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Agile/Scrum

To the Agile Community – WTF is wrong with you?

by The Cranky Product Manager on March 16, 2009

in Agile/Scrum

As you might know from previous posts, the Cranky Product Manager is pretty neutral on Agile / Scrum.

Yes, Agile is trendy.  Everyone is doing it.  Some consultancies out there have tied their entire brand to the Agile concept (digression – how smart is this when the inevitable backlash against something so over-hyped will inevitably occur?).

And don’t get the Cranky PM wrong, Agile/Scrum can help greatly with many types of product development problems.  It’s good. It can be fun. But Agile/Scrum is not perfect.  It has its problems too.  Some of which have been elucidated more eloquently by others.

Well, the Cranky Product Manager is going out on a limb and declaring that:

The BIGGEST problem with Agile/Scrum is its crazy, insulting, demeaning, and threatening lunatic fringe.

Yep, these zealots — and YES, they are TRUE frakin’ Drink-the-Kool-Aid, Jihadist ZEALOTS — believe that Agile is The One True Way to build a product.  And that if you do anything else, well, you’re a frakin’ moron who must be silenced.  You “just don’t get it,” “you must be doing it wrong”, etc.

And if a non-believer DARES publish something with less than ridiculous adoration for the Agile concept, well they get freakin’ flogged in a over-reacting, vitriolic, personalized fashion.

At best, the non-believer gets publicly berated as stupid/really naive by the principal of a product management consultancy.

At worst, the non-believer gets called a c-word who should “shut the f#$# up” and “watch out,” topped off with a “I’ll get YOU into some very Agile positions, you effing  b@#$%,” for good measure.

Lovely.

Yep. Each of the Cranky Product Manager’s three posts on Agile/Scrum received an amazing amount of hyper-nasty emails and comments, some of which were downright threatening.  The Cranky Product Manager has learned to scan and promptly dump these abusive comments and emails directly into the garbage before she has time to properly comprehend them.  Because otherwise, the Cranky Product Manager might become too afraid to leave her house (remember Kathy Sierra, anyone?  Fortunately, the Cranky Product Manager writes anonymously).

The Cranky Product Manager has had this post in draft form for months because she’s afraid of unleashing the wrath of the Agile Jihadists once more.  But eff it.  She won’t be intimidated by those f@#%s any longer.  Seeing the attack on Adam Bullied (even though it was relatively minor) made her want to speak up.

Anyway, the Cranky Product Manager does not know how to wrap this post up, except to call upon the more moderate elements of the Agile community to

  1. Stop getting so defensive with people who don’t think Agile is the second coming, and
  2. Do something about your lunatics.

Please.  And thank you.

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Guest Post: The Cranky Test for Agile Product Managers

by The Cranky Product Manager on February 6, 2009

in Agile/Scrum

Today we have a glorious guest post from Scott Sehlhorst, product management consultant extraordinaire and author of the tasty-good Tyner Blain blog.

Scott may be genetically incapable of true crankiness.  One of his co-workers once accused him of having excess serotonin levels.  And he’s never had a headache.  Nor has his dad or his grandfather. Scott once parachuted in to help out late in an “agile” project.  It inspired the following exam.  After you take the quiz, you’ll understand why the Cranky Product Manager is publishing it.

The Cranky Test for Agile Product Managers

One of the challenges that comes from the growing popularity of agile development is that sometimes the people racing to adopt the methodology out-pace the clue-train of understanding. Some teams say “Agile” without knowing what that really means. Sometimes part of the organization knows how to be agile, and other parts don’t. That can be a source of frustration for everyone. If you’re a product manager, working with an Agile (or “agile”) team, you might just get cranky. Being sensitive and pragmatic and realistic, just how cranky can you justifiably be?

Here’s a quick multiple choice test, for product managers joining an Agile team mid-flight.

Take the test to see just how cranky you can (justifiably) be. Record all your answers without reading ahead.

