Category Archives: agile

Lego Serious Play

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Do you know what the term Lego Serious Paly really is? Or how you can get started with Lego Serious play? Well, if you do not about this term and want to learn, then keep reading this article.

Lego Serious Play is a special methodology in the agile world. The Lego Group created this methodology and made it available under the open source which is a model of community-based. The goal is to be a creative thinker by using Lego bricks. Big companies use Lego Serious Play methodology to enhance their business performance through the imaginary scenarios by constructing Legos in three dimensions. Now let’s get started with this methodology.

All you need is some Lego bricks. There are multiple colors and set options to choose from.  Go to Lego meetups or organized one of your own. In these meetups, a question will be given to all attendants and each one of them will answer it by using Lego bricks. In the end, a single model will be built as a team in order to represent the understanding of the respected problem. After this action and decisions would be taken. In big organizations and companies, employs the use of Legos to represent their work with confidence and commitment.

By using Lego Serious Play one can explore connections and relationships between people and their world. Lego Serious Play guides you in an honest and freely opinion’s exchange. The tangible and physical construction will allow you to make conversation without fearing of treading upon some kind of personal feelings. This way real issues will get addressed and other people will also get a chance to see the problem with their eyes. Lego Serious play allows you to take a shortcut toward the core. Lego bricks work as a catalyst and when you will use it for metaphor’s building, the processes would be the trigger that you might not previously aware of.

Sources

  1. https://www.lego.com/en-us/seriousplay
  2. https://www.lego.com/
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile Fluency Model

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What is Agile Fluency Model?

The Agile fluency model is something that has been derived from the agile software management (IT) techniques. This basically came into being after teams were observed and it has certain core principles at its center. It strives to achieve a team which focuses its beliefs so as to produce business value. Teams which deliver execute on the market with a good market rhythm. Teams that are highly optimized and in sync are the ones that lead the market and teams that are strong contribute in making their own companies stronger.

The above-mentioned principles are what are called as zones and agile teams pass through these to achieve fluency in order to succeed.

How does It work?

What the Agile fluency model tries to achieve is proficiency. Basically, it tries to instill within a team a sense of technique which is continuous and resolute so essentially you can be thinking about go out with friends but actually performing the task at hand with great skill.

What the fluency model tries to do is that it tries to instill within a team something that they are proficient at so that they may achieve the purpose of the zone. Some individuals will have specialties while sometimes the entire group will be proficient at what they do. Basically, a team becomes fluent in what they do and they become autonomous and they apply their skills to problems that come as soon as they arise.

How is it different

The Agile fluency model is different to all the other techniques and methods out there since instead of teaching an organization how to manage themselves or teaching the employees tricks on how to perform better, it focuses on achieving goals by making a team become so proficient at what they do that the tasks of adapting and facing new challenges becomes second nature and a part of a routine.

— Slimane Zouggari

Ogata Heya

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What is Ogata Heya?

Ogata Heya is an infrastructure of Japanese workplaces which is very different from the design of well-known Western offices. The structure of the western offices is that the space of the whole room is divided into separate cubicles and each cubicle is working in its own space while the Ogata Heya offices do not have divided rooms nor the divided cubicles; there are tables placed together without any blockage or partition. The members of the same teams can sit together and discuss the work making it efficient and even when someone is sitting far apart, there is no hassle of running from one office to another to find the person.

How does it work?

The main idea of Ogata Heya offices is to make the work efficient and to be able to collaborate. It is a trait in the Japanese Management to keep the work place abuzz and to make the staff members interact with each other to give the best results. The managers can keep an eye on the staff and get the updates from them swiftly. Even a meeting can be held right there in that very room without moving from one partition to another since it is an open space and that makes communication among the staff members much easier.

How is it different from Western Culture?

In the Western Culture, apart from the infrastructure of the workplace, the staff members insist on having privacy while working and they do not welcome noises from other staff while in the Japanese Culture the staff do not mind that. The preference and issues of both the Cultures are very different; while the Western Culture vote for privacy and less noise so that outside disturbances can be avoided while working, the Japanese Culture concentrates more on the work done while everyone sits together and get the job done in a speedy manner.

— Slimane Zouggari

 

Promiscuous Integration

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Promiscuous integration is known as a pub-sub framework in which we replicate the data, in the Ruby applications. In this way, out or order updates are removed and new updates are being replicated time to time thus the subscriber always see the updated updates.

How it works

If you are into CI (continuous integration) when it comes to dealing with dependencies what strategy you are planning to use? Many questions are going to arise when you are dealing with dependencies. Now when you check in to the binary dependency then it is quite difficult for you to get the updates time to time. This is the time when you need to make a strategic decision so that all the difficulties can be managed.

