“I spent the whole night until 2 am packing my luggage,” said my colleague, who is travelling to Sapporo. The next morning, he said he packed until 5 am. After months of struggles at the office, people often go on vacation. They travel to different places and feel like escaping from the real world. The intention is to relax and hopefully recharge before going back to work. Once they have decided to escape the real world, they spend a month researching the place they will visit. ...

Several weeks ago, there was a meetup at my company, targeting Scrum Masters to share their experience with their teams. A Scrum Master shared how several Scrum teams within his area work. “Let me give you some advice,” said one of the attendees, “You should do blah blah blah…” After the attendee’s advice, the presenting Scrum Master immediately denied the advice and explained a lot. Tension built up. The debate, filled with “No, I mean…”, lasted several minutes until the facilitator stepped in to end it. ...

Every system operates under specific conditions, including Kanban with Flow Metrics. Of the 4 Flow Metrics, it is important to understand that Kanban with Flow Metrics is supported by Little’s Law. Little’s Law states that the average number of customers in a stable system is equal to the average arrival rate multiplied by the average time a customer spends in the system. To uphold Little’s Law, the system must be in a steady-state condition. ...

Last time, I described how my team applies Flow Metrics with Scrum. Although we don’t often estimate the short-term delivery, we are sometimes asked when a big feature will be completed. In the Story Points era, we used Story Points and calculated the average velocity of the previous 3 to 5 sprints for forecasting. In theory, averaging is the easiest way to forecast. However, in reality, unexpected situations may arise. For example, someone may call in sick, there may be a public holiday in the middle of the Sprint, or a PBI may be blocked by external parties. It is easy to fall into the trap of relying solely on averages, resulting in an unrealistic forecast. Moreover, communicating Story Points to stakeholders can be challenging due to their inherent ambiguity. In such situations, Monte Carlo Simulation comes into play. ...

It has been over three months since I introduced Flow Metrics to my team. My team has changed their mindset when it comes to work. Today, I am going to discuss how I apply Flow Metrics to the team. Before implementing Flow Metrics, I created a spreadsheet and recorded all the Product Backlog Items (PBIs) created in 2023. Following Daniel Vacanti’s Flow Metrics for Scrum Team, the spreadsheet includes an Aging Work in Progress Chart, Cycle Time Scatterplot, and two Monte Carlo Simulations: “How Many” and “How Long.” I obtained the Service Level Expectation (SLE) for the Cycle Time. ...

Management loves measurements, especially those who work in traditional companies. When management wants to assess how much the team has improved after adopting Agile development, things like the Agile maturity model are usually presented to them. Everyone celebrates the results as the scores have improved from negative to positive after three months of hard work and dedication. Several years later, we revisited that team. Unfortunately, the team continues to practise the same things since we celebrated the improvement in Agile maturity. They continue practising what they learned, even if the industry has already abandoned some of the practices for years. They believe they are mature and that everything is going well. They refuse to change their current way of working. ...

It has been over six months since the last time I travelled to Japan. The last time we visited Hida Takayama, we enjoyed it a lot, especially the snow scenery in Shinhotaka, the heritage in Shirakawa-go, and the onsen in Gero. After weeks of discussion, we have decided to visit Hokkaido next month. To travellers like us, Hokkaido appears different from other areas of Japan. Apart from the Japanese, it consists of Ainu people as well. They are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, with a distinct culture from the Japanese. I am interested in their history, culture, and how they coexisted with the Japanese in the past and present. ...

Recently (and finally), I watched the film “Oppenheimer”. They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it. — “Oppenheimer” (film) I don’t know whether it’s a quote from the real Oppenheimer or a creation from the movie, but this impressed me the most. Typically, we can’t change people’s minds directly. Often, they change because they realise that the change improves their lives. People often fail to realize the dangers of constantly staring at their phones on the street until they experience a vehicle collision. In the Agile world, people won’t understand the concepts we teach until they’ve tried them. ...

The Agile coach training programme at my company has reached its second half. One of the training objectives was to teach the Agile coaches about unit testing and code refactoring. Naturally, the coaching programme expects the trainees to subsequently coach their teams on the same topics. As a mentor to two new Agile coach trainees working in different teams, I often allow them to choose their approach and evaluate it later on. Both teams had no prior knowledge of unit testing and code refactoring. After learning the basic techniques, Trainee A decided to ask everyone to try writing unit tests themselves simultaneously. They would then share and discuss their work during Code Review. On the other hand, Trainee B dedicated all his time to working with a single developer, allowing others to continue working as they had been. Once that developer had grasped everything Trainee B knew, they would split up and work in pairs with the other two developers. ...

Typhoon is a common phenomenon in Hong Kong, typically happening almost every summer. However, reaching Hurricane Signal no. 10 is a rare occurence. Recently, we had a chance to face such a severe situation. Last week, the weather forecast indicated that Typhoon Saola was approaching Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Observatory expected to hoist Gale or Storm Signal No. 8 at midnight last Friday. Everyone at the office was ready to have a work-from-home day the following day. ...