Roles in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Team

Most data science projects, especially the ones of sufficient scale and complexity, are carried out by teams that consists of roles of different skill sets. Different organizations give different names to these roles. However, in most cases, these roles boil down to three broad categories that broadly correspond
to the steps of the analytics workflow.

Data engineers: are primarily responsible for the collection, transformation, and organization of data that is required for an analytics project.

Their skill set grows upon computer science and software engineering, and includes programming, data modeling, and database skills.

Data scientists: also known as statisticians, are responsible for developing and executing the analytical models that process data to derive the desired insights.

Such individuals are well-versed in statistical analysis, and increasingly, in the newer spectrum of powerful analytics techniques, such as machine learning, natural language processing, and social network analysis.

Data translators: are the interface between the analytics team and the rest of the business.

They understand the business side very well and have a broad, though not necessarily very deep, understanding of the technical steps of the analytics process.

They are responsible for defining the business questions that motivate the project, helping translate these into data questions, and developing a strategy for obtaining the right data.

At the other end, they are responsible for translating the results of the analysis into business insights and helping the business stakeholders use these insights to make decisions.

Manager/Leader: Analytics teams usually also include the manager role, who oversees the entire process and manages the relationships among the team members, as well as with the business stakeholders.

Data analysts: are typically more junior employees who help people from across an organization
answer relatively straightforward business questions by creating databases and data warehouses, and using business intelligence and data visualization software to construct charts and reports.

 

What is project management? What are main characteristics of a project? What are the steps of project management life cycle?

 

What is project management: When people think about project management, they often have an image of large construction projects, buildings, and machinery worth millions of dollars. These type of projects represent project management at a very high level. But in reality, project management can be used in almost any setting.
 

Everyone, from teachers, students, wedding planners, through to office workers and do it your selfers
can employ the core skills of project management to help their day to day work run more smoothly,
and ensure a greater chance of success. Almost every job requires a level of planning, understanding of what and who is involved, how long it should take, and what it's going to cost.

Carefully managing each of these aspects and understanding what success looks like is exactly what project management is all about. This course has been designed to break the stereotypical boundaries of project management, to walk you through the core project management activities, and give you the tools and confidence needed to manage, lead, and communicate effectively throughout the project life cycle.

Whether you are involved in construction, information technology, corporate, or small business, or simply just running your own home project, a sound knowledge of essential project management skills
will ensure the result is far more successful, and reduce surprises along the way.

 

Project management transcends all industries. Projects can be large or small. They can be fairly simple and straightforward, or quite complex and time consuming.  

 

Characteristics of a project: Generally, there are four main characteristics of a project, regardless of its size and complexity.

1. Start and End Date: The first characteristic is that a project has a definite start and end date. It is a temporary undertaking within a fixed period of time, whether this is one week or six years. A project manager has to complete the project within the specified amount of time.

2. Goal or Outcome: The second key characteristic of a project is that it achieves a goal or an outcome. In other words, something is completed or achieved by the end of the project life cycle. In our examples, we saw that the end points were the wedding, the workplace system, and the tiling of a kitchen.

3. Benefit or Value: The third characteristic to consider is that a project provides benefit or value to the recipient. In other words, what will the recipient gain from the completed project? 

4. Allocation of Resources: Finally, a project requires an allocation of resources that need to be skillfully used. These resources will vary depending on the size and complexity of the project. And all projects will, in one way or another, allocate and use resources to achieve their goals or outcomes.
 

Project Management Life Cycle: Project management follows a distinct linear process or journey, which is known as the project management life cycle. The life cycle has four phases.
 

Initiation: The life cycle begins with initiation, which is the starting point of any project. It is usually the shortest phase but the most important, because it sets up the foundation of the project. It is in this phase that you flesh out the project objectives, success criteria, and high-level plan. Is also in this phase that you identify risks, stakeholders, and your team.

Planning: The second phase of the life cycle is planning. Planning is the primary function of any project manager and requires you to undertake a rigorous process of developing plans to ensure you achieve your project objectives. The area that you will focus on in this phase of the life cycle are scope, scheduling, and costing.

Execution: Phase three is project execution. This phase is about completing specific deliverables that are required to meet the scope and objectives of the project. In this phase, assessing risk and implementing strategies to reduce or mitigate risk is paramount. This phase also focuses on being an effective leader for your team and engaging your stakeholders in the execution of the project.

Closure: The final phase of the project management life cycle is the closure of the project. It is in this phase that the outcomes are achieved and the benefits of the completed project are experienced by the stakeholders. The closure of a project requires you to obtain feedback from your stakeholders and your team.
 

 

How to write dynamic pivot query in SQL Server

This video show how to write dynamic pivot query in sql server. Dynamic pivot query is useful when you want to display data in columns instead of rows where you are not confirm you much row will be converted to columns.


