Interview with Mitch Lacey, author of The Scrum Field Guide

Mitch Lacey

My Projects at Work podcast interview with Mitch Lacey, author of The Scrum Field Guide.

Also, check out my review of the book here.

The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice For Your First Year
Written by Mitch Lacey, published by Addison-Wesley Professional as part of their Agile Software Development Series)

One of the things that is difficult about taking a Certified Scrum Master or Certified Product Owner classes is that to a large extent, the material looks at Scrum in a state that is (for many) based on an ideal they may never reach. Once students leave the class and go back to work, the number of obstacles they face in the struggle towards Agile transformation can be a daunting thing to overcome. If they are brave enough to take up the challenge, they soon bang up against the fact that when they try to apply Scrum in the wild, what they end up facing may not sync up so well with what was taught in class.

Enter Mitch Lacey’s new book: The Scrum Field Guide:Practical Advice For Your First Year. The Field Guide picks up where the classes leave off and addresses some of the real world issues that people face when they go back to their workplace and start trying to implement Scrum and Agile.  In a narrative that is unassuming and easy to read, Mitch Lacey shares stories, his own experiences, and advice from other expert sources on how to actually get Scrum up and running and producing results.  The book covers some of the most common questions that come up during implementation like:

When we don’t know what our velocity is, what do we tell our stakeholders we can commit to?

What if you have to play two roles at once?

How do you deal with team members that are only needed for brief, very specific types of work?

How is Scrum Master a full time job and how to you convince others of that?

The cases are presented through stories that set up the different situations. Lacey then draws on his own experiences leading and coaching Agile teams to explore the different options and offer his recommendations.

The book also includes a “First Aid” section for those who are trying to solve very specific issues with things like “Running a Productive Daily Standup Meeting” and dealing with some of the cultural challenges that are part of Agile Transformation.

While it is called the Scrum Field Guide, the book is not just about Scrum. Lacey introduces his own practice of Agile by saying that for him, one of the keys to getting Scrum to work has been pairing it with Extreme Programming. Throughout the book, Lacey introduces XP practices where he has seen them effectively utilized with Scrum.

While the book does include information on the actual Scrum Framework (in the Appendix) it is really designed to work best for folks who have a bit of experience in using Scrum and are seeing various issues, or “smells” as they are often called, creep up.

There are a lot of books out there that are aimed at clarifying what the Scrum Framework is. If you have clarity on what Scrum is supposed to be, and need a resource to help you make it work, The Scrum Field Guide will be a great addition to your tool belt. The title of the book indicates that this book is intended for people who are in their first year of doing Scrum. I’ve been working with Scrum for many years now and I’m also a Certified Scrum Trainer. I still found a lot of valuable information in this book and expect it is something I’ll be referencing in the future when I’m coaching.

Important Links:

Scrum Field Guide on Amazon

MitchLacey.com

@mglacey

Projects@Work White Paper - Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits

ProjectsatWork has published a study called Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits. The report was put together by Elizabeth Harrin  (@PM4Girls), who is the author of the website A Girls Guide to Project Management. The results of the research cover a lot of ground with respect to what makes distributed Agile projects work and what can contribute to their failure.  The report is very insightful and definitely worth the time it takes to read. While some of the findings may seem like common sense, knowledge workers in the IT space (myself definitely included) seem to possess a remarkable capacity for periodic loss of grip to that tether.

My favorite part comes at the very end during the summary of recommendations. Number One on the list is:

Don’t act like your project is co-located – pay the tax for distribution. 

This is one of the most simple things that so many of us forget when we are working at a distance. I believe this applies whether you are working down the hall from someone, or across the globe… there is a price that has to be paid when you are not sitting in the same room. With the transparency that Agile offers, this tax becomes far more obvious. There is no doubt that distributed teams provide a number of benefits, but those benefits come at a cost. The reason (IMHO) so many people struggle so much with distributed is that they keep thinking that the ride is free ... which it theoretically could be… unless you actually want it to work.

Woefully behind in the blog (again)

Today is the day I am trying to get caught up on the blogging.

Here is a link to the ProjectsAtWork : Agile Coaches Corner  interview I did recently with Xavier Quesada.

