Characteristics of an organization for easier Agile adoption

“Embrace the change” is the buzzword everyone is shouting at the top of their voice in every conference and seminars. ‘Follow the Agile process to succeed in your value delivery’ is also very much prevalent across discussions. Once the top management finalizes Agile transition, the entire approach changes dramatically. Hence, not all organizations respond to this change positively. In such scenarios, it will be better to stick to the traditional waterfall model or opt for a customized hybrid model.

Below are some of the desired characteristics of a company for a smoother Agile transition:

Urgency to deliver:Agile is best suited for teams and customers who know their priorities according to market dynamics. When all the features are of same priority, Agile will not be very effective. But when features have to be prioritized according to maximizing value for the customers, with an eye on the criticality and time constraint, Agile is best suited to deliver the highest value.

Volatile Requirements:Unlike waterfall model, wherein requirements are locked before design and development begins, Agile is all about expecting changes and embracing it. This thought process is very practical in nature because market dynamics and competition force your customers to be light footed and nimble. Also, there might be internal conflicts among different stakeholders about which feature should be given higher priority, which can also lead to change in requirements.

Customer Availability: Customers don’t have to be available at all the times, but there are several instances wherein their presence is mandatory. Customers have to provide inputs at the right instances; else the entire effort becomes futile. Also, once customers involve themselves more and more with the projects, they will start to appreciate the effort that is being put in by the delivery team, and they will become more supportive and considerate.

Consistent resources:In traditional method, functionality silos exist. But in Agile, “one team” culture is followed. The primary reason is that Agile teams have a learning curve, and they eventually get better with experience and time. Also, frequently changing resources in an Agile project will mean more effort from the new resource to understand the processes. So, highly motivated individuals are preferred who want to be part of the Agile transition, and as much as practically possible, teams should not be tinkered with.

So, in case an organization scores high in the above mentioned characteristics, it can be assumed that transition to Agile process will be smooth, rewarding and satisfying.

Know Your Microsoft Certification – Part 1

Which Microsoft certification is best suited for you?

The answer to the above question depends totally on your current position in your company or the path you would like to choose to build up your career. Microsoft certifications help in increasing your expertise and market your skills to others.

Below mentioned are the different job titles and how each certification will help you in your career progress.

Software Application Developer

If you are a software developer, then Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) certifications are best suited for you. Microsoft Certified Professional Developer makes you an expert developing various platforms using Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

Microsoft Certified Application Developer covers the whole application stage starting from the development of the software to its maintenance.

If analysis and design of software appeal to you, then you can go ahead with Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD). The MCSD covers the whole of the application stage going through design, development, testing and maintenance.

Systems Engineer

For a systems engineer, the MCSE or MCSA are the best options depending on the depth of study you would want to take. The MCSE is a standard certification in the industry and provides all the skills from analysing the business requirements to the design and deployment of infrastructure. The MCSA is one level lower and it mainly focusses on the managing and troubleshooting areas.

IT Business Analyst

A candidate who has mastered Microsoft Office can go ahead with a MCP or MCSD which will bring a lot of help to most of the business analysts. If you want to do other certifications as well, then you can go for MCP as it opens up several career paths. But, be sure to choose the best one of all the options. The MCSD is basically the ultimate level which handles the full application lifecycle.

Systems Analyst

A typical systems analyst has to cater to many roles which need the candidate to go for a MCSD or MCAD depending on the candidate’s current job and his requirements. The Microsoft Certified Application Developer takes care of the application stages starting from development to maintenance. Whereas, the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer certification might be helpful for an analyst to get a good overview of the full application cycle from analysis, through design, development, testing and maintenance.

Software Engineer

For a software engineer, either a MCSD or a MCSE is an excellent choice. The choice though depends on your current job and the current demand in the market. If you opt for MCSD, then you would gather knowledge of how to design and develop development tools, technologies and platforms. On the other hand, if you go for MCSE, you would gain the knowledge of doing analysis, design and implementation of infrastructures.

Colocated Team Vs. Distributed Team in Scrum

One very important factor considered while forming Scrum team is physical location of team members– are all of them located at the same place or in geographically dispersed locations. For many of the Scrum practices, high-level, frequent communication between members of the Scrum Team, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters is required and to enable this, it is preferred that team members are colocated. Colocation allows both formal and informal interaction between team members. This provides the advantage of having team members always at hand for coordination, problem- solving, and learning. Some of the benefits of colocation are –

·         Questions gets answered quickly

·         Problems are fixed on the spot

·         Less friction occurs between interactions

·         Trust is gained and awarded much more quickly

However it is always not possible to have colocated teams. At times the Scrum teams may be distributed due to outsourcing, offshoring, different physical locations, work from home options, etc. In case of distributed teams, appropriate infrastructure has to be made available to ensure that regular communication takes place among team members. Whenever possible, a distributed team should have an in-person Project Kick-off Meeting at a common location. This will help establish the basis for future communications. It is also a best practice to have different team members relocate to another site to act as cultural liaisons to ensure proper communication throughout the project.