Pivot query in sql is used to convert rows to columns where generally you need to explicitly declare which row value will be converted to which column which is possible when you know all the values of the row
values to pivot. When you have a variable number of pivot values then dynamic pivot query might be very helpful.

How to email large files with Gmail, Yahoo or any other email

 In this video, I will show you how to email large files with Gmail, Yahoo or any other email. Every email services has a maximum size limit for sending attachment files in an email.

Gmail’s attachment limit is 25MB, yahoo also limited to 25 MB where as other email clients have less size limit. However when you really need to send large size file to someone how you will do it? This video gives you a solution using sendtransfer.com. Sendtransfer.com allows us sending upto 10 GB file in single transfer without registration.

Send Transfer site: https://www.sendtransfer.com/

if you are interested with google services than I have another video on how to sent large attachment in gmail using google drive: https://youtu.be/ct0FCuZ2k2A



Please watch till the end of the video, I hope you will enjoy it. If you have enjoy the video, please go ahead and like it. Write us in comment how helpful this video for you. If you think this might be helpful for your friends, Please share the video with your friends.

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5 Difficult Airplane Landing in Madeira Airport

This video show 5 difficult landing video in Madeira Airport. Some are failed landing and some are very hard to land.

Cristiano Ronaldo Madeira International Airport, commonly known as Madeira Airport or Funchal Airport, is an international airport in the civil parish of Santa Cruz in the Portuguese archipelago and autonomous region of Madeira.

The airport is located 13.2 km (8.2 mi) east-northeast of the regional capital, Funchal, after which it is sometimes informally named. It mostly hosts flights to European metropolitan destinations due to Madeira's importance as a leisure destination, and is pivotal in the movement of cargo in and out of the archipelago of Madeira. It is the fourth-busiest airport in Portugal.

The airport is named after Madeiran football player Cristiano Ronaldo.

The airport is considered one of the most peculiarly perilous airports in the world due to its location and its spectacular runway construction. It received the Outstanding Structure Award in 2004 by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. The History Channel program Most Extreme Airports ranked it as the ninth most dangerous airport in the world and the third most dangerous in Europe. Pilots must undergo additional training to land at the airport.

Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, is an archipelago comprising 4 islands off the northwest coast of Africa. It is known for its namesake wine and warm, subtropical climate. The main island of Madeira is volcanic, green and rugged, with high cliffs, pebbly beaches and settlements on deltas of the Fajã River. Capital Funchal has botanic gardens and is known for its harbor and a large New Year's fireworks show.

Top 10 Tourist Destinations in Uganda you must visit

Uganda is an East African country known for Lake Victoria, mountain gorilla habitats & vibrant capital Kampala.

Here is the list of top 10 tourist destinations in uganda:

1. Queen Elizabeth National Park

Attractions: Ugandan national park, with Lake Katwe, hippos in the Kazinga Channel & leopards on Mweya Peninsula.

Queen Elizabeth National Park occupies an estimated 1,978 square kilometres (764 sq mi). The park extends from Lake George in the north-east to Lake Edward in the south-west and includes the Kazinga Channel connecting the two lakes.

Queen Elizabeth National Park is known for its wildlife, including African buffalo, Ugandan kob, hippopotamus, giant forest hog, warthog, Nile crocodile, African bush elephant, African leopard, lion, and chimpanzee. It is home to 95 mammal species and over 500 bird species.

 

2. Murchison Falls National Park Uganda

Attractions: Ugandan national park, known for Murchison Falls, Lake Albert Delta & Kaniyo Pabidi mahogany forest.

Murchison Falls National Park is a national park in Uganda and managed by the Ugandan Wildlife Authority. It is in north-western Uganda, spreading inland from the shores of Lake Albert, around the Victoria Nile, up to the Karuma Falls. Together with the adjacent 748 square kilometres Bugungu Wildlife Reserve and the 720 square kilometres Karuma Wildlife Reserve, the park forms the Murchison Falls Conservation Area.

3. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

Attractions: Forested national park in Uganda, home to endangered mountain gorillas, plus birds & butterflies.

The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is in southwestern Uganda. The park is part of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and is situated along the Democratic Republic of the Congo border next to the Virunga National Park and on the edge of the Albertine Rift. Composed of 321 square kilometres of both montane and lowland forest, it is accessible only on foot. BINP is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-designated World Heritage Site. 

4. Lake Mburo National Park

Attractions: Wetlands with lodging & safari tours

Lake Mburo National Park is a national park located in Nyabushozi County, Kiruhura District near Mbarara in Uganda.

