Scrum Scrum Scrum

Scrum can be easy. Scrum can be hard. Scrum can be perfect. Scrum can be so wrong. Scrum can change everything. Scrum can change nothing.

Is it because of Scrum or the way we use it?

Is it just the pessimist stating that Scrum doesn’t work, or doesn’t add any value? Is there any truth to it? Is there truth to the optimist stating that Scrum revolutionized “our” business improving our performance with X percent? Was it because of Scrum or something else?

Personally I think Scrum is one of, or perhaps “the”, best model for team-work out there at the moment. But that’s also it.

I’ve worked for small organizations where Scrum actually might not be needed; it all depends on mindset of the people working together. But I can also see how it would have helped us become more efficient and focused on doing what counts.

For larger organizations though I think that Scrum as the team framework makes, almost, immediate sense. I’ve seen plenty of teams destructively working on unimportant tasks just to generate “heat”. To be stressed out for deliveries even though it is unclear what to deliver and why. To be bogged down by tasks from other teams without the quantity of extra work ever being visible. To be part of a team but completely unaware of what the other guys and girls are filling their days with. What they are actually filling their days with.

But!

To use Scrum in a larger organization is far different from adopting it in the little “SW-shop” with 10 or so developers. During Scrum trainings and seminars I’ve been getting answers implying that as long as you stick to SCRUM you are doing the right thing and that Scrum will point out where your problems are; irrespective if you are 100 or 10 people.

The problem is though that many of these problems can’t be solved by following the rationale of Scrum. Because for large organizations the team-work aspect makes sense but other straight lines in Scrum might need some bending. Or you will at least need to add things to deal with issues you have simply because you are a large amount of people with a lot of interfaces.

Scrum doesn’t have roles (besides the golden 3) and traditionalist state that everyone in the team should able to do any task… is that really practical, cost-efficient, or even possible? How do you put together your teams with this in mind?

Scrum appraises the retrospective but does that really mean you are working towards constant improvement? Does it really?

How do you Scrum when your organization are both assigned with product development and product maintenance? Can you time-box maintenance?

How do you fit testing into it all? Unit-testing sure, how about integration test?

How do you deal with geographical spread?

What do you do if the DoD depend on other teams?

How do you deal with extensive documentation that can be required due to legal or safety aspects?

How long should a sprint be when our cycle-times are long? To short and we add too much overhead, too long and we aren’t Scrumming anymore. Or?

There are a lot of questions around this that I find interesting, for some I think I have the (or at least one) answer and for some I’m still doing some soul-searching.

Leaving the trees behind

Off I go to Gothenburg and the west coast tomorrow; it’s time to talk at the IBC Euroforum conference “Electronics in vehicles”. If anything it will at least be nice to see some old colleagues from Volvo and meet my current Know IT ones.


Besides the very nice assignment at SAAB there’s currently a lot of Know IT business development going on, particularly I’m keeping myself occupied with some ideas around agile development as well as technology management for less mature (in terms of electronics and software) organizations. The space and time for these kinds of discussions and concept evolution is one of things I really like about KIT TM. Oh and not to forget the thread around MDA.

As far as Android goes the time for playing around with Eclipse and the SDK is rather rare but I have been able to play a bit reading sensor data. Besides the serious discussions around apps that I have with a Gbg-buddy of mine I’m keen to try something around augmented reality (after first talking a bit with Torkel and then checking out some demos on youtube).

AA

Jim Coplien is coming to Linköping in May talking about Agile Architecture, a really interesting booking made by the good people at Responsive. Read more here.

Serious Android

Got a nice e-mail from one of my good friends back in Gothenburg today, he had some interesting and serious suggestions for Android apps (that he’s planning to realize on iPhone). We’ll see where this ends.

Next week it’s finally time for IBC. Been iterating the presentation for a while now and starting to go around in circles a bit, the final pieces will fall into place while talking I’m sure.

The last couple of days I’ve been getting acquainted with Q as well. Maybe not the most pleasant experience but in the end it gets the job done. Or at least it might. The interesting part though is to see if we can auto-generate necessary input straight from a SysML model.

Additionally I had a brief e-mail discussion with a colleague in Gothenburg about xtUML, code generation and model verification. Good to see that xtUML is getting some attention around the block; I definitely think there are some goodies to collect there. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to continue that dialogue this week since he had some follow-up questions on CM.

Well, time to open Eclipse.

I'm an android

Always liked android... ever since the paranoid version.

And now my phone is an android as well so being an engineer and all I have to try and fiddle with the full potential of my phone.

So I've installed the Android SDK ontop of my Eclipse. All I need is something fun to do (something else than Hello World). But what I really would like though is to see if I could round-trip (model-code-model) using e.g. Papyrus. Been discussing round-tripping on and off at work and would be kind of interesting to see what you can do by just using open-source.

... and it is a good time as any to practice my, currently, mediocre programming skills...

Suggestions for an Android app? Current front-runner in the app-race is the "find your closest Systembolag app" by popular demand at the fika-break.

Volvo

I haven’t really had time to think about the blog for a while but the world apparently haven’t stopped moving even so ;)


The purchase of Volvo Car Corporation is now a fact. Having worked at, and for, Volvo for quite some years I’ve followed the events with great interest. I know that the same people that have had issues with Ford will now have issues with Geely and think back at Ford as the “good old times”, that is inevitable but also quite natural since it’s a typical pessimistic way of life.

If I had still worked at Volvo I would think the separation from Ford or Europe would be sad… mostly because I enjoyed working with the people in Cologne (as the separation from Jaguar was sad since a lot of good guys worked there as well)… and in some ways FOE pushed VCC to excel and we learned a lot working together.

I also think that the people at VCC really learned how to work in an international environment something that of course will benefit them with a Chinese owner as well.

No one knows how the new owners really think, but I tend to have an optimistic view so maybe this is Volvo catching a break; a chance to become an even better company. Hopefully they have learned a lesson with regards to rigorous processes, large corporate frameworks and similar and choose to approach development in the future with a more lean approach.

If Li Shufu really means what he says then Volvo’s fate is in her own hands.