Tag Archives: Sprint

Agile, SDLC, Software Development, Technology

Azure DevOps: In Search of Exceptional Reporting Falls Short of Expectations

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Azure DevOps (ADO) reporting “out of the box” or leveraging extensions lacks robust project delivery timeline reporting many are reliant upon for conveying project timelines. Integrations by Microsoft DevLabs such as “Delivery Plans”, “Feature Timelines,” and “Epic Roadmap” all fall short of making the mark. Why? The ADO product targets Sprint delivery and primarily focuses on reporting with the most common graphical paradigms for measuring Project / Sprint progress, such as the Sprint Burndown rather than a Gantt chart.

Still Can’t Print

Sounds like a small ask, but it’s not. None of the aforementioned Azure DevOps Extensions gives the user the ability to print out timelines. I don’t think anyone said, “let’s not let users do that”. Printing out “Gantt-like” charts is not easy with special formatting constraints. If you’ve ever tried to print out an MS Project Gantt chart, you would know the pain of adjusting print parameters to get it just right, e.g., fit to NN page(s)

Still Can’t Share Outside Azure DevOps

This kind of relates to the “Still Can’t Print” issue. In the best-case scenario, users should be able to print their “Gantt like” charts to a PDF, and then the PDF can be used to externalize and vocalize the timelines, for example, with the “Feature TImelines” extension. Yes, you can send a link to these timelines visualizations; however, the user who will try and click the link will need to have some license setup in ADO to see the page.

Reporting Across Projects and Teams within an Org

The Azure DevOps “Delivery Plans” extension has finally empowered users to report across any and all projects across your ADO organization. In addition, filtering by a Team is also available if you have multiple teams working within a project. A portfolio manager could look across their portfolio of projects and only see what is relevant to them.

Markers

The Azure DevOps “Delivery Plans” extension allows the user to add markers/milestones to a project timeline. Product “release indicators” could be added to the timeline.

Delivery Plans Extension

Delivery Plans seem to be the most promising visualization tool, with additional capabilities noted:

  • Styling Rules (Colors, Bold, Italic, Underline)
  • Fields Displayed on Cards (up to 17)
  • Tag Colors

Drawbacks to Implementation

  • Field Criteria doesn’t include AND | OR Logic
  • “Feature Timelines” does a vertical “Group By” Epic, which seems to be a better “delivery focused” view showing which features will be delivered within a specific Epic instead of delivery grouped by Team. At least we should have the option to do either.

Power BI with Gantt Chart Reporting Against ADO

The closest you will come to Azure DevOps Project Plan reporting will be to utilize the Azure DevOps data source from within Power BI and install the Gantt Chart Visualization designed to report on ADO.

Agile, AI, Business, Digital Assistant, Technology

Agile Advisor Plugin for Microsoft Teams

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Advisory Role in Microsoft Team Communications

Agile Advisor Plugin for #Microsoft Teams is able to observe team interactions, such as conference calls within Microsoft Teams. The Advisor can derive “dialog intents” and provide recommendations for improvement. A retrospective on communications, such as Scrum ceremonies

Voice Recognition During Teams Meetings

Technology that leverages voice recognition, such as Interactive voice response (IVR) solutions are fraught with failed recognition. IVRs are used to answer calls in just about every company, which prompts for either a phrase from the user on what they want and the ability to enter a numeric value correlating to the desired intent. Challenge #1.

Dialog and Intent Identification

Beyond trying to identify the user’s intent from a phrase or sentence, a dialog, a series of interactions between two or more team members is even more complex. Current AI models that identify intent from a sentence or phrase have a mixed variable of accuracy, which is why these models must be tuned over time. A collective of interactions, a dialog between two or more team members, has a much higher level of complexity to identify intents. Challenge #2. Once a dialog intent(s) has an “N”% level of accuracy, rules may be fired with any number of outcomes, such as unintrusive logging of Agile suggestions for best practices, and next steps: e.g. a retrospective of the scrum ceremony.

Dynamically Identify Roles in Teams Meetings

Who participates in Microsoft Teams meetings and team chats can be associated with Microsoft Teams’ member profiles, such as Scrum Master, and Product Owners.

