Category Archives: agile

Large Solution SAFe

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Large Solution SAFe is made out of artifacts, roles and processes that are needed to develop complex and large scale solutions. In this level, you can find how special attention is paid towards capturing requirements while having solution in mind. This is done with proper coordination with multiple suppliers and Agile Release Trains. This is done in order to make sure that a company is in compliance with standards and regulations.

In order to develop large scale solutions with Large Solution SAFe, it is important to have additional roles, events, artifacts and coordination. Presence of these elements will cater towards the possibility of implementing Large Solution SAFe and ensuring a lean agile framework within the company.

When it comes to Large Solution SAFe, special attention is paid towards overcoming biggest challenges faced by a company. In order to overcome those challenges, the company will go ahead and develop large scale solutions as well. They are beyond the scope of single ART that can be developed.

Large Solution SAFe is using three different activities in order to coordinate with multiple suppliers and ARTs. They include pre and post pi planning, solution demonstration and inspection along with adoption. Then it is possible to evaluate the current solution and introduce the much needed change.

According to the definition of Scrum, a team should be less than 10 members. However, there are situations where bigger teams have to be employed to get projects completed. While dealing with such projects, Large Solution SAFe will come into play. They can offer much-needed support and assistance to introducing lean agility to the company.

— Slimane Zouggari

Essential SAFe

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Essential SAFe is the minimal set of events, roles and artifacts that are needed to deliver business solutions through an Agile Release Train continuously to the Agile Teams. Due to the same reason, you can think about calling ART, or Agile Release Train as the heart of Essential SAFe as well. In here ART acts as the virtual company formed to increase functional boundaries while removing the unwanted steps when implementing SAFe principles and practices within a company.

You will have to deal with lots of bottlenecks when implementing SAFe lean agile practices and principles within a company. You can overcome them with ART. In the meantime, ART will be able to help you to enhance the functional boundaries as well.

Essential SAFe is a large solution. In fact, it can be implemented wider across an organization in a more convenient manner. Along with that, the time taken to get the entire company to function according to lean agile practices can be reduced. This is the main difference that you can see in Essential SAFe when compared to other configurations of SAFe.

Essential SAFe focuses more on fixing people because the processes will often be able to deliver similar behaviors within the people team. Along with that, it is possible to enhance the agility of the company as well.

In order to introduce agility to a company, managers will come across the need to overcome some cultural barriers of the team members. Overcoming these barriers will become an easy thing to do with the support and assistance offered by Essential SAFe at the end of the day.

— Slimane Zouggari

Cocomo

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Cocomo is a regression-based model that is based on the number of lines of code, or LOC. In here, Cocomo refers to Constructive Cost Model. You can think about calling this as a procedural cost estimated model, which has the ability to estimate the software projects and go ahead with reliably predicting with many different parameters linked with working on a project such as quality, time, cost, effort and size.

There are three different models of Cocomo. The first level is Basic Cocomo. It is used for rough and quick calculations of the software development expenses. Then you can find the intermediate Cocomo, which is taking the influences of individuals in project phases into consideration. Detailed Cocomo is the last model, where the detailed cost drivers are taken into consideration.

Depending on the type of Cocomo, a specific formula will be followed. This formula is in a position to deliver effective results at the end of the day.

The main reason why we should use this agile software method is to get a reliable understanding about the software development cost. Once we have a solid understanding about the cost, it will be possible to take appropriate measures to reduce the cost factor accordingly.

Depending on the type of Cocomo followed, it is important to have a clear understanding about the cost drivers. Then you can minimize error and end up with a more accurate estimation.

A large number of parameters will be considered for Cocomo. They include hardware attributes, personal attributes and even project related attributes.

— Slimane Zouggari

Amoeba Management

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Amoeba Management can be considered as a comprehensive management system. It has the ability to ensure a high level of dynamism within the company. In addition to that, it is possible to keep a very high level of employee commitment as well. This will eventually contribute towards the company success at the end of the day.

Throughout the recent years, thoughtful managers wanted to come up with a self-organizing system, which can be used to manage the employees in a better way. That’s’ where they got to know about the Amoeba Management methodology. It can help the employees to work with more accountability and responsibility.

