Contracts are required to bridge the gap of trust and uncertainty between different organizations thus enabling them to work together. Traditional ‘fixed price, fixed scope and fixed time’ projects do not take the uncertainty in business environment and software development into account. These contracts tend to set up the customer and vendor against each other where, instead of collaboration, time and energy is spent on deciding who should pay for the change. A working group is currently brainstorming on OpenPlans with an aim to produce reusable agile contracts. This would potentially reverse the customer-vendor relationship from confrontation to collaboration.
In the past Alistair Cockburn has listed more than 10 strategies of Agile contracts based on inputs from several people. These include the standard ‘fixed price fixed scope’, ‘time and material’ contracts to the more innovative ones like ‘Incremental delivery with payment on incremental acceptance’ and ‘Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity’. Martin Fowler talked about projects where they first build trust with the customer and then get to a flexible charging scheme for future projects. Mary and Tom Poppendieck have discussed various contract types and their potential benefits. They also discussed various customer and vendor categories and the factors like culture, country and software type which might affect the contract.
The working group on OpenPlans currently has a work in progress Agile contract titled ‘Money For Nothing, Change For Free’ which places strong emphasis on customer participation. The customer is expected to have a high degree of involvement in prioritizing features, sprint planning, writing conditions for satisfaction of features and sprint review. The contract also has the following clauses set up
* Early Termination (Money for Nothing)- Customer can terminate the contract at the end of any sprint by paying 20% of the remaining contract value * Change For Free – Customer can add new features at sprint boundaries if items of equal scope are removed from the contract.
The contract also talks about ‘Guarantee of work’ where the vendor guarantees that 80% of the functionality is delivered with high quality as per the agreed upon definition of done and that the vendor may take the risk of late delivery.
The contract development can be tracked on the ‘Agile Contracts’ home page and membership can be requested for contributing to the contract definition.
Scrum Certification New York with Jeff Sutherland and Joe Little 18-19 Dec 2008 Scrum Certification Seattle with Jeff Sutherland and Mitch Lacey 12-13 Jan 2009
Scrum Certification San Francisco 15-16 Jan 2009 with Jeff Sutherland and Bas Vodde
Scrum Certification Boston 20-21 Jan 2009 with Jeff Sutherland and Bas Vodde Scrum Certification Beverly Hills 16-17 Feb 2009 with Jeff Sutherland and Scott Downey 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 co-authored the Agile Manifesto with 15 other industry thought leaders.
Jeff is the CEO of Scrum, Inc. powered by OpenView Venture Partners and Agile coach to the OpenView venture group which runs all internal operations with Scrum, as well as their portolio of software companies. As Senior Advisor to OpenView he focuses on using Scrum to transform companies as well as empower software developers. In his last position as CTO of PatientKeeper, his Scrum implementation was the key to quadrupled revenue in 2007. OpenView is using Scrum 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.
Jeff spends one week a month working directly with development teams in OpenView portfolio companies. This gives him continuous hands on experience in implementing Scrum and helping to improve engineering practices. The other three weeks a month he does consulting and training for companies worldwide. As Chairman of the Scrum Training Institute he leads one of the largest global Scrum training organizations.
You can learn from Dr. Sutherland's experience as consultant to the world's leading companies. Their experience can help make your Scrum implementation world class. Jeff's clients include: 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, Barclays Global Investors, Constant Contact, Wellogic, Inova Solutions, Medco, Saxo Bank, Xebia, Insight.com, SolutionsIQ, Crisp, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Motley Fool, Planon, OpenView Venture Partners, Jyske Bank, BEC, Camp Scrum, DotWay AB, Ultimate Software, Danube, Rally Development, Version One, Scrum Training Institute, AtTask, Intronis, Version One, OpenView Labs, Central Desktop, Open-E, Zmags, eEye, Reality Digital, DST, Booz Allen Hamilton, 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. As CTO/VP of Engineering of nine software companies, he has created, scaled and distributed Scrum using his companies as laboratories for continuous process improvement. His last company, PatientKeeper is run by a MetaScrum, and is one of the most advanced implementations 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 Jeff's courses, participants learn how to stop thrashing and improve performance 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.
Dr. Sutherland's training is helpful to every employee in a Scrum company. Most of his Openview portfolio companies use Scrum in sales, marketing, finance, or in the senior management team, so you will often see these people in his classes. Every developer can benefit by getting a thorough grounding in Scrum basics. Some of Jeff's companies send every employee, including adminstrative assistants to his courses. These companies always experience radical growth and profitability when everyone in on the same page with the Scrum process. In addition, many Certified ScrumMasters use his courses as a refresher as they often contain advanced material depending on who is in the class. CSMs and CSPs may attend his training at reduced rates.
During a Scrum Certification course in Atlanta, I gave a presentation at CNN for the local Agile community - Pretty Good Scrum: Secret Sauce for Distributed Teams. A good time was had by all, particularly at the dinner after the Agile meeting.
World's Best Product Owner: Evil Genius Steve Jobs
A lot of people confuse product vision with strategy vision for the company. Product vision has to do with crafting a product that is so cool that when people see it they don't understand how they ever lived without it. Most senior management teams have no product vision although for some companies like Apple, and several of OpenView Venture Partners startups, the CEO or the CTO is the product visionary.
Levy's article on the birth of the iPod shows how Steve Jobs hovered over every aspect of the iPod during its creation. He added features, removed features, ordered features, committed to the final dates, and showed up to evangelize the product when it was announced. This is what a Chief Product Owner should do and precious few companies have a good Chief Product Owner.
In my Scrum training, I refer to this article as one that aspiring Product Owners should read. So here is a link so everyone can find it. Product Owner Lesson #1. The Perfect Thing Five years ago, Apple engineers used foam core and old fishing weights to craft a model of a new MP3 player. The age of the iPod was about to begin. By Steven Levy - Wired Magazine 14.11 Nov 2006
In mid-October 2001, I received an invitation to one of Steve Jobs' carefully choreographed, exquisitely casual shows. It was to be held at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, on October 23. The most interesting thing about the invitation was the teasing addendum: "Hint: It's not a Mac." Usually, I would have hopped on a plane to see the latest wrinkle in the consistently fascinating saga of Jobs. His return to Apple was a great business story in itself, but what was novel about his whole career was its unapologetic and unprecedented grafting of 1960s values – everything from rock and roll to cracker-barrel Buddhism – into the corporate world. Jobs was a great salesman, a guy who out-suited the suits when it came to mastering the pulleys and levers of global high tech product development and manufacturing, a chief executive of two companies traded on the Nasdaq (Apple and Pixar Entertainment). But I'd also seen him stroll into his boardroom wearing scissor-cut shorts almost up to his balls and a pair of flip-flops. All of this – the austere authority of a Zen poet, the playfulness of Mick Jagger, and the showmanship of David Copperfield – would be on display at this event. And if history was any guide, the product he unveiled would be worth writing about.
Agile Contracts: Money for Nothing and Your Change for Free
We have a team working on an Open Source Agile Contract. You can participate in the Open Plans Agile Contract Project. The following general principles are agreed upon. Definitions We mutually agree on working together, and thereby build trust in each others expertise.
Customer Participation in Scrum Team: The Customer is expected to be active in the project. The role of the Customer includes the following:
1. Prioritize features by business value and have them implemented in order of maximum value 2. Mutually agreed estimates for all work items. The official representatives of both parties need to agree. This needs to be noted in a signed addendum to the contract for each change. 3. Participate in each Sprint planning meeting by discussing the selected features with Company team, including answering questions to provide clarification to the team. 4. Participate in writing the conditions of satisfaction for each feature, so the team and client have a shared definition of when a feature is done. These conditions should be completed as part of a user story before any code is written. 5. Participate in each Sprint review meeting, and provide timely feedback both for both work-in-progress and completed work.
***To company: Things to ensure are defined in the contract:
* Total value of the contract * Rates for time and materials billing * Scope of the contract
Clause: Early Termination (Money for Nothing) The Customer may terminate the contract at the end of any Sprint. The standard metric for termination is when the Customer perceives the cost of continuing the project is higher than the additional value received. The Customer will pay Company 20% of the remaining contract value to exercise early termination.
Company commits to delivering 80% of the project scope as high quality by the agreed upon delivery date. High quality is defined by the agreed upon Definition of Done.
This clause can only be enacted if the Customer maintains Participation in the Team Scrum during the project.
