Copenhagen: Two Year Boy Found Alive

Almost 2000 citizen participated in search with North Zealand Police to bring the two years old missing boy, alive back to his parents. 

A two year old boy got missing from his home in Hillerød yesterday 8th July 2015 at around 7:00 pm . He had a bike without pedals which was later found 100m away from his home. North Zealand Police when being unable to find the missing guy by 10:00 pm appealed to the locals using their Facebook Page to come out and help them in searching the boy. 

Following the news, a massive figure of up to 2000 people from all around the Copenhagen and outskirts reached the area and helped the police in their search. Then there were those who were bringing food, coffee, tea from their home for volunteers. There came a point that the North Zealand Police released the message that they don't need anymore volunteers as it was getting difficult for the dogs to search for the boy. Volunteers were asked to search on pathways, shelters of their houses, backyards, car garages while police continued their search in the Forest. 

In between on social media even the news of "missing boy fallen in Lake" had been erupted for a while. But it was so great to see all the people dis respective of their Religion or Ethnicity were being worried for the boy and how the whole nation stood together in search of the boy. These are the incidents which are test of the morale of a Nation and yesterday I felt proud of being part of this Nation !!!

Those who were not there, were continually following the news on Social Media and sending their wishes to the family and expressing the willingness to provide any help if required. 

The search went on for almost 7 hours when finally the boy was found at 2:00 am asleep in a forest in the same area but almost 2 miles away from his home.  A massive wave of joy passed thought the whole nation when North Zealand Police wrote “Storm is now on the way to be reunited with his family and to a check at hospital”. They further thanked all the volunteers for their help stating “North Zealand Police wants to thank all of the people who took part in the investigation for their massive efforts,”. 

But as of now it is unknown that how a boy aged two years got missing from his home at first place. 

Agile Development: Scrum Roles

There are three fundamental roles in Scrum, which make up the scrum team :

• Scrum Master
• Product Owner
• The Development Team

Scrum teams are cross functional and self organising. When we say cross functional, it means that scrum teams are comprised of cross functional members, including software engineers, testers, QA experts, architects, UI designers and hence they have all the competencies to complete their tasks without depending on someone from outside. And being self organising scrum team know how to accomplish the best of their work without being directed by others. 

The Scrum Master

The scrum master is a person who makes sure that scrum team adheres to scrum principles: theory, practices and rules. He acts as a facilitator for both the scrum team and the product owner. According to "Scrum Guides", scrum master has been titled as a Servant-Leader for the scrum team.  The quality of best scrum master is that he feels satisfied in facilitating others in their work. The traditional project manager role is very different than the role of scrum master. And it is never a good idea to put the same person as a scrum master who has previously leaded the same team as project manager. As in that case team will keep coming to scrum master for instructions for the work, while by definition scrum teams should be Self Organising and they should interact with other teams, departments and external entities by themselves.

Become a Certified Scrum Master and improve your chances of recruitment.

Responsibilities of Scrum Master 

Scrum Master has the three main responsibilities that he should serve the product owner, the development team and the organization. Below I have described what kind of services he has to provide to each of these roles and what are the responsibilities of scrum master related to them.

a- Service to the Product Owner
Scrum master helps product owner in following ways:

• Finding effective techniques for product backlog management.
• Ensuring the product owner knows they way to prioritise the backlog. 
• Helping product owner in understanding and practicing agility. 

b- Service to the Development Team

• Removes the impediments in the way of the development team.
• Helping the development team understand the need for clear and concise backlog items.
• Coaching the development team organisation and cross functionality. 
• Helping the development team to create high value products.
• Facilitating the scrum events as requested or needed.

c- Service to the Organisation  

The scrum master also serves the organization in several ways :

• Coaching the organization in its scrum adoption.
• Planning and implementing Scrum within organization.
• Helping employees and stakeholder to understand the scrum.
• Co-ordinating with other scrum masters to work towards increasing the effectiveness of the scrum with the organization. 

