Meeting Info:

Topic: Refining Our User Stories (aka "The Planning Game")

Date: Tuesday, Sept 11, 2007

Where: Indian Trails Library (in Wheeling, 355 Schoenbeck Rd., Map). Meeting room is on first floor, near the back, on the left, behind the video section.

Time: 7-9pm

Before the meeting: Be sure to review/print the group's Backlog of high-level stories and bring it with you.

Agenda:

We'll be conducting a "real" agile planning session, as seen on agile dev teams everywhere. :)

• We'll start with our previously-generated list of high-level goals
• We'll select a few which we can all agree we have interest in
• We'll uncover tasks or more detailed stories we can do, to accomplish our selected high-level goals before some due date (End of year?)
• We'll persist these tasks / detailed stories to the wiki and commit to delivering them!

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Meeting Notes:

(to be recorded during/after the meeting)

Attending:

• Dan Wellisch
• Derek Wade
• Nate Kirby
• Sergio Pereira
• Lukass Franklin
• Sam Hazziez

Notes/Comments:

Derek Wade: 

    I thought this was a very high-energy meeting. While we didn't get into the planning game, we postponed it because everyone was interested in the "WHY" and "HOW TO MAKE IT WORK" questions surrounding the planning game. Specifically, how should we agilists deal with the tension between "business people" and "agile people / developers" that results from different viewpoints (strategic vs. deliverables).  We talked about the two poles of our world:

    On one extreme is "suits" / scope / strategy /  requirements /  desire to know that the dev team is going to deliver what the org needs when the org needs it.  

    And on the other end of the spectrum is "geeks" / deliverability, small bites / "I-N-V-E-S-T" criteria / tasks / stories / desire to know that the organization isn't going to make the dev team do more than they can.

    We came up with some good answers for how to balance the tension between these two extremes. I talked about Trust Loops, and may talk more on that later. I'll let other people post their notes on our other conversations. :) 

    For next time, we want to actually start demonstrating / practicing ways to resolve this tension, by actually working on producing product. There were two questions we wanted to pay attention to going forward as we do this:

 

1. Trust Loops and "Organizational Change through working on the product" -- how do we START?
2. Dealing with reality -- what to do when "they" want "us" to put 10 months of work into a 5 month bag.

 

Dan Wellisch:

The main point that I took back from this meeting is how we are empowered as developers (on the product side) to actually reduce the    natural tension between us and the business people.  Tension is reduced by communication.  Communication is not just talking with our business customers, but it is delivering product as soon as possible.  Even in an organization that is not considered "Agile", if we take the facet of Agile that concerns delivering a working product (albeit smaller in scope) in 1 week, for example, when the 1st deliverable is due in 1 month, this facilitates  communication by virtue of example.  It also facilates "agility" without the customer knowing it....net effect:  Customers will communicate with you  naturally, earlier, and by virtue of playing with your product.....it's a win-win for you and the customer!

 Lukass Franklin:

The smaller size of the group at this meeting helped increase the level of networking and participation from everyone, something that we all enjoyed.  As a noobie to the formal Agile philosophy of development, but someone who has been coding and managing programmers for over 25 years, it is interesting to see that many of the successful elements of my own personal development style are present in XP while there are concepts that are new to me that seem to be good things to add to my own methods.  A big thanks to Derek and Sam for being patient with us noobies and for helping us understand in practical terms how to apply these XP/Agile concepts to real-life problems.

 

Sam Hazziez:

Excellent meeting and collective examination of the 'AGILE' Practioner's owness (duty) to relieve/remove the inherent 'tension' between the Business and IT stakeholders in an agile environment.  Major points I presented and I continuously press on my teams:

 

• The 'Project' has needs that the 'Requirements' must address (This is IT's vested interest)
• The 'Product' has needs that the 'Requirements' must address (This is the Business vested interest)
• Competing interest (tension) between these [2] elements are consistently prevailent, causing major disconnects and communication fall-off that subsequently challenges the success and viability of both the 'Project' and the 'Product'
• The CSM/CSPO must intuitiatively navigate both stakeholder factions away from 'Stormy Seas' - Herein is the divide that separates the true 'MASTERS' from the certifiable 'DISASTERS'
• Engergized and High-Performance Teams along with Integrated Leadership & Empowerment (Circle/Loop-of-Trust) is the only proven formula for mitigating the 'tension' and ensuring a 'Pathway & Behavior' for both 'Project' and 'Product' success