Having risks is an issue or are issues risky? :-)

Recently I got a question from some of my friends, what is the difference between risks and issues? When I thought about it, I felt that it is indeed a confusing topic! There are some confusing questions, like - Do issues lead to risks? Or do risks lead to issues? Can issues be forecasted? Are unplanned risks = issues? Let me express my views. To make the explanation easy, let's take an example.... Because I am now 27 year old and my parents and relatives have started hunting a life partner for me, I may get married soon. Here the risk is - "I may get married soon". It's ...
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Iterative approach on fixed scope, fixed time and fixed budget project??

Recently I got a chance to work with scrum teams (who were new to scrum) and the management insisted that this project has a fixed end date, with fixed scope and a fixed budget. None of these can be changed. Because commitments have been already made to customer! Following are the things that we tried and seem to have helped the project stakeholders. Initially we had 3 week sprint length. We decided to go with 1 week sprint. Following being the reasons - With 3 week sprint, managers used to pressurize teams to squeeze more work (you can imagine how this works with fixed price pr...
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Sprint Planning: Should the teams break their heads for task breakdown?

If you plan a trip, you will think of where you would like to go (what is the destination) and how would you accomplish it. If you plan to renovate your house, you will have to decide what do you want to renovate and also how would you accomplish it. So, if its sprint planning (for next 2-3 weeks) then you need to decide "what" you will try to accomplish in that time and also "how" will you get there. In my opinion, both aspects are important (when you pan anything!). I have come across different teams who have approached planning differently. First type of a team is where the team membe...
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Kaushik Ghanekar, Dev Manager, Capita

Sachin is an expert in Agile methodologies and Scrum. His involvement with team really helped us to mature in Agile and Scrum. He is a very good "coach" and his best quality which I can highlight is about how he merges with the teams and able to coach using a real time examples. I will surely recommend Sachin as an Agile coach for teams who want to learn Scrum and Agile.
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प्रोजेक्ट म्हणजे प्रोजेक्ट असते ….

प्रोजेक्ट म्हणजे प्रोजेक्ट असते, तुमचे आणि आमचे, अगदी सेम असते :-) पहिले ४ महिने सगळे अलबेल असते, सगळ्या dashboard वर "green" दिसत! शेवटच्या २ महिन्यात सगळे फाटत, green dashboard red red होत जाते! प्रोजेक्ट म्हणजे प्रोजेक्ट असते.... सगळ्यांना सगळे कालच हवे असते, start लाच प्रोजेक्ट late झालेले असते! waterfall असो, कि असो agile, प्रोजेक्टमध्ये आता, मध्यरात्री कोंबडे आरवते! प्रोजेक्ट म्हणजे प्रोजेक्ट असते.... scope, time, cost चे कोडे सुटत नसते, कुठल्याही प्रोजेक्ट चे घोडे इथेच आडते! मंगळयानासारखे एखादेच प्रोजेक्ट चुकते :-) चुकलेल्या प्रोजेक्टमधून कोणी कधी शिकते? प्रो...
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Saurabh Popli, Capita

I had the pleasure of working with Sachin as an agile coach for our team.  From day 1, we could see that Sachin was very result oriented, focused, effective and observant. In particular, he was able to enroll teams into breaking down user stories to the extent possible and yet the stories retained their business value. The estimation and story pointing methodology became a hit within the teams and everyone started participating in the process. He also was able to ensure that teams authentically raise the issues instead of being overly optimistic or pessimistic. Most of the scrum ceremonies ...
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Relative (तुलनात्मक) sizing म्हणजे काय रे भाऊ?…..

समजा कि तुम्हाला घर रंगवायचे आहे. हे काम किती मोठे आहे? ह्याचे उत्तर १००० स्क़े फू हेच असू शकते. हे आपण माझ्या आधीच्या blog मध्ये पहिले. एखाद्या कामाला किती वेळ लागेल ह्याचे उत्तर देताना पहिले आपण ते काम किती मोठे आहे ह्याचाच विचार आधी करतो. आणि त्यामुळे effort estimate पेक्षा size estimate जास्ती योग्य ठरू शकेल हे सुद्धा आपण माझ्या आधीच्या blog मध्ये पहिले आहेच. पण घराचा size किंवा लग्नात लागणाऱ्या लाडवाचा size estimate करणे सोपे आहे हो. एखादे software किती मोठे आहे ह्याचे उत्तर तेवढे सोपे नक्कीच नाही! पण आपण software चा size मोजू शकलो तर बरेच प्रश्न सुटू शकतील :-) . आता आपण हे पाहू कि हा s...
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Size म्हणजे काय रे भाऊ? आणि Effort म्हणजे रे काय?

समजा दिवाळीत घरी चकल्या बनवल्या जात आहेत. असे समजा कि आई चकल्या करणार आहे. घरी गेल्यावर तळलेल्या चकल्या बघून तुम्ही विचारता “किती चकल्या बनवल्या आज?” आई उत्तर देते “२ तास चकल्या बनवत होते”. आता समजा कि बायको चकल्या करणार आहे. घरी गेल्यावर तळलेल्या चकल्या बघून तुम्ही विचारता “किती चकल्या बनवल्या आज?” बायको उत्तर देते “४ तास चकल्या बनवत होते”! आता बायकोने आईपेक्षा जास्ती चकल्या बनवल्या की काय? Not sure…कदाचित कमीच बनवल्या असतील :-) पण मग चकल्या नक्की जास्ती कुणी बनवल्या? कसे कळायचे हे? आता तुम्ही शक्कल लढवता आणि तुमचा प्रश्न बदलता. “किती किलोच्या चकल्या केल्या आज?” And now you get expected...
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Efficiency & Effectiveness – Do They Contradict?

I recently had a discussion with a very senior person, head of product development for a fairly big MNC s/w company. He said he cared about only 2 things - efficiency and effectiveness! After the meeting I just wondered what does this mean?? As I understand, efficiency means more output for same given input or same output with lesser input! You want your teams to be more efficient (aka productivity improvements). Which means the team should deliver more throughput every month / release / sprint....whatever is the desired unit of time! Well, then - Akshay Kumar's 10 movies are released...
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