5. Lake Bunyonyi

Attractions: Island-filled lake with canoe tours

Lake Bunyonyi is in south-western Uganda between Kisoro and Kabale, and it is close to the border with Rwanda. The lake appeared from 2004 to 2009 on the 5,000 Ugandan shilling note under the title "Lake Bunyonyi and terraces". Scientific literature generally quote a maximum depth of 40 m, but some tourist guides and locals insist that it much deeper, about 900 m, which would make it the second-deepest lake in Africa. Towns on its shores include Kyevu and Muko, while its 29 islands include Punishment Island and Bushara Island.

6. Rwenzori Mountains National Park

Attractions: Africa's third highest mountain peak and many waterfalls, lakes, and glaciers.

Rwenzori Mountains National Park is a Ugandan national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Rwenzori Mountains. Almost 1,000 km² in size, the park has Africa's third highest mountain peak and many waterfalls, lakes, and glaciers. The park is known for its beautiful plant life.

7. Bulago Island

Attractions: Safari, lake, and honeymoon

8. Ndere Centre

Attractions: Folk dance

9. Itanda Falls

Attractions: Scenic Spot

The Itanda Falls are rapids on the White Nile river in Uganda. They are a challenge for kayakers, being graded at the highest level of difficulty

10. Munyonyo Martyrs' Shrine - Uganda Martyrs Basilica

Attractions: Catholic church offering Sunday mass

The Munyonyo Martyrs’ Shrine is a Roman Catholic shrine and Minor Basilica dedicated to the Ugandan Martyrs.

Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

 Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) takes a completely different approach to scale. In fact, the term that LeSS uses is NOT scale, but De-Scaling as the pinnacle of the scaled organization for Scrum and Agile.

Where other frameworks look to align the Agile approach to teams within a Traditional Organization, or show how those people can now "fit" within the organization; the LeSS approach is to say 'no.' No more "pretend Agile" or "Fake De-Scaling" where all the parts of the products that come together are considered independent and managed independently. 

This leads to trap where teams try to act as independent teams within an organization:

• "Independent Teams" need a portfolio manager to ensure alignment of efforts, because otherwise they'll diverge
• Portfolio Management leads to integration and dependencies,
• Dependencies re-introduce the need for the Program Management Office (PMO) to institute rules of coordination
• Rules remove ownership and power from the Scrum teams, and quickly lead to additional complex teams to manage them

To avoid all this, the LeSS system provides two types of scaling of Products to remove other potential roles:

• LeSS - used for up to eight (8) teams of eight
• LeSS Huge - used for up to thousands of teams delivering products together in single increments

This way the organization can avoid unnecessary "dotted lines" that take away power and control from the Scrum Teams which in turn zaps productivity and pride of workmanship.

 

 The LeSS system provides two types of scaling of Products to remove other potential roles:

• LeSS - used for up to eight (8) teams of eight
• LeSS Huge - used for up to thousands of teams delivering products together in single increments

This way the organization can avoid unnecessary "dotted lines" that take away power and control from the Scrum Teams which in turn zaps productivity and pride of workmanship.

According to the philosophy behind LeSS, Scrum works as it is designed for one team. And it shouldn't be changed for one team. No matter the complexity of the product, it should remain that there are three roles:

• Product Owner (PO)
• Scrum Master (SM)
• Development Team Member (DT)

And in the LeSS these roles persist and remain the only roles for up to eight (8) teams. It's important to note that LeSS suggests that teams be aligned to features to maximize their ability to "specialize" on the architecture of a product and work independently.

Beyond eight (8) teams only one additional role is added to support the Product Owner. This role is the Area Product Owner, and they are needed because of the pressure on the Product Owner to manage such a large backlog is too great:

• Area Product Owner (APO) - provides a buffer of work definition and act as intermediaries to help manage an "area" of requirements
• Product Owner (PO) can have up to ten (10) APOs working with them to manage requirements, forming the Product Owner Team
• Can manage up to eight teams
• Cannot override the prioritization of the product backlog items - this still belongs to the PO

At this point there is enough "scaling" that it can handle global operations of product development. Sites can have multiple teams, and areas can include anywhere from five to ten teams. When multiplied this allows a single Product Owner to manage up to a thousand or more team members.

But why create such large structures of Scrum?

The answer is using Large Solutions to De-Scale the organization.  Organizations looking to create smaller, more independent teams to Scrum will drive towards an model that performs "Fake De-Scaling." These ideas are as follows:

• We create "independent" teams with internal and external markets, everyone has customers and are consumers of Agile teams
• For larger products, "independent Teams" need a portfolio manager to ensure alignment of efforts, because otherwise they'll diverge
• Portfolio Management leads to integration and dependencies because there are real-word physical dependencies in products
• Integration and dependencies drive the need for rules so teams can stay independent
• These rules re-introduce the Program Management Office (PMO) to control coordination
• Rules remove ownership and power from the Scrum teams, and quickly lead to additional complex teams to manage them

So what does the organization then look like for the LeSS company?

