TORONTO, 06AUG, 1600--Thomas Nilsson of Responsive Development Technology (Sweden) is offering a kind of task board for the product owner team and the work they do to prepare backlog items for planning. Seems pretty neat, especially for a group of BAs who need to organize that work.

Some highlights:

• Analysis sounds like a dirty, BRUF word, but we do still need it. So, call it Agile Analysis. We need it, and it needs to be different
• What goes into an iteration? Requirements/stories which are ready to be worked on. Who and how gets them ready to work on?
• The challenge: BAs and POs need to continually evolve the product backlog. A continuous activity with no end and no iterations. Lots of tasks. Some tasks have long lead time.
  
• Enter personal productivity
  • Organize/plan  }
    
  • Focus/act        }--just like what delivery teams do
• Methods:
  • Devid Allen: Getting Things Done (GTD)
  • Mark Forester: Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play. --> work small
    
  • Francesco Cirillo: The Pomodor Technique --> work in 30 minute chunks
• Kanban
  • Task Board
  • Limited Number of Places
  • Can Only Move to Empty Space
  • Gives "Pull" instead of "Push"
• Round Robin
  • Operating System Scheduling
  • Time slots
  • Parellelism on one processor (processor=analyst)
  • andles different lead times
  • Higher priority suspends
• Kanban + Round Robin = a board with items in states, and a scheduling/kanban element. States:
  
  • New = new req we heard of
    
  • Need = articulate the need. maybe an epic
    
  • Story = break need into stories
  • Implement = product backlog (when scheduled, goes to delivery team's board)
  • Validate = back on our board
• Scheduling
  • Top Half is suspended--they are lower priority, not being worked on
  • Bottom Half is scheduled--they are active
  • For active items: only 5 slots in his example ... can only move to in-progress if room. Work 30 min on item 1, 30 min on item 2, 30 min on item 3, etc. in a round-robin.
    
• Running it
  • Daily standup with 3 questions
  • If a spot opens up in schedule, check with PO on which is next-highest priority to promote
  • Items can be blocked (can't get info)
  • Provides a visible place to drive discussions on items in still in analysis (stakeholders wondering why stuff not moving)
  • An analyst card might map to many stories (you need a new card when your stories have different priorities)
  • Validate state is not used all the time. It's when you need more than the usual iteration acceptance for a collection of stories
• p.s. Great use of Pink Panther cartoon graphics. :)