Scrumology

Disclaimer: I witnessed this first hand as a junior technical lead several years ago. This is a stark reminder of how a neglected team member can suffer both professionally and personally. The names have been changed for privacy, and this person did not report to me.

It was early 2001, when Ben walked into the interview with a jovial personality. Ben’s resume was impressive with a laundry list of accomplishments as a Senior Software Engineer. We grilled him in a series of 2-on-1 interview sessions and at no point did he raise any red flags. Ben’s answers were articulate, and he was hired shortly thereafter.

Once Ben had joined the company, the IT Director placed him on production support for our evolving trade platform.

He did this (I believe) for 2 reasons:

1. Since we had no training material, it was an easy way to have Ben learn the platform.
2. It would place another set of eyes on our critical bug stream.

Ben sliced through malformed XML with the speed and precision of a Japanese master chef. One misplaced decimal point or node could result in thousands of dollars in gain loss, yet none of which happened on Ben’s watch.

As our start up matured, we adopted an agile framework to help quickly meet the needs of our clients. Our core offerings flourished and our teams gelled. This was great news except for Ben, who was still on production support after more than a year. The IT Director had either completely forgotten about Ben, or was unwilling to let him work on new functionality. I imagine if Ben had participated in our shiny new agile team we’d have to actually address our sustained engineering problems.

Ben’s personality slowly deteriorated over time as he watched his coworkers continuously roll out new functionality. One afternoon we found him underneath his desk, sobbing in a fetal position. Needless to say Ben wasn’t with the company for much longer.

What lessons can we learn from this tragedy?

- Good developers want to create code, not continuously patch it.
- Do not leave a team member isolated on a project with no end in sight.
- Training new team members should be mandatory.
- Single points of failure do not save you money in the long run.

It is no secret that the iPhone is creating ripples across the online services space. Last week we learned that YouTube has seen a 400% increase of mobile uploads since the iPhone 3GS launch. I’m now noticing an some interesting trends on Flickr that may result in concern for the folks at Canon.

Apple has already run away with the most Popular Smartphone crown on Flickr.

Yet it surprised me to see the iPhone making a run on the Canon Digital Rebel XTi for the most popular overall camera.

This is amazing considering that Flickr has yet to roll out a tight integration with Twitter. Once that happens, I expect these numbers to go through the roof.

I hear the buzz about agile and scrum becoming more popular, but is there any data to support that notion? Are more employers looking for agile experience? Are people searching for agile and scrum resources on the internet? I decided to sit down and pull some numbers together for you. Most of them are very promising, and a few of them highlight trends that I did not expect.

1. Indeed.com Job Trends

One of the more popular job search sites is Indeed.com. Based on the latest comScore numbers, their Unique Visitor count has increased from 1 million in July 2006 to over 8 million in May 2009. They also offer trending on keywords from their job postings.

Job postings including the terms agile and scrum have grown 3,500% since July 2005.

That is impressive when you couple this with Indeed.com’s growth, however it makes up less than 0.2% of all job postings on their site.

Job postings including the terms agile, scrum, and microsoft project have grown 17,500% since July 2005.

Wait, what? I’ve never viewed Microsoft Project as the ideal tool to manage an agile implementation. Are these “not agile” and “scrum butt” implementations? Are employers simply sprinkling buzz words to gain views, or are they looking for people with both PMP and Scrum Master experience?

2. Google.com Search Trends

It’s no secret that Google is the most popular search engine on the web. According to comScore, Google Search Unique Views in July 2006 were 95 million. As of May 2009 Google Search is at a staggering 138 million Unique Visitors. Google has also rolled out a rarely publicized tool called Google Trends.

Users searching for the terms agile and scrum on Google since early 2005.

The Search Volume number is certainly going up and to the right, but who’s conducting these searches?

Users searching for the terms agile & scrum on Google since early 2005 by Region.

I can understand that India comes in at the #1 spot by a large margin, but I didn’t expect the United States to be #6. Are agile sources in higher demand overseas? Is this a terminology overlap between sports and technology?

What can we conclude from this high level analysis?

Well for one the terminology is certainly on an upward swing in both job listings and general online searches. Compare these numbers with the exponential growth of the entities hosting the trend data and it is quite impressive. I’ve also learned that it isn’t the U.S. leading the charge for online search volume on agile and scrum sources.

So while I continue to be optimistic about the adoption rate and popularity, I wonder if agile and scrum are staying true to form with their rise? Are they being thrown around generously with other terms like Web 2.0 and SaaS?

Those of you with Scrum & Agile experience are probably familiar with the following story:

A chicken and a pig are together when the chicken says, “Let’s start a restaurant!”.
The pig thinks it over and says, “What would we call this restaurant?”
The chicken says, “Ham n’ Eggs!”
The pig says, “No thanks, I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved!”

There is only one problem with this story, they are missing the Seagull.

A Seagull can be identified by these characteristics:

1. Comes into the project mid-sprint with no prior contributions
2. Makes a lot of noise
3. Craps on everyone & everything
4. Leaves just as abruptly as he or she appeared

This can be a team morale killer, especially if it is a C-Level player. Also it will definitely have an adverse effect on your current velocity!

So how does a Scrum Master play defense against a Seagull?

Twitter is more than a sounding board for Cats, it can very helpful for keeping up to date on the latest Agile trends.

This is especially true when you find Agile Gurus sending over nuggets of information ranging anywhere from designing the next JUnit release, to where they’ll be presenting next week.

While you can certainly go in search of Agile Manifesto signatures on Twitter, you may be disappointed. Not everyone has embraced this new way of communication. Over the last year I’ve collected a number of Agile, Scrum and Lean experts that actually participate on Twitter in a meaningful way.

I certainly do not want this list of 10 to be the end of your Agile education. If you have an Agile, Scrum or Lean Guru on Twitter that others would benefit from following please share!



1. Michele Sliger

Link: http://twitter.com/michelesliger
Bio: Agile coach, trainer, and consultant. Certified Scrum Trainer, PMP.

2. Esther Derby

Link: http://twitter.com/estherderby
Bio: working to help teams deliver software

3. Jeff Sutherland

Link: http://twitter.com/jeffsutherland
Bio: Co-Creator of Scrum

4. Ron Jeffries

Link: http://twitter.com/RonJeffries
Bio: I’m sure you can figure out who I am if you really want to.





5. Kent Beck

Link: http://twitter.com/KentBeck
Bio: Programmer, author, father, husband, goat farmer.





6. Ward Cunningham

Link: http://twitter.com/WardCunningham
Bio: Objects, Patterns, Agile, Wiki





7. Mike Cottmeyer

Link: http://twitter.com/mcottmeyer
Bio: Work… Agile thinker, writer, project manager, consultant >> Life… Christian, husband, dad, guitarist, backpacker, scout leader, and coffee drinker

8. Scrum Alliance

Link: http://twitter.com/ScrumAlliance
Bio: The Scrum Alliance is the leading global professional association for Scrum users. Our mission is to transform the world of work with Scrum.

9. Martin Fowler

Link: http://twitter.com/martinfowler
Bio: Loud Mouth, ThoughtWorks

10. David Alfaro

Link: http://twitter.com/agilenature
Bio: Project Manager for Web Tools, Software Engineer, ScrumMaster, Usability Consultant. All that in Artinsoft. Cross-Browser Compatibilty Junkie