Jeff Sutherland - Agile Project Management at Google

This presentation was packed to the rafters, Jeff is a god in the Agile Community.

Jeff is the father of SCRUM, spoke about how he implemented SCRUM at Google, taking principles from the production lines of Toyota into the development teams at Google, giving them their incredible momentum for pumping out applications.

SCRUM teaches people to focus on delivery in a non competitive environment, and is applicable
to all team environments, not just development teams. He covered the fact that annual performance evaluations don't work,
cost a lot of money and invariably no one ends up pleased with them. Instead he preferred continuous feedback,
in the form of one to ones and retrospectives. All Google employees have to have a web page saying what they're going to be doing over the next 3 months - they've ditched appraisals all together.
The fact that the employees have to write it down and publish their goals has created a culture of pride in making sure they complete their goals.

Jeff covered the use of a Burndown chart - a chart showing features left to build against iterