So close yet so far

This long weekend was not much of a weekend at all for me.  Crystal and I spent most of the weekend working in our basement trying to get a bunch of progress made.  It did pay off as we got the final sanding on the mud done, primed everything, and got 2 coats of paint on.  On top of that I also fixed a broken rounded corner in the upstairs and painted it.  Once the paint was finished we installed the rest of the flooring in the rec room and part of the hallway.  Just have to finish putting the flooring in the rest of the hallway and then it's pretty much done except for the last bedroom.  We went and picked up all the baseboards for the whole basement as well, this week i'll be installing that. 

Before:

After:

Well it's been about a month since we officially started managing our new development using the SCRUM methodology.  So far it's been a good experience and I think everybody is enjoying it.  Just today I was explaining the process to somebody who doesn't know anything about software development and they couldn't believe that people get to pick whatever they want to work on (from the team agreed upon bucket of work).

I would have to say that the hardest part of making the switch is the breaking of old habits.  People don't like change, it's just how we are.  We're like electricity, we take the path of least resistance, and that means sticking to what we know and what is comfortable.  That's where I come in, my job is to go around and make sure people are following the appropriate processes and not just sticking in their rut of old habits.  You can tell when people feel like they're under pressure because that's when they want to revert to their old habits the most.  It makes for some busy days.  I'm hoping that after 2 or 3 months it will just be second nature to the entire team to follow these new processes which will make my job a lot easier <g>.

One of the key changes we made that is allowing SCRUM to work was moving our business analysts and product owners in to offices in the immediate vicinity of the development team.  The benefits of this are 2 fold

1)  The developers don't have to go far to have a conversation with them
2)  Friendly conversations with the business team happen much more frequently which leads to a much higher level of understanding, trust, and respect between the business and dev teams.

I must say i've been blown away by how much it helps morale and productivity when the development and business teams are working well together.  When everybody is comfortable with each other and has a good level of respect for each other it's amazing to see the results.  I don't recall a previous time when a group of developers could be standing around a white board having a conversation and it didn't bother them at all to have a business person stop by to drop in on their conversation.  It's also great for everybody else in the company when they want to know what's going on with the development team and where the work is at.

SCRUM has been awsome but it wouldn't be possible without a high level of trust, respect, and collaboration between business and development.  I know our old rut was comfortable, but now that we've successfully jumped out of it, I would never want to see us fall back in.

I think this comic I found sums it up nicely:

Well "No Country for Old Men" won best picture this year at the oscars.  I really don't get the whole fascination everybody seems to have with this movie.  Seriously it's not THAT good.  I watched it, it was cool, had some neat new things in it, kept me entertained etc.  However it was just pretty good, it wasn't "great".  Do I even need to mention the terrible ending, or can you even really call it an ending?

Good movie, yes.  Great movie, possibly.  Best movie of 2007, definitely not.