Agile: learning and sharing

23 days ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

Last week, I got a chance to meet the IT Leader of my company’s very big client and was asked to present my work experience with Agile{ Business Intelligence-BI}.

The Project that he led mainly used the Oracle Apps as the HRMS, Informatica and Business Objects as the BI suite and OBIEE for the Analytics. The meeting started off with standard questions like drivers for using Agile, the benefits of the methodology and its disadvantages. Later we got into a discussion where by the client  presented us a scenario.

Their IT had a fixed release plan for the entire year. They had monthly production releases and within a month they followed a standard waterfall or toll-gate approach. He wanted to study our system to see how that could be related to his company’s way of working.The entire team got involved wherein we  asked the lead of each project to identify the waste in their processes.The points that came up were as follows:

1. User acceptance Testing was very slow because of which they could not meet the deadline.
2. Meetings were long.
3. Knowledge retention.
4. A  lot of time was spent in upfront design. In one of the examples stated, they had to change the entire design because of the required changes.
5. Requirements discussion happened at two stages; one between the users and IT managers and then between IT managers and the team. Hence, the requirements signoff was a lengthy process
6. There was a separate QA Team who missed certain key points because of complete ignorance.

Solution to these problems were Standard Agile Principles like Automation testing, Intact and co-located teams,in time design, cancellation of unnecessary meetings,Cross functional teams,etc. He then agreed that if used diligently,it could help the team. The conclusion was that Agile makes you think and discourages one to be complacent. This was the best part of it…….

The other thing I learnt in the meeting was about the Retrospectives we have. We normally reflect on things like what went well and what did not.But also important are two questions: What did we learn between the last retrospective and now and What is something that still puzzles us??? I guess its a  good food for thought…………………….

Overall it was a great learning experience about Agile. Looking forward to many such opportunities in future………………………..

Google Documents: Simple but effective.

about 1 year ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

Today, I and Abhishek were discussing about uploading a document into a Blog site. All we could find is an option of adding a hyperlink into the Blog.

While exploring the Google homepage, I came across a page called Google Documents. And as I started exploring it further, I found it really really useful.It is simple yet a really effective tool to share documents over the internet. In Google Docs, one can create docs in Excel, Word or PPT format.

I could also upload in various formats like .doc, .xls, .ods, .ppt and many more. The best part that I liked about Google docs is sharing of the documents and ability to edit it online.

The tool is pretty simple to use. Yet another Google tool that is easy to use, light in framework and most importantly very effective.

Just one thing to note is it should be used with discretion and confidentiality of the content should be maintained.

Thanks to Facebook, Nostalgia was in abundance

about 1 year ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

Last week, I was going through my mails in Hotmail. I came across an invite to join a group. The name of the group was A.A.B.V.V. Something immediately struck me. Its actually the name of school. Amulakh Amichand Bhimji Vividhalakshi Vidyalaya. Big name huh??

Yes it is indeed a tongue twisting name… Coming back to facebook, it took me no time to join the group and start exploring it. Here I found a few friends who had been out of touch since I left my school which was like 10 years ago. A long time. Exploring the Photos, I found some group photographs uploaded from some of my friends.

The best part was everyone was trying to find oneself in each photo. I uploaded the ones which were there with me. One of them is the one below.

Something for Nostalgia. Thanks to the person starting this group and thanks to Facebook, a superb collaborative site, I could for a short while get back those wonderful memories of my schooling days..

Windows Live Writer: A simple Blog Writer Tool

about 1 year ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

Exploring my laptop, I just came across a simple but an effective blog writing tool named Windows Live Writer. It came with the Windows Live installation. But it was there on my laptop without being noticed.

It has lots of features like adding Hyperlinks, pictures, Photo album, Tables and many more…

It connects online to a Blog site by a simple  configuration. Its saves Drafted Blogs locally as well as on the Site. The best is it allows blogging offline in the same format as you would on a Blog site..

A nice and an easy tool to make blogging even more easier.. Not that blogging was tough anyways!!

Learning as an important part of the Project

about 1 year ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

Since the day I joined the IT Industry, there has been one word that I have been hearing day in and day out.. “Learning”.  Especially in today’s situation, it forms an integral part of the Project.

The situation is such that we cant escape from learning saying that I have a hectic Project schedule and have no time to learn. We need to take out time from our schedule for this.

Or else, include learning as a part of the Project work. We recently had a pre project kick off and thanks to Erika, the Scrum Master of our project we decided that we would take up stories that are related to learning and also somehow inline with the Sponsors interest. But the main focus was to learn something by the end of the Project

Something that can be useful for both the Project as well personal development.

Scrum Agile - Making Sprint Reviews interesting

about 1 year ago | Binoy Shah: Binoy Thinks

AGILILITY in software development is the industry BUZZ these days.We have been "Agile" in developing BI Solutions to the Clients since past 2 years. Scrum methodology is a tool we use to become more and more "Agile"

Sprint Review meeting form one of the most improtant part of Scrum Agile. This meeting is focussed to Demo "Working Sofware" to the Business and all the other Project Stakeholders. The invite of this meeting in our case is extended to the teams ranging from the Business users, Support Team, sponsors and all the top notch IT people from the Client side. Hence these meetings like all the other Agile meetings are precise in content. The development team uses this as a great platform to demo what they have achieved in the Sprint to the end users and Sponsors. During these demos, there is no PPT or document describing the product. It is working software. This way the sponsors know what their money is doing.

In Java and UI related projects, this is a great idea. Here the UI can be shown to the users and they can give their feedback on the Product. However in Data intensive projects like BI, we might end up just analyzing the data in some Sprints when the Project starts. What can be used to Demo then??

We used some interesting tools for this. In Sprint Zero, where we had to just understand certain applications so that the stories related to those applications could be estimated, we used an Animation. It was a brainchild of our Scrum Master and Product Owner. Showing animation really was an effective way of communicating what we have done in the Sprint. The animation used was simple and most improtantly, it clicked with the users.

Even in the most recent Sprint Review meeting, we used Screencasts to demo the Data analysis story. The screencasts were designed by our Scrum master onsite and it worked really well in the Demo. The only thing which is improtant to understand is that preparing these animations should not be too time consuming.

In BI Projects that requires data analysis, we might not have working software to demo every Sprint. So these kind of animations and screencasts or any other such techniques help keep the interest of all the parties in the Sprint review meetings.