PI is providing you with many benefits over CI and you will face less difficulties with working on any project. You can get the updates and it will be your choice that when do you want to get updates.

Benefits

  • It can replicate from Postgres, Mongo, Redis and ElasticSearch
  • From one application to another it can observe the model changes and known as remote observer.
  • It is able to publish the virtual attribute as well.

Why is it different from Continuous integration?

We need to figure out the fact that on what basis PI is better or different from CI and under what circumstances.

First of all, we will discuss about CI so that we will be able to know how is it different from PI. When you are working with CI, you will not be able to use the VCS. However, the mainline is said to be healthy hence you will be able to release after any commit safely. If you have made a feature which you do not want to release then it will not affect the other functionalities of CI, but it will require to do some masking if you do not want it to be seen.

While working with PI, it will give you many features to work with. You can release the feature with ease and if you do not want to do that then you can hide it from the UI easily, there will not be any kind of hassle for you.

— Slimane Zouggari

Delegation Poker

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Delegation Poker

When we talk about delegation then it says that either I do it or you do it. But in delegation poker there are seven levels of the game. In all these levels, we identify that who is responsible for what and what is the level of that person. Employee engagement is encouraged in this method through clarified value, controlled self-organization and decision making.

How to play

There are some common rules of playing this game but each team play the game differently, all you have to do is to follow the common rules and then play the game on your conditions. It is about how your team is looking at the self-organization and delegation.

You will have to start by the situations and pre-defined case on what you want to establish who has what influence and create a delegation policy. You have the agile development team or authority that is hiring the new members.

If you have a pre-defined case then here are the steps to play the game:

  1. One of all the people, will read the situation to all of them or he can create his own story.
  2. The cards are then chosen privately by the team members, the selection of the cards will represent that how they delegate that situation.
  3. When all the players have selected their card, they will then reveal them.
  4. They will explain their reason for the selection of that card, points will be granted accordingly.
  5. A delegation board needs to be created so that the results can be recorded there.
  6. There must be a person who has the 7 number then if he is alone then no points will be awarded, but if more than one person is having the 7 number then each of them will be awarded with 7 points.

This is mostly used in agile management 3.0 training but people these days use them to train their management teams as well, because it is handy to use; the delegation style and different approaches can be known by using this.

It is a game about team collaboration that how will they collaborate with each other afterwards.

— Slimane Zouggari

Honne & Tatemae

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Well, if we are talking about Honne & Tatemae then we are clearly talking about the Japanese culture and they say that these words describe the difference between the desires and true feelings of a person, the opinions and behaviour shown by that person in the community.

Honne

Now, if we see that the true feelings and the behaviour shown in public have a clear difference in accordance with the circumstances and position of that person in personal or public. He usually tries to keep the true feelings hidden and shows then only to the people who are close to him, this is called as Honne.

Tatemae

Now, Tatemae is something that the society expects from the person to behave in public or with the random people. Most of the people hide the true feelings and desires (Honne) and some of people show them in public as well.

People tend to lie in front of random people because they do not want to expose their real self in front of public.

Honne & Tatemae is having a chief importance in Japanese culture and according to some analysis it is considered as a cultural necessity. They think that it is of importance in order to avoid the conflicts that can occur in everyday life.

They say that the person is having two faces and they call it outside face and inside face of the person and these two faces are the main reason for the conflicts to occur.

Other people view this perspective that the person is hypocrite but the Japanese people say that this is not a negative thing and they consider it normal. They say that this is the social etiquettes of a person that he shoes them in personal life and public life.

In agile development and change management people are not able to freely express their feelings to the bosses. All the information they have is not shared by the person due to some insecurities that his idea may get rejected or he may not hurt the feelings of others.

— Slimane Zouggari

Ringi

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What is Ringi

Ringi is a Japanese management style which is used throughout the country. Some of the people who use Agile Software Management (IT) have started to adopt this method of managing as well. Ringi is a very immersive method of management since it basically starts at the bottom levels of a company.

Essentially a Ringi is a sheet of paper which consists of a question which needs to be answered along with it comes all the data the person could find when they initially framed the question. This paper then is passed up the chain of command and signed by all the higher ups until it reaches the top.

This method is a great tool for management since it allows all the people in the chain of command to read the question then understand it and add their points and then approve it. This method makes sure that everyone in the company from the lowest ranked employee to the head of the company reads the issue and agrees with it.

Ringi has been making waves in management styles since it is one of the very few methods that actually makes sure that every segment of the company or organization gets to read the Ringi.

