Once again, I am trying to show how easy it can be to Agilize your projects with a bit of effort, and I will try to do it in the most non-technical way I can. Just like you could explain it to a random unknown person in a bar tonight. We are used to apply this methodologies to software projects, but at the end of the day, any simple or complex task can be done using Scrum, wich means that this man in the bar, who owns a small construction company, probably could start using this techniques with the few lines I will write today here. Lets call “the man in the bar” Lucas (just felt like calling him that )

One of the main objectives in a Agile project is to be flexible and adapt to changes quickly and at any stage of the project. In traditional project management, a small change could mean starting all over again, losing all work done till then.  We want to be able to manage these projects in a more agile way, let see how:

1. Small self-organized teams. The ideal team is a small group of people, with different skills and disciplines, who can organize themselves and having a transparent communication. In fact, the term Scrum comes from the bunch of people together in rugby, all of them pushing in the same direction.

2. Client point of view. Write down all the things “he want to do” or that  ”the user can do”, and even make cards with one each of them if you can, to make the process easier. Sort them out by priority and you have the Product Backlog. The team will decide the time assigned to each item.

3. Short sprints, frequent deliveries. We gonna have to prepare now a “Sprint Backlog” breaking down the Product Backlog requirements into small parts that will be delivered to the client, who can test himself and add new changes.  If this Sprints are short and frequent it makes the process more flexible, because we can detect problems or apply changes before is too late. If Lucas makes a sprint too long, like building a full room before the client can see it, changing a window can be a lot of work . Calling the client two days earlier to see the state could save time and money.

4. Scrum Roles. As we said before, we have the pigs and the chickens, but we can still refine this classification and say that we have more roles to define. Lets talk about the pigs first, the ones really commited, because they can be eaten…

- The Product Owner pig: who represents the client and provides the business vision. He writes down the user stories and prioritize them:
- The Scrum Master pig: Who meant to clear the path for the Sprint to flow with no obstacles and reach the target. He is also called the facilitator.
- The team pigs: the responsibles of the product delivery. Members of a small group (between 5 and 9) and from different disciplines(designers, developers, etc).

Just remember this … if you are a pig, you can be eaten!

And what about the chickens? Who are them? The ones that are implied, but their lives (or legs) are not depending on the project.

- The User chicken: Who uses the product or application.
- The Clients or Sellers chickens.
- The  managers and executives chickens.

5. Daily Scrum. The “everyday” meeting. It has to be a quick review of the tasks done and to be done. It should last less than 15 minutes and not even sitting down. Everybody in the team will answer 3 questions: What did you do yesterday? What are you planning to do today? What got in your way of doing work?  Only the pigs can talk in the daily scrum. One of the most important points here is  transparency: all members know what the others are doing, and the problems should be brought to light as soon as  they are detected.

6. Conclusion. In short, SCRUM allows creating motivated teams, able to organize themselves, where communication and transparency is total. And with this methodology, the user gains importance and the customer becomes part of the development team.

Lucas will be able to have the team working better, focused in shorter tasks, knowing that they have less chances of having to knock down what they already built…

Subflash 2010 bilbao

Year after year I enjoy one of the main events in the Spanish web development industry, and it is not because its size or the money the speakers get for it… it is its quality and proximity what makes it absolutely unique. I am talking, of course, about Subflash

How many Seminars have you been where the lecturers goes out with you at night? Where this speakers also pay the fees like everyone else? Probably never.

In Subflash you learn new things, but at the same time you have a very personal and up-to-date feedback of the web industry. You have designers, developers, commercials, bloggers,… sitting at the same table. It doesnt matter if you are one of the Adobe gurus, the number one in mobile device software or the guy who sell websites around the corner. If you are one of the limited group (60 people) you become part of the Subflash family, something beyond technologies.

I would like to explain quickly the main cornerstones in the 2010′s edition (and I will talk about the technical side, and the social one)

day one, conference one: Luis Adrian Rosas gave us a very good speech about Business Intelligence (Emotional). Not only he put the audience in his pocket from the first second with his people skills and his Lego toys for everybody. He also gave a lesson about behaviours in work, the communication issues and the ways to deal with conflicts. It was so interesting that the people couldn’t stop asking questions after the conference. Personally I expected some references to Agile methodologies…but who knows, maybe I will manage to do it myself in the next edition. It would be an honour. In the social side, lets talk about the long travel that the lecturer went through to reach Bilbao from Southampton where he is living at the moment (Through London, Frankfurt and Madrid), and that I personally appreciate a lot. That night we went out and we managed to find, in the middle of the Aste Nagusia, one of his favourite vegetarian meals: Tofu burger, with peppers, cheese and onion

day one, conference two: Two of the main web developers in Spain, Joan Llenas (Flash/Flex) and Andrés Cayón (Dreamweaver), created this sort of tennis match, Joan was was choosing ActionScript to develop Adobe Air applications, and Andrés chose what he knows better, Javascript. The examples were amazing, and the battle hard. Friends after all, they proved that both options are strong and capable, which means Adobe Air is flexible, and the developer is free to choose the language for the scripts. Both good, both friends. Like I did with the first one, lets talk about the social side of this conference. Andrés Cayon, who knows the city of Bilbao almost like Dreamweaver, was the perfect partner for the “after speech” walks, explaining the history of this beautiful city. Joan Llenas, like most of us, enjoyed the night time with the group in Café Iruña.

