Contents

1. Upcoming courses
2. Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns of Software Organizations
3. XP2009 highlights
4. The New New NEW! Product Development Game
5. Beyond Budgeting
6. Kanban – a pragmatic approach to agile and lean
7. Promise is Debt – Trouble in (agile) paradise
8. Rob climbs the Alpe d’Huez six times
9. Events

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1. Upcoming courses
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1-3 July, eXperience Agile

Courses will take place in Tilburg (The Netherlands), unless indicated
otherwise. We also deliver our workshops and courses at other
locations (depending on where most participants come from) and in-
house.

www.qwan.it

Brochure: www.qwan.it/doc/courses_and_workshops_2009.pdf

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2. Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns of Software Organizations
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In March last year we presented “Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns of
Software Organizations” at the QCon conference in London. The video of
this presentation is now available on InfoQ

We introduce different cultural patterns you can find in software
organizations, based on Gerald M. Weinberg’s work. We tell how to
recognize them, what behavior to expect, and how unexpected events and
change are handled. We show how different agile processes like Scrum,
XP, and Lean Software Development fit in. We also explain common
agile failure modes. It’s all about choosing an approach that fits
your situation and that makes you more effective.

www.infoq.com/presentations/beyond-agile

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3. XP2009 highlights
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In the last week of May we participated in XP2009, the annual European
conference on agile software development. The conference was organized
in sunny Sardinia (Italy). We enjoyed a wonderful mix of interactive
workshops, lively open space sessions, good keynote presentations, and
many inspiring conversations.

We have run two workshops: the New New NEW! Product Development Game
(see below) and the Scrapheap Challenge (more about that in the next
newsletter).

Some highlights:

* Bjarte Bogsnes’s keynote and tutorial on “Beyond Budgeting: because
the future ain’t what it used to be”. See below for a detailed
description of this fascinating way of (un)budgeting.

* Mary Poppendieck’s keynote on “Cultural Assumptions Behind Agile
Software Development”

* A great open space with good sessions and intense discussions, for
instance on Solution Focused Coaching, Agile testing, Executable
Specifications, and Visual Management

* Various sessions on Kanban

* The Scrum Board Game by Stefan van den Oord and Wim van de Goor.
This game lets the participants experience how to quickly create order
out of the chaos in their (spaghetti project by visualizing and
continuously monitoring and updating user stories and tasks on the
wall.

Next year’s conference will be in Trondheim, Norway, in June 2010

me.andering.com/2009/05/31/xp2009-beach-photos
www.xp2009.org
www.xp2010.org

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4. The New New NEW! Product Development Game
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The New New NEW! Product Development Game is a new simulation we have
developed to let people discover the differences, similarities, and
(dis)advantages of several existing and new agile planning approaches.

Scrum and eXtreme Programming reduce planning a complex product with
multiple stakeholders, which is a multidimensional problem, to a
linear backlog or list of stories. Sometimes it is too simplistic to
“let the customer speak with one voice” (XP) or “let the product owner
decide what features go in the product” (Scrum). It also occurs that
waiting until the end of the next sprint to get an urgent feature
request in production takes too long, or that pre-planning and
estimating are useless because a team is maintaining existing software
based on incoming defect reports.

Another limitation we have run into is the traditional backlog being
well suited for incremental development – building a product feature
by feature. It does not fit the iterative nature of creative work like
software development well, where we elaborate features piecemeal while
our understanding of the problem grows. The result is disappointed
customers (who thought a feature would be finished in one go) and hard
to manage costs.

A third limitation of traditional agile planning is the lack of
overview of the product as a whole. This makes it difficult for
customers to prioritize, risking a product with too many features of
too little value.

To remedy these limitations of traditional agile approaches to
planning, a number of new planning techniques have been developed.
User Story Mapping and Dimensional Planning are better suited for
product development in complex environments. They continuously provide
a good overview of the whole product, while allowing detailed release
planning fast. Furthermore, these techniques support working
iteratively much better. Kanban enables working in extremely small
batches and is a useful supplement for the other techniques.

In our simulation the participants create a release plan in one or two
rounds. They also have to adapt for unexpected changes. The challenge
is planning a system that is as valuable as possible with minimal
effort, while balancing the interests of different stakeholders.

The title of the workshop refers to the Harvard Business Review
article “The New New Product Development Game” by Nonaka and Takeuchi
(1986). This article is among other things the source of Scrum.

www.qwan.it/newproductdevelopment

We are developing the simulation itself in an iterative and
incremental way as well. At XP2009 we ran a trial, after which we
performed it during an in-house course with some modifications. Read
our impression:

bit.ly/14cdhj

Or read Dave Nicolette’s report, with suggestions for improvement:

dnicolet1.tripod.com/agile/index.blog/1913027/xp2009-my-report

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5. Beyond Budgeting
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Beyond Budgeting is a new and promising approach to budgeting and
managing organizations. Like agile software development, Beyond
Budgeting builds on selforganization and leadership. Business units
have the freedom to determine their goals, given they are responsible
enough.