Of course, writing a Ringi is no easy task making it is an art and the person who frames it initially must frame the question in the right words and then condense all the data into one single large page. In America companies who have adapted this method into their management techniques make new employees take lessons so as to frame the perfect Ringi so that the higher ups don’t have any problems reading and understanding it. At its essence, the Ringi incorporates three important features Reporting, Informing and Collaboration which allows a company to thrive.

— Slimane Zouggari

Liberating Structures

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Liberating Structures are a collection of 33 different structures which can be used to facilitate meetings and conversations. Liberating Structures tells us when to use which structure on which kind of member, at what time and how to get the wanted result. There are many members to an organization and each member has different personality; some are easy to blend with while some are stone-faced and do no participate in conversations but using Liberating Structures, every member of the organization can be included into the easiness of the work, participate in the work and the organization can get lean and fit results.

How does it work?

The main Conventional Microstructure such as Presentations or Brainstorming have defects such as either they are too forceful or too loose and they do not include the participation of each and every member of the organization but in Liberating Structures, every member is given equal control over the conversation or discussion and all the members of the organization can decide the next step together.

The benefit of the Liberating Structures would be that everyone will get to participate and all the members of the organization would be satisfied. The Liberating Structures cannot be understood unless one experiences it; the book of Liberating Structures cannot be easily understood neither the website is simple, the only possible way would be to understand and later use it for good is to join a workshop and experience what the 33 structures are like and then experiment with them.

The Liberating Structures is more efficient and agile as compared to the Conventional Microstructure. The variety of 33 structures is very helpful; since there are various situations while running an organization which cannot be easily managed unless one has enough number of solutions available at hand and the Liberating Structure provides you exactly that.

— Slimane Zouggari

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological theory which was presented by Abraham Maslow 1943, he was the famous Humanistic psychologist of 20 century. It describes the common five motivational needs of human being.

Maslow divided these needs into five groups:

Physiological Needs:

Physiological needs are the bodily necessities for human existence. Sleep, water, air, food, shelter and clothing are basic physiological needs. By these needs human body can work properly, if these physiological needs are not met, body will eventually fail in its performance. These are very important and basic needs of human body, without them the other needs do not fulfil the requirements. These needs are at the top of this Maslow pyramid.  Same as this in any system it is very necessary to provide the workers bonuses regarding their services and increasing their salaries with the passage of time in agile development process.

Safety Needs:

When your physiological needs are being met then then your safety needs will come next. Self-safety, health safety and economical safety are included in these needs. Every person wants to feel safe in all aspects of life. In the working environment, the workers also need the safety of their assets and comfortable environment.

Social Needs:

Social needs are actually the needs of belongingness and affection. These needs belong to family, friends, social interactions and other relations. Same as this it is very necessary to provide them such relaxing environment to celebrate their achievements.

Self-Esteem:

Self Esteem are described as ego and self-respect. Every person wants to need to be respected and received appreciation form others. Inferiority complexes may destroy the personal life of the person. In any agile development system, it is important that make your workers sure about their work and abilities that how are they important for this system.

Self-Actualization Needs:

Self-actualization is a drive which is present in every person. It is the state where any person realizes his own abilities and potential and wants to other people that they should realize too. Provide the opportunities for taking hold and leading any project for their self-actualization of the team members in agile development.

— Slimane Zouggari

The Three C’s

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The user stories is the most imperative part of agile development and when we see the user stories more closely then it has three imperative aspects. These aspects are known as three C’s provided by Ron Jeffries as a good user story creation framework. They are known as Card, Conversation and confirmation respectively.

Why is it useful?

It is a known fact of that user stories are having a currency value in the agile development process as they provide focus of the estimation, team activities, sprint planning and ensure that the team is actually delivering the product customer wants.

These give us the complete framework, abstract ideas that we can discuss it with the team in order to get better results. These stories ought to be constructed in a manner that they can be executed and improved as per demands with time.

Let us have a deep look on this three C’s of user stories that how these are going to help in agile development.

  1. First C of this series is for Card, as the stories are written on the cards and there is a lot of room to write more information according to the requirement. But, there is no need to fill up the whole card rather the main idea is written which will reflect the cost and priority.
  2. Second C is for Conversation, now when the team is going to work on this story, they will have to read the card and get the idea and then they go for conversation with the owner so that they can communicate everything needed.
  3. The third and last C is for Confirmation, the team needs to confirm in the end that of the story that whatever needed to work is attained or not.

This was all about the three C’s and their importance.

— Slimane Zouggari