In the event that both parties cannot mutually agree on work item estimates or that the Customer does not maintain participation in the Scrum Team, the contract shall revert to a time and materials billing. Clause: Change For Free If the Customer maintains Participation in Scrum Team during the entire project, Customer shall be able to make changes to the Scope without incurring any additional cost if total Scope of contracted work is not changed. New features may be added for free at Sprint boundaries if items of equal scope are removed from the contract. Guarantee of Work
Jens Ostergaard: 80% of the functionality of high quality is guaranteed at the fixed price. The 80% of high quality means that you deliver according to your definition of DONE (which is an agreement between customer and supplier on a feature level).
Jeff Sutherland: Vendor assumes the risk of late delivery. Jens: As to sharing the risk, if you have a confident team who have done this several times you could do what Jeff says. I would however be cautious starting this with a new company, and have some kind of risk sharing. Remember we are in this together and do the best we can. Customer knows what they want built, supplier knows how to get there, and both parties need to recognize that we have to work together.
Sign up here for next course. Other courses below. Scrum Certification New York 18-19 Dec 2008 Scrum Certification Seattle 12-13 Jan 2009
Scrum Certification San Francisco 15-16 Jan 2009
Scrum Certification Boston 20-21 Jan 2009 Scrum Certification Beverly Hills 16-17 Feb 2009
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 Agile coach to the OpenView venture group which runs all its internal operations with Scrum, as well as their portolio of software companies. As Senior Advisor to OpenView he focuses on using Scrum to transform companies as well as empower software developers. In his last position as CTO of PatientKeeper, his Scrum implementation was the key to quadrupled revenue in 2007. OpenView is using Scrum 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.
Jeff spends one week a month working directly with development teams in OpenView portfolio companies. This gives him continuous hands on experience in implementing Scrum and helping to improve engineering practices. The other three weeks a month he does consulting and training for companies worldwide. As Chairman of the Scrum Training Institute he leads one of the largest global Scrum training organizations.
You can learn from Dr. Sutherland's experience as consultant to the world's leading companies. Their experience can help make your Scrum implementation world class. Jeff's clients include: 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, Barclays Global Investors, Constant Contact, Wellogic, Inova Solutions, Medco, Saxo Bank, Xebia, Insight.com, SolutionsIQ, Crisp, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Motley Fool, Planon, OpenView Venture Partners, Jyske Bank, BEC, Camp Scrum, DotWay AB, Ultimate Software, Danube, Rally Development, Version One, Scrum Training Institute, AtTask, Intronis, Version One, OpenView Labs, Central Desktop, Open-E, Zmags, eEye, Reality Digital, DST, Booz Allen Hamilton, 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. As CTO/VP of Engineering of nine software companies, he has created, scaled and distributed Scrum using his companies as laboratories for continuous process improvement. His last company, PatientKeeper is run by a MetaScrum, and is one of the most advanced implementations 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 Jeff's courses, participants learn how to stop thrashing and improve performance 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.
Dr. Sutherland's training is helpful to every employee in a Scrum company. Most of his Openview portfolio companies use Scrum in sales, marketing, finance, or in the senior management team, so you will often see these people in his classes. Every developer can benefit by getting a thorough grounding in Scrum basics. Some of Jeff's companies send every employee, including adminstrative assistants to his courses. These companies always experience radical growth and profitability when everyone in on the same page with the Scrum process. In addition, many Certified ScrumMasters use his courses as a refresher as they often contain advanced material depending on who is in the class. CSMs and CSPs may attend his training at reduced rates.
Yesterday, I gave the keynote presentation at the Scrum Gathering - Pretty Good Scrum: Secret Sauce for Distributed Teams. Ken Schwaber, Scrum Alliance leadership, and a packed house are all here. It is raining off and on in Stockholm so the weather is not great but the spirit is high.
I'm beginning to incorporate learnings from OpenView Venture Partners portfolio companies. I meet with many of the companies once a month to review progress on their impediment backlog for improving their Scrum implementation. They will aggressively try new things and report back the next month on what happened, making them an excellent laboratory for validating and improving the Scrum experience.
OpenView Venture Partners runs all of their internal operations with Scrum teams so when our senior partners attend board meetings of the companies, they can thoughtfully examine the state of each Scrum implementation. They are mainly concerned about senior management understanding the velocity of their teams so their release plans make sense. And they want to know how many impediments the management removed since the last board meeting to help the teams increase velocity while simultaneously improving quality.
