Nokia Test: Where did it come from?

www.slashphone.com

In 2005, Certified Scrum Trainer Bas Vodde was coaching teams at Nokia Networks in Finland and developed the first Nokia test focused on Agile practices. He had hundreds of teams and wanted a simple way to determine if each team was doing the basics.

The Nokia test is a similar to a maintenance check on your car. It looks at whether your tires have air, your tank has gas, all cylinders are firing, and makes sure there are no critical missing pieces to your car. You should perform it before you go out for a drive with your Scrum team.

It does not provide the secret sauce for hyperperforming teams. However, it is the first line of the recipe for high performance. We give this test to Scrum teams at OpenView Venture Partners and to their portfolio companies as the venture group does not expect good performance from Scrum teams without passing the Nokia test. They are also very interested in predictability of release dates which is impossible without passing grades on the test.

By 2007, Siemens had acquired Nokia Networks to form Nokia Siemens Networks with over 60,000 employees and 15 billion Euro in revenue. Bas Vodde moved to China to train Nokia Siemens Networks staff on Scrum and updated the Nokia Test to include Scrum practices.
In 2007, Jeff Sutherland tuned the Nokia Test for Scrum Certification and in 2008 developed a Nokia Test scoring system.

Each person on the team takes a sheet of paper and prepares to score eight questions on a scale of 1-10. Teams average their score and team scores are averaged across a training class or a company to determine the Nokia test score.

Scrum training classes average a score of 4 to 5 during the first morning of the course. At the end of the course, they feel they can bring their teams up to a 6 by the end of their next Sprint using what they learned in the course.

Deep Lean and Scrum: Stockholm 25-26 Sep 2008

Crisp Academy presents
Deep Lean
Learn from the experts!
2 days with Mary, Tom, Jeff, and Henrik
Sep 25-26, 2008 Lean Scrum XP
Click here for registration!

Deep Lean is an in-depth seminar targeted to people familiar with Lean, Agile, Scrum and XP software development. This will be a unique opportunity to be in a relatively intimate conversation with Lean/Agile/Scrum/XP thought leaders for two days. We will have in-depth discussion of software development challenges, principles and practices.
Date: Sep 25 - 26, 2008
09:00 - 17:00 (breakfast from 08:30)
Agenda: Here is the detailed agenda
Location: Central Stockholm
Price: SEK 7500 + vat
Teachers: Mary & Tom Poppendieck, Jeff Sutherland, Henrik Kniberg
Contact: academy@crisp.se
+46 8 556 950 15

Examples of topics that will be covered:

* Why software projects fail
* Lean principles and Scrum
* Using Value Stream Mapping to uncover and eliminate waste
* Agile transitioning - how to get started
* Real world experience creating lean and agile companies

The price includes:

* 2-day registration covering all presentations and workshops
* All slides and course material
* Breakfast, lunch and snacks
* You are invited to dine and socialize with the speakers and volunteers at a local restaurant on friday night (all participants are responsible for their own expense).

For those needing more background, we recommend reading Mary & Tom Poppendieck?s first book: Lean Software Development - An Agile Toolkit in advance of the seminar.

ScrumMaster Certification in Los Angeles

25-26 Aug 2008, Beverly Hills, CA

Get certified by Jeff Sutherland, Co-Creator of Scrum and Scott Downey from MySpace. This course is filling up quickly and may be sold out soon. Sign up now if you want to attend.

This course will be led by Jeff Sutherland, Co-Creator of Scrum in downtown Beverly Hills near Rodeo Drive at The Tower - Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverwil Drive. Beverly Hills, CA 90025. Jeff has been a consultant to MySpace and Scott Downey, MySpace Scrum Evanglist will assist him with this training.

The course will start promptly at 9am each day and run until 5pm. Please arrive at 8:30 the first day for a continental breakfast. Participants should read Ken Schwaber's book, Agile Project Management with Scrum, or Jeff Sutherland's draft of The Scrum Papers before the class as we will assume you know the basics of Scrum.