day one, conference three: Dani Llops, one of the flash gurus, was sitting there with the rest of us. But he was not there to listen only, he was there to talk about a non usual combination, but full of possibilities “Flash + Drupal”. How to link them together, and use the powerful CMS to manage the Flash contents. Hours later, the dancefloor was his place No details, just fun!

day two, conference one: We all work with internet, but not everybody knows exactly what happens with the information, and the path and technology that is used for that. Here appear Marc Palau and Mario Ezquerro, explaining all the ins and outs, helped with the funniest slideshow ever, to let us know a little bit more about all this. Marc is one of the members of CdMon one of the sponsors, and well known by the subflash community because he always managed to find the freakiest videos on internet. Mario is Jack-off-all-trades and it is amazing to sit with him and a coffee and listen to his skill levels: he can fix your usb, show your his exclusive lookalike ipad or prepare the settings for a satellite connection…no problem!

Marcos Gonzalez & Raul Jimenez in Subflash 2010

day two, conference two: Marcos Gonzalez and Raul Jimenez , experts in mobile device technologies, decided to show us what the future can be for mobile phones and flash platform. They chose to create instead of just talking… and showed us an amazing experiment of a game, made in Flash, multiplatform, where the players can use their phones as commanders, and the rest of the people can follow the games on their laptops or mobiles phones… Really impressive. We got closer to the future with this demonstration. Marcos and Raul are two of the organizers of Subflash, and we have to thank them for this successful event. Apart from being speakers in places like Adobe Max in Chicago or Adobe Live… they still have time to go back to earth and spend some time with us.

Subflash is a modest event…but they still manage to have more and more presents for the community every year. This year more than 15000€ in tshirts, books, games and software were given to the assistants by drawing lots. Dreamweaver User Group Spain and BlocketPC gave a couple of  CS5 Web Premium licenses (one each) IndexBook lots of books, FxInteractive a box full of PC games, lots of magazines from IdN, Nitsnets tshirts for everybody, CDMon free hostings, Video2Brain free subscriptions to their courses, and I am sure that I am still forgetting something…

Making a long story short, we enjoyed together a very nice weekend, in a great city like Bilbao, with 60 people of different levels and sectors in the web development world, in a really friendly atmosphere.

I was happy to see again the old friends and because Twitter was the hype this year let’s try to list them all:

@fcomoreno – and his sidekick @laflores-, @andreskarp, @supremo_tata, @skeku, @bftoni -and happily pregnant Astrid-, @_alfons, @palaueb, @qmarcos, @elecash, @tecnorama, @joangarnet, @quadricula, @montxi77, @SaraMorueta, @eyeclipse, @eladnts, @sergiomas, @jorcanvi, @zguillez, @rodrigo_dm… and Micky Palma, probably the only one without twitter I hope I forgot less than half of them

I also met new ones: @martinigleu (a friend finally desvirtualized), @xbeumala, @llops, @alfonsofonso, @daniinebot, @abelcabans, @aleixpellicer, @websmonerris, @isidroperez,… and many more

Where can I buy the ticket for next year??

This basically means that you base your software development in tests. Never a piece of code without its test.

This sounds tedious at first glance, but in a long term it makes the developers life a lot easier. In the traditional Waterfall system, people used to add more and more code, functions calling functions… not even knowing if the smallest parts of this software are full of bugs. And than, at the “end” of the proccess, they had to go through thousand of lines of code to find out what is wrong.

The quality of the code will be improved 200%

I you use a framework like Eclipse or JDeveloper, one of the better tools to build this tests is JUnit.

In this video, Brian Lawrence (aka Bobukanator) , explains in a very simple example, how JUnit works, and I think it is a good introduction to TDD for begginers.

He also recommends two books that you shouldn’t miss:

- TDD by Example, by Kent Beck

- and, JUnit Recipes, by J.B. Rainsberg

I hope this is also useful for you, and that you become a little bit more Agile  

So, if you can, join it.
You will enjoy it as I did the last two years.

