Which Agile tool should you use?

After browsing through discussions on the Agile Alliance LinkedIn group this morning I came across a thread: Best SCRUM tools in the market. I posted a comment on this thread and thought it worthwhile expanding on this and sharing details of my analysis.

A while ago I did some detailed research into agile tools for managing distributed Scrum teams. There were 9 tools that I looked at in total evaluating each based on the following metrics: functionality, price, usability and scalability. For each of the tools I either created a test account or downloaded and installed a test version of the application. The top 3 tools that I came up with were : Target Process, Rally and JIRA with Greenhopper. Here is a detailed matrix containing my analysis:

* ping me your email address if you interested in the cost breakdown per user details and I will send through the full spreadsheet – andrew [at] thekeggies [dot] com:

full view

We decided to go with JIRA with Greenhopper and have been using it with our distributed teams for a couple years now…to good effect! It is an extremely affordable solution and does more than is necessary to enable teams to get things done. I have found that the Atlassian Greenhopper team listen closely to what their users are saying and have an aggressive approach product improvement and development which is encouraging. Here is some evidence.

Now don’t just dive into using an automated tool if you are just starting out with Scrum or any other Agile approach. If you have a collocated team, start off using a white board and stickies and automate once you are comfortable.

KPI’s for Agile and Scrum teams

Over the past week I have been taking some time out to research effective metrics/KPI’s and processes for measuring and tracking the performance of Scrum teams.

There are many suggested metrics all with varying degrees of complexity in terms of data tracking and calculation. My goal was to find team metrics that were easy to track and calculate – see below:

Team Performance

• Velocity – story points completed
• Goals achieved (yes/no)
• Product owner satisfied (yes/no)

“Velocity” is the most popular metric employed by Agile teams. It doesn’t always provide you with scientific accuracy but is a good indicator of progress made. The story point estimation of the product backlog upfront is a time consuming process, but worthwhile in the long run for both the team and business to provide a clear indication of capacity and delivery.

“Goals achieved” and “Product owner satisfied” are two simple metrics which both give a clear indication of the team’s delivery. Tracking the product owner’s specific comments and feedback each sprint creates a transparent testimonial of the team progress over time – very handy.

Measuring individual team member’s performance is a little more complicated. It is generally accepted that metrics alone do not reflect a team member’s (developer/tester/analyst…) performance accurately and I tend to agree. A combination of metrics and peer review feedback; however, provide a far clearer picture. I selected a couple below:

Individual Team Members Performance

• Hours Estimated vs Actual
• % Contribution
• Peer review feedback using 360 degree review tool

I like to think that the Hours Estimated vs Actual metric indicates the following:

1. Competency and understanding of the architecture and technology stack
2. Understanding of business requirements and scope
3. Confidence in their own, and the team’s, ability

This; however, is fairly subjective – I would suggest writing up your own indicators for this metric and discussing it with your team members before agreeing.

% Contribution is a metric that brings back memories of working on group projects at university. Being aware that one is being measured based on % contribution is a sure fire way to encourage team involvement and buy in. The senior members of your team are usually in the best position to gauge the contribution of team members but I would suggest taking this one step further and incorporating this metric into the peer review process as feedback based on perceived contribution provides some interesting insight into team dynamics.

There are plenty of 360 review tools out on the web. After much scouting around I settled on two options: Survey Monkey and Dynamic Forms using Google Docs.

Google Docs is the best option as it is 100% free and allows great flexibility. You can read more about the 360 degree survey I set up using Google Docs by clicking on this link:

Survey Monkey gives you a free account and ability to create and run a survey but limited capacity to download and analyse the data.

I have created a survey here which I am planning to use at the end of this quarter – this is a work in progress so let me know what you think?

Click here to take survey

Now the proof is always in the pudding – I will post some feedback on our progress with tracking team and individual members’ performance this quarter utilising all the above options and let you know how it goes. Ciao for now.

360 Degree survey using Google Docs

I have recently been working on sourcing tools for conducting 360 degree peer reviews for my development team and department. The mandate was to find a tool (a) that is free (b) that allows easy manipulation of results for interpretation. As you can imagine this is not an easy mandate to fulfil with loads of paid-for solutions on the market.

I managed to discover 2 alternatives – Survey Monkey and dynamic forms using Google Docs. Google Docs wins hands down as the solution is entirely free and the results available in spreadsheet format for download and manipulation. Definite winner!

Here is an example of a 360 degree survey that I set up – let me know what you think.

360 Survey excel source file

Greenhoppers latest release 5.2

A couple of months back I wrote a post on creating a cumulative flow diagram (CFD) using Greenhopper. Unfortunately the article didn’t provide readers with a solution to the problem, as I was unable to finish off the custom php script I was planning to use to generate the pivot of data required to create a CFD.