For those that there will be an enabling leader who is the "Head of Product." This person will provide coordination and support using the Servant Leadership model of management. The responsibilities include managing:

• Site Locations - ensuring the teams are supported with facilities, people, etc.
• "Undone Departments" - those departments that are still functionally aligned or separate from Scrum Teams
• Support Teams - these teams provide a lean service of support to the large teams (such as delivery or DevOps)
• Product Owner Team - led by the PO in charge of the product, this team develops and prioritizes the backlog
• Competence & Coaching - the functions of training and coaching to ensure continuous improvement

Higher levels of management are intended to provide similar types of "servant leadership" support for the organization. The goal being to enable teams to work according to the LeSS principles:

• Large-Scale Scrum is Scrum - LeSS is just dealing with the unavoidable scale of some products, but remains scrum
• Empirical process control - processes should be subordinate to the product and market needs
• Transparency - required to drive fear out and improvement into the workplace
• More with Less - gain better teams, ownership, and reduced waste with less process and control
• Whole-products - focus on the product in delivery, not just the part of the product, so efforts are aligned
• Customer-centric - by focusing on the customer, everyone aligns to the priorities and needs while reducing waste of other distractions
• Systems thinking - understand that the system is the focus, not the local performance of a team, so waste is reduced and flow is optimized
• Lean thinking - continuous improvement and the Go See approach to management drive a respect for workers and continuous improvement
• Queuing theory - understanding that long queues increase cycle time, reduce feedback speed, increase variability, and result in multi-tasking

To learn more about these concepts go to: https://less.works/

Sources:

• De-Scaling Organizations: https://less.works/blog/2015/05/08/less-scaling-descaling-organizations-with-less.html
• How too many rules at work keep you from getting things done: https://www.ted.com/talks/yves_morieux_how_too_many_rules_at_work_keep_you_from_getting_things_done#t-983376
• Requirements Areas: https://less.works/less/less-huge/requirement-areas.html
• Area Product Owner: https://less.works/less/less-huge/area-product-owner.html
• LeSS Organizational Structure: https://less.works/less/less-huge/organizational-structure.html
• More-with-Less: https://less.works/less/principles/more-with-less.html
• LeSS Role of a Manager: https://less.works/less/management/role-of-manager.html
• LeSS Principles Overview: https://less.works/less/principles/overview.html

Additional Great Video Resources:

• Scaling Agile with LeSS Large Scale Scrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKEIaJ7qBew
• Introduction to LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BZf_Oa7W94

 

 

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

Disciplined Agile Delivery attempts to answer that question with the Disciplined Agile Framework.

The ideas in the framework is simple: every team in the organization should be Agile.

This means that teams such as Marketing, Sales and Finance should be Agile. So should the Legal, Human Resources, and IT Governance teams. All Development-Operations (what are called "Support Teams" by many or "Systems Teams" in SAFe) should also be their own agile teams.

This requires that the organization can create products that are consumable by the other parts of the organization. And it means that at all levels the whole organization is learning. However, this also requires that each team be Enterprise Aware a core tenant of the Disciplined Agile framework. In total there are a select number of key Disciplined Agile considerations that expand on Scrum, with an ultimate goal of having Scrum work over time, locations, size of teams, and the variety of teams needed to run whole organizations.

Key questions to consider as you think about Disciplined Agile Delivery, are as follows:

• What would an Enterprise Aware team of teams look like?
• How would you prioritize the work across the organization?
• How could teams manage their dependencies if they act as semi-independent Agile teams?
• How could learning and "flow" of value needed for continuous operations at scale be incorporated?

 

Disciplined Agile Delivery starts from one single premise: being Agile doesn't permit teams to be undisciplined.

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) grew from origins in Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Lean. As it's original forms were being codified it was clear that Agile was being used by many teams to avoid good practices of sustainable development. "We don't do that, we're Agile" was a common phrase that frustrated many in the Enterprise. DAD offers a compromise that many people today find extremely valuable in fitting into the organization.

The key characteristics of Disciplined Agile Delivery are:

• People first
• Learning oriented
• Agile
• Hybrid
• Goal-driven 
• Delivery focused
• Enterprise aware
• Risk and value driven
• Scalable

In order to achieve these goals, the Disciplined Agile Delivery process uses a hybrid framework with stages that align with the Traditional Stage-Gate model, from concept to retirement (disposal). It's focus in generally on very large solutions that are required for organizations or developed within large organizations that roll out a product line. 

