La globalización de las comunicaciones y la mejora sustancial en los medios de transporte han logrado que el mundo parezca mas pequeño de lo que era. Esto provoca que los cambios que hace un siglo tomaban una década, hoy en día tomen apenas dos años. La generación de nuestros padres observa con vértigo la velocidad a la que nos adaptamos a los cambios y cuán flexibles nos volvemos. Los métodos de organización del trabajo tradicionales mostraron ser ineficientes para adaptarse al a velocidad requerida por un mercado cada vez mas ávido de productos innovadores.
A nivel de mercado, tradicionalmente un producto que llevaba innovacion tomaba cuando menos dos años en desarrollarse, y su vida útil de mercado promediaba los 10. Hoy en día, con empresas como Microsoft, Google y Apple, observamos que el tiempo de mercado de los productos se ha reducido a niveles temibles. Tomando como ejemplo el iPhone de Apple, cuando salió al mercado en abril de 2007 causó una revolución. Hoy, tres años mas tarde, está a punto de quedar obsoleto por su sucesor, aparato destinado a reemplazarlo completamente ya que apunta al mismo segmento.
Si se habla de software, esta obsolescencia es muy similar, o quizás mayor. Tomando por ejemplo la suite de ofimática Office, encontramos que existieron 5 versiones en 10 años (office 2000, office xp, office 2003, office 2007, office 2010, todas en la primera década del siglo XXI).
Productos como éstos no pueden tener un tiempo de desarrollo largo, porque quedarían obsoletos antes de salir al mercado, y además se desarrollan específicamente pensando en generar la necesidad de reemplazarlos en el corto plazo.
Ante la constante necesidad del mercado de nuevos e innovadores productos, comienza a desarrollarse a principios de 2000 una nueva manera de organizar el trabajo. Esta se basa en 4 principios básicos que luego serían las bases de técnicas, herramientas y métodos que llevan a la práctica el espíritu de estos principios:
1- Personas e interacciones antes que herramientas y procesos
2- Un producto que funciona antes que una documentación exahustiva
3- La colaboración con el cliente es mas importante que la negociación del contrato
4- Responder al cambio en vez de seguir un plan rígido.
La adopción de metodologías ágiles ha trascendido rápidamente el ámbito del software.Está comenzando a ingresar en otras ingenierías mas tradicionales, y en cualquier proceso que necesite una respuesta rápida al cambio. Se logra a través de la agilidad que la industria pueda responder a una necesidad del mercado en un período de tiempo que sería impensado hace 20 años. A medida que se encuentren maneras de articular estos principios a la industria, veremos mas y mas productos innovadores, de alta calidad y que se ajusten mejor a las necesidades del mercado en este momento.
Fuentes:
Artículo principal: http://knol.google.com/k/desarrollo-ágil-de-software#
Artículos de apoyo:
http://www.monografias.com/trabajos28/agilidad-desarrollo-software-libre/agilidad-desarrollo-software-libre.shtml
http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office
As all things in this world the Scrum Management course ended today. The experience was way more enriching that I expect, and if I’m luky I’ll get a new banner in this site, like this:
This is the Scrum Manager certification for people that approves the course with the corresponding score.
Tomorrow I’ll continue this post, with more details on the journey that Juan Palacio proposes to “get” scrum.
EDIT: Here we are, Juan and I:
Scrum manager course. Juan Palacio and Carlos Barroso
Awesome day! Juan Palacio is an excellent speaker, and is so concerned in your learn process that you cannot *not* learn.
The Scrum Manager course is an approach to scrum that is different of everything I readed before. He focus in the management part, in how to manage your company / department and the relationships of them. All the books I readed in the subject focus in the scrum process himself or, at most, in the project management aspect of the task. Juan gives us a new point of view in management: applying the agile principles to the company as a whole.
While I was listening his speech, it occurs to me that I was doing something of this intuitively, as most of the scrum practices we do before even know what’s agility. This makes me think about a subject that was not investigated yet, the interaction between scrum packs and other groups organized with “traditional” approaches.
As I see, this is the next step of agility, in a path that is yet unknown but promisses much much more.
I’ll continue tomorrow, after the end of the course, and I hope I can publish some pics too.
What you do when your sprint is going far away from planned ?
If you have made mistakes in the estimations, you correct them, hopefully early thanks to the burndown chart. If you are slowed down because you lost a team member, the solution is the same: reestimating and reasigning tasks. But there is some situations when this is not enough.
One monday evening, the working site burned up. Yes. Totally. Computers. All the paper, the scrum board, all the information in paper, everything. The fire is a very good evidence eraser!
Read the rest of this entry »
In the begining, there was Excel… As most of the new scrum practitioners, I started to make my burndown charts in a spreadsheet (Excel, OO Calc). Like all the tools made too generalistic, I don’t like it, and felt that something is terribly wrong in the universe. Then I start a search for a tool that:
1- Can be used from the CLI 2- The graphic can be written / modified by the most quantity of tools possible. 3- Use a text-only format. Well, this wasn’t a requirement at first, but becames one when I find this tool Read the rest of this entry »
This is one of the few good books that I found in the matter. Written by Juan Palacio, caracterized himself as “learner and sharer”, he has his blog in Navegapolis, full of material about scum, developement and much more.
The details of this free ebook can be consulted in Safe Creative under the number 0710030001587.
The book is well organized, recommended to any person who wants to get started with scrum in a guided manner, with proven recipes and the right level of theory, just enough to understant why are we doing what are we doing. Full of cites and references to additional information, provides an excellent starting point to professionals who want to begin with scrum, or are tired and disappointed with the Traditional Project Management methods.
Divided in three parts, begins with the project management dimension, comparing the traditional or predictive project management with the new agile, iteration-oriented project management. The second part is devoted to managers and bosses, mostly trying to use the preexisting knowledge in system theory and process improvement in order to introduce the minimum number of changes to make them agile.
The third and last part is devoted enterily to scrum, showing in order and with detail the model, elements, tools and people’s responsabilities in the process. Like scrum, the books is focused heavily in the people, with a lot of advices and recomendations.
Being a free book, I should recommend it to teach scrum in any level, specially in the enterprise level. And with the fact that is written in spanish, the one book I gave to any spanish-only speaking friend out there.
EDIT: Download the book from here.
Today I finally agree with the managers to use Scrum in our software developement process, and possibly in the industrial process too, once I prove that the process is solid and my capabilities to implement it are mature enough.
This will be my diary, where I’ll write all my experiences in this journey, and I hope several things more.
To begin, lets speak abot the negotiation: in order to change some of the corporative manners, your boss / managers must have a lot of confidence in you, because this looks like a big step (and indeed, it is!). In my case, the only point where the managers get a little nervous was when I say that we will not use gantt charts to track this project. The bosses then ask me some method to know what’s the project level of success, then I show them the burndown charts and explained it’s use, then they remained calmed (for now).
I’ve promised the first demo in exactly 7 days from now. Wow. I’ve been working in this since monday, so a first iteration of 9 workable days, 2 weeks seems reasonable to me. I’ll be using plain paper to carry out the whole system, I’ve designer myself a scrum board, the history cards and the tasks post-it (not really post-it in my case, but small square pieces of paper). On monday I’ll start using the burndown chart updated to thay day, so the managers can remain happy until the demo presentation.
That’s enough for one day, I’ll continue soon…