Jeff Sutherland started the first Scrum at Easel Corporation in 1993. He worked with Ken Schwaber to emerge Scrum as a formal process at OOPSLA ’95. Together, they extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and IT organizations and helped write the Agile Manifesto.

Jeff is the CEO of Scrum, Inc. powered by OpenView Venture Partners and is Agile coach to over 20 portfolio companies and to the OpenView venture group staff which runs all its operations with Scrum. As Senior Advisor to OpenView and CTO of PatientKeeper he focuses on using Scrum to transform companies as well as empower software developers. PatientKeeper quadrupled revenue in 2007 and the OpenView venture capital group is using it to create similar high performance portfolio companies. Jeff will share the secret sauce that helps development teams radically improve productivity and quality while providing a more rewarding and fun working environment for developers.

You can learn from Jeff's experience as a consultant to the world's leading software companies. Their experience can help make your Scrum implementation world class. There has been lot's of learning with Jeff at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, MySpace, Adobe, GE, Siemens, BellSouth, GSI Commerce, Ulticom, Palm, St. Jude Medical, DigiChart, RosettaStone, Healthwise, Sony/Ericson, Accenture, Trifork, Systematic Software Engineering, Exigen Services, SirsiDynix, Softhouse, Philips Medical, Barclays Global Investors, Constant Contact, Wellogic, Inova Solutions, Medco, Saxo Bank, Xebia, Insight.com, SolutionsIQ, Crisp, Johns Hopkins Applie Physics Laboratory, Motley Fool, Planon, OpenView Venture Partners, Juske Bank, BEC, Camp Scrum, DotWay AB, Ultimate Software, Danube, Rally Development, Version One, and many other companies.

Jeff is an expert on distributed/outsourced Scrum (see Agile 2008) and on implementing Scrum in a CMMI Level 5 company. He has has scaled and distributed Scrum using his last five companies as laboratories. His entire current company at PatientKeeper is run by a MetaScrum, and is one of the most advance implementions of Scrum worldwide. Mary Poppendieck, in her latest book on Lean Software Development, comments: Five years ago a killer application emerged in the health care industry: Give doctors access to patient information on a PDA. Today there is no question which company won the race to dominate this exploding market; PatientKeeper has overwhelmed its competition with its capability to bring new products and features to market just about every week. The sixty or so technical people produce more software than many organizations several times larger, and they do not show any sign that the size of their code base is slowing them down.

A key strategy that has kept PatientKeeper at the front of the pack is an emphasis on unprecedented speed in delivering new features. It will not surprise anyone who understands Lean that PatientKeeper has to maintain superb quality in order to support its rapid delivery. CTO Jeff Sutherland explains it this way:

“Rapid cycle time:

* Increases learning tremendously
* Eliminates buggy software because you die if you don't fix this.
* Fixes the install process because you die if you have to install 45 releases this year and install is not easy.
* Improves the upgrade process because there is a constant flow of upgrades that are mandatory. Makes upgrades easy.
* Forces quick standardization of software via new features rather than customization and one off.
* Forces implementation of sustainable pace. You die a death of attrition without it.
* Allows waiting to build new functionality until there are 4-5 customers who pay for it. This is counterintuitive, and caused by the fact everything is ready within 90 days.”

"I find that the vast majority of organizations are still trying to do too much stuff, and thus find themselves thrashing. The only organization I know of which has really solved this is PatientKeeper." Mary Poppendieck

In this course, participants will learn how to stop thrashing and start executing along with everything necessary for getting started with Scrum. There are very few rules to Scrum so it is important to learn its fundamental principles by experiencing them directly from those who have implemented the best Scrums in the software industry. Participants gain hands-on practice with the release backlog, sprint backlog, the daily Scrum meeting, tracking progress with a burndown chart, and more. Participants experience the Scrum process through a “59-minute Scrum” and the "XP Game” which simulate Scrum projects through non-technical group exercises.