The key difference between this model and the typical Scrum Model that starts when a team is initiated with funding is as that DAD uses a startup phase called "Inception." During this phase many important things happen to help scale:

• Modeling of the solution
• Proof of concepts are explored
• Shared architectures across teams are initiated
• High-level release planning and feature roadmaps are established

During this phase the teams often work in functional and cross-functional groups. This startup phase allows for a shared understanding going into the solution development or "Construction Phase."

Disciplined Agile also believes in many more roles than Scrum does:

• Primary Roles:
• Stakeholder - these are the same as in Scrum - anyone who is impacted by the solution being built (owners, support, customers, etc.)
• Team Member - focuses on producing solutions for stakeholders, the Scrum "generalizing specialist"
• Team Lead - servant leader that coaches and helps organize delivery, and often considered an "Agile Project Manager"
• Product Owner - provides the "voice of the customer" as either the representative, actual customer, or business line expert
• Architecture Owner - can be simple as the "senior developer" or an architect; with the goal of reducing technical debt risk at scale
• Secondary Roles:
• Specialist - may be the specialist in a certain technology or tool that's used in the solution
• Domain Expert - provides detailed domain expertise on critical topics for parts or details of complex solutions
• Technical Expert - can be experts in key non-functional areas (user interface, security, databases, etc.) needed for performance
• Independent Tester - can be required for complex solution environments or for regulatory requirements (such as government)
• Integrator - can be a separate role for integration and delivery mechanisms in complex solutions, such as DevOps teams

Disciplined Agile Delivery works by always having the Primary Roles (although sometimes the Architecture Owner and Team Lead are the same person). Then it adds the Secondary roles as needed.

In order to scale across teams, DAD uses the "team of teams" model, building on the "Scrum of Scrums" concept invented by Jeff Sutherland.

• DAD Agile teams meet in Daily Standups
• DAD Team Leads meet separately to coordinate delivery, as the Product Delivery Team
• DAD Architecture Leads meet separately to coordinate architecture and remove dependencies, as the Architecture Team
• DAD Product Owners meet separately to coordinate planning, as the Product Management Team

These teams of teams models are then coordinated, as needed, by an overall Program Manager role. 

From this basic scaling model, Disciplined Agile then extends these concepts to the organizational level. How can we mature the organization into a "Learning" organization. In fact, the ideas are that the Agile model is a startup model for Disciplined Agile that can be used to eventually create a lean-agile organization that continuously performs the "stages" of development as needed.

Concepts that are built in are the idea of scaling the "Supporting Cast." Those in the secondary role can become their own Agile teams that produce products used by the Disciplined Agile teams to delivery new product. Support teams include everything that could be considered "Development-Operations" or DevOps:

• IT Operations
• Customer Support
• Security
• Data Management
• Release Management

These teams are then further scaled up into the total Product Management realm, deemed the "Disciplined IT" realm including Governance and Reuse of products (COTS, GOTS, FOSS), as well as Enterprise Architecture, People Managemenet, and Portfolio Management.

Then Disciplined Agile goes one step higher, suggesting that the entire Enterprise can behave in an Agile manner. Every part of the organization can be its own Agile team or team of teams. This applies to Sales, Marketing, Legal, and Finance, as well as other organizational areas.

To keep the entire organization aware of its own structure, there is a need for "Organizational Assets" and the "Knowledge Base." This means that the Organization becomes its own market for consuming products both internally and externally. By managing a central portal to access the key information and tools needed to run the organization, each team can run without being directive to the others.

This is the actualization of the ideas of a adaptive learning organization. The stages of which are below (shorted from longer forms you can find at http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/dae/):

• Tribal - impulsive, and driven by urgency; management "preys" on its employees
• Traditional - Authoritarian, driven by protocols and formal roles and hierachies
• Scientific - Profit or growth-oriented, driven by innovation and meritocracies of ideas
• Post-Modern - Consensus driven, with values-based decision making
• Living - Cellular models of management with an evolutionary purpose

Do these ideas make sense to you? What kind of organization do you work in?  You can learn more about the concepts and ideas of Disciplined Agile Delivery here: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com

Other Sources of key pages cited here:

• Introduction to Disciplined Agile: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/introduction-to-dad/
• Disciplined Agile Lifecycle: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/lifecycle/agile-lifecycle/
• Disciplined Agile Enterprise: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/dae/
• Disciplined Agile Teams: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/roles-on-dad-teams/
• Disciplined Agile Teams at Scale: http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/agility-at-scale/large-agile-teams/

 

 

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

SAFe offers a means of scaling Agile very quickly within an organization that is currently highly Traditional in nature, and large in scale. The key principles being a blend of Lean and Agile thinking. 