The Product Owner

Product Owner serves the combined duties of both the Product and Project Manager. The role of the product owner is to increase the value of the product and the work of the development team. He is the person who is responsible for the success of the project. Product owner outlines and prioritise the work in Product Backlog, depending on its value in the business. But besides that he also represents the wish of the customers and stakeholders. So in order to achieve all this Product Owner needs to work closely with the Scrum Development Team and must respect team's ability to create its own plan of action. For the same reason product owner is not allowed to change the Sprint Log in the middle of sprint. If the product owner needs to make any alterations in the plans, he needs to wait for the next Sprint Planning Meeting. While making product backlog, although product owner keeps the teams desire in consideration, but still no one in the team is allowed to change the backlog or the priority of items in backlog except Product Owner.

All in all the product owner has following responsibilities to full fill :

• Managing the Product Backlog.
• Managing Stakeholders.
• Managing Product Release.
• Working closely with Scrum Team.

The Development Team

The development team is the team of professionals who work towards the delivery of the product or product increments during the sprint. The development teams are self-organizing and they are not dependant on other teams or departments to convert the items in the product backlog in to the deliverable increments. The development teams are cross functional, they are equipped with all the skills and includes all the roles necessary to successfully implement the product. But unlike the traditional development team, in scrum the team is not divided into roles such as designers, testers, architects or programmers rather they work and interact together on the tasks assigned within the sprint. Thus they all are known as "developers". 

The optimal size of the development team varies between 5-9. If the size of the team will be smaller than they might lack some skills essential to develop the complete product. Similarly in case of the large teams, it will be difficult for the team members to coordinate with each other efficiently. If the team will be too large much of the effort will be wasted on managing the team instead of focusing on the tasks.
   

Agile Development: Scrum Artifacts

In my previous post, I discussed Scrum Ceremonies . Now is the time to have a look at the tangible deliverables in Scrum, called Scrum Artifacts. In agile Scrum there are three artifacts:

1- Product Backlog

Product backlog in Scrum(agile development) is a prioritised list of all to-do tasks and the features, it contains a short description of all these items with the desired functionality in the product. Product backlog is a dynamically prioritised and always changing list, depending on the new ideas for the product. Product backlog is owned by Product Owner, and is also broken down in to user stories by him. Product Owner must prioritise the top stories before Sprint Planning Meeting. Product Log contains all the scope items regardless of their level of details.

2- Sprint Backlog

During the sprint planning meeting, the developing team selects a list of items from product backlog that they need to deliver by the end of the sprint. This list of requirements and tasks that is the subset of a product backlog is called Sprint Backlog. The requirements in sprint backlog are further broken down into tasks and are assigned a priority order for implementation by developers. These tasks need to be developed, tested, documented and integrated by the end of the sprint.

Sprint backlog is more detailed than the product backlog, and usually includes the information like number of hours required for development and the name of the person responsible for particular task. Unlike product backlog, sprint backlog can not always be changed unless required by development team.

3- Burndown Chart

The burndown chart shows the progress of development team over the period of time. It represents the amount of work that needs to be done during the sprint. Burndown chart is very useful way to see where development team stands at any particular time during the sprint, as it represents both the progress of the team and amount of the work left.

The burndown chart can be drawn by plotting work done along the horizontal axis while time along vertical axis.

Mac Book: Battery not Charging

Okay... Last night I was working on my Macbook for quite late when suddenly I couldn't continue and was so sleepy that couldn't save my work and shutdown my Macbook. So with sleepy head and almost closed eyes I put my Macbook on "Sleep" mode and went to my bed. After three-four hours when I woke up in the morning I again opened up my Mac and continued my work. Only 15minutes would have passed that my Mac got suddenly turned off. I tried to pressed buttons on keyboard and tried to wake it but no use. It was pretty shocking for me because it never happened before. Battery was almost full and Charger was plugged in. I restarted the Macbook, it got turned on but now the Green LED of my Magcharger had been tuned off. And there was X sign on my Macbook battery. The status was battery not charging. I went to the system info and checked the power. And it was something like this :

In confusion I couldn't think of anything so just "Restarted" my Mac, but nothig changed. Shutdown: didn't work. Put it to Sleep mode and then woke it again, still nothing worked. I unplugged the Magcharger still nothing happened. But luckily my mac didn't shutdown after removing the charger. So it gave me little relief. So I thought of Resetting "System Management Control" (SMC).

