small controlled experiments

smallcontrolledexperiments

@mathiasverraes

smalluncontrolledexperiments

@mathiasverraes

Mathias Verraes

Independent ConsultantValue Object Comm.V

Student of SystemsMeddler of ModelsLabourer of Legacy

verraes.net

Fitness landscape

Continuous Improvement

"When changing teams or organizations, the trick is not to try and push them out of their current behavior. (...) A better idea is to change parameters in the environment so that their current situation becomes unstable and disappears all by itself."

4 Jurgen Appelo6

6 Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders

Heavyweight

Retrospectives are too slow

Unproductive pressure to improve

Daily

Two minutes, after standup

Brainstorm rules

"Yes, and... "

DivergenceConvergence7

7 "Thinking in New Boxes", Alan Iny & Luc de Brabandere

Avoid upfront consensus

"A meeting is where ideas go to die"Experiments over opinions

"If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine."4 Jim Barksdale

Avoid upfront expectations

Expectations determine outcomes

Low impact

Small, cheap, reversible, low-risk

No backlog

Backlogs kill motivation

Timeline

Stickies

Guarantee veto

Everybody must be heard

Measure selectively & intentionally

Avoid optimising for the metrics

Accept uncertainty

Non-scientificExposes invisible problems

Accept gut feeling

Emotional response is fine

Accept failed experiments

Welcome failures as new data points

Kaizen Mind

The urgency to improve

Climate of Doubt

Assume everything is broken and fixable

"If an idea is obviously bad,find a quick way to test it,because if it's not bad,then it's really interesting."4 Kent Beck

Experiment

Deliverone story a day

Experiment

Atomically scoped stories

Experiment

Start every storyin pair

Experiment

Testers deploy independently

Experiment

Core Protocols

Experiment

Syncing physical boards

If it's noton a wall or a board,

it's not visual.

Experiment

Measure by hand

Experiment

Hide the estimate from the board

Experiment

No moresprint deadlines

Experiment

No interrupts after lunch

Experiment

Vizualize cost of interrupts

Experiment

Wall ofTechnical Debt8

8 http://verraes.net/2013/07/managed-technical-debt/

Use experiments todetect problems

@mathiasverraeshttp://verraes.net/2014/03/small-controlled-experiments/

http://verraes.net/workshops