Back in 2001, a small group of
software developers discussed a more successful and innovative approach to
managing software development projects. The result was called the Agile Manifesto. What makes agile so different from the traditional approaches to
managing software development projects? Well there were four main values that
the group agreed upon which were Individuals and interactions over processes
and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer
collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following
a plan. These four main values can be summed up as “while there is value in the
items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” For the twelve
principles that are based on the Agile Manifesto, check out this website.
Agile can be a great tool for
anyone that wants their project to succeed. There is one tool that I have used
that has an interesting concept in building team communication, which is called
Planning Poker. Now you may be thinking that just because I said poker, that this
agile tool is all fun and games, but in actuality it is not the type of poker
you may be thinking about. Planning poker is basically presenting a story or
objective in achieving the main goal of the project. With each objective, every
group member is presented with cards with a number value. Each numbered card
represents an estimate of how much work the member thinks would be involved in
the achieving that objective. Each estimate is kept private from each
participant until everyone has chosen a card. The cards are then shown and if
there are any differences between card values, then the group discusses
on why they think it would take this amount of work to accomplish the
objective. It is not until each group member has selected the same card value
that the group can precede with the next story or the objective. You repeat the
process until the group has agreed on how much work will be done to complete
the project.
I find this tool to be effective
and has the potential to build team chemistry. Each member can disagree or
agree by providing information or solutions as to why this project will be
completed by that estimated amount of work. There are other methods such as Scrum, but using planning poker can be the first step in getting any work done and making sure that everyone stays on the same page. Also, the best thing about Planning poker is that it is absolutely free. So why not try it today.
Hi Anacleto,
ReplyDeleteYou have emphasized much on planning poker. I agree with you that it is great! But, I really cannot connect with planning poker in real time scenario. Probably because, the team I used to work for in software organization was too big. We used to have scrum. Apart from that, we also used to have planning meetings which is a little different from planning poker. In our case, each software developer would do some investigation on the task and come up with his estimate. He would then discuss it with the team about the time he wants for that particular task! In my opinion, investigation of the task would take some time and all of them cannot investigate a same task which would be redundant. So, as you said planning poker might work well, but, I am really wondering how software organization makes use of it!
Great write up! All the best!