Agile Specification: is it a hoax? or a necessity?
When Alistair Cockburn says something like:
"There is no such thing as 'agile specification'. The phrase is a hoax."
This is exactly the kind of discussion we had at the Agile Manifesto meeting in 2001. It means there is something really interesting to talk about.
At PatientKeeper we have "Agile Specifications" in order to solve a problem. Maybe Alistair can come up with a better name.
Problem: You will implement over a thousand user stories over many years at random times. Very tight precision is required for screen shots, flow, and business logic as a error could kill a patient. Or a physician could call it "crap" and refuse to use it.
Forces: Physician users require an exact fit to their workflow, their inferencing from clinical data, in minimal time while standing in front of a sick patient using their iPhone for all clinical data. Developers have no idea exactly how this should look to a physician. Neither does the Product Owner, even though the Product Owner may be a physician. A carefully selected group of physician thought leaders must use working prototypes to determine exactly how it should look and feel to the physician while coming to a consensus and developers much exactly create their chosen approach or physicians may refuse to use the product. Physicians will not use a mouse. Most things must require one click and anything requiring more than three clicks will never be used as it will interfere with conversation with the patient. Any data corruption is life threatening. Lack of ease of use is life threatening.
For example, a small amount of the clincial data is lab results. There are dozens of lab tests, each producing a complex data set with multiple values and normals ranges. There is interaction between these results. Automatic alerts for critical conditions based on a complex relationship between multiple lab results is needed. These are regularly updated by clinical boards that determine best practice. All lab tests are graphed differently to exacting specification taught in medical schools. Often new lab tests are required. They are based on research data developed in labs. The developer must be able to quickly review all previous implementations of all lab results to fit this new result into the physician's workflow in the correct way. The physical implementation of the current product is not sufficient for this purpose.
Solution: The Product Owner creates a dccument that is just enough, and just in time called Lab Tests. It grows over time as there are more lab tests, and as research data influences lab test results. The Product Owner does high level analysis of screen shots, workflow, data structures, business logic and presents it as a very light weight use case to support user stories implemented at a point in time. The Product Owner has tested a fully working prototype of this implementation on a group of physician thought leaders before any story for these is ready to go into a Sprint. Developers refuse to develop any story that does not achieve this "ready" state. In fact, they are told to take the day off if the Sprint Backlog is not "ready."
Result: Over eight years and thousands of stories the global specification has grown to almost thirty pages. A developer can capture in his mind in less than five minutes the entire history of implementation of all lab results that is essential for implementation of a new blood test for treating diabetic patients.
The Product Owners are extremely disciplined in this environment. They know developers will take the day off if their "Agile Specification" is not in a ready state for creation of user stories in a Sprint.
The Team is also very disciplined and achieves a velocity that is 10 times as fast as their waterfall competitors causing revenue to quadruple in 2007.
Name for this thing: Up for grabs. Need for this thing: Absolutely essential or you will risk killing patients Or even worse, the physicians will refuse to use it declaring it "a piece of crap" or it has too many alerts or does not alert to a critical condition on this lab test in the context of certain data on multiple other lab tests. Or it does not automatically populate the right clinical notes, or the developer is clearly so clueless about treating patients that he should be shot, or ....
Best training for developers: Send them to surgery where patient is opened up on the table and the surgeon starts screaming at him and the surgical staff making threatening gestures to hit them with surgical instruments for providing the wrong data leading to his decision to abort the surgery and try again at another date when they give him the right data and the right instruments at the right time when the patients lab results are exactly in the right constellation for the surgery to take place.
Scrum Certification San Francisco
15-16 Jan 2009Scrum Certification Boston
20-21 Jan 2009 Scrum Certification Beverly Hills
16-17 Feb 2009 Scrum in Europe
Jeff 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.
In the same year, Mike Beedle started Scrumming with Linda Rising and others to publish the PLOP Scrum pattern in 1998.
Jeff, Ken, and Mike are three of the authors of the Agile Manifesto.
For Scrum Training, Mentoring or Consulting contact:
Jeff Sutherland, Ph.D.
CEO
Scrum Inc. powered by OpenView Labs
332 Congress St, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02210
+1 617 606 3652 jeff.sutherland@scruminc.com
Scrum is an Agile Software Development Process that Certified Scrum Trainer Jeff Sutherland invented at Easel Corporation in 1993.
