Technical Team Leaderin AgileTitas Lapinskast.lapinskas@ba.lt

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Shortly about me

How do you like Agile?

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• We are not using Scrum/We are planning on using Scrum shortly

• Scrum works perfectly for us• Scrum fails to help us to deliver projects on time

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When Scrum works perfectly

When Scrum works perfectly

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• Product development process

• Long term (2-10+ years) development on the same codebase

• Static or very rarely changing team

• They release after each sprint, but release to production is after some set of functionality is complete

• Quality is everything!

• Ex. Banking system, Online Shops, Content Management Systems

Project management triangle

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Scrum team lifecycle

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Burndown history

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When Scrum doesn’t work

When Scrum doesn’t work

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• Short lived project• Fixed price + fixed scope + fixed time• Newly assembled team• Usually one-time activity

• Classical project definition

• Ex. Migrating to SEPA payments, Switching to new CRM system, Integrating new partner’s business system into data exchange

Project management triangle

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How customer understands agile

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Burndown history

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Who is Technical Team Leader?

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• Group player• Technical– Specialist– All rounder– Key person

• Soft skills– Leadership– Coaching– Management

Start of the project

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• Gather technical information• Prepare infrastructure (Continuous integration,

dev/test environments)• Select or adapt to the frameworks/tools• Do some prototyping (proof of concept)• Document all this

Survival kit / Survival guide

Let the team fail?

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• Classical Scrum Master says : “Let the team fail”

• I say: “Don’t let the team fail, if you can prevent that”– Several failures in a row, makes that a habit– New members quickly pick up traditions– People start concentrating on what was bad instead

what must be done

• Never be afraid:– Of new things and technologies– Refactoring– Resetting of the team spirit

Confidence

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• Make the decisions:“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing”

Theodore Roosevelt

– Sometimes timely made bad decision is better than long thought good decision

– Experience helps to find balance

• “Selling to the team”:– Believe yourself first– Believe in team

Team’s growth

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• Team skills must grow as they do the project:– One gets acquainted with technology/library while reading about

it, one learns technology/library while working with it– Talk with people in advance about areas they want to grow– It is much faster to learn from someone, comparing to learning

alone.– Pass knowledge outside the team: conferences, blogs, knowledge-

sharing

• Team must grow as a team!• “People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make

any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” Mary Kay Ash

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To code or not to code ?

To code or not to code ?

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• Technical Team leader responsible for covering:– Prototyping / Initial tackling with new components– Working on extremely hard bug– Provide on spot consulting/help with an issue– Code reviews

if ( unit.getVendor().equals(“Cisco”) && unit.getType() == HARDWARE.SIDE_PANEL ) {if ( unit.getType() == HARDWARE.SIDE_PANEL&& unit.getVendor().equals(“Cisco”) ) {

• Paradox: “The stronger technical team leader is in technical department – the less actual coding (s)he does”.

Technical Team Leader …

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• Is a part of team:– Fails together with the team, succeeds together with the

team– He is not a superman, the team does the job

• Is not a replacement for a scrum master.

• Is not replacement for a product owner

How to deal with Technical Team Leader?

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• Technical team leader is a normal person:– (S)he likes proactivity from team members– Reacts very well to praises– “Thank you” is a phrase everybody likes to hear– There are unpleasant activities which (s)he likes to

avoid– Hates overtime and failing projects– Any other things good to other people

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