Part 2 of the Roman Pichler Interview (Podcast)

And my Projects At Work: Agile Coaches Corner interview with Ray Lewallen.
I've got lots of blogging to catch up on, there will be more posted very shortly.

New Stuff Posted on Projects at Work

Part 1 (of 2) of my interview with Roman Pilcher is live -> http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/PodCasts/270538.cfm

Blog Post: How Much Do We Actually, Really, Totally Need To Do? -> http://www.projectsatwork.com/blog/Dave-Prior/5063/

Questioning the "Cost of Sound"

I was listening to an interview on the radio today with one of the authors of a book called Healing at the Speed of Sound. The interview was intriguing enough that I’ve already started reading it, but what stuck with me the most from the interview was a question that was asked about the “cost of sound”. The idea being that any kind of noise around you, ambient noise from an air conditioner, the hum of electricity, water running though a pipe in the wall, children in another room or co-workers in a nearby cube, all have a cost associated with them. Since we can’t actually shut our ears, the way we can our eyes, we are always in listening mode. Even if you wear earplugs or noise cancelling headphones, you are merely swapping one noise for another. Noise is something we can’t entirely block out; our brain will always be processing the sounds around us. The reason that the “cost of sound” question stuck with me so much is because I started thinking about different work environments, how different types of people need different soundscapes to maintain productivity and yet, beyond making sure no one is disruptively loud, we pay little to no attention to sound when we put people together in a workspace.

So, what I’m wondering is, does anyone measure the impact of sound on productivity in an office setting. And, if anyone does, is there a way to translate the negative or positive actual cost (currency) impact of one sound scape over another on a given project? Can changes in sound scape be translated into cost or risk? And, is sound like other environmental conditions?

If the Hawthorne Works studies indicate that simply changing a variable in a work situation will result in increased productivity simply because of change, does this apply to sound? If I start playing Never Mind the Bollocks in the office, will folks be motivated to work more efficiently or quicker? Once their productivity has stabilized, if I replace the Sex Pistols with Kenny G, are they still going to see an improvement?

#46(ish) Using Social Media. Two Years Later

Points to Bas

Editing the new episode of Project Potion. Points to @projectshrink (Bas de Baar) for coming up with a reason to actually use Flipbook - to catch up on recent tweets into a specific hash tag.

The new episode includes a look back at how our use (as project leaders) of social media tools has evolved over the past 12-14 months. It should be up in a day or so.

25 Incredibly Useful iPad Applications
Check out Andrea McDougal's blog post on 25 Incredibly Useful iPad Apps  at Masters in Project Management 

The site is geared towards helping people find a great graduate program for PM (cough - University of Texas at Dallas - cough), but her recent blog post on iPad apps has some great ideas in it.

Agile and Project Management Talks at SXSW 2012 Last year I attended SXSW for the first time. While I had intended to spend my days basking in the onslaught of music and film that it is known for, what I actually spent my time doing was focusing mostly on the talks that centered on Agile and Project Management. Each of the presentations on PM and Agile were very well attended. In some cases there was a line waiting to get in, so there is a definite hunger for information at the event. Unfortunately, with the exception of one talk (given by Brett Harned and Pamela Villacorta) the content presented in most of the PM and Agile talks was disappointing. SXSW 2012 is right around the corner and they’ve opened the area where people can vote on proposed topics. If you’ve got a few minutes, follow the links below to become an SXSW 2012 Panel Picker, search for Agile and PM presentations vote Thumbs Up for the ones you think look interesting.  This Spring, there will be another crowd of PMs in Austin who are interested in learning about project management and how to do it better.  Help make sure the talks they get to choose from are going to help them raise their game. Who knows… you may end up working with some of them someday. SXSW 2012 Interactive Panel Picker  http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/10 SXSW 2012 Music Panel Picker http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/12 SXSW 2012 Film Panel Picker http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/11 And while you’re voting, you may want to consider… Project Leadership Through Personal Branding (ProjectShrink Bas de Baar and Dave Prior) http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/10995 Developing Music and Software Across a Distance (Dave Prior with Panda Transport’s Kathy Compton and Thierry Holweck) http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12133