SAFe looks to blending the ideas behind Lean and Agile to provide answers to the questions:

• How does management give up control, when it's still responsible?
• How do we develop products for hundreds or thousands of customers?
• How do we coordinate work across teams when the work requires dependencies?
• How do we fund, architect, and implement large hardware and software systems with enormous dependencies over years?

In fact, SAFe has three four levels of implementation to help answer these ideas:

• Essential SAFe - basic SAFe with only Business Owners managing as executives often on a single Agile release train (ART)
• Portfolio SAFe - includes a portfolio management function to align funding across teams or trains
• Large-Solution SAFe - Introduces the concepts of having Suppliers that integrate delivery along with multiple ARTs on a Solution Train
• Full SAFe - Includes a Portfolio Management function above the Large-Solution when managing across Solution Trains and other ARTs

 

SAFe introduces many new roles to the Agile framework beyond the Scrum's three main roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team member. These roles considered essential to manage the integration and flow of products across many Agile teams running concurrently. 

• System Teams - those that manage delivery and integration of products produced by individual Scrum teams
• Architecture Teams - manages and promotes the shared architecture framework across teams
• Product Manager - leads the Product Owners as the primary person in charge of targeting features and EPICs
• Release Train Engineer - leads the Scrum Masters on each of the Scrum teams, and conducts the large team or team ceremonies

By adding these essential teams, and others when needed, many teams can work together. These teams help make up what is termed the "Agile Release Train" or ART.

ARTs are how many agile teams work together on a single product or part of the business. For instance if there is a Financial company that wants to develop a new mobile banking application for loans, then all Agile teams working on that application might be on the same Agile Release Train. There then might be a separate Agile Release Train or "ART" for developing internal accounting software.

SAFe aligns ARTs to the business Value Stream. By modeling the business as a Lean process (remember Week 2), the organization can then continuous improve how it delivers value to customers using the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.  ARTs are the teams that build and deploy changes to each step in the business value stream. 

• Agile Release Trains (ARTs) align to one or more similar parts of the Business Value Stream
• ARTs are limited to up to 120 people, keeping on the lowside of Dunbar's number
• ARTs work together through the Sprint process, with shared ceremonies at the Release boundaries

This introduces the need to coordinate very large groups through the typical Sprint processes of Planning, Development, Review and Retrospectives. One of the most prominent aspects of SAFe is what's called the "Big Room Training" and "Big Room Planning" during Release Planning. Each Release is called a "Program Increment" and usually takes four to six sprints.

Program Increments (PI) Planning:

• All Agile Teams get in a room (can be up to 200 people, when accounting for stakeholders and Systems Teams)
• The Release Train Engineer organizes and coordinates the Planning Day
• The Product Manager provides a shared vision, set of features, and priority for the next Release
• Product Owners and Scrum Masters each play their role to execute Planning
• Points are considered absolute (at least at first) to compare across teams with one point equal to one person for one day
• Teams commit to complete PI Objectives, instead of stories (which belong to the team)
• PI Objectives are given business value points by Business Owners
• Teams identify their dependencies across each other during this planning
• The Program Board captures all work and dependencies across teams
• The Teams "ROAM" risks: Resolve, Owned, Accepted, or Mitigated
• Everyone gives a "vote of confidence" on whether they can meet the objectives, and keeps going until the whole team puts up "5 out of 5."

Program Increment Inspect and Adapt (IA):

• System demo is performed across all teams
• Often includes the Project Sponsors (Business Owners)
• Humanizes management
• Business Owners give feedback on achievement of business value points
• Retrospectives are run briefly to identify the most important problem to solve
• Problems are then addressed using workshops that include Business Owners, with clear outcomes and support by leadership

A couple of the principles that make SAFe work are:

• Take an economic view - Instead of just responding to customer wishes, work is evaluated in terms of cost of delay (CoD).
• Plan on cadence, release on demand - All teams must plan together, but they can release whenever work is ready.
• Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems - The work is only considered done when it is fully demoed at the system level
• Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths - leverage the Lean principles of limiting WIP and managing queues with small batches helps prevent turning independent teams back into departmental-like groups

Another issue that SAFe addresses at scale is the need to continuously explore, develop, and deploy new solutions. This is embodied in their ideals of "Continuous Everything;" which promotes the movement of potential work, work-in-progress, and done work through Value streams.

SAFe has three four levels of implementation to help answer these ideas:

• Essential SAFe - basic SAFe with only Business Owners managing as executives often on a single Agile release train (ART)
• Portfolio SAFe - includes a portfolio management function to align funding across teams or trains
• Large-Solution SAFe - Introduces the concepts of having Suppliers that integrate delivery along with multiple ARTs on a Solution Train
• Full SAFe - Includes a Portfolio Management function above the Large-Solution when managing across Solution Trains and other ARTs

 

To learn a little more about SAFe, check out these great videos as well that can help guide you through the 

• Explanation of SAFe in 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmJ_mJw8xec
• SAFe Version 4.5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=qTG4I6jUbj4
• Scaled Agile Framework Online: https://www.scaledagileframework.com

 

 

What type of Scrum will you use in your workplace?