Employees are often managed by managers. In other words, managers ask what the employees should be doing. This will make the managers spend a lot of time as well as effort on their own. If you want the managers to overcome doing this, it is possible to come up with Amoeba Management methodology. Then the employees will be able to work on their own and contribute towards end objectives of the company.

Lack of time among managers is the main reason why it is needed to come up with this management practice in Agile. Then it is possible to manage the employees with minimum manager intervention.

It is important to set up the mindset of the employees accordingly before moving forward with this management practice.

Managing remote employees can be considered as a tough job for the managers to do. In order to manage such employees, it is possible to provide them with responsibility and empowerment to work with. That’s where Amoeba Management will come into play.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile Testing

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When agile software development teams scale their team members and develop software, it is important to engage with testing as well. It will make sure that the software is properly developed in order to cater to the requirement of the product owner.

When it comes to standard software testing, the testers will wait until the entire software is developed by the developers to go ahead with testing. This is a time-consuming process. In order to overcome the difficulties associated with it, agile testing came into play. In agile testing, the testers will be able to keep on testing as the developers release developments for testing.

Agile testing can be considered as a continuous testing strategy. It is quite different from the waterfall testing methods. In here, the testers will go ahead and test the developments as the developers keep on releasing the developments.

 

Inside agile sprints, developers will keep on releasing their developments and the testers will be able to keep on testing those developments along with time. At the end of the sprint, a fully tested functionality to the software will be released by the agile development team.

 

It is important to make sure that the testers plan their time accordingly and work along with the testers in coordination. Then it is possible to make sure that testing can be completed before the time available in sprint times out.

Many different testing methodologies will be used in agile testing. They include acceptance test driven development testing, behavior driven development testing, exploratory testing and session-based testing as well. In addition to that, test strategy will be clearly executed as well.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile teams

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An agile team is made out from a cross functional group of individuals, who have everything, and everyone needed to create a functional and a tested version of a product. The team is working according to a set of rules and they are not moving in between different teams. They work together to achieve one common goal at the end of the day. 

 

The average size of an agile team will be 6 plus or minus three. In other words, the minimum number of individuals who can be on an agile team is 3 whereas the maximum number of individuals who can be on an agile team is 9.  

 

An agile team is a diverse team composed usually of business analysts, the software developers and software testers.

 

Typically, requirements on what to develop comes from the business analyst or the product owner. The developers will then develop based on the requirement and the testers will test to ensure that functionality is working as desired.  

 

It is important to plan effectively to go ahead with the agile team. Otherwise, there is a risk of getting work done within the agile lean environment.  

 

According to organizational structures, the employees from the group can be picked into the agile team based on their specialization. The specialists who come into the team will then be able to perform as one single group and get work done.  

 

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile Physical board vs Online board

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When it comes to agile software development, most of the software development teams will be using a Scrum board (or a variant) in order to track the work in progress.

As the name suggests, an agile physical board is a traditional board displayed in the office (meeting room, project room, etc.). It can deliver the best results for smaller and local teams. Items in the agile physical board will be updated manually. Typically, using magnets or post-its.

An online tool will be used to create an agile online board. This will be a web-based board. It is possible to define rules accordingly, so that items in the scrum board gets updated automatically. This is ideal for the larger scrum teams.

 

If the team is small and local, it is possible to use an agile physical board. That’s because the agile physical board can provide a better chance for the people to visualize things. However, this might always not be the best approach available to move forward. In such a situation, it is important to go ahead with an online board. That’s because the online board will be updated automatically. The time and effort that has to be spent on managing the online board will be minimum as well.

Local teams are staying at one place. In such a situation, it will be possible for the team members to update the agile physical board in a convenient manner as well. They will be able to get the most out of the physical board and visualize content in an effective manner. This is not possible with managing large, remote teams.

— Slimane Zouggari

6S

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Everything you need to know about 6S

6S can be considered as 5S + Safety. 5S is a common methodology that people in today’s world follow in order to get their project processes done in an efficient manner. That’s because a new factor called safety comes into play.