Enhance the Adherence to Agile Principles

12 Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto, and opportunities for rules to be trigger based on conversations, the interactive dialogs.

  1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
  3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
  11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Dialog Intent Rules for Agile Guidance

From the above agile principles, we can derive the following dialog intents and precise recommendations for improvement.

Barriers to Implementation

At the current level of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Digital Assistants, i.e. chatbots, even the “best in breed”, has “difficulty”, i.e. lower probability with intent recognition, with a single sentence or phrase. Multiply that by interpreting an interactive dialog with multiple sentences, multiple participants, and exchange of responses, feasibility is highly speculative.

And Still More Opportunity: Recognition of Facial Emotional Expressions 

Expressions of people may be able to be determined, and opportunities for suggestive posture can be advised. Even body posture folded arms as an example, can imply a guarded opinion, and not open to compromise.

Reference article – Emotion recognition using facial expressions

Caution and Opportunities

This plugin output could be used for annual employee evaluations.

The Art of Playing the Hand You’re Dealt

Agile, Business, Development, Software Development, Technology, Work

Agile’s Watergate

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A relic of the Waterfall model is the construct of a “gate” process. In order for a project to achieve a milestone, the project/solution would need to achieve certain criteria that would allow it to go to the next phase of the project. For example, going from solidifying requirements in a Business Requirements Doc (BRD) to the software implementation phase.

In Agile, we leverage the Product Owner (PO) and the Product Backlog to determine what gets done and when. A Product Backlog item (PBI) may cover the full lifecycle of a Feature, from requirements to implementation. The Product Owner dictates acceptance of the PBI based on the status/transparency of the Backlog, such as the criticality of the Bugs linked to the PBI. Product quality and implemented functionality are transparent to the PO, who will determine the next steps such as release the software, and/or go through another iteration/sprint. Iterations are a defined cadence agreed to by the implementation team and the Product owner, typically, 2-week sprints.

Agile, Hybrid Environments: Opportunities for Synergy

Epics, Features, Product Backlog Items, and Tasks are object types in a Backlog that enable the PO and the team to link objects and plan over multiple sprints. Epics or Themes of Sprints are “high level”, potentially strategic initiatives. Features roll up into Epics as a part of several sprints. Either Epics or Features may be high enough level to link to Psydo Project Milestones for a product roadmap of deliverables, and solicitation outside the team.

Aggregation of Product Backlog Items, Effort Estimations, roll up into Features, and then up into Epics, which roughly equate to milestone timelines.

The “Definition of Done” (DoD) for a Product Backlog Item may require 0 outstanding Bugs with the severity of “Critical” linked to this PBI. The DoD criteria could be analogous to a traditional Quality Assurance gate.

Tasks that are production rollout activities, without a project plan, should be planned for in future sprints, akin to estimating when items may be completed in the proper sequence. Some of the Tasks may be placed conservatively in “early” sprints and may require items to be “pushed forward” after each of the iterations.

Business, Economy, Media, Mobility, Technology

Free Nights and Weekends Makes a Comeback

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Remember when you could make free mobile calls after 9:30 PM weeknights, and all weekend? For awhile the mobile carriers competed on the time when “off-peak” started, from 10 PM to 8:30 PM. A whole hour and a half! These days we have unlimited domestic calling all the time.

So, now we have varying degrees of data plans, such as AT&T Wireless 3 GB, 9 GB, or unlimited per month, but there are caps where after 22 GB data transfer speeds are slowed down.  22 gigs seem like a lot until you have kids using Snapchat and TikTok.

When you think about it, data peak is when you may not be in a hot spot. At night, you’re at home using your own WiFi, or at an establishment with their complimentary WiFi. Weekends and weekdays are a bit scattered. Your work may have WiFi, but weekdays “on peak” are mostly commuting times, the “rush hour(s)”,

Can wireless carriers bring back on and off-peak for data?  The simplest approach:  “turn off the meter” during off-peak data periods.  Maybe on-peak the consumer can elect 5G, when available, and off-peak at 4G LTE? Our Smartphones can identify low consuming bandwidth opportunities, e.g. when the phone is locked, text messages without graphics and email are semi-passive states. Maybe users are able to prioritize their apps data usage? What about those “chatty” apps that you rarely use? Smartphone settings may show you those apps bandwidth consumption as opportunities to prioritize them lower than your priority apps.

