Agile in the Ether

After hearing good things about it for years, and failing to get one of the limited spots at its lean coffee events for almost as long, I was excited to finally be at Agile in the Ether last week. Here's a few aggregated notes from the excellent conversation.

How to encourage non-digital stakeholders to understand the value of discovery and outcomes over outputs?

The business has scaled quickly and is large and stakeholders just want features
They don't talk about problems and give people space to offer solutions
Help them to think about how they experience the world outside work
Lay out the risks/benefits of switching to incremental devlopment
Get an ally who is respected (by them) to support your case
Show business which haven't adapted, e.g. Blockbuster
Show business which have adapted, e.g. McDonalds
Let stakeholders observe interviews with users to understand their priorities
Don't use the word "agile" or "digital"
... instead say "de-risk this proposition", "build it so we can rollback if needed"
... talk about the benefits of agile development not the practices

How do I get an organisation to value (agile) communities of practice?

Some managers just don't get it
They'll say "you need to do this in personal learning and development time"
Do it in stealth mode; just call it a meeting!
Ask the Community what they find valuable, and get them to talk about it
Find stories of success and share them
Some people think CoP is just soft and fluffy and not delivering
Managers perhaps don't care about the personal side of work, just outputs
Can you make the managers look good so that they will support it
Talk about it in manager-friendly terms e.g. ROI, break down silos, spread good practices, ...
Talk about disadvantages of not having CoPs, e.g. slower onboarding
Use some specific example of good practice to convene a group, then keep it going

Mentoring, coaching and team-building in a team where members are constantly changing. Any tips on how to keep stability?

In this case the team is around 8 people (perm and contractors, mixed disciplines)
Particularly hard when people are leaving (personal and org change)
Usually tends to stabilise, but not this time so constantly restarting
Pairing/mobbing can introduce new people quickly
Be alert to workplace loneliness
People can tend to go quiet, so be hypervigilant
Use CoP to build a shared culture across teams so that in-company movement is easier
Focus on some small thing together and complete it to build team spirit
Don't wait for a time when things just stabilise before starting something
One of us had used a team stability metric
... the number of sprints in a row with the same people on the team
... found that it's correlated to happiness
... but now worried that it's now become a marker of pride
... and teams are not changing enough

How to revive a flagging test community of practice?

Lots of people have left, including the CoP lead
New people started and are not so enthusiastic
The CoP used to be brilliant, but it's now a shadow of its former self
Drew Pontikis talked about letting the CoP end when its energy has run out
Change things up e.g. 1, 2
Communities are so reliant on the people involved. What are their needs?
Treat it like a new team; have a new kick off
Fit timing to other participant commitments to make it easier to attend
CoP need not be the only community meetings, e.g. pairs, random coffees, etc
It will take a while to get restarted
It's natural for there to be cycles of energy
Favour quality over quantity

Image: Wikipedia

Comments

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The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "If testers can’t code, they’re of no use to us" My first reaction is to wonder what you expect from your testers. I am immediately interested in your working context and the way

Meet Me Halfway?

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Stop answering my questions with questions." Sure, I can do that. In return, please stop asking me questions so open to interpretation that any answer would be almost meaningless and certa

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One of my chores takes me outside early in the morning and, if I time it right, I get to hear a charming chorus of birdsong from the trees in the gardens down our road, a relaxing layered soundscape of tuneful calls, chatter, and chirrupping. Interestingly, although I can tell from the number and variety of trills that there must be a large number of birds around, they are tricky to spot. I have found that by staring loosely at something, such as the silhouette of a tree's crown against the slowly brightening sky, I see more birds out of the corner of my eye than if I scan to look for them. The reason seems to be that my peripheral vision picks up movement against the wider background that direct inspection can miss. An optometrist I am not, but I do find myself staring at data a great deal, seeking relationships, patterns, or gaps. I idly wondered whether, if I filled my visual field with data, I might be able to exploit my peripheral vision in that quest. I have a wide monito

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Testers are Gate-Crashers

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Testers are the gatekeepers of quality" Instinctively I don't like the sound of that, but I wonder what you mean by it. Perhaps one or more of these? Testers set the quality sta

Vanilla Flavour Testing

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The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "When the build is green, the product is of sufficient quality to release" An interesting take, and one I wouldn't agree with in general. That surprises you? Well, ho

Make, Fix, and Test

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The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "What's the best format for a test plan?" I'll side-step the conversation about what a test plan is and just say that the format you should use is one that works for you, your coll

Test Now

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "When is the best time to test?" Twenty posts in , I hope you're not expecting an answer without nuance? You are? Well, I'll do my best. For me, the best time to test is when there

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