program selection system

I present agile practices—KPT, Estimate Retrospectives, Positive Strokes, Iteration Planning, Darts, Task Kanban, and Overtime Tickets—that I have actually practiced in a project where I worked as a Technical Lead. I also discuss the benefits and careful points we experienced when implementing these practices from the viewpoint such as team building and leader’s mind-set.

“None of the number of people, technology nor a power of money will complete this construction after all. It is the people’s feelings which we can only rely on.”

This is one paragraph from the documentary novel “Mt. Fuji Top” written by Mr. Jiro Nitta. It’s about a project to build the meteorological observatory on the top of Mt. Fuji.

There are a lot of serious projects called the death march project in IT business. Anyone in this business could have experienced such a serious project several times.

I also have experienced such situation, not only once, but several times. I noticed that, in such situations, little of “the number of people, technology, and a power of money” are the core of the problems nor a bottleneck really. I am feeling strongly that core of the problem is in the project management and the feeling of people involved in a project.

On the other hand, I adopt various techniques and ideas such as XP, SCRUM, and Lean effectively in the project which I work as the Technical Lead. I present the examples of such projects in this report, and describe how our team put effort to handle problems about project management and person.

The concrete practice that I talk about as follows.

• Retrospectives
  • KPT (keep & Good, Problem, and Try)
  • Estimate Retrospectives
  • Positive Strokes (Oneself recognize a good point of oneself and do it for vitality to advance next.)
• Iteration Planning
  • Darts (We decide the person in charge of the task by darts.)
  • Task Kanban
• Energized Work
  • Overtime Tickets (The structure whose salary will decrease if it works overtime)

It is a content that I would like you to hear it from the manager who keeps trying and erring though it worries because it has the awareness of the issues on the site of development, the site leader, and the programmer by all means.

A Japanese version is here.

http://www.slideshare.net/fkino/practices-of-an-agile-team