Skeptic, and think there are no Peak or Off-Peak periods with data?  Check the business analytics.  I’m sure wireless carriers have a depth of understanding for their own business intelligence (BI).

Agile, Project Management

Agile Mind Games – the Psychology of Scrum

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Team Effort Estimations Are Critical to Accurate Velocity, Maximum Productivity, and Team Building.

The team tech lead may provide an effort estimation with little or no input from the developers and/or testers doing the work.

If the tech lead vocalizes his/her effort estimation…

  • BEFORE the developer who will be doing the work, the developer may feel pressured to agree with the tech lead’s estimate.
  • lower than the developer’s guestimate, who will be doing the work, this might create social friction and inaccurate velocity.
  • WITHOUT a collaborative approach, a comprehensive estimation may be ruled out, such as consideration for not only dev. and test., but infra (configuration management, i.e. build & deploy) and other effort costs.

Using tools like Planning Poker, where all estimations are revealed at once helps the team appear to not contradict one another. The negotiation process occurs after all teammates flip their cards at once. Derives better estimates with more perspectives not factored in based on a single Tech lead providing the estimation.

Transparency and Scrutiny

Many “hands-on” project/product stakeholders want maximum transparency into the current state of the product regardless of the duration of the sprint (e.g. 2-week sprints),   Typically, a pulse on the product at two-week increments satisfy most.

Some of the agile, change management tools such as Microsoft Azure DevOps offer dynamic graphing and reporting.  Product stakeholders may be provided dynamic dashboards, that include Burn Down, and Burn Up charts based on the sum of effort from user stories (i.e. product backlog items).  At any given time charts can predict velocity, and based upon the outstanding, total effort estimation, can chart a course to the next release.

Meaningful burn up and burn down charts rely not just on accurate effort estimations, but the people who are assigned these user stories constantly update the status of these stories, e.g. New; In-Progress; In-Review; Done. Countless times I’ve seen team members update the user story status the day before the sprint close/demo, from New -> Done.  This habit gives any product stakeholders a false view of the product within a sprint.

Another challenge and opportunity with Transparency and Scrutiny within a given sprint, is making sure each user story has one or more (child) tasks.  Defining tasks provides a wealth of opportunity, such as naming all of the tasks to complete for the story, e.g. database tasks, UI tasks, etc.  If the tasks are itemized, they may also be assigned to multiple team resources, and show a delineation of labor.

Sticking with the Azure DevOps tool, Tasks have a default field, “Remaining Work”.  This field may express task work in hours or days, the unit of measure. In the beginning, tasks are populated with the total task guesstimate of hours. Each day the person assigned the story task may draw down on the task to incrementally show progress within the task and correlating story.

Task, Work Remaining field must be relentlessly updated across the Backlog in play or else it will create more harm than good. At this level of scrutiny on tasks are amorphous and will be challenging to garnish any projected value.

The Abominable Blocker

What, you can’t figure it out on your own?

The dreaded blocker has the ability to stop a Scrum team in its tracks. The term Impediment used synonymously with the word Blocker, has an innocuous sounding sentiment. Your Scrum team may use either, perhaps a less severe issue merits an Impediment?

The Kanban / Scrum board may have a column in the workflow called Blocker, which should fixate your team on helping to remediate that Blocker. Our Daily Scrum of 15 min may focus on Blockers as they have been isolated in our workflows.

Conquer the blocker before it conquers you!

Applause, Applause

Closing and Demo for Sprints should follow healthy applause from the team, including Stakeholders and Product Owner. Positive reinforcement of a job well done. We’ve completed what we committed to complete, should be followed by applause. We should take a moment to soak in the feedback.