The course will run from 9am-5pm each day.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional Certified ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.

PMPs:
You can receive 16 Professional Development Units (PDUs) for this course.
Course Material:

Participants will receive course materials for review upon registration. Click here for course syllabus.

The CSM course was formulated to train and certify ScrumMasters and is used worldwide for ScrumMaster training. The book, Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber is required reading for the course and the course is based on the primary Scrum book, Agile Development with Scrum.

Of course, there will be updated material and training exercises in the course which you cannot get from books. The entire syllabus will be made available upon registering for the course so you can look it over and bring it with you to the sessions.

Scrum and Fighter Aircraft

In 1993 at Easel Corporation when we started the first Scrum, I thought the ScrumMaster needed to see how to land a Sprint on a date, just like landing a fighter aircraft at the end of the runway. If you are high on the glidepath in a fighter you can easy land in the middle of the runway and if it is wet or icy can slide off the end of the runway. At the end of every runway there are trees, a deep hole, or water. It is always bad.

So the Burndown Chart along with the Scrum Emergency Procedure was developed. What do you do when bad things start to happen in a Sprint?

More specifically, what do you do when an Agile system becomes unstable?

But I digress. Jim Coplien just sent me a great video of an unstable Agile system, the latest Euro fighter. Here we see a race between a Bugatti and the fighter aircraft which reminds me of the time I flew F4 Phantoms in Europe in the air while I was driving a Porsche 911 on the ground. Here the Bugatti races the fighter to the end of the runway and back while the fighter takes off, flies straight up for a mile, then does a reverse loop in an attempt to beat the Bugatti back to the takeoff point.

Click here for an exciting ride!

HICSS Papers: Need Reviewers

HICSS paper submissions are in and we are seeking Agile experts to review these papers. All reviews must be complete by August 15. This is your chance for an earlybird view on some of the latest Agile thinking. Contact Jeff Sutherland if you want to review one or more of these papers. Please include paper numbers in your email.

179 - An analytical survey of “on-site customer” practice in Extreme Programming
189 - Scalable Dynamic Clustering
277 - Analyzing the Modes of Communication in Agile Practices
323 - Automated Acceptance Testing Using Fit
357 - A Model of Agile Evolution and Maintenance Process
433 - Understanding Shared Leadership in Scrum
553 - Measurements of Software Agility
462 - The impact of organizational culture on agile method use
794 - Service Development in the User-Oriented Software as a Service Era
941 - Bridge Methods: Using a Balanced Project Practice Portfolio to Integrate Agile and Formal Process Methodologies
1008 - Agile Deployment: Lean Service Management and Deployment Strategies for the SaaS Enterprise
901 - Proposing an agile approach to software ethics
1058 - Using Scrum in Distributed Agile Development: A Multiple Case Study
1087 - All-Out Organizational Scrum as an Innovation Value Chain
398 - XP Benefits to Software Development: A Case Study Analysis
575 - An analysis of Stand-up Meetings in Agile Methods

See HICSS42 for latest details on the conference.

Scrumming in Paris: La Cremerie

Certified ScrumMaster Rev. Arline Sutherland with Serge Mathieu-Mahias of La Cremerie

Xebia France hosted an excellent ScrumMaster Certification course at La Defense in Paris. What a great location for a CSM course! Not only the French, but some Danes, Poles and Germans were there. The September course is already full and the December course is filling up quickly. I expect more and more people will fly in from around Europe to enjoy the good French food and ambience.

For example, a great French lunch is not to be rushed. We always have to take an hour and a half for three delicious courses, with wine of course. Even then, we are rushing the waiters. Definitely the best Scrum training lunch I have had worldwide.

