The iron triangle in an agile world

 The original project managment triangle which has been used now since around 60 to 70 years

defined a scope, costs and a deadline. As a result the quality suffered in so many projects as one or more corners exeeded the limit.

Even Agile is around since 20 years, projects are still planned within this triangle. A scope is defined, costs are predicted and when working time is estimated and based on this a release date announced, the chance of low quality is high. Or costs or/and time exploded to reach the targeted quality level.

What is here the Agile way to prevent poor solutions? Flip the triangle! Instead of have a fix scope, you know the sprint length and the costs of the team members. The scope is estimated but not set in stone. As quality is not negotiable on the release day not everything might be finished but it is releaseable. 

Now - if you are thinking now that your recent projects would have failed with a smaller scope or would not be releaseable with a smaller scope, then probably one of the both fixed elements - costs or time have been wrong. Sure not everything can be released even if the quality is ok. If you e.g. implement an shopping basket only for the half, it might not be releaseable so you need to postpone it. In this case the time corner was set wrong. 

In practice the costs in agile developement projects are normally fixed as the development team does not change so often. As quality should also be a hard requirement there is not much space to negotiate. So scope and time can vary in a project.

 

Fake News - the information war

 

 In the last years the words Fake News got really popular. Empowered by the previous US president (I can still not belief that a person in that rang created such a big amount of fake news), wrong information are a weapon in the current era like a bomb 30 years ago. Destabilizing other contries by messing up the mind of the people using wrong information leads to an economical disadvantage. People loosing trust instead and play mind games who does what plan to just suppress the society. If everybody who has currently that mindset in Europe would use it in a positiv way to bring humanity to the next chapter, ... maybe we would have seen way more science breakthroughs and art legends.

As all chapters in the last eras, the handling of fake news is the biggest challenge of the current era and a difficult task to create awareness, safe the kids from stupid conspiration news and this list is getting longer and longer.

Mobile world

Recently I have been ask if Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro is a good phone. I read the specs and had a look on some tests. From my experience, a mobile phone in this price category can be good for some cases and some not. So I asked how the phone will be used and what are the most wanted features.

Only when you know your acceptance criterias you are able to get the device with the best price/value ratio. Of course you can always buy the biggest and best device for any money but is that the device you need?

Why is this simple use case - you buy what you need - in software engineering in many cases so difficult? You start already that you only know you need something - like in our case a mobile phone. But whats next? That is the strength of Agile. You do not specify all details and when you are finished the phone is already outdated. Instead, you start with the most important details, have a look at some aspects and you get way earlier to you result.

Regeneration

Regain power with a PowerBar Energize Original Chocolate 25x55g - High Carb Energieriegel + C2MAX Magnesium und Natrium is good way to get energy back during running or cycling. But how to regenerate in the daily office business. In the agile world a sprint is a well known expression for an iteration of Scrum. I generally prefer iteration as sprint is something you can do once perfect, second time a bit slower and then the performance of sprinting is getting slower and slower until you only walk the distance if you do not regenerate between sprints.

To getting faster and faster in the iterations the team needs training, doing and regeration and I think the regeneration should not only be the part "weekend" in the sprints. Having breaks in the working day improves the performance of delivering faster. 

Read the last two words again, think about it and what was your interpretation of "agile && faster"

Top news of today - what is the value of a news

 I do not want to start a discussion about Covid in this blog as this situation is weird for all. Today I saw on the Austrian's public broadcasting website following news:

On of the main stories is about "A cable car manager has been vaccinated". I am asking myself, is this really so important to be in the top news? What is the a benefit and the value of this news for the publicity? And is there no more valuable news?

In a company, you have a direct relationship between information and decision. There more information you have the better decision you can make. Thru bigdata this is not a real new fact. And this is valid for nearly all cases in my opinion. 

I am asking myself which relation are there based on public or society news. In general I see in all news an decision value. Maybe not direct for me but in general all news and information are the base for a decision of an undefined number of persons. If this information and decision cycle turn some rounds, probably an action and reaction workflow has already been added by an undefined number of persons. 

In an follow up cycle, there is a high chance to generate public waste. Unfortunately this can be intended by anybody to hide something.

What can be learned from that for the daily work? Not only getting information is essential to make decisions. Also the value of the information has to be checked otherwise you might be targeted by data manipulation and you are lead to a bad direction. Check the value of the information and if you are not sure dig into the information source to clarify the value.

Agile Transistion - thoughts for the first steps

 

Agile is hype, agile is everywhere. - at least as theory. If the agile transistion ends shortly after the introduction of an agile team, then the transistion never took place. Coaching Agile Teams is getting people together - often from different departments. This is itself already a essential part of an transistion. Getting people together is not just sitting them into an room. Especially in the Corona time, when team members sit at home, the communication level is decreased to video communication if all have a webcam. Even worse, if the company does not provide webcams, the communication level is further decreased to only audio level. 

This is a really hard condition for a start. You can compensate this by investing way more time in team building. But why is this all necessary? For trust. If you trust you team, you will go beyond with the team. Trust is material which keeps your team together. In my opinion, if you have a team with average people an a high value of trust, they will beat a team with top people without trust. A team is more than the value of the seperate team members. This is the first milestone a new team should reach.

A new gadget

 

Today I replaced my loved Garmin Vivoactive HR with the Garmin Instinct Solar. On the hiking tour in August to the Priel with around 12 hours on tour, the Vivoactive run out of battery, I started my plan for replacement. The requirement was clear for me - I want a watch with enough battery capacity and similar functionality as I already have.

I started to look on the market and as I already had a Garmin watch and I were satisfied with all Garmin devices I owned, I set the focus on Garmin watches. 

The first research brought two results, the Fenix 6 solar and the Instinct Solar. The Fenix series is the non plus ultra and also the most expensive series. The Instinct costs less than the half but uses button for navigation and has less smart functionality. It was clear that I will not buy a watch via Internet without trying a prototype, so I look for offers in a local store and today I found the offer at Conrad. Of course, I looked several videos on Youtube and these strengthen my decision.

I went there and used the buttons and my decision was broken because of the "old-fashion" usability. Additionally, a sales guy came around and asked if he can support me and I summarized my requirements. He favored the Fenix series because this series has an extended battery capacity with and also without Solar. 

After taking a breath, I recapitulate my requirements - extended battery capacity. I do not need maps on my watch, same for Garmin Pay, music and colors. There is some missing functionality on the Instinct which I also did not have on the Vivoactive, but is this the price difference worth it? Or is it gold plating for feature I rarely or never use? That tighten my decision again and I gave the button navigation a chance and bought it.

On an Agile perspective, this was an interesting lesson learned. I thought I had a requirement and I had enough knowledge about the button usability. Finally, I nearly trapped to "overengineering" by buying the Fenix.