It was a large group this month at the SL-Agile roundtable. As my laziness continues, all you get again this month is my raw notes. I’ve bolded my main take-aways.

Agile 2009 Roundup

Kanban: the gap in inventory in the next station. Kanban pulls from the end, not push from the front. You would only code new features if QA has time to test it.
Costs: if costs are essentially linear, and software value is exponential, estimation becomes worthless. Value is the only thing that matters. Always deliver high value items, regardless of the cost.

Switching from command and control to a collaborative leadership style

Celebrate failures. If you haven’t had a failure in the last 6 months, you have a problem.

The appropriate amount of slack

Google does 1 day out of 5 for personal time
1/2 day every two weeks is not enough
Better to group up the time to have large blocks. 4 weeks on, 1 on.
You have to plan the slack in. Give a “gold” pass out to one person per iteration. Don’t hide it in padded estimates.

Dealing with trust issues on a team

Book: Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior
Self organized teams would self disciplin and deal with the trust issues.

User story formats

Quit arguing about the format and do something.
Can your customer read, understand and see value in your stories.
Are they reading them?

What is the role of process in a growing company

New person wants to rollback some working agile processes. You’ve got to fight for it.

Jonathan’s show and tell

Big iceberg list from a project. 6 cards wide by 12 cars high. Each with a sentence.
Is it effective as an information radiator? the intended consumer has to judge.
Does not readiate very far.
Borderline overload.
You have to watch and review your tools to make sure they still have value.

Book Recommendation:

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace