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Posts Tagged ‘Software Development’

O que faz uma boa equipa?

December 10th, 2009

Num artigo do Financial Post de Setembro, pode ler-se o seguinte:

“An effective team has to be able to respond quickly[...] And for that, we need a forum for robust dialogue.

A formally constituted team comes from the desire to work collaboratively [...] There is a shared commitment to goals that has the support of individual team members, and in turn supports them.

An effective team [...] contrasts with a more common hierarchical approach to business goals, “the command-and-control approach.”

The effective team are [...] The Magnificent Seven rather than The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

To have and effective teams [...]Businesses need to shift from individual bonuses to team-based bonuses, to flatten out their reporting structure.

What may not be a Team? [...] A committee is a weak variant of a team [...] A team [...] is the opposite of a committee in that it has a unifying purpose and values to which all members ascribe, despite their position within the organization.

How to build a team? [...] Peer mentoring is a team learning system that lets people teach each other [...] Workshops have their place in leadership development, but most corporations don’t have a significant way to transfer that knowledge into skills.”

Peer Mentorig [...] challenges people to take ownership of their careers. As long as no direct reporting is involved, it works magically.

How a effective team looks like?[...] include enough people, and a good cross-section of skills. We call it collective intelligence. The worst thing to do is try to figure out things by yourself.

Ainda no mesmo artigo são sugeridas oito características de uma boa equipa:

EIGHT TEAM MUST-HAVES

  1. Must have a meaningful purpose that all members care about.
  2. Can’t be too large. Some experts suggest capping at 20. Field cautions against there being too little work for all members.
  3. Needs a diverse set of skills appropriate to the goals.
  4. Needs to be physically together. Even having some team members on different floors can hurt the team.
  5. Succeeds or fails together. No stars or scapegoats.
  6. Shares leadership. Of course there is one leader, but he or she should be willing to step aside when another team member’s skills are required.
  7. Has strong shared norms and expectations of behaviour. These are soft skills that often need to be taught.
  8. Needs time. “You lose advantages if you hurry,” Prof. Field says. “Slow it down for the process to work.”

Artigo original:

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2258320

Agile, Business, Gestão, Gestão de Projecto, PMP, SCRUM , , , , , , ,

Communities of Practice

October 2nd, 2009

Hoje tinha de escrever alguma coisa para o meu blog. Estou a tentar disciplinar-me na escrita e então decidi introduzir um tema que ando a tentar compreender melhor: Communities of Practice.

Uma Community of Practice é uma forma de criar e renovar conhecimento nas organizações. É por vezes uma solução na transformação de modelos de desenvolvimento de Software Waterffal para modelos mais ágeis e lean. Ao eliminar equipas especializadas (Testers, Architects, Developers, Designers) as pessoas podem perder as condições ideais para se especializarem em assuntos e áreas de interesse profissional.  Não acho que o facto de as equipas serem multidisciplinares e trabalharem em todos os aspectos do desenvolvimento do Software, seja justificação para acabar com o conhecimento que é criado através destas equipas.

Os Testers geralmente pesquisam e desenvolvem soluções que lhes permitem melhorar os testes de Software. Os Architects pesquisam e desenvolvem conceitos de Software que, sendo implementados, criam valor no produto. Os Developers pesquisam e desenvolvem soluções que  possam proporcionar um aumento de eficiência no seu trabalho. Acho que é importante que se continue a ter as condições para criar este tipo de conhecimento e uma das formas de o conseguir é através de Communites of Practice.

Ficam aqui alguns recursos sobre o assunto:

Vídeo:

Caterpillar- Collaboration Through Communities of Practice

Slides:

Communities of Practice: Conversations To Collaboration

Read more…

Gestão de Projecto , , , ,

Conflito e Colaboração

September 23rd, 2009

Dois tweets:

joaomrpereira: estou a criar conflitos :) http://bit.ly/2AvQOU

joaomrpereira:como é que vêem o conflito na colaboração? de que maneira o conflito contribui, positivamente ou negativamente, para a colaboração?

E um artigo sobre Aikido : http://www.urbansim.org/pub/Research/ResearchPapers/Aikido%20and%20Software%20Engineering%20final%20accepted.pdf

Acho que o conflito é um elemento essencial à colaboração, por isso não vale a pena tentar resolver conflitos através de pequenas cedências, poderes, ataques pessoais, ignorando-os ou suavizando-os.

Agile, Business, Empreemdedorismo, Gestão, Uncategorized , ,

Don’t do objectives SMART. Do them Concrete first.

May 12th, 2009

You’re in London in a conference assisting to a lot of talking about spreadsheets online. Everyone agrees that they suck in user experience. You’re feeling the agreement from audience that Excel is the standard in that matter.  (You can argue against this, but it’s not the point here!).

You have one team available to start working right now on this great new idea you have about spreadsheets online. You decided to take the risk and tweet  your team:

Our project is to build the next generation Online spreadsheet, that runs everywhere, every time and offers the ultimate user experience.

Wow. What a project.

“But what does it mean?” – your team tweet you back a minute later. Maybe they hit some analysis paralysis state and are wondering “wtf ultimate user experience is??”