Thankfully the Greenhopper team had enough time to do it for me! The latest release of Greenhopper – 5.2 includes CFD’s as well a number of other changes which you can catch up on in the Release notes.

It was a great touch by the Greenhopper team to invite me to test the latest set of features prior to the launch. I was impressed that they took the time out to send me a personal email and invite my feedback – thanks!

In testing the latest release I realised I have been a little out of touch with progress made on JIRA over the past while. The tweaks made to the interface add a “minty freshness” to the user experience, which I like. There is a clear focus to developing the supporting agile widgets – great value to project managers who are looking for that little bit extra than competing products provide. I need more time to explore 5.2 further – so far so good though.

Greenhopper has great potential in the PM tool marketplace – with such competitive pricing and available functionality, it is hard to ignore. It still doesn’t provide you with multi project/programme reporting and analysis but what’s the bet that is planned for Release 6 – watch out!

Hyderabad Business Trip

Two weeks ago I travelled to Hyderabad, India on business. We flew Emirates via Dubai: fairly comfortable, decent food and great entertainment system = good flight. The Hyderabad airport is impressive – definitely something for the people of Hyderabad to be proud of. It is, however, on the drive out from the airport that you start to realise that the development of infrastructure is very much still in progress. Four lane highways lead to dirt road off-ramps, which then lead back on to further stretches of tarred road. This theme runs throughout Hyderabad with pockets of infrastructure clearly outstanding.

The city is vast and best explored via taxi. We were fortunate to have one driver with us throughout our stay who diligently navigated the crazy traffic and roads. I have uploaded a couple videos from one of our rides into the office. Gives you an idea of what it is like out on the streets.

Hyderabad is known as on of the major IT hubs in India and this is clearly evident. A number of the large firms have built massive campuses, I managed to get a photo of the front end of Microsoft’s campus. There are masses of buildings going up everywhere. Most of them shells though, awaiting fresh investment since the recession.

View Slideshow

Why all the foreign investment you might ask? India has a large highly educated and skilled workforce, and with the favourable exchange rate, it is a desirable emerging market to invest in. A quick sum to give you an idea of the scale: 8 developers can be hired in India on the wage of a single developer in London. Hmmm that is a bit of a no brainer for CEO’s. This cost however comes with its challenges – cultural differences and communication being the most prominent.

My experience of the people and culture of India was limited to my interactions with those I met in our business meetings and at the hotel. Polite, humble, dedicated, genuine and hard working are some of the words that come to mind in recalling those we met. Unfortunately our time was limited on this trip, our only outing being a business lunch at a local curry restaurant to sample dum briyani (famous in Hyderabad). I was breathing fire after the starters, the briyani was great!

No sooner had we arrived than we were once again packing for the journey back. Next time we will have to hang around a little longer to explore.

India is a country full of potential and destined for greatness, let’s hope it is realised.

Day trip out to Windsor Castle

This morning we woke up early to trek out to Windsor for the day. The idea was visit Windsor Castle and wander down to Eton for  a pub lunch. Thankfully the weather cooperated!

Windsor is about an hour train trip from London Victoria, around 45 min direct from Waterloo. You are immediately struck by the Castle’s imposing figure as you walk from Windsor station. As far as castles in England go, this is the best that I have seen. As they say in the guide it is more of a collection of buildings as opposed to one single large castle.

The entrance fee is £16 per person which gives you a years pass to the castle (remember to get your ticket stamped). You get a free audio guide upon entering which is really handy and informative. I prefer the flexibility this allows you – in my opinion self-guided tours are far better than guided ones. Anyway the castle grounds are vast and you need to do quite a bit of walking to cover them.

No photo’s are allowed inside the state apartments so all of mine are of the outside. I could say quite a bit more about the tour but rather you get out there and experience it for yourself.

View slideshow

After the castle tour we walked down the hill and crossed the Thames river into Eton in search of a pub for lunch. Note to self – next time just go to one of the 20 pubs located directly outside the Castle grounds, Eton has hardly any choice. After wandering round for ages and being seriously hungry we settled for a sandwich at a cafe along the Thames.

If you need to grab a few things before heading back into London, Windsor has a number of shops in close proximity to the castle and station. The shopping area was buzzing today with Castle tourists and locals.

If you get the chance, travel out to Windsor – definitely one of the better day trips that we have done.

Create a Cumulative Flow Diagram using Greenhopper

Note: I have since discovered that actually this does not produce a perfect cumulative flow diagram as the script doesn’t incorporate negative accumulation. Working on a php script which factors both positive and negative to give an accurate flow.

