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PM magazine | FALL 2018
3. Write fiction. Learn to feel comfortable writing documentation for products you can not test yet. You are more likely to meet deadlines by writing fiction than by waiting to write nonfiction for a finished product.
attendees from having to attend the meeting. If you produce the questions, there’s almost always someone on the team willing to provide the answers. Also, be willing to do more digging and playing. You would be surprised at how little you may need to get started.
4. Revise fiction. Learn to revise any fiction before it ships to customers. Insert revision reminders in documents and add revision reminders to your calendar. 5. Skip meetings. Skip meetings that do not add value to the documentation. For example, it might not be necessary for writers to attend code review meetings between developers and quality engineers. 6. Schedule office hours. Schedule a few hours on your calendar each week to answer documentation related questions for your scrum team (or for scrum teams who are not assigned a writer). Agile is a proactive environment: let developers and product managers come to you. 7. Organize documentation “blitzes”. Organize weekly or monthly documentation blitzes — a time when your team works together to review and find flaws in each other’s documentation. Blitzes help ensure accuracy and introduce writers to products they might not be familiar with. 8. Write bottom-up as well as top-down. Agile emphasizes flexibility over processes; it is okay to write a plan after you start writing topics. Do what you think is best for you, the team, and the product. 9. Learn what to ignore. Take what you can from agile and ignore the rest. Agile focuses on software development, not writing. For example, attending daily scrums only twice a week may be enough. Agile means self-organizing; it is okay if different teams work in slightly different ways.
Troubleshooting The short answer to every question is: speak up! Agile relies on face-to-face interaction, frequent updates, and team members confident enough to volunteer input, whether good or bad. What do I do if I’m not invited to meetings, such as daily “stand ups”? Find the person who runs the meetings, ask to be added to the meetings, and be prepared to explain why. You may need to reassure the person that you will not slow down the meeting, and remind her that the more you learn, the less time you need from subject matter experts (SME). Escalate if needed. If you can not attend scrum meetings, sprint reviews, and similar meetings, the organization probably has bigger problems that need addressing, and you are not really writing in an agile environment. What do I do if product managers or developers think agile is a license not to write functional specifications? If you have agile coaches or anyone monitoring the health of the agile implementation, ask for help. If you do not, we have found out that the following produce results: holding meetings, and suggesting in the invite that answering pre-screened questions will save
How do I cope with last-minute code check-ins? Some organizations insist that documentation should not be held to the same cycle as development and quality assurance, but of course this just leads to more debt being accumulated. Some organizations define “done” in such a way as to leave a little wiggle room for those Friday afternoon check-ins. The best way to cope with this is to help manage the process so that late check-ins do not occur. Bring up in sprint review meetings that any user interface affecting work should be done early, not late. Or, remind folks that their work may not get translated, or will stick out as possibly of lower quality without adequate time to review online text and other steps. If someone really does check in a hunk of code at the last minute, with a lot of documentation ramifications, remind the team that the whole team is not done until all the work is done, and ask for help. You may not get help the first time, but the wonderful thing about scrum is that team members get the chance to learn from their mistakes and improve every month. Writing in an agile environment poses new difficulties for writers, but so did the typewriter and computer when they were first introduced. With widespread support, patience, and best practices from our managers and executives, we learned how to use agile and discovered that the benefits it provides writers outweighs the struggles we encountered when learning how to use it.
FOUR KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MANAGING AN EFFECTIVE AGILE TEAM Moyo Fakeye Project Manager Early Morning Software (EMS) Inc.
In today’s world, agile management has really caught on with big and smaller organiz ations across all sectors of the economy. There are so many discussions and writings about the Agile framework and its benefits by numerous renowned practitioners.
It is important that a project manager takes a deep look at these principles and the cultural makeup of project teams.
4. Choosing the right principles and concepts
1. One of the principles that would allow for effective
“...the makeup of project teams is one of the most important factors to consider when implementing the Agile methodology.”
management is creating an environment that encourages a constant feedback cycle as well as an allowance for failure. This is very important because, in order to be agile, a team needs to be nimble. This ensures that the occurrence of change can easily be incorporated into the ongoing team activities.
ability to follow defined processes. There are numerous software tools in the marketplace that are built with an agile team in mind, so it is important for a manager to do research on the different features available in the marketplace and choose the right one for the team.
2. Another way to manage agile teams more
3. Another mistake in managing an agile team
One thing that is usually omitted when the Agile framework is adopted by an organization is how to manage agile teams throughout the organization effectively.
effectively is to ensure that the right project management tool is chosen. With a lot of employees working remotely these days, project management tools that allows for virtual teams to collaborate in an efficient manner is important. These project management tools must have the
is not understanding the team culture. To be an effective manager, you have to examine what aspects of the Agile framework would be used in your organization. Agile management comes with numerous how-to’s and managing principles, but these concepts are very generic and generalized.
to implement should be done with the makeup of project team members in mind. In my agile practitioning experience which spans over a decade, the makeup of project teams is one of the most important factors to consider when implementing the Agile methodology. Organizations must ensure that the adoption of the Agile methodology involves careful customization with the cultural makeup of the company in mind In conclusion, the paradigm shift of Agile management is here to stay. Companies need to invest in management training and technology to help their managers succeed. Most business schools are now teaching Agile management methodologies in their coursework so graduates and junior level staff are going into the workplace expecting to be competent Agile managers. To effectively manage a team with the Agile framework, it is important that managers understand the uniqueness of their organization. Managers must also seek to understand how agile management can play a role in improving organizational efficiency.