Read more…

Agile, Empreemdedorismo, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM, Uncategorized , , ,

Scrum Quick Qizz

May 10th, 2009

You’re the ScrumMaster for organization Foo and you’re working with  Team Bar. In the first sprint planning meeting you’re thinking that the team committed too much functionality from Product Backlog. You, the ScrumMaster, reminded the team that they are responsible for  committing only functionality that they can complete in a Sprint, and they can drop any functionality that they feel that cannot be completed.

The Team Bar strong believed that they can do so much work. They proceed with the Sprint.

At the sprint review meeting, the team demonstrated the functionality committed. The demo was guided by a script that team members follow consistently and religiously. Stakeholders at the meeting congratulated the team for the work done. At the end of the of the sprint review meeting, you started to play with the functionality delivered by the team and ignored the script they used to try different use cases. The software started to throw exceptions and crashing.

What went wrong?

A) The time spent in Spring Planning Meeting wasn’t enough.

B) The time allotted  for Spring Review Meeting wasn’t enough.

C) Team Bar ignored the rule of Sashimi.

D) Everything went ok. What’s the point?

What is you best guess? Why?

Agile, Gestão de Projecto , ,

Useless Gantt chart

May 9th, 2009

Yeah, it’s true. I’m in a process of leaning and relearning. Fortunately I have the time to think about the usefulness of things we use in software development. :)

This week I came across the question:

“For what are Gantt charts useful?”

And because we live in knowledge the wisdom of the crowds era, I decided to throw an message in LinkedIn’s IT Project Manager group.

Let me start to quote my self in that question:

Are gantt charts useful for software projects?

Software projects are complex not only because the technology but mainly because the human behaviour. Humans collaborate to create solutions for complex problems, are Gantt charts useful to model human behaviour and collaboration?

It seems to me that Gantt charts are well suited for very predictive projects or production lines with machines, and software projects are everything but predictive. What is the point of using a technique that assumes a predictive future in a environment in constant change?

As far as I know, Henry Gantt worked with Frederick Taylor and I assume they had the same way of thinking. Now, if Taylor is a Theory X manager what’s the point to use their tools when you are a theory Y manager? Does it make any sense to use gantt charts to manager projects, specially SW projects?

Additionally, I heard from someone that the first time Henry Gantt introduced what we today know as Gantt charts never used the word projects, mainly because those charts were used to manage assembly and production lines… why are we using Gantt charts to manage the complexity of projects?

I received two answers, till now. One from Maryann Snider, PMP and other from William W. (Woody) Williams in the discussion.

These answers led me to think again in the usefulness of Gantt charts. My current opinion about Gantt charts is (as seen in LinkedIn discussion):

Ok, so a Gantt chart is only a communication chart, right? We can think of it as a tool for visual management if the stakeholders are educated in that way, I guess.

I understand that Gantt charts can be used to show critical path/s calculated with CPM (Critical Path Method).A lot of more tools and techniques exists to assist us in creating a tentative schedule, like the critical chain method as William mentioned. But at the end, a Gantt chart is only a tool for communication, right?

IMHO, there’s a risk with Gantt charts

PMI, for instance, as well as Agile Manifesto, promote face-to-face communication. The heavy use of Gantt charts can be seen as a risk when they start to flow, more than desired, through email within your organization.It’s not only a question of everyone seeing different versions of a project, it’s also a question about the wrong message your organization can be passing to stakeholders: email-communication culture is Ok.

I think we’re loosing sight of what its important in projects, the People. So, the use of Gantt charts for communication of project status, progress, etc should be revisited, IMHO. Moreover, I think that a “Go see” culture is the most effective way to access progress.

I’m not against the use of gantt charts in any way. I just have to believe in their utility before using them.

And you, how do you feel about the uselfulness of Gantt charts?

Agile, Gestão, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM, Software , ,

Useless Certified Scrum Masters

December 13th, 2008

Are you willing to have a surgery with a surgeon that has taken a two days course in surgery?

Think about that for a moment. If you answer “No” (which I believe you do unless you’re a suicidal crazy person) I’m also sure you will not believe that a Certified Scrum Master (or a bunch of them) will save your projects and your business.

SCRUM is simple. SCRUM is hard. There is no ambiguity here. It is simple but it is hard.

Most of the organizations implementing SCRUM do not bother to find out why the “old” processes haven’t worked and simple jump into SCRUM because it is simple. People tend to judge that simple things are also easy thinks.

I think is a mistake, when you’re the adopting SCRUM framework (or any other agile process/methodology/practice/framework) to jump into it and trashing everything you learned from the past failures. This is a warning of continuing the failure path.

SCRUM, and any other agile methodology or process is not about the process or methodology itself, it is about a change in mindset and organization values and principles. SCRUM will help your organization to change, but will not change it by itself. Do not expect that SCRUM will solve all of your problems but expect it to show you all your problems.

What about the good engineering practices? Will SCRUM save your project if you are constantly building garbage? Probably SCRUM will help you to build garbage more quickly. That’s great if your business is all about building garbage.

I am just starting with this stuff of Agile Software development, so do not take what I have said here too seriously :) . I am sure your certified surgeon, with a two days course, will do a great job to your brains after a surgery to your head.

Agile, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM, Software , , ,