Pass the Mic

For those of us on the Scrum team who are introverts and actively look for ways of dodging opportunities to speak, this one is for you. During Daily Scrum, pass the facilitation mic around where everyone gets an opportunity to facilitate per stand up.

Allow all people within the team an opportunity to demo the “Done” user stories on sprint close. It’s not to break folks out of their shell, it’s to impart a sense of pride in the work accomplished, and truly resonate the one team mentality.

Disclosure: the opinions provided are my own and do not reflect that of my clients, or anyone I represent.

Business, Entertainment, Media, Technology

Wireless Carriers: Data Only Plans

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Is there any traction on ‘Data Only’ wireless plans which augment your primarily carrier?

E.g. when you reach the allocated capacity of the primary plan, one of N secondary wireless providers may be selected ‘on the fly’ or in  settings.  Each wireless provider may offer their own competitive ‘data only’ plan.  The subscriber may choose a “10 GB for 10 USD.”

Alternatively, the consumer may direct traffic of a certain type, e.g. Network packets for movies to ABC wireless.

Prime example, my family shared plan offers 10 GB to share among the 4 of us.  One of us, for the last two months, chewed up our data plan.   At 75%, 90%, and 100% AT&T sent us warning notifications, which was very good.

After we bust the quota, we are automatically charged one GB for 15 USD.  It may be just me, but that sounds pricey.  Both months I stopped the data component for one of the phones.  Also, a great feature AT&T, but it doesn’t go far enough, block only streaming movies when not in WiFi.  I’d prefer if the middle tier, the wireless solutions management implement the feature.  The kids don’t have access to it as would a device implementation.

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Law, Legal, Media, Mobility, Technology

Wireless Data Plans, Packet Protocols, Granular Reporting

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6 Days Left of my Billing Cycle: 0.3 GB Left (out of 10 GB)

Are you kidding me?! I login to AT&T’s Wireless, myAT&T portal to dive into where is all our data going?  I am able to see quite easily what mobile phone number is eating up our plan, but no additional granular information.  AT&T has a great site with lots of good information to help their customers manage their plans.

However, it seems wireless providers leave it up to the handset manufacturers to interpret the usage of the phones. Makes some sense on an individual level, but as multi line / family wireless plans continue to evolve, the growth of wireless services management portals should be spent on providing consumers transparency into their usage, aggregated and granular.

Packets of [wireless] data, bits of information, have a ‘signature’ as they travel through the Internet ether.  Packet protocol defines where the data/information originates, and it’s destination, as well as any other required information by the application sending / receiving the data.  Wireless carriers’, services management portal should allow consumers to slice and drill down to see how data is being used. For example,

Wireless plans of 10 GB is not a lot with teenagers.  You may want to target areas to curtail usage so you aren’t ‘bleeding data’.  At this time, there is not enough transparency on how data is being used from the wireless provider’s usage platform. The provider should be able to parse data packets to quantify how data is being used, and provide reports, e.g.

June 2015 Snapshot for 212-555-1212

231 songs streamed from ABC, N MB; 23 videos watched on YouTube, 2.3 GB; 34 streamed videos from Netflix, 3.2 GB; 345 emails downloaded, 90 MB;

DAM on wireless services:  Application data packet objects may have visibility through Digital Asset Management (DAM), all objects that can be managed, phone calls to chats from Facebook (except where encrypted).

Now take a piece of paper, write privacy on it, then rip it in half and toss it in the garbage.

Business, Technology

Adjustable Data Quota Limits on Member’s of Family/Shared Data Plans

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A cap on the amount of shared data each person in the plan is allowed to use should be adjustable at any point in the billing cycle. Good Use Case:  my kids are on my family plan, and I want to limit their data usage.  They always use more than my wife and I.

Another possible use case, from a small business perspective, if you add a few lines on your plan, then you may allocate to specific type of employees, such as sales reps., specific amounts of data.  There are several types of widgets can be used, such as a pie chart, and the total pie represents the total data package, and each slice represents an allocation to each member of the shared plan.

Update: I stand corrected, and do see an AT&T Smart Limits for 4.99 USD per month: