Module #9: Key Roles In More Depth

A team’s Product Contact, Facilitator, and Manager(s) can have a tremendous (positive or negative) impact of team effectiveness, so we cover these roles in further depth, indicating how they can affect iteration cadences.

Team Product Contact: While the focus of the Product Contact is accurate communication regarding customer requirements, there are many considerations in doing this effectively. This topic covers

• defining “value,”
• outputs vs outcomes,
• saying “no,”
• customers in Agile,
• the relationship with the Team Facilitator,
• working with the Development Team,
• backlog grooming/refinement,
• iteration review impact, and
• retrospective participation.

Agile Team Facilitator: Perhaps no one is charged more directly with concern for team effectiveness than the Facilitator. This topic covers

• skill and knowledge awareness and growth,
• what being a “learning organization” means,
• signs of mistrust and building trust,
• rules, values and agreements,
• “dead fish” and “elephants,”
• the Tuckman model in more detail,
• daily meeting contributions,
• iteration review contributions,
• retrospective contributions, and
• three examples of retrospective visual tools.

Managers in Agile: As noted before, not much is often said about managers in Agile contexts as an early view was that self-managing and organizing teams would eliminate the need for managers, but managers can impact adoption a great deal. This topic covers

• “What if I want something done?”
• management and team self-organization,
• rethinking the performance review,
• manager role in planning,
• management command and control,
• manager role in daily meetings,
• managers in iteration reviews, and
• managers in retrospectives.

Module #10 Project Structure/Planning

While there is a change in the Project Management role, Agile projects do observe several planning behaviors and activities, though with a different approach.

Project Initiation: Agile approaches take a significantly different approach to initial planning, though they engage in very frequent planning throughout a release’s iterations. This topic covers

• the levels pf Agile planning,
• project planning realities,
• accuracy vs precision,
• product/project vision
• elevator pitches and “designing the box,”
• themes and roadmaps,
• project charters,
• the Cone of Uncertainty,
• traditional requirements,
• stories vs traditional requirements,
• contracts and “good neighbors,” and
• why emergent requirements.

(Agile) Project Management: Good project management concepts do not disappear in taking an Agile approach, though the Agile approach is more strategic and less tactical, leaving the latter to be handled at the team level. This topic covers

• what is Agile project management,
• why don’t we “kill” projects,
• how could/should we kill projects,
• Agile vs traditional risk management, and
• Agile practices in mitigating risk.

Documentation Considerations: Previously we addressed documentation at the technical level associated with documenting implementation details, but there is the broader topic of documentation. This topic covers

• why we document,
• many documentation methods exist,
• key documentation concepts, and
• Potentially Shippable Increments (PSI’s) and Minimum Marketable Products (MVP’s).

Release Planning: Just as Agile takes a different approach to project initiation, it also takes a different approach toward release plans and planning. This topic covers

• release plan purposes,
• determining team velocity,
• steps in guessing initial velocity, and
• allocating stories to iterations in a release.