Collaboration tools play a very important role in effective communication between team members.Collaboration tools that can be used for colocated and distributed teams are as follows –

1.    Colocated Teams (i.e., teams working in the same office) – If teams are colocated, preferred modes of communication include face to face interactions, decision rooms or war rooms, Scrumboards, wall displays, shared tables, and so on.

2.    Distributed Teams (i.e. teams working in different physical locations) –Some tools that could be used for effective collaboration with distributed teams include video conferencing, instant messaging , chats, social media, shared screens, and software tools which simulate the functionality of Scrumboards, wall displays and so on. Because in person Daily Stand-up Meetings are not possible in case distributed teams, they need to be done electronically. One important point to consider here is to fix an acceptable time for everybody for the daily meeting - for example, early morning for America, mid-day for Europe, and evening for Asia Pacific and so on.

For more information on Scrum, Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK^TM Guide) from SCRUMstudy is a recommended reading.

Do individuals matter in Scrum Teams?

An Organization becomes empowered by individuals who have the required information, skill and desire to individually succeed in a way that will help in collective organizational growth.

Inability or perceived inability to take an active role in organizational process results in bringing down the motivational level among people working in that organization. When individuals are not empowered, it leads to falling back to methodologies and work processes.

However, Scrum has a complete different view towards the standard approach in that it emphasises on putting responsibility of problem solving to a self-managed team. Scrum believes that people dealing with problems are the appropriate people to find a solution to it.

Usually a self -organized team issues takes local into account irrespective of the solution, design or approach the team comes up with. So, when things get worst, the teams are committed to make things work as it is their decision. If it were someone else’s decision they would be less interested. Current and relevant knowledge helps them to come up with better solutions to problems they face.

Majority of problems faced by Organizations and teams are very complex. So, ideas or solutions against such problems involve increased level of complexity which cannot be solved by a single individual. Therefore, companies need to encourage synergy of motivated minds where the value of combined effect is greater than the sum of their separate effects.

In a self-managing team everyone is responsible for the collective team performance. There is nowhere to hide in a self-managing team. Nobody can hide in a self –managing team and no one is going to take the fall for the other.

Self-organizing team in true sense can increase the performance, motivation and satisfaction level among the individuals involved. Therefore, improving the performance of the organization overall. Suitable deliverables along with self-managed team synergy provides a win: win situation.

However,  in order to realize the benefits of self –managed team, we need to have a conducive or productive environment , a culture where the people believes in all information is good information and that everyone did the best. What matters most is the success of the projects on which the teamis working and the organisation that the team is a part of.

Success of Scrum is dependent on self-organized teams. However, it is not always possible to manage self-organized teams .Self-organizing teams require constant self as well as peer reviews to perform well.

Incidents and Problems

One common doubt is usually there in everyone’s mind related to the IT service field as to what is the difference between an incident and a problem. This doubt is usually there in most of our minds but we generally tend to ignore and don’t ask anyone for the fear of being ridiculed or believe it to be the same thing. We generally use it in a very casual manner as all issues are either an incident or a problem.

However this is far from true as ITIL very clearly specifies the difference between an incident and a problem. Now let’s look at their explanations and clear the air around the same.

An incident is actually a failure of a system or an error in the system like a hard disk failure or a server crash or printer jamming etc. They are actually 1 time events and have standard handling and fixing procedures.

Whereas by contrast a problem arises due to multiple related incidentsand is usually more serious than an incident and needs to be followed up at deeper level to avoid future similar incidents.

A classic example of an incident resolution is taking an aspirin when you get a headache-this guarantees that you do not have the headache anymore but doesn’t guarantee the fact that you wouldn’t have the headache again. While popping an aspirin we never bother to think of why we got the headache in the very first place.

So here the aspirin Is the incident resolution while finding out what caused the headache is classic problem identification and resolution.

The main motto of Incident resolution is to resolve the incident as soon as possible while that of problem resolution is ultimate resolution of the problem and ensure that it doesn’t reoccur again.

Ideally there should be fixed and tight deadline for incident resolution, but none for problem resolution as their mottos and aims are totally different, though their functioning and processes might be similar.