  1. In the first daily stand-up meeting you attend you heard (pick one):

    1. Each member of the implementation team say what he did yesterday, what he will do today, and what if any roadblocks he faces.
    2. A user-rep / proxy from the business says “I have a couple UATs I’d like to add to that ’send a gift’ story you’re doing this sprint.
    3. The architect proclaims that all stories must be delivered two weeks prior to each sprint, after which point, the business is not allowed to change them — only development can change them.
  2. You sit down with the key stakeholders to prioritize the target users / market(s) / market segments, and you’re told (pick one):
    1. Here’s the persona representing our most profitable customers, and the one representing the bulk of our customers.
    2. We are focused on mom and pop SMB retailers. We’ll define the other market segments later. Remember:  Mom. And. Pop.
    3. It’s the Internet — for all we know, our customers are dogs. We suspect most of them speak English. At least some.
  3. You reviewed the stories to find (pick one):
    1. Each story is on a yellow post-it on the whiteboard in the war room, with a pink post-it nearby including some ‘verify’ statements.
    2. All the stories that were just estimated for this sprint are sorted into columns based on size in points (and the team uses fibonacci for the values).
    3. All ’stories’ are managed in a requirements repository, from which MS-Word docs are generated, zipped up, and emailed to the development team, who modify the word documents, and store them in subversion in a directory structure reflecting if they were accepted or rejected (for lack of clarity).
  4. When you asked about testing, you were told (pick one):
    1. We automate our unit tests and incorporate into the daily build process – we won’t promote to the trunk with bugs.
    2. Do you mean testing what we wrote, or testing by users to make sure we wrote the right stuff? We did both.
    3. The person who manually tested was working against a different version of the product than development.
  5. When you asked what the user feedback so far has been like (pick one):
    1. Very positive from a couple people in our target demographic – and we uncovered some great new ideas.
    2. Rough. The stakeholders let us know that they met last week, and completely changed their strategic goals – but we’re adapting now.
    3. Users? Look at the time…
  6. You corner the QA lead for the project to talk about performance testing and (pick one):
    1. She shows you the logs, and how they identify which stories get the most action, and how long they take. Then she circles “the bad one” and shares that it just got prioritized into the current sprint.
    2. She takes you to the break room, and shows you the trend charts on the wall, for average response-times for the top ten stories (in importance to the key persona) – pointing out which times are above “ok” and which ones are below “ok.” Then she starts to ask you about scalability.
    3. She suggests that if you sit down with a stopwatch in front of the test server, next week, after the next build, you can probably measure performance, if the build doesn’t crash all the time like the current build.
  7. You hear a rumor that the cadence of releases is not working very well. When you investigate, you find (pick one):
    1. Weekly releases are too frequent for the users to review, and they are asking that we move to biweekly releases.
    2. Monthly releases are too far apart, and now that the automated build process is done, developers want to move to biweekly releases.
    3. Our first release is two months away. How can anyone be complaining about the frequency of releases? No one has seen it yet.
  8. The management team is completely replaced when a new CEO cleans house. When you meet with the new CEO to review project status, you share (pick one):
    1. The burndown charts and expected “completion” of today’s version of “the project vision.”
    2. The sequence of deployment of tangible, valuable capabilities, combined with the number of users at each release.
    3. A hand-waving explanation of why nothing can be deployed after 6 months, and how “everything” is 80% complete.

CALCULATE YOUR SCORE

  • For every (a) answer, give yourself 0 points.
  • For every (b) answer, give yourself 0 points.
  • For every (c) answer, give yourself 5 points.
  • Give yourself 1 point for every time you’ve been hit with the recent Facebook reincarnation of the 25-things meme.

Add up the points. This will tell you, on a scale from 1 to 40, just how Cranky you can justifiably be.  If you hit 40, make sure you sign up to write a guest post.  The Cranky Product Manager needs your rantings and ravings to be put to good use!

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Take the Forest Ranger Agile Survey

January 26, 2009

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know the Cranky Product Manager thinks technology analysts (also known as Forest Rangers and Gardeners on this here blog) are GENERALLY (note 1) coin-operated ho-bags.  (See here and here.)
So you can appreciate the Cranky Product Manager’s consternation when confronted with Forrester’s Agile survey.  It’s about [...]

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Poll Results: Software Development Methodologies (Agile vs Waterfall)

October 10, 2008

Big thanks to the 119 of you who deigned to answer to the Cranky Product Manager’s lil’ Facebook poll on software development methodologies. The poll is now closed.
While this is hardly a scientific poll, the results show a HUGE change in software development methodologies between now (2008) and two years ago (2006).

In 2006, you [...]

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Heresy Against the Church of Agile Software Development

September 23, 2008

The Cranky Product Manager is a big fan of anything that will get quality, innovative, market-killing products out the door more quickly.
Sincerely. This statement is a paragon of truthiness. Hell, the Cranky Product Manager would even trade in her extensive work wardrobe of Lucky Brand jeans for a pile of poofy skirts if it would [...]

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POLL: Agile vs. Waterfall Software Development

September 12, 2008

Hey there, the Cranky Product Manager has a new poll over at Facebook.  Its purpose is to informally see how much software development methodologies have changed over the past 2 years, be they  Waterfall, Agile / Scrum, Agile / But Not Scrum,  or Cowboy Coding. 
Only 2 questions. Won't take too long, promise.  You'll get to [...]

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Scrum THIS

September 2, 2008

Hey You! Mr. Release Manager!
The Cranky Product Manager appreciates that you’re trying to do this Agile Scrum thing by the book. And that it is hard for you. Because before this Agile tsunami came crashing down you mainly just tracked the progression of different release documents (Is the PRD done? Check. Is the Functional Spec done? Check. Is the Design [...]

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So You Think “Agile” Methodologies Exempt You From Product Management

April 19, 2007

Yo, yo, yo!  Listen up, Enterprise Software Developers.  Yeah, you!
The news: The Cranky Product Manager knows that there is a certain percentage of you that doesn’t really care for her or her PM brethren.
And why?  Because the Cranky Product Manager is a pain in your ass. Because, YES, she totally cramps your style.
For one thing, [...]

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So You Think “Agile” Methodologies Exempt You From Product Management

April 19, 2007

Yo, yo, yo!  Listen up, Enterprise Software Developers.  Yeah, you!
The news: The Cranky Product Manager knows that there is a certain percentage of you that doesn’t really care for her or her PM brethren.
And why?  Because the Cranky Product Manager is a pain in your ass. Because, YES, she totally cramps your style.
For one thing, [...]

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