As part of the agile practice assessment, we group of friends, the other day they had a talk about how we feel and what we feel are good and bad about agile. what we feel are okay and what we feel are awesome about agile in comparison with waterfall model which we practiced previosuly.


So, lets get into the topic.

What I like with agile:

1. As a team, we can pick and choose which tasks to complete first.
2. I have the freedom of talking and sharing with my teammates more.
3. With more talking, we felt it was the ideas of the complete team than just a two or three that counted.
4. We have the best oppurtunity of 2-3 brains thinking on a problem, if we are stuck than a single head hitting on the wall for a solution.
5. Estimation is done based on ME and MY TEAM members abilities and skill sets than just picking up few use cases.
6. Minimum documentation to the level of making the new entrants understand the project.

What I hate/dislike/disagree about Agile:

1. Too much freedom or too much of work as tasks are divided for everyday core working hours.
2. Sometimes, it so happens that everyone is busy with the sprint work that I don't get a dedicated helping team member to solve my problem.
3. Too lengthy retrospective and sprint planning meetings.
4. Continuous work allocated. So taking a leave might turn my next day a nightmare.

Points of conflict.

1. Less scope and more scope for INNOVATION
2. Less documetation is a down side and at the same time an advantage
3. Team talk an advantage as well as a disadvantage.
4. Product owner giving tasks based on sprint length makes us lag on the complete knowledge of the project and the work to be done.


We will talk on some points in depth and touch upon few more in the next episode.

Stay tuned! Stay curious!! Stay Healthy!!!

1. Make sure stand up meetings don't go beyond 15 min of time.
2. Never discuss a topic too deep. Say a person is facing issue in establishing an ADO.NET connection to the DB. It should remain as a hindrance issue and not a topic to discuss on.
3. Carry a piece of object like an identifier, that indicates who is speaking.
4. More importantly, don't leave the issue reported in step(2) in the stand-up but discuss it and help resolve the person his/her issue at their desk.

Stay tuned, stay healthy, keep coding!!!

Parker and John are two champs working with a renowned IT product and services company. These days, they are keeping themselves busy for few hours and free for few hours at the office. When peeped in, you can notice that they are spending their time at Pool table, a smiling chat over a cup of coffee.

We grew curious and wondered how not just these two folks but rest all from their project are seen around the office at the same time. So, we decided to walk to them and ask what made them have good free time at office and at the same time deliver better quality product during the project meetings and demos. The answer was straight and clear  - "We are into Scrum under the Agile Methodology"

So, what is Scrum Methodology

When we talk about agile, most of the teams that practice agile are using scrum methodology. That's because its the most easiest and the simplest of all. The simple steps that make Scrum the simplest of all are.

• Its team has 4 different roles 1. Product Owner. 2. Scrum Master 3. Team members.

           However, Scrum master is not a new person in the team, but a role given to one from the team.
           A good output from a team can be obtained if the team has 2 developers and 1 QA.

• The project requirements are executed in what is called SPRINTS which last for 2 weeks and in some cases 3 weeks. 

•   At the end of the sprint, all the team members/ stake holders get into a meeting and review the work done. In general, this has what items of the product have been promised, what are delivered, what have changed and followed by a DEMO of the potentially shippable application.

Backlog:

This has all the requirements to be developed so as to produce a completed product.
Each backlog item has few steps that take the team's efforts closer to finish line.

Sprint Planning:

Few items together executed over a sprint makes a potentially shippable product.

Daily stand-up.

Also called as daily scrum, all the team members share with each other

• what an individual has done yesterday
• what  is in for them for today
• are there any obstacles/ impediments/blockages that can hinder the sprint work

This meeting is presided over by the scrum master.

Sprint review:

At the end of the sprint, team has a meeting with the product owner where the developed part of the application is either accepted or rejected.

Sprint retrospective:

This is the last step of finishing the current running sprint before the next one is taken. Here the scrum master discusses what went well, what went wrong, what were the unexpected that came to the team during the sprint. This helps in better planning for the upcoming sprints.

See you with another series on agile coming up!!! stay healthy, stay tuned, happy coding.