sureshkrishna's blog

Scrum Master Vs Project Manager

February 4, 2008 by sureshkrishna

Scrum Master is specialized in ensuring the scrum process is implemented as intended. He is the one who takes care of the different agile practices to reach the team. Project Manager is the one who takes care of the planning, project deliverables, billing, process, QA, etc...
And now the question for many is can a project survive without the Scrum Master. Its often the case that a traditional project manager takes training as scrum master and he takes the role of a scrum master.

Do you do Incremental Design ?

January 14, 2008 by sureshkrishna

Incremental Design is one of the core values of the XP. Many favor to have a "rough up-front design" rather than the "big up-front design". The days when the Design is a single long term process is gone (as in waterfall or v-model) and developers are embracing the design as an integrated daily process.

Software development has taught us to know that the "requirements change" and we need to live with it. When requirements change, the design too changes. We often hear that "the design need to be flexible enough", but not practical in all cases. The software design is often a function of the designer's technical and system/business knowledge. Its very difficult to predict and assume some of the changing requirements in advance.

How about a "Day in the life"

January 2, 2008 by sureshkrishna

Its very interesting to see a new face to the interviewing process for a team member to enhance the trust and understanding. When adding new talent to the team, its become a practice to have the candidate to go through a day in team's life. Its very important to have the candidate f2f and nothing is like candidate spending a day in the life. Many organizations believe that both the candidate and the team can benefit from such an interview process.

Do you enjoy Self-Organizing team?

December 26, 2007 by sureshkrishna

There days many organizations practicing Agile processes are expecting team members to be multi-talented and be able to work in variety of situations. More frequently we hear the terms like "Self-Organizing" or "Self-Managing" teams in the Scrum world.

In the software development we have learned that the software is becoming more and more complex as the variables technology and requirements change (thus the upfront planning has become famous). In the traditional project management, the project manager used to take the responsibility of the Risks, Complexity, Deadlines, Release Plan, Testing, Documentation and etc... On the contrary the self-organized team is set of individuals with different skills and mostly complementing each other. This team is organized and re-organized depending on the project pressure, schedules and deadlines. This team wears different hats depending on the situation. This team works on a simple rule that "Tell me what to do; But not How to do" and sometimes even the baby steps.

Why are Standup Meetings effective?

December 19, 2007 by sureshkrishna

"Standup Meetings" is one of the core practices in the Agile Software Development. Instead of meeting the team once in a week in a meeting room, daily 10 minute Standup Meetings are quite popular. Few teams - which do not have a clear idea of Scrum - consider these meetings as personally intrusive and intimidating. But what one can gain via Standup meetings are many fold then conventional meetings.

"War Room" is gaining popularity over conventional cubicle

December 12, 2007 by sureshkrishna

For newcomers in Scrum and XP, its often difficult to appreciate a "War Room" or "Team Room" or often called as "Scrum Room". The conventional seating which depicted the hierarchies is slowly fading.