And of course the seminars, where nobody gets paid, but not for that are less interesting.

This year the schedule is (remember that the seminars are in spanish):

• SBF01. Inteligencia Empresarial (emocional).
  Luis Adrian Rosa Wiedfeldt will talk about project managing and productivity, insisting in the importance of Emotional Intelligence in business, team and leadership wise, becoming Business Intelligence. Here is where I expect to hear a little bit about Agile methods and the links between philosophies. It will be very interesting, for sure.
• SBF02. Poliglot AIR2.
  In this case the seminar will talk about AIR applications and the pros and cons of using javascript and/or actionscript. A face to face between Joan Garnet and Andrés Cayón
  
• SBF03. Internet, hasta dónde llegan tus datos.
  Marc Palau, from CDMON, will talk about internet, protocols, dns, servers… and all this things that we hear and use everyday but not always have under control. Our data depends on it…
• SBF04. Combinando flash y drupal
  What about mixing architectures? Drupal, one of the main CMS and Flash. Dani Llops will explain how and the secrets of using webservices to set the limits between front and backend.
• SBF05. Froyo Bolsón, tu nuevo amiguito
  The internet world is becoming mobile, and if somebody knows about Flash and mobile devices in Spain that’s the Infocket team, Raúl Jiménez and Marcos González will introduce the new Froyo to the Subflash people, the chances of Android as the new work field for flash developers and they will also analyze the multiplatform that FP10.1 is offering.

I have been there the last two years and I seriously recommend it, it is a great experience.
Networking, laughs and new concepts to feed your brain… dont take long to decide…its nearly full!!

See you in Bilbao.

My last discover, was this short and very understandable article about Scrum. It was written by Marion Eickmann (www.agile42.de) last summer, but believe me, it could be created last night. I recommend you to read it. If you are a beginner like me, because it is really easy to unsderstand. And if you are a little bit more experienced in this matters, to see that you dont always need to use the same examples that everybody uses.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE: http://freshmeat.net/articles/an-introduction-to-scrum
I hope you also like it

Unfortunately I can’t fly to Barcelona this time… but it was a good opportunity to learn… and that’s why I decided to share this  news with you.

Organized by scrummanager.net and xtremobyte, July 7-8 2010, “Management of Projects with Scrum Manager” is a course that covers all the aspects to know, to understand how to establish of global and flexible form agile practices in businesses of software.  Flexible because besides the concrete practices of the model one Scrum, covers the principles and criteria for its adaptation to the own business and to negotiate its continuous improvement; and global because, besides the application of Scrum in the management of projects, covers the implications of the agility in the remainder of the business.

It is a formation based on the practice:  simulations of scrum, plan of product, product backlog, agile estimation, videos and exercises of simulation.

You can obtain  125 authority  Scrum Manager points, and includes the test of Professional Certification.  You will receive also a book!

Well … dont take long….its nearly full!

We have to realize that the supposed initial security that we have with the traditional Waterfall projects, with all the requirements written down and a signed contract, is a false state. It is not real security, it is only a sate of mind, that will drive us to an uncertain end of the project.

In the other hand, the Scrum process, has a harder start if you want to call it that way… but done properly, with a good Scrum team, ends up with solid and safer final product.

Today I have been watching one of this Scrum masters that you should also listen to… because the lived all this processes and they explain the hows and whys. I am talking about Jens Østergaard, a fully qualified Certified Scrum Master Trainer, who gives an introduction to Scrum and talks about why is Scrum so hard.

Watch it yourself and have your conclusions. We all learn from all this differents points of view.

Thanks Jens for the Masterclass

But some people with a special sense of humour built a website to “defend” the waterfall system. Take a look

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

And dont forget to Register… it is the main part of it

And, no doubt, the more you read, the more you realize that one is not better than the other, just different systems to solve different problematics.

You can see an example in this 2 very good articles by Thomas Björkholm, from Crisp.se:

Why Scrum is better than Kanban

Why Kanban is better than Scrum

after this, express yourself your conclusions.

- The bar, with the world famous double hamburguer with cheese.

- and the Software Theory, that even when we always thought that it was useless all that UML, Requirement Analysis, etc in a long term you realize how good it was and how much the big companies in Europe appreciate it.

So I decided to investigate if they are doing anything now about this Agile Concept that I am exploring. And voilà! They just had, three months ago, a very interesting conference about Scrum, one of the main Agile Techniques…  If you also want to “assist” to it… just click here. LA ALTERNATIVA ÁGIL (The Agile alternative, in spanish) , was presented by Xavier Abaladejo, and it is in Spanish… but I am sure that many of you can still enjoy it. He is one of the members of Agile-spain.es

It is a good speech, that gives you the basics of the Scrum. I recommend it!