Ok so after much hunting around I have finally found a solution to creating a cumulative flow diagram using Greenhopper – albeit a workaround!

1) Download Toad for MySQL: http://www.quest.com/toad-for-mysql/

2) Connect to your JIRA Database

3) Use the following query to pull out accumulative totals – tweak parameters based on the project you are working on:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(changegroup.CREATED, ‘%Y/%m/%d’) AS CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING, Count(changeitem.NEWSTRING) As Total
FROM changeitem
left outer JOIN changegroup
ON changeitem.groupid = changegroup.ID
left outer JOIN jiraissue
ON changegroup.issueid = jiraissue.ID
left outer JOIN projectversion
ON jiraissue.PROJECT = projectversion.PROJECT
WHERE jiraissue.PROJECT = ** Your Project ID**
AND changeitem.FIELD = ‘status’
AND projectversion.vname = ‘Release 1′
GROUP BY CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING
ORDER BY CountDate ASC

4) Export your result set into Excel and create a pivot table
5) Change the graph to type Area
6) Summaries your results by running total

See Example here

Obstacles Welcome by Ralph de la Vega, 2009

So, it has been two months since my last blogger book review. After my previous read I was looking forward to my next book from Thomas Nelson but unfortunately my expectations weren’t met.

Obstacles Welcome is the story of Ralph de la Vega’s rags to riches progression to becoming the President and CEO of AT&T Mobility. My expectation of the book was a roller coaster story of personal development and growth, but instead it turned out to be a business theory book intertwined with elements of Ralph’s journey.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the theory and it is clearly effective in practice. Personally though, I found that I didn’t connect with the story and what should have been a compelling biography read more like a group of case studies from a university text book.

This is a pity as one cannot deny that Ralph is clearly a dynamic leader and gifted businessman. Obstacles Welcome is not the book for me; however, I recommend it to all those entrepreneurs out there interested in business development and growth.

You can find out a little bit more about Ralph on the site created for this book: http://www.obstacleswelcome.com

Long weekend in Bath with friends

What a great weekend! The mercury is dropping close to zero in the UK but that isn’t stopping us from getting out and about. It is a 3 hour journey from London out to the picturesque town of Bath. Our friends stay in the suburb of Odd Down which looks out over the city of Bath with views of the country side.

On Saturday we hit the town and local sites. Stonehenge was our first stop. Now to cut straight to it – I was expecting more. We stumbled on the site rather unexpectedly – it is situated around a busy intersection and literally looks like a spare field that a farmer sold off with a rock garden in it. Anyways that said I jaywalked across the road to get a couple pics instead of paying the 7 pounds entrance fee. After Stonehenge we stopped off at a local pub for lunch and then headed off the city centre.

We strolled along the river, past the rugby club and sports fields (odd to come across a Lacrosse match in the UK?) and finally landed up at the Roman baths. The 11 pound entrance fee was well worth it – loads of interesting historical facts and architecture. This leg of the journey was rounded off at the supposedly famous Sally Lunns for Sally Lunns buns – not sure what all the hype was about?

Anyway – all in all what a great time – we are definitely looking forward to going back and possibly exploring Bristol and surrounding areas in more detail. If you get a chance make sure you stop off in Bath!

View a Slideshow

Kabul 24 by Ben Pearson & Henry Arnold, 2009

This is my first book review for Thomas Nelson publishers. I am a supporter of their approach which provides bloggers with free books in exchange for reviews – great win-win idea! Anyway, here’s to many more books and blog reviews – enjoy.

Kabul 24 captures the story of a group of Christian aid workers who risked their lives to serve the people of war-torn Afghanistan. The common thread that ties the aid workers together is the organisation they are a part of, Shelter Now International (SNI). The aim of SNI is to come alongside refugee communities and serve, love and care for them and provide for their day-to-day needs.

This true life story is set around the time of the 9/11 terror attacks and imminent American invasion of Afghanistan. The atmosphere surrounding the SNI team in Kabul rapidly changes becoming tense and unpredictable. A sense that things could go horribly wrong starts to creep up on the team; and what they certainly hoped would not happen, does. They find themselves caught up in a hostage drama that only God can pull them out of.

My opinion of this book certainly improved the further I progressed. I pushed through the first 50 pages, which I found rather weak, and I am glad that I did. I felt that more historical context could have been given to the characters and the SNI organisation. Once into the main body of the story, I found myself wrapped up in the emotion of the situation. I had found a good companion for my evening commute.

I found this story personally challenging and humbling, particularly the risk taken to serve these refugees. I am left wondering what is to become of Afghanistan. Such anger, deception and brokenness – one can only hope that God has a plan to heal and restore. Overall Kabul 24 is a good read and a book I recommend.