features are clear and useful to customers.

    Responding to change over following a plan. This means change is welcome throughout the project, each project and allows for priorities to shift over time versus following a rigid or scripted development plan. 

    The Agile Manifesto 12 Steps

    Essentially, the core values of the Agile Manifesto can be fully detailed in 12 steps, or principles. These principles support the key points of the manifesto and provide additional detail as to how the practices can be followed in an agile environment. Again, for those who currently follow the Agile Manifesto, the following may be redundant. For those new to the concept, these steps provide clarification and direction to drive agile processes overall.

    • Self-organizing teams encourage great architectures, requirements and designs.
    • Regular reflections on how to become more effective.
    • Frequent delivery of working software.
    • Simplicity.
    • Support and trust for those involved in the process.
    • Enable face-to-face interactions.
    • Working software is the primary measure of progress.
    • Agile processes to support a consistent development pace.
    • Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility.
    • Collaboration between the business stakeholders and developers throughout the project.
    • Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery.
    • Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process.

    Based on these principles, there are three points—the final three listed here—that we often find the most compelling. A colleague of mine, Tobias Spöcker, scrum master and QA engineer, says these points naturally float to the top for an organization such as TOPdesk.

    The reasons for this are fairly obvious. We create products that are sold to thousands of customers around the world. To pinpoint any development problems, we look to the scrum process described by the scrum guide, with an emphasis on the last parts of the process. For example, the following illustration is edifying for explaining this process:

    Agile scrum process

    Notice in the “product release” phase illustrated above that the team listed here focuses on finished work for the development sprint. This portion of the model should be able to present a product incrementally to the stakeholders, including the customer. Ideally, these increments are released through a continuous delivery model. Here are two principles that further illustrate the point: Collaboration between the business stakeholders and developers throughout the project and customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of the software.

    There’s an additional consideration when providing value: Develop what is right; don’t simply develop something right.

    Adding Value

    At TOPdesk, providing the proper value to customers is a major goal for us. To achieve our organizational goals, we consider the impacts on our customers so when we start on a new product development project, we always work with some of our customers so they are involved in the development process, which makes the process and the product better for everyone. Those of our customers that have participated in our development processes usually tell us that they find the experience valuable and that being a part of the process also helps them when they use the solution. These same customers also express satisfaction in our efforts—as partners in the development process—and with us as an organization.

    Direct Feedback is the Key to Better Development

    The immediate and direct feedback we receive also helps to achieve another of our key operational principles: accommodating changing requirements throughout the development process. Through the partnership with our customers during the development phase, we’re able to receive regular, constructive feedback—even criticism—that leads to changes and evolutions in the product map and development stream. This feedback facilitates refinement of the most important processes and features, and moves them to the top of the priority list, leading to a project that’s undertaken with a focus on the most valuable areas so that development capacity (on the part of our organization) is spent the most wisely.

    Agile-Organization

    In Sum

    The agile mindset and the scrum framework are powerful tools if they are used in the right way. When considering following any development principles, don’t go in blindly. It is a good idea to see which parts of the toolbox help your organization be the most agile, efficient and customer-focused, and utilize the processes and principles that work best for your organization.

    Consider direct feedback from customers, which can be implemented immediately into the product scope. Provide simple-to-use customer communications vehicles, including metrics built into the software, surveys and feedback portals. Live demos of the product, when ready, can be extremely effective in helping you collect copious feedback efficiently. However, if your feedback loop is too big—meaning there are too many cooks in your kitchen—the whole process will quickly balloon beyond profitable, resulting in a less agile development process.

    The projects we develop using these principles are the ones that deliver the most value to our customers the most quickly. Including feedback from customers makes the development team more confident in what they are creating, and our customers tell us that they feel their needs and input have been heard, which they greatly appreciate.

    — Nancy Van Elsacker Louisnord

  • Yahoo7 Uses DevOps to Speed Website Redevelopment

    Yahoo7 Uses DevOps to Speed Website Redevelopment

    Yahoo7 is a joint venture between Yahoo and Australian entertainment and TV company Seven West Media. Seven is one of Australia’s three major TV networks.

    The company has completely replaced its technology stack and is in the process of revamping its seven consumer sites to take advantage of the new platform. The first cab off the rank is the Be entertainment and lifestyle site, but “the rest will come pretty quickly,” according to CTO Paul Russell.

    “We had an aging website based on a proprietary framework,” he said, which has been replaced with a platform based on node.js and other open-source frameworks, including the Yahoo-backed Screwdriver continuous delivery platform.

    There is also a focus on adopting reusable components across all the sites. It is more efficient to select, for example, an image gallery that gives the best user experience and deploy it across all the sites. That doesn’t mean all the new sites will have the same look; it is still possible to have distinctive layouts for each of them, Russell said.

    A move to cross-functional teams and Scrum “was a pretty big change for us” that took approximately two years, he said. There are three teams, each with four or five developers, a product owner, a tech lead, a Scrum master and a tester. A user experience specialist is added when required.

    The reorganization required “a mindset change,” but having people doing different types of work side by side did help. But the adoption of common KPIs “really has made a big difference,” as it keeps people focused on the things that really matter.

    “We’ve got a fairly mature DevOps model” and the current project is the company’s latest step, said Russell.

    Augmenting Screwdriver with automated performance testing on a range of metrics including latency and the number of requests per second that can be handled captures any problems at the early stages. This was “a really big step for us,” he said, especially as Yahoo7’s news content leads to significant spikes in demand, and also because the entire stack was being replaced.

    The scope of the project meant it was important to have experienced staff (top engineers were needed to pull everything together under Screwdriver, he noted), although some PHP developers were cross-trained for the technical skills required for the new platform. Russell said he is prepared to train people who come with the right attitude, but even though Yahoo7 is regarded as an attractive employer, “it’s definitely a challenge” to get the right people.

    Functional testing is being automated for some of the more complicated parts of the site, such as the video player, to improve confidence in each release.

    Russell believes organizations need to be clear about what they expect to accomplish by adopting DevOps practices, and warns that it requires a change of mindset which is unlikely to be achieved unless the people involved buy into the concept and are all on the same page.

    In particular, the idea of allowing the development team to run releases can be challenging to those used to traditional operations practices, but “it’s absolutely worth it,” he said. For example, the increased release pace means the company can respond more quickly when opportunities arise; Yahoo7 now can deploy two releases per day when necessary.

    There are also benefits from the way the teams take greater day-to-day ownership of the systems they build and run. This—combined, we suspect, with the shared KPIs—brings about a situation where rules imposed from above are largely replaced by good working practices created within the teams.

    A final tip from Russell to anyone considering the adoption of DevOps: You need the right tools and practices in place if it is to be successful.

    — Stephen Withers