Our Agile Pursuit of Happyness

A "happy" team is an "Efficient" team. The intended audience are developers, leads, managers and any individual part of a group or aspiring to lead a group.

This talk discusses how eBay embraced Agile methodology and as part of this effort, how we formed a new team to manage Identity Infrastructure. This talk takes the audience through the journey of how a group of individuals got together and transformed to an efficient and highly productive group. The journey is wrought with hurdles, battles and conquests and this talk bares the details of how a team rallies together against a common enemy. This talk identifies the key points of what keeps the team cohesive, motivated and challenged and the lessons learnt on how to keep a team "Happy" and always in the pursuit of its "Happiness"

We will discussing some of the ground rules, how to centralize the right things, how to breed a culture of learning, need for a safe space etc., How high levels of automation help achieve better quality of life. We would be talking about how everyone acts as everybody and flexible to take up any role and much more."

Transcript

1. My Our Agile Pursuit of Happyness Senthilkumar Gopal @sengopal
2. Every team is unique 2 https://cdn.empireonline.com/jpg/80/0/0/1000/563/0/north/0/0/0/0/0/c/features/583485ee394eca14054bc60a/Lord-Of-The-Rings.jpg
3. “An expert tells you a simple thing in a confused way as to make you think the confusion is your own fault.” - William Castle Are you an “expert”? https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/286395-an-expert-is-a-man-who-tells-you-a-simple
4. Day 0 - Training 4 http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-11-26
5. Transformation 5 https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/harrypotter/images/4/40/DivinationHarryRon.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2000?cb=20161207020758
6. Day 1 - Diving into the deep end 6 https://unsplash.com/photos/tN63HVT_Jxw
7. Day 2 - Chaos 7 https://unsplash.com/photos/8osoVBQWWHc
8. Retrospective Problems 8 https://media.giphy.com/media/4W4WIRTYaRuMM/giphy.gif
9. Begins with you 9 Be a Rock. Be Vulnerable. Be the bad guy. http://vrpe.me/quote/best-45-tactueux-funny-leadership-quotes/
10. Being a leader
11. Being a leader - A Leader with no title 11 No-one is special. Empathy. Everyone is special. Not Equal, but Equivalent. https://twitter.com/theleaddev/status/1012292472993656832
12. Path not goalpost 12 “Kids Team don’t listen, but watch” Question Everything. With Confidence. Being Confused is ok. https://unsplash.com/photos/riEiamlDV4Y
13. Remember how you started? 13 https://unsplash.com/photos/LrPKL7jOldI
14. How we built a “Happy” team?
15. Identity Crisis 15 Create your Own Identity. https://img00.deviantart.net/4275/i/2012/263/2/2/identity_crisis_cat_by_sebreg-d5fcofy.jpg
16. Trust instead of Control 16 Plan Early. Trust to do the “right” thing. Foster conflicts. Feedback. https://www.tripsavvy.com/krishna-janmashtami-govinda-festival-1539288
17. Predictability 17 Predictable hours. New skills. Personal Growth. Celebrate wins. http://mycollectwallpapers.blogspot.com/2011/11/winnie-pooh-thanksgiving-wallpapers.html
18. Avoid
19. Avoid Meetings 19 No Invites. “Office” Hours. No decks. Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them. - Anonymous
20. Avoid Ultimatums 20 Experimentation. Decision Making. https://www.pexels.com/photo/toddler-with-red-adidas-sweat-shirt-783941/
21. Avoid Context Switching 21 https://thetomorrowlab.com/2015/01/why-developers-hate-being-interrupted/
22. Day 30 22 Trust in you and each other. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201508/the-neuroscience-trust
23. JIRA , Backlog and a story 23 Workflow. Definition of Done. https://www.agitma.nl/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Dilbert_Give_me_all_Features.png
25. Planning and Execution 25 Sprint Goals. Relevant DoD. Evident Quality. Technical Debt. Circle of Knowledge. Your job.
26. A simple story. 26
27. A “simpler” story 27
28. Mob Programming 28 Common understanding. Branching. Testing. Conventions. 911. https://cdns.klimg.com/kapanlagi.com/wallpaper/img/computer-game.jpg
29. Code Reviews 29 Code Style. Patterns. Your own. Unit tests. Jenkins - Pipeline. Github. Pull Requests.
30. 30 Coverage Report. Standards. Static Analysis. Security Review. Continuous Deployment. Jenkins - Pipeline
31. BDD - Behavior Driven Development 31 https://applause-prodmktg.s3.amazonaws.com/2017/01/23/04/31/37/bbdc5e0b-b565-42d8-b345-4ed746399927/567177108c19137368315d380430d37c.jpg Intuitive TDD. Focus on feature. Behavior, not implementation. Conversation in common language. Everyone is QE.
32. 32 BDD - Cucumber
33. 33 BDD - Cucumber https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Cucumber+Reports+Plugin
34. Deployment & Communication 34 Jenkins - Pipeline Integration Tests Deployment Feature Deployment Common Stage * ✚ ✚
35. Day 60 - Keep improving
36. Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler - Albert Einstein
37. RTB - Run the business 37 An Unchanging Constant.
38. How to support this … 38 Documentation. Support Channels. Publish-Subscribe Channels. Migrate Legacy Systems. Align Roadmap. https://grondamorin.com/2017/04/14/computer-malfunction-break/
39. Make them better…. 39 One small step at a time. Code. Documentation. Process. https://pixabay.com/en/boy-scout-scouting-asia-same-1822621/ “Always leave the code cleaner than you found it.”
40. Difficult to make mistakes 40 Ground Rules. Centralize the right things. Make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing
41. Day 120 - Ultra Agile
42. Culture of Learning 42 “Learning” Deadline Culture of sharing Rates of learning Learn & Consolidate
43. Need for a safe space 43 Childlike fearlessness True to themselves Crazy and weird Everyone acts as everybody https://ifunny.co/fun/IynpG5X41
44. Newbie and Juniors 44 Ask questions. Praise thirst of knowledge. Mentoring. Positive reinforcement. http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-12-02
45. Experienced Developers 45 © 2018 eBay. All rights reserved. Responsible partners. Feature leaders.
46. Measurement 46 "Happyness" https://unsplash.com/photos/TU1b56dfn2A vs.
47. Consistency is the playground of dull minds. - Yuval Noah Harari
48. Evolve. Re-invent yourself. 48 Inspect and Adapt. Incorporate Discomfort. The Gardener. “Kaizen” https://unsplash.com/photos/3u51-uLQICc
49. Thank You! 49 http:/ /go.sengopal.me/agile @sengopal