Agile Edge 2012 opening presentation presented by Pritam Seehra and Carl Bruiners

1. An Agile view from a Agile Program
Manager and a Agile Expert
By Pritam (George) Seehra and Carl
Bruiners

2. • Grumpy check: Agile teams don’t always know best
• Is a Agile Program Manager an Oxymoron?
• Does an Agile team need a manager?
• What purposes do I have in life as a program manager?
• Defining the role of a Agile Program Manager;
• Removes organisational impediments
• Getting the right team ingredients
• Gives direction to the team – including practices, tools, etc…
• Political guidance for the teams
• Has the ability to ‘Stop the line’
• Relationship management between the business interfaces and the team
• Management of the reporting overhead
• Creates the environment for self driven teams
• Why do I need a manager if I have a coach? Or why do I need a coach if I have a
manager?
The Agile team and “the management”

3. • Grumpy check: Show me the money - supply and demand
• Grumpy check: Scrum Master should not be the manager
• Grumpy check: Good Scrum Masters are hard to find
• The goal of a good Scrum Master should be to make themselves redundant
• Good Scrum Masters don’t ‘just do Scrum’
• The makeup of a Scrum Masters falls into two camps: Those who take on the challenging
roles and those who take on the coasting roles
• Evolution of existing team members
• Scrum master demands greatly vary depending upon cultural influences
• A Scrum Master should act as a bridge between the Agile Program Manager and the team
• Allow the Scrum Master to make continuous improvements with the team
• Encourage a Scrum master to coach, its not all about turning the handle
• When to be a leader and when to coach and when to be a referee
• Project managers don’t automatically make good Scrum Masters. Prince 2 practitioners
with Scrum Master certification does not automatically have the making a good Scrum
Master
Scrum Masters – Getting them and
keeping them

4. • Grumpy check: Plodders, lots of teams carry them
• Can they be equal? No! do not strive to make your teams equal, this will only lead to
disappointment. British Leyland and Google are not equal
• Play to the strengths of your unique team makeup
• Team structure should be able to morph into various shapes as required
• Developers cannot be testers and testers cannot be developers
• Do not compare team velocities, no two teams can have the same velocity
• What do we mean by a high performing team ? Self driven ?
• Team commitment – Are they really committed? Do they feel like genuine owners?
• Why do I want individual team members to be customer / product focussed?
• Grumpy Trap: Clearly define ownership – The lure of product destiny
• Team empowerment – Do it genuinely or don’t do it at all
• How do Teams handle constraints on their destiny
Are all Agile teams made equal?

5. • Grumpy check: Cultural changes often make your team grumpy!
• Social team capital increased by increased build transparency
‘Social capital is a sociological concept which refers to the
value of social relations and the role of cooperation and
confidence to get collective or economic results.’
• Improvement in team responsiveness
• Breaking the build is not allowed – The Microsoft story
• Fixing the build is paramount – swarm if needed
• Unit tests on legacy products…..why bother ?
• Engine for culture change
• Behaviour changing - from a developer into an engineer
Developer Engineer
1. One that develops 1. Engineering is the discipline, art,
2. A person who develops real skill and profession of acquiring and
estate, especially by preparing a applying scientific, mathematical,
site for residential or commercial and practical knowledge, in order to
use. design and build structures,
machines, devices, systems,
materials and processes.
The Continuous Integration glue