In some situations you might need to reset your computer's System Management Controller (SMC). Below is the method given to reset SMC on most modern Intel based Macs, which do not have removable batteries. 

Before doing SMC on Macbook pro make sure you have already tried all the above mentioned procedures. 

How to Perform SMC on Mac?

Here you can find the steps to reset the SMC on macbook pro:

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
3. On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
5. Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Yess, Now when I turned on the Macbook my battery was up and working again :D 

 

To read more about SMC, visit Apple official Support Site: 

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/

Agile Development: Scrum Meetings

In todays post I will focus on Ceremonies or Meetings of the Scrum. I will try my best to describe how these ceremonies are done to keep the progress on track and drive an agile development.

Scrum Ceremonies:

1. Sprint Planning Meeting

Attendees: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development Team.
Duration: Minimum an hour per week. For 2 weeks sprint, 2 hours sprint planning meeting.
When? At the beginning of each sprint.

Every project starts with an idea; to make that idea a Success there should be a proper planning to implement it. Sprint planning meeting also begins with an idea or user stories in the form of Product Backlog which is owned by Product Owner. During the sprint planning meeting the product owner along with scrum master and developers find the answers to questions like "What" and "How"...

Sprint planning sets up the entire team for success through out the sprint, so special attention should be paid. Product owner describes about the products or items in the product backlog to the team while the team members decides what can be delivered during the sprint i.e. the goals of the sprint. This results in sprint backlog. In this meeting the development team estimates the effort required to achieve the sprint goals.

2. Daily Scrum Meeting

Attendees: Scrum Master, Product Owner (Optional), Development Team
Duration: 15 minutes
When? Once per day. Usually by the end of the day.

Daily scrum meeting is short in interval but is an integral part of agile development. This meeting focuses on these three questions:

a- What did I accomplish since last daily scrum meeting?
b- What I will be doing till next daily scrum meeting?
c- What are the impediments in my way?

These questions should be answered by each team member but it is just a status meeting and should not include the problem solving or planning sessions. Anyone can attend the meeting but only development team will contribute, the rest can just sit and learn.

3. Sprint Review 

Attendees: Scrum Master, Developers, Product Owner, All stakeholders (Optional)
Duration: 60-90 minutes
When? At the end of the sprint.

The purpose of this meeting is to give demonstration of Product or features to the team members. At the end of each sprint scrum team and stakeholders review the resulting increments in the product. This meeting can be from 60 - 90 minutes depending on the length of the sprint. Ideally there should be minimum of 45minutes per week of the sprint. So if your sprint is of 2 weeks then sprint review meeting is recommended to be of 1 hour 30 minutes.

Stakeholders have "stakes" in your product so it is nice if they are there to see the demonstration of the product increment. The meeting should start with little reflection on what has been achieved during the sprint followed by running the piece of code or product demo. After that Product Owner says the final words and updates the product backlog.

4. Sprint Retrospective

Attendees: Scrum Master, Developers, Product Owner
Duration: 60 minutes per sprint weeks
When? By the end of the sprint.

By the end of the sprint, the scrum team meets again for sprint retrospective. This meeting is also timeframed as one hour per sprint week. During this meeting team members reflect back on how did things go during the sprint. They analyse all the processes and tools used during the sprint. All members give feedback related to how things went. They point out the positive things as well as the instances where things didn't go very well. Team members reflect on the interpersonal relationships during the sprint. And they discuss how things can be improved for upcoming sprints.

This is meeting is all about the feedback from team with future planning to make product and development culture better. Retrospective is not about complaints but a meeting to figure out whats working best for the team so it should be continued in future.