Job Preparation

I am building a list of the questions I want to find out from each team to figure out the state of their processes. I have a feeling that many of these teams are doing a modified waterfall instead of agile. I expect to find that instead of having teams working toward  getting user stories accepted each sprint that I will find the typical development working away and delivering code late into a sprint and QA scrambling to accept two weeks work in the last day of the sprint.

Here are some data points I am interest in:
* Is there an automated build?
* It there a continuous build kicked off by check-ins?
* Are there unit tests?
* Are unit tests part of the build?
* Are there automated backend tests?
* Are automated backend tests part of the build?
* Are there automated UI tests?
* Are automated UI tests part of the build?
* How long does a build take to complete?
* Does everyone have sandbox environments to run their own tests in?
* Is there a code review process?

* What is the length of the team sprints?

* How often does the project ship?

* Are their burn down charts for recent sprints?

* Are they using story points and tasks?

* Do their user stories include tasks for unit tests, automated tests, usability tests etc?

I am sure I will think of many more questions to assess where each team is at in creating an effective Agile process. But I think this is a good start. I don't imagine that everyone will be able to check off everything on this list and I don't expect to get them their over night. But a first step in fixing issues is assessing what they are so you can create an attack plan. For example, if I want unit tests and a team has no unit tests then we can start adding some user stories to add some unit tests each sprint and before long we will start having some code coverage!

New Job

Today I quit my job of 10 years. It has been a good job. My duties have spanned designing, coding and delivering version 1.0 products, managing multiple development teams, leading a team into Agile and product management. I have learned a lot, grown a lot but its time to move on.

I have spent my life at small startups some of which grew to many hundred of employees by the time I left. I have to got to experience the challenges of  growth, the joy of going public as well as the sadness when people are laid off because you cant make payroll. I love the excitement of a startup!

So where am I going next? I am joining a 20 year old company and will be managing teams across the US and in India as they are architect their legacy product using Agile methodologies. I am looking forward to teaching, shaping developers and sharing my experiences as I figure out just what is the role of a development manager!