We're going to present all the basis you need for deciding the best framework for you and your organization now, by giving the the context and insight you need into all the major frameworks, including:

• Scrum in the World of Agile
• Hybrid Agile Framework (aka "Iterative Waterfall")
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
• Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Watch out for the shameless plugs we've purposefully put in this course to asking you to verify for Applied Scrum. We've done it because you really should verify! Not only do you get a certificate from UMD proving your excellence, you'll also get access to lots of free content and tools to start applying these lessons right away.

The last lesson, Pitfalls and Benefits of Agile, is especially focused on helping you consider the best way to continue and not get stuck while starting to apply Agile on your team.  More of these ideas are discussed in greater detail in the verified content (yes that's another plug, but it's true!).

We hope you continue to stay engaged, have fun, and be curious as you explore the world of Applied Scrum at it's most applied: the Agile Frameworks. Time to actuate and pick what kind of Scrum you'll use.

It is official across multiple surveys: roughly half of all projects are now, at least in part, Agile in nature.

And, of those types of projects almost ALL the projects in the organization use Scrum or some hybrid of Scrum at its base. The reason being that Scrum is so effective with small teams that it forms the team-level model for nearly every Agile framework. The four largest "Agile Scaling" frameworks all use the Scrum model as their basis:

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Scrum of Scrums
• Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
• Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Both the Project Management Institute (PMI), which has been very Traditional in nature ("Predictive" as they call it); and the Verizon One "State of Agile" report across industries that over 50% of organizations are using Agile.

Note these surveys are very representative across industries of all sizes. In fact, over half the respondents to the PMI survey had organizations worth over $500M in total annual revenue.

According to PMI's Pulse of the Profession:

• 23% of projects use Hybrid (Agile and Predictive/Traditional) methods
• 23% of projects used Agile
• 7% used "other" approaches
• Only 47% were Predictive / Traditional projects
• 71% of organizations report "Agility" as being essential to staying competitive

According to Verizon One, who also surveyed a similar distribution of companies (although skewed towards technology and finance):

• 56% of all projects used Scrum
• 75% used either Scrum, Scumban, Scrum/XP, or Kanban

Therefore, the World of Agile has arrived. Now it's time to figure out which framework fits you best!

 

Scrum in the World of Agile Summary Points

The World of Agile is HERE!

According to PMI's Pulse of the Profession:

• Only 47% of projects use Predictive / Traditional approaches
• Almost 1/2 of all projects are now Agile in nature
• Half are "pure Agile" and usually Scrum
• Half are hybrid Agile
• Most organizations see Agility as essential to staying competitive (71%)

This means that you've made a great investment learning Scrum, because no matter what you're likely going to need these skills in one out of two projects you conduct professionally. In fact, if we look at the primary reasons why projects fail we see the likelihood that Agile will continue to grow.

Here are the top reasons why projects fail according to PMI's Pulse of the Profession:

• Change in the organization's priorities - 39%
• Change in project objectives - 37%
• Inaccurate requirements gathering - 35%

And these were all tied for fourth at 29%

• Inadequate vision or goal
• Inadequate, poor communication
• Opportunities and risks were not defined

When you review these aspects, who do they align to the Agile Manifesto? How do they align to the benefits we've discussed in Week 3 on how Scrum works? 

The reality is that Agile addresses the primary challenges facing projects today directly: objectives, requirements, and communication.

Understanding that Agile continues to grow, we also see in Verizon One's State of Agile report that most projects use Scrum:

• 56% use "pure" Scrum
• 75% use Scrum, Scrumban, Scum/XP, or Kanban methods

This is because Scrum is simple, works, and is great for small teams. But as we've reviewed, there's no greater "organization" in the Scrum model. So what about Scale? How do these organizations that use Scrum scale their Agile approaches?

There are four major types of scaling methods used today, according to Verizon One's survey:

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) - 29%
• Scrum of Scrums - 19%
• (Internally Created Methods) - 10%
• Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) - 5%
• Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) - 5%

This accounts for the major majority of methods used. Often we see that internally created methods tend to look like Hybrid methods. In the next sections we'll explore SAFe, DAD, and LeSS. Each has the following items in common:

• All use Scrum as the base model for managing teams
• All have Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Development Teams
• All differ on how to mange "Support Teams" and how to make an organization Agile.

