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
   

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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
   

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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
   

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4. Day 0 - Training
   4 http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-11-26
   

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5. Transformation
   5
   https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/harrypotter/images/4/40/DivinationHarryRon.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2000?cb=20161207020758
   

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6. Day 1 - Diving into the deep end
   6
   https://unsplash.com/photos/tN63HVT_Jxw
   

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7. Day 2 - Chaos
   7 https://unsplash.com/photos/8osoVBQWWHc
   

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8. Retrospective Problems
   8
   https://media.giphy.com/media/4W4WIRTYaRuMM/giphy.gif
   

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9. Begins with you
   9
   Be a Rock.
   Be Vulnerable.
   Be the bad guy.
   http://vrpe.me/quote/best-45-tactueux-funny-leadership-quotes/
   

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10. Being a leader
    

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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
    

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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
    

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13. Remember how you started?
    13
    https://unsplash.com/photos/LrPKL7jOldI
    

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14. How we built a “Happy” team?
    

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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
    

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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
    

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17. Predictability
    17
    Predictable hours.
    New skills.
    Personal Growth.
    Celebrate wins.
    http://mycollectwallpapers.blogspot.com/2011/11/winnie-pooh-thanksgiving-wallpapers.html
    

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18. Avoid
    

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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
    

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20. Avoid Ultimatums
    20
    Experimentation.
    Decision Making.
    https://www.pexels.com/photo/toddler-with-red-adidas-sweat-shirt-783941/
    

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21. Avoid Context Switching
    21 https://thetomorrowlab.com/2015/01/why-developers-hate-being-interrupted/
    

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22. Day 30
    22
    Trust in you
    and
    each other.
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201508/the-neuroscience-trust
    

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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
    

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25. Planning and Execution
    25
    Sprint Goals.
    Relevant DoD.
    Evident Quality.
    Technical Debt.
    Circle of Knowledge.
    Your job.
    

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26. A simple story.
    26
    

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27. A “simpler” story
    27
    

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28. Mob Programming
    28
    Common understanding.
    Branching.
    Testing.
    Conventions.
    911.
    https://cdns.klimg.com/kapanlagi.com/wallpaper/img/computer-game.jpg
    

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29. Code Reviews
    29
    Code Style.
    Patterns. Your own.
    Unit tests.
    Jenkins - Pipeline.
    Github.
    Pull Requests.
    

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30. 30
    Coverage Report.
    Standards.
    Static Analysis.
    Security Review.
    Continuous Deployment.
    Jenkins - Pipeline
    

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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.
    

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32. 32
    BDD - Cucumber
    

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33. 33
    BDD - Cucumber
    https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Cucumber+Reports+Plugin
    

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34. Deployment & Communication
    34
    Jenkins - Pipeline
    Integration Tests
    Deployment
    Feature Deployment
    Common Stage *
    ✚ ✚
    

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35. Day 60 - Keep improving
    

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36. Make things as simple as
    possible,
    but not simpler
    - Albert Einstein
    

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37. RTB - Run the business
    37
    An Unchanging Constant.
    

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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/
    

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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.”
    

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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
    

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41. Day 120 - Ultra Agile
    

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42. Culture of Learning
    42
    “Learning” Deadline
    Culture of sharing
    Rates of learning
    Learn & Consolidate
    

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43. Need for a safe space
    43
    Childlike fearlessness
    True to themselves
    Crazy and weird
    Everyone acts as everybody
    https://ifunny.co/fun/IynpG5X41
    

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44. Newbie and Juniors
    44
    Ask questions.
    Praise thirst of knowledge.
    Mentoring.
    Positive reinforcement.
    http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-12-02
    

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45. Experienced Developers
    45 © 2018 eBay. All rights reserved.
    Responsible partners. Feature leaders.
    

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46. Measurement
    46
    "Happyness"
    https://unsplash.com/photos/TU1b56dfn2A
    vs.
    

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47. Consistency is the
    playground of dull minds.
    - Yuval Noah Harari
    

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48. Evolve. Re-invent yourself.
    48
    Inspect and Adapt.
    Incorporate Discomfort.
    The Gardener.
    “Kaizen”
    https://unsplash.com/photos/3u51-uLQICc
    

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49. Thank You!
    49
    http:/
    /go.sengopal.me/agile
    @sengopal
    

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