How to Calculate Capitalisation Costs in Scrum without Timesheets

At the London Scrum Gathering I shared a technique I use to calculate development costs for capitalisation without needing developers to track hours. I promised to blog about the technique since people found it useful. This is something I use today, in the real world. Our finance department love it, and are happy that it is auditable, and it has zero overhead on our development team. Discover the magic formula below…

A Development Manager’s Strategy

It’s the end of the year and as a software development manager I find myself thinking about strategy. I’ve been in this position for 5 months now, and I think it is time to start consciously working towards a strategy rather than just doing what I think is right. After a few discussions with others I think I have the foundation of something that really resonates with me, what I believe, and what I hope we can achieve. I thought I’d share it and see what people think.

I believe there are three things that our board and executive team expect from product development. These are the 3 key goals or objectives for me for the year: Predictability, Quality and Value.

The First Month

It’s been 1 month since I started the new job. In the spirit of Improve your scrum implementation in one week, I thought I’d reflect on what I think I have achieved in my first month. Did I take any of my own advice?  Read on to find out

I didn’t do much in week one, except observe. I was very conscious of coming in as the new broom and changing everything. I was aware I might throw out some of the good stuff they already had in place if I did. I wanted to first understand what they had, and only then make changes.

I spent some time chatting to a few people one on one to get their point of view on things. I tried very hard (and wasn’t always successful) not to share my opinions too early. I didn’t want to influence what I was observing. I did make lots of notes and lists. I noted down all the things I though could be potential improvements. I knew that I wouldn’t implement everything immediately, and that after a while I would lose that fresh perspective I had in week one. So I made an idea backlog, and jotted down anything I though might be a good idea.

To be dooced or not

If perchance I have offended, then think on this and all is mended…

Imagine you have a personal blog where you write about things that happen and that you learn to help share knowledge and experience with your peers. What would you do if your employer was unhappy by something you posted?

Would you stop blogging?

Would you resign?

Would you remove the offending posts?

Would you edit the offending posts to make them less offensive?

Would you just ignore it?

Would you blog about it?

Are there any objective objectives?

My company is currently undergoing an initiative to improve our performance appraisal process. Some people don’t believe bonuses and increases are fairly paid. Our solution to this problem has been to train managers in objective setting and roll out an initiative where objectives set for the senior management team are rolled down to the departments under them so that everyone understands what they need to do to perform well, and how their objectives relate to the performance of the company.

Can you guess how this has been received? No prizes for guessing that we have some very unhappy and vocal people. I know that measuring metrics leads to the wrong behaviour because as humans we will always game the metric. I’ve read all the articles suggesting that performance appraisals are bad, and do more damage than good, but I’m faced with a few stumbling blocks in throwing it all away.