The Ultimate Agile Transformation Tool — “STICKY NOTE”
Who would guess that the ultimate Agile tool is as simple as a sticky note? Read on to find out how it will work for you and your team. Author, Zakaria Khan
Traditionally, Software product development is conducted by orchestration of three different SILOs know as System, Design and Test. Historically, each SILO refers to different departments with well-defined boundaries in an Organisation. The new big thing “Agile” proposed to combine the SILOs and everyone rushed to join the agile buzz.
How to know an organisation achieved agile transformation?
Sarcastically, when you see a group of developers standing close to each other and pointing to a white board; they are agile!
Scrum Adaptation, reminds me the very first days of an agile team I coached. I held meetings, being the coach I have explained how amazing Scrum is and it’s the new big thing; so let’s do it together! As excited as I could be, looked around, search for the well expected acknowledgement and yes my excitement lasted only few second when I received feedbacks like “Agile or Scrum seems a waste of time”.
Why scrum is a waste of time?
I asked to the team why scrum would not work?. Summery of some answers I had received were breaking down bigger tasks into smaller tasks, estimating time, writing sticky notes are nothing but a waste of time. It is not efficient, it is redundant work since the real task would need to get done anyhow. Indeed, a team of developers!
Having giving significant efforts in following several sprints and retrospectives in education, coaching and explaining the benefits of breakdown and estimation to the team, no improvements were visible. Desperate for a solution, reminded me one of the 3 fundamentals of agile methodology, “VISUALISATION”.
Contemplating with my thinking cap on suddenly a bulb just lighted up, “Sticky-Note”! a miracle tool, colour code of the sticky note. I had just invented “Agile sticky note”. I have used the following colour code conventions for my latest invention, agile sticky notes:
- Any task that shall take more than 5 days shall be RED.
- Any task that shall take between 2–4 days shall be ORANGE.
- Any task that shall take 1 day or less shall be GREEN.
Once the team started visualizing, the white board looked RED! not a very pleasant sight. To improve, the team set a goal to make the board as green as possible. Eventually, the breaking down tasks got a momentum and the team started understanding the benefits of software cost estimation. One important benefit is that it helps a team to identify the dependencies between tasks early thus the may plan better.