And after work, what do you do when you have nothing in the refrigerator? Actually, we decided to pick up a couple of bottles of wine at La Cremerie as Arline had noticed it was one of the best wine shops in Paris. We stumbled down the street from our apartment on the Left Bank and into a little shop. The owner asked if we had a reservation as he has a little store with four tables and a bar. We told him we just wanted to pick up a couple of bottles of wine to take back to the apartment to have with an omelette. He said (speaking perfect English), "Sit down, I am going to serve you something better than an omelette!"



I asked him what wine he would recommend with an unbelievably huge chunk of mozzarella with tomato and greens. The best mozzarella I have every tasted was in Rome after a CSM course with IBM. This was even better! And the wine was even better than the mozzarella, a 2006 Auxey-Duresses, an organic burgundy.

It was a magic moment and we shared some laughs with the owner before picking up another bottle of Auxey-Duresses, a 2006 Maranges burgundy, and a 1984 Calvados. I drink a lot of Calvados and this was definitely the best I've had. Check out Cremerie when you are in Paris!

New Takeuchi Paper on Toyota

The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success
by Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu
Harvard Business Review, June 2008 (free online during June)

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Toyota's success. TPS is a radical innovation that has disrupted a huge market. However, without the "soft" factors that drive Toyota, they would still be just another auto company.

This is also true of Scrum where the Scrum framework is a necessary condition for hyperproductivity but that alone will never get you there. The team must rise to the occasion, engineering practices must be extraordinary, and management must provide an environment that removes all impediments that stand in the way. You can only get high quality by going fast in the right way and you can only go fast in the right way by working less, not more. Failure of managers to understand these paradoxes will cause Scrum to fail and often the company along with it. This is natural in a free market economy where bad companies deserve to fail and the sooner the better as then improved companies, products, and services can emerge more quickly.

Takeuchi wrote "The New New Product Development Game" which launched the first Scrum team and his work continues to be of high interest to the Scrum community. He and his colleagues have struggled to understand Toyota for decades and done many studies to try to get to the bottom of Toyota's success.

Quite simply, TPS is a “hard” innovation that allows the company to keep improving the way it manufactures vehicles; in addition, Toyota has mastered a “soft” innovation that relates to corporate culture. The company succeeds, we believe, because it creates contradictions and paradoxes in many aspects of organizational life. Employees have to operate in a culture where they constantly grapple with challenges and problems and must come up with fresh ideas. That’s why Toyota constantly gets better. The hard and the soft innovations work in tandem. Like two wheels on a shaft that bear equal weight, together they move the company forward.

Toyota’s culture of contradictions plays as important a role in its success as TPS does, but rivals and experts have so far overlooked it. Toyota believes that ef?ciency alone cannot guarantee success. Make no mistake: No company practices Taylorism better than Toyota does. What’s different is that the company views employees not just as pairs of hands but as knowledge workers who accumulate chie—the wisdom of experience—on the company’s front lines. Toyota therefore invests heavily in people and organizational capabilities, and it garners ideas from everyone and everywhere: the shop floor, the office, the field.

Perhaps the biggest contradiction has always been Toyota's mission - to make the world a better place. Therefore they do things no other auto company with do even if there is not an immediate financial return.

Toyota Value, the document that outlines the company’s beliefs, says it best: “We are always optimizing to enhance the happiness of every customer as well as to build a better future for people, society, and the planet we share. This is our duty. This is Toyota.”

This focus captures the hearts of the people and their spirit of innovation. To execute it well requires great leadership and great leadership is servant leadership that listens to the people and changes their behavior to help the people.

Senior executives constantly hammer home messages such as “Never be satisfied” and “There’s got to be a better way.” A favorite saying of former chairperson Hiroshi Okuda is “Reform business when business is good,” and Watanabe is fond of pointing out that “No change is bad.”... Toyota has a strict hierarchy, but it gives employees freedom to push back. Voicing contrarian opinions, exposing problems, not blindly following bosses’ orders—these are all permissible employee behaviors. Watanabe, who recounts how he fought with his bosses as he rose through the ranks, often says, “Pick a friendly fight.”