The simplest means of understanding Agile at Scale is to look at the two methods originally used to Scale Agile:

• Scrum of Scrums - teams coordinate work through sending representatives to have Daily Stand Ups across teams.
• Hybrid Methodology - teams are coordinated by using Predictive or Traditional controls, such as stage gates, to manage delivery

Scrum of Scrums:

• Scrum of Scrums Stand Ups: Teams send a representative, although usually this is a Product Owner or Scrum Master
• Can take literally just a long as a standard Daily Stand Up
• Focuses on reporting out completions and blockers
• Opportunity to identify need for coordination among team memebrs
• Scrum of Scrums have a Scrum Master
• Usually a senior person in the organization
• Responsible for facilitating the coordination of work
• Responsible for overall productivity of the Scrum of Scrum Teams
• Scrum of Scrums applies when two teams have potential dependencies
• Share resources (people, services, etc.)
• Shared product in development
• Shared goal or vision
• Originally this was proposed by Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders as Scrum and signatories of the Agile Manifesto in 2001
• "Agile Can Scale: Inventing and reinventing SCRUM in Five Companies" - Jeff Sutherland, Cutter IT Journal, 2001
• Provides story of using Scrum of Scrums at IDX, where weekly product line Scrums and Monthly Management Scrums occurred.
• Some teams became "hyper-productive," a state of Scrum teams that Jeff Sutherland talks of being 4 to 5 times more productive

Scrum of Scrums offers a very simple, and yet elegant means of scaling Scrum. In fact, the practice has been used by many very large scale organizations to achieve organizational agility. 

In the HBR Article, Agile at Scale (2018), there are examples of Scrum of Scrums spanning hundreds of people in less than one hour:

• Saab's aeronautics business has over 100 agiel teams for its Gripen fighter jet ($43M project)
• Daily Stand Ups occur from 7:30 AM to 8:45 AM
• By the end of the the Stand Ups using Scrum of Scrum approaches, the executive team knows the critical issues it needs to address
• That's over 500 people fully reporting using word-of-mouth in less than 90 minutes

This model is having a resurgence now among many Agile practitioners. Especially as many organizations are expanding their understanding of Agile and using Hybrid means or SAFe to transition into becoming an Agile organization.

The Hybrid model that is most commonly used by organizations is rather simple:

• Traditional means are used to control major decision points
• Stage Gates are leveraged especially for Requirements, Design, and Operations (Deployment)
• This offers a chance for the Traditional / Predictive leadership to approve the next "Stage" of the project
• Agile (Scrum) methods are used to rapidly and iteratively develop products in each stage
• Whole teams are used to develop Requirements, Designs, Development, and Verificatoin
• Whole teams are able to prototype and create reusable document
• Requirements are managed as User Stories
• Stories are generated in Requirements, refined in Design, Implemented and closed in Development
• Development is often still iterative and incremental for speed and learning
• Development may have multiple releases to a "staging" or "pilot" environment
• Verification is run for system-level requirements against use cases

This effectively looks like iterations between stage-gates; and is often more successful in organizations that resist Agile. Since organizational resistance to Agile and misunderstanding of Agile are the primary reasons for Agile failing (according to Verizon One), this makes sense for many new entrants learning Agile for the first time.

When looking at the major reasons that Agile fails, we see the following:

• Organizational culture at odds with agile values - 53%
• General organizational resistance to change - 46%
• Inadequate management support - 42%
• Lack of skills/experience with agile methods - 41%

These statistics show why the Hybrid model is so popular among about half the practitioners of Agile in more traditional organizations. For this reasons "Internal Agile" is a great means of proving the effectiveness of the method when there's no upper management support. However, the only means of truly achieving agility is to have leadership support and good Agile training.

So how do we convince the leaders who are disbelievers in Agile? Show them the data:

• Reasons for Adopting Agile
• Accelerate Software Delivery - 75%
• Manage changing priorities - 64%
• Increase productivity - 55%
• Better alignment of business and IT - 49%
• Increased software quality - 46%
• Benefits of adopting Agile (percentages show counts, not impact)
• Better management of priorities - 71%
• Project visibility - 66%
• Alignment of business and IT - 65%
• Delivery speed / time to market - 62%
• Team productivity - 61%

And in terms of impact, the benefits can be four to five times the productivity and value output; as seen in the Ambysoft survey in 2013.

Now that you understand the Scrum in the World of Agile, and you know that world is here (!):

1. What framework will you choose?
2. How will you achieve the benefits (speed and innovation)?
3. How will you manage the change (leadership and control)?

The other lessons in this week will try to help you answer the first question. To answer questions 2 and 3, we highly recommend you sign up for the remaining courses in the Agile Project Management Certificate. Just like in this course, if you Verify you'll get tools, additional resources, and insights that go beyond these lectures and notes to enable the change in your projects.

Now, go be Agile and win!