The leadership principles of Beyond Budgeting are:

1. Customers – focus everyone on customer outcomes, not on meeting
internal targets

2. Organization – create a network of small units accountable for
results, instead of centralized hierarchies

3. Responsibility – build a high responsibility culture based on
relative success, not on meeting targets or following ‘the plan’

4. Autonomy – give teams the freedom and capability to act, instead of
micro-managing them

5. Transparency – promote open information for self management; don’t
restrict it hierarchically

6. Governance – adopt a few clear values and boundaries, instead of
detailed rules and budgets

It’s about making everyone within the organization feel what the
strategic goals are, so that everyone takes responsibility to achieve
these goals. Contrast this with imposing internal targets, which tends
to reduce productivity.

Why is Beyond Budgeting relevant for agile software development? For
moving quickly from “concept to cash”, yearly budgeting cycles are a
disaster – it can take a year or longer before your wishes come true.
We have even encountered organizations where you have to request next
year’s budgets already in June.

Like agile software development, Beyond Budgeting is based on a
continuous planning cycle. Another similarity is that Beyond Budgeting
is based on high levels of trust within the organization. Beyond
Budgeting looks like a good enabler for sustainable agile development.

www.bbrt.org (Beyond Budgeting Roundtable)
www.scan-agile.org/2008/slides/bjarte.ppt (Bjarte’s presentation)

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6. Kanban – a pragmatic approach to agile and lean
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Kanban is a new agile approach that has triggered innovative ideas and
heated discussions in the agile community. It is a pragmatic approach
to planning and scheduling development work, based on lean principles.
It is not a method or cookbook, but a set of principles that can be
applied in different ways. The principles are:

* Apply visual process control to manage the flow of work – make a
visual map (Kanban board) of your current processes as a starting
point.

* Limit the Work in Process and the work waiting between process
steps.

* Apply the lean principles of Pull and One Piece Flow, to create a
continuous flow of valuable work being delivered to your customer.
Kanban does not use iterations or time boxes.

* Develop Minimum Marketable Features – the smallest sets of
functionality that can provide value to a customer when released. A
minimum marketable feature tends to be larger than user stories used
in Scrum and other approaches.

* Make decisions based on measurements, not on predictions. Measure
cycle time – how long it takes for a feature to flow through the
system – and the actual work in process.

* Establish a culture of continuous improvement.

Kanban takes a different perspective than for instance eXtreme
Programming and Scrum. A strong point is that it doesn’t require you
to overhaul your existing process. Instead, it takes the current
situation as a starting point for continuous improvement.

Kanban focuses on workflow and scheduling. It says little about how to
do product management, product planning, and prioritization, so you
still need additional practices for this.

blog.mattwynne.net/2009/05/27/kanban-state-of-mind
www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/2009/kanban_over_simplified.html
www.thekua.com/atwork/2009/06/xp2009-day-2

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7. Promise is Debt – Trouble in (agile) paradise
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Willem and Marc will give a presentation on systems thinking applied
to software development and stakeholder management, at the
Integrating Agile conference. This conference is jointly organized by
the Agile Consortium Benelux and Agile Holland and will be held in
Hoofddorp, The Netherlands, on June 18.

In this presentation, we tell the story of an agile development group
working with multiple customers. The group gets stuck in a vicious
circle of making promises to attract new customers, working hard
trying to fulfill the promises, and making more promises when they
fail. What is happening here, are the developers just incompetent? We
taught them agile so everything should work fine!

We will show what happens if management problems are not solved at the
right level by the right people – they surface disguised as technical
problems. We will uncover the underlying dynamics using systems
thinking and show how you can effectively break vicious cycles.

QWAN offers the opportunity to register for the Integrating Agile
conference at a 50% discount.To qualify for this discount, please
mention our name at “Where did you hear about the Agile Conference
2009?”.

www.agileconsortium.nl/en/conference.html

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8. Rob climbs the Alpe d’Huez six times
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In the first week of June, Rob, sponsored by QWAN, has participated in
Alpe d’HuZes, an event where cyclists cycle to collect money for the
fight against cancer.

Rob managed to climb the legendary Alpe d’Huez six times! All
participants together collected the record amount of over 5 million
euros.

www.opgevenisgeenoptie.nl/over/visieuk.php

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9. Events
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18 June, Integrating Agile conference (Hoofddorp, NL),
www.agileconsortium.nl/en/conference.html

24-28 August, Agile 2009 (Chicago, USA), www.agile2009.org

27-29 September, UK Lean and Kanban Conference (London, UK),
www.ukleanconference.com

15-16 October, Scandinavian Agile Conference (Helsinki, Finland),
www.scan-agile.org

23-24 November, XP Days Benelux (Mechelen, Belgium), www.xpday.net

26-28 November, XP Days Germany (Karlsruhe, Germany), www.xpday.de

7-8 December, XP Day London (UK), www.xpday.org

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(c) 2009 Piecemeal Growth, Living Software BV & Westgeest Consultancy