Following on from my last post; “Communicating in Patterns” here’s the first of my regularly used concepts - alluded to in “Don’t Open More Barrels Than You Can Consume“.
Name: “Breaking The Seal” or “Cracking Open” etc.
Analogy: (This one makes me think of the campfire scene in blazing saddles even though it’s only partially relevant)…
You only open the lid on a new can of beans when there isn’t enough in the current can to feed the family.
Underlying Concept: One of the key ways of delivering maximum throughput on teams is to limit WIP (work in progress/process). Teams inexperienced at this tend to start additional items or “break the seal” on new work when blocked or when a team member has completed their last personal task. We need the team to take a hard look at the work at hand, consider swarming around a given item or story and only open the lid on a new item if there really is no additional value to be gained from another member of the team helping out on the current top priority item.
This works on many levels – here’s a few…
- Every time you open a new can you risk not finishing it all and having to throw the leftovers away.
- Opening too many cans and forcing the family to eat them all causes bloating.
- Eating excess beans takes longer and leaves no room for dessert.
- Unfinished cans in the refrigerator tend to get pushed to the back and go moldy.
- Very few people like cold beans for leftovers. (actually - sometimes I do)
About The Captain
Captain Crom started programming and debugging games from magazines on his Brother’s BBC as a small boy in the early 1980s. With early qualifications in both computer science & art and a love of live music it became clear he was destined for bad things.
His tyrannical ways commenced with a degree in Computing & Informatics at Plymouth and from the mid 1990's a career in the software industry. After formative years as "The Scourge of the Thames Valley" between Reading and Bracknell with occasional raids on the San Francisco Bay area, since 2004 he has been seen sailing stretches of the A10 North and South of the Isle of Ely with the primary source of his raids targeted around Cambridge. Sightings have also been rumored as far afield as Scotland, Norway, India, Nevada, Florida and Georgia.
The Captain has served in companies ranging from successful startups and ailing dot-coms to global corporations, spanning roles from IT, consulting, support, development and management through to agile coaching.
The common thread in each of his roles is that he has always chosen to join software product groups - usually large-scale enterprise software. His large-scale product and organizational focus differentiates him from the more common textbook agile captains.
(Other differentiators include his distinctive hoop earrings and love of spiced rum)
The Captain's Agile experience started with a blend of FDD and XP in what he describes as "the most disciplined team he had ever served with". He subsequently moved onto using Scrum and XP blended with Theory Of Constraints, Kanban and Lean philosophies to improve software delivery techniques in other organizations.
He believes every member of a delivery team should spend time with customers supporting the product they produced. “Sitting at the dirty end of a product (or cutlass) completely changes the way you think about business processes and write software for the rest of your softwarefaring career!”
