Scrum Works! Really!Discuss Agile Conference May 2016 Santosh Shaastry

Background

• Programmer

• Agile Enthusiast

• Looking for all possible ways in which

Agile can benefit community• Volunteered for Managing Committee

• Limited prior experience

• Not a professional set up

• Work with teams and stakeholders

How does Scrum hold up outside software?

• Not much literature whether Scrum works outside software development

• For adoption outside software, no metrics on success rates

• The book “Art of doing twice the work in half the time” does share some success stories

Inspiration

• Certified Scrum Professional

• Practicing Agile/Scrum for four years

• Experienced results of Agile/Scrum

Issues at hand!

• Ad-hoc management

• No proper tracking system

• No pre-defined goals

• No tasks

• Mismanagement of maintenance work

How it worked before?

• Staff not briefed of their work

• Firefighting all the time

• Multiple stakeholders

• Duplicate work

• Extensive paperwork

• Limited communication with vendors

• Maintenance activities not monitored

Start….

• Hire a good Scrum Master

• Set a proper communication channel in place

• Task management

• Kanban adoption

Communication Process

Coaching Adoption

Kanban..why and ?

• Transparent task management

• Must be easy for staff to use

• Easy for product owners to monitor

• Did not set a WIP limit

• Separate column for blockers

Kanban helped…but

What we could achieve• Track work assigned status

• Understand blockers

• Tasks requiring limited follow-up

What we could not achieve• Manage dependencies

• Communication among stakeholders

So…I chose to Scrum it!

• Easy to learn

• Easy to adopt

• Customized to suit our needs

Scrum team

PO

All committe

e members

Scrum Master

Estate manager

Team members

Electrician

Plumber

H/K staff

Dependencies

Vendors

Govt entities

Residents

Scrum ceremonies and artifacts

Ceremonies

• Stand-up meeting

• Sprint Review

• Dependency meetings

Artifacts

• Daily status report

• Weekly status report

• Financial reports – expenditure

Success with Scrum-ban!

FROM

• Ad-hoc management

• No proper tracking system

• No pre-defined goals

• No tasks

• Mismanagement of maintenance work

TO

• Professional management

• Attendance & task tracking system

• Agreed and pre-defined goals

• Defined tasks for smallest unit of work

• Contracts in place and monitored

Challenges

• Aversion towards change

• “Respect everyone” attitude (staff)

• “Do not question” attitude (residents)

• Dependency management

• Team motivation levels

• Avoid “production support” like environment

• There is no “real” production release!

Current adoption

Forming Storming Norming Performing

Achievements

• Net expenditure has come down

• Increase in productivity

• People involvement helps identify issues proactively

• Clarity of purpose/responsibilities

• Better maintenance of the apartment

• Long pending work identified, tracked and completed

• Automation to ensure better transparency

Thank you!