What makes 6S different from 5S?

6S is different from 5S due to the additional parameter, which is safety. When Safety is added into 5S, you will be encouraging the employees at the workplace who follow agile organizational structures to keep safety in mind. In fact, they will be able to adhere to safety throughout all the other 5 steps as well.

Applications of 6S

For example, you can go ahead and introduce red colored tags into the items that you are going to remove. In addition to that, you can add yellow colored tags to the EHS hazards. All the items with a red colored tag must go to the central hiding spot. Likewise, the yellow colored items should be evaluated separately and they should be treated in a different way.

While you are straightening, you are provided with the chance to organize all the items, so that you will be able to boost the overall efficiency. While you are doing that, you can keep an eye on safety as well. You are not just placing things in place to boost the productivity, but you also pay attention towards safety problems, such as ergonomic strain that would take place. The additional safety factor will not create any hindrances, but it can deliver a range of benefits to the people who follow 6Sigma at the end of the day. Therefore, you can go for it without keeping any doubts in mind.

— Slimane Zouggari

5S

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Everything you need to know about 5S

5S is a popular workplace organization method, which originated in Japan. Along with the effectiveness of it, it has evolved into many other areas as well. In fact, the principles of 5S can be used for ensuring quality in the management process as well. That’s where 5S, which differs slightly from 6Sigma comes into play.

Here’s a quick overview of the five different steps. When you go through these different steps, you will be able to get a better understanding on how it works for agile organizational structures and why you should be thinking about using it.

  • Seiri (Sort)

Seiri is all about figuring out what items are necessary and what are not necessary. Then you can keep the necessary items and make sure that you are working efficiently with them.

  • Seiton (Straighten)

Seiton is the process where you organize and arrange the necessary items, so that you can easily use them.

  • Seiso (Scrubbing)

Seiso is the scrubbing step. In here, you get rid of hindrances and debris to make sure that there are no road blocks.

  • Seiketsu (Standardize)

You develop a standardized system to get the job done.

  • Shitsuke (Sustain)

You are sustaining the new process that you implement to get positive results in the long run.

Why should we be interested about 5S?

In today’s world, it has become important to go ahead and develop mechanisms in project processes with the objective of enhancing the overall work efficiency.  That’s where 5S comes into play.

You can find numerous examples for 5S. For example, staff members in an organization can go ahead and organize materials that they work with while adhering to the above-mentioned steps and get the job done while ensuring effective results at the end of the day. They can improve efficiency of work done at workplace with the help of it.

— Slimane Zouggari

LS – Wise Crowds

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What is meant by it?

Wise crowds are an organizational structure that can help a group of people in engaging together to solve a problem and help each other. The participants will be either called ‘clients’ or ‘consultants.’ Clients are those people who will be sharing their challenges with the consultant and asking them for help. The consultant will be focusing on the story and give recommendations in return.

How is it done?

Wise crowds can be carried out by asking the participants to become clients and consultants. The clients will be sharing their challenges to their consultants and asking for help to learn how to solve those challenges. Consultants should be focusing on their client’s story and keep asking questions to help the client share their experience in a better way. Consultants will also have to give advice and recommendations to their clients.

What is its purpose?

Wise crowds are an agile way of generating good results that can help people in succeeding their challenges. They will be able to improve their skills when it comes to asking, giving and receiving help. They will also learn how to liberate their creativity and intelligence. Mutual trust will be built between the clients and consultants.

What are its Tips and Traps?

Make sure that you not only invite experts but also invite the general public. Participants should critique themselves and not jump to action before they have clarified their problems. Participants should stay focused on their client’s experience, and the clients should not be hesitant to answer any question.

Examples – Where can it be used?

Wise crowds are a liberating structure that can be used in the following circumstances:

  • For research groups to leach from each other.
  • For sharing progress in group projects.
  • It can be used instead of reviews and presentations.
  • For solving different problems.
  • For improving your relationship by getting advice from someone.
  • The salesperson can use it for keeping new customers.

— Slimane Zouggari