HL Arledge

Why are our testers smiling?

Someone said last week...

"HL, you say that EnvisionConnect has zero known defects after the first week of each 30-business-day sprint, but how do we know that this means EC doesn't have defects? Maybe, it means your testers just aren't finding them."

Of course, my first reaction was to become defensive of my Quality Assurance Team, but instead I reminded them that our customers are also testing as they do their day-to-day work.

Then, I grew a bit paranoid and started spending more time with QA to evaluate whether we have processes there which warrant improvement. It has been an interesting endeavor, and you will hear more of my findings in the weeks ahead.

But today I read a quote from Catherine Powell, and I saw some cross-over with the perspective of many scrumming QA'ers...

"Pragmatic QA is about doing what works. Shipping product well is paramount. How you do it is less important. Just get it done.

• If you have to change your process, do it.
• If you have to alter your test plan to account for new information, do it.
• If you have to push back your test schedule to allow for the last minute "forgot it" feature, do it.
• If you have to restart testing of an area because you just found a big bug, just let people know and reset expectations.

Oh, and do it all cheerfully."

Indeed!

Who's afraid of Orange County?

Orange County Environmental Health is one of Decade Software's largest customers—if you weigh large as the number of users. They have been Envision users for many years. In fact, their insights helped shape Envision 3.4 into the solid product that it is today.

Lately, OC has been contemplating a move to EnvisionConnect, and this week, they invited Client Services Manager John Jensen and I down south for a pow-wow.

In the days preceding our trip, the mumbling among Decade staff echoed down the halls.

"I pity JJ and HL. Those Orange folk are tough to deal with."

"Yea, they're really pushy. If there's a feature they want, they won't stop complaining until they get it."

"...and they're tough on defects, too. If Nick Reyes finds something wrong, you'd think the world was coming to an end."

I laugh anytime I hear such chatter.

I've worked with Nick Reyes, Karen Newe, Jeff Warren, Pearl Boelter, Ron Margheim and the rest of the OC crew since they came onboard, and I appreciate the fact that Orange is one of the many clients that helped make our products as solid as they are today.

Do Product Owners evolve and adapt like fire ants?

Mike Cohn posted something I found interesting this week...

"...product owners evolve in adaptation to their environment, just as the fire ants had evolved in adaptation to theirs. His unfortunate situation won’t change until some other environmental factor comes along that changes the motivation and incentives of the product owners."

When I look at the Product Owner for the EnvisionConnect project, Darryl Booth, I think I see where Mike is coming from. Darryl's focus has changed quite a bit in the year or so that he has been in the role, but until reading Mike's thoughts I hadn't attempted to determine just how much.

I think I'll make that one of my next projects and let you know what I find.

Two challenges to effective management in a Scrum world

Ken Judy wrote...

"Team managers should till the soil with their teams. Anything else is waste and waste must be rooted out."

This is not as easy to do as it may seem.

Ken sums the obstacles into what he calls "the two tremendous challenges":

• How to limit distractions in order to remain a reliable contributor
• How to balance your roles as both the boss and peer

In Ken's article, he describes a manager he oversees and describes that manager's practice as a good pattern to solve these problems.

His recipe consists of two parts:

• An experienced coach with people skills and authority over development practices pairing with the developers
• An experienced scrum master

Functional management, says Ken, can reside in one or the other or be divided up in some sensible and easily described way among the two of them. This, he says, enables direct participation in ongoing work, management attention to the team, and strategic contribution to the rest of the company.

I hear Ken loud and clear, and I agree—in principal, but this practice is so much easier described than executed.

In the weeks ahead, I will attempt to kick the tires of Ken's practice, and I'll report back with my findings.

Do not command and control your clients

All of the go-to books on leadership tell you that command and control techniques do not work. Team-building—allowing people to balance their strengths and weaknesses to evolve into one cohesive, self-managing entity—is the fastest was to increase production, quality, and performance—simultaneously. My team has proven that in leaps and bounds.

...but did not know that this technique can apply to customers as well—particularly in the software industry.

I mentioned yesterday how our design team has worked with EnvisionConnect users to form a team that was able to work together and redesign our flagship product. After posting that, I was considering how and why that had worked so well.

We've all heard time and time again that,

"Design by committee doesn't work."

This reminded me of something someone told me long before I was a manager at Decade...

"Decade Software is a privately-owned company. It is not—nor will it ever be—a democracy, Mr. Mayor."

The person making the statement didn't understand the benefits of teamwork. He was stuck in the mind-set that command-and-control was the only way to manage.

Three EnvisionConnect secrets revealed

A colleague e-mailed regarding the post, What is a Smart Client anyway?.

She asked...

"In this article, you insinuate that the technology is the reason for EnvisionConnect's resounding success, and too many times to mention, you have attributed the product's success to Scrum and the hard work and commitments of you team. Are there any other factors to the product's success."

Well, what can I say? I am shocked.

If I have led readers of this blog that these are the only two factors in making EnvisionConnect the success it is today, then I owe both our design team and our customers a very BIG apology.

Here are some secrets to our success, but don't tell our competition—if we have any.

• Envision became EnvisionConnect to draw attention to the fact that the new interface was designed from the ground up by our customers.
• Our design team works side-by-side with customers, creating and evaluating prototype interfaces to ensure that the designs delivered to development are the most intuitive work environment possible.
• Both our design and development teams work iteratively—think “evolution”—continuously improving and enhancing EnvisionConnect based on the latest user feedback.

So if I have slighted our customers or designers in any way, I am sorry. The development team could not have done it without you.

What is a 'Smart Client' anyway?

I have mentioned before that EnvisionConnect is powered by the latest dotNet technologies from Microsoft Corporation, including Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Reporting Services. EnvisionConnect is a “smart client” application built using Microsoft C# and Microsoft Visual Studio.

Someone said to me today...

"HL, I think I know what a smart client application is, but I'd like you to explain it in layman's terms. Why did Decade choose this type of platform for EnvisionConnect, as opposed to other web technologies like Java or ColdFusion?"

As I answered, I thought...

"This will make a great blog post!"

 

Give the 3 gifts of Trust in 2008

I have blogged incessantly this year regarding the successes my team has had. I have not omitted the failures, but I was extremely lucky in 2007. The failures were overshadowed by our successes—and I expect 2008 to be more of the same.

Much of this success can be attributed to Decade's commitment to Scrum and the concepts of Perpetual Teams™ , but our successes can be equally attributed to a hard-working team committed to achieving their goals.

After recently reading Patrick Lencioni's holiday retrospective on the best gift you can give employees, I realized that part of the reason my teams were committed as they were, was likely due to the gifts I gave them since I have been in this position.

Lencioni sums up those "gifts" in this way...

• First, get to know your people better than you know them today. Take an interest in what is going on in their lives and find out what their dreams and passions are, both professionally and personally. The only caveat is that you have to be genuinely interested. If you haven’t done this much before and you’re afraid that it will feel weird to start now, do it anyway. Your employees want it, need it and will thank you for it.
• Second, talk to them about how their job impacts the lives of others—customers, vendors, colleagues, even you!—in some way, large or small. Help them understand that their work matters, to someone, and that without them, others would suffer.
• Third, help them figure out how to best measure and gauge how effectively they are doing their jobs, especially in terms of the impact they have on others. Give them the ability to determine for themselves whether they are succeeding or not, and free them from depending on your subjective opinion for a sense of accomplishment or esteem.

These gifts cost little, but given sincerely, they are worth a fortune. If you are looking for team success in the coming year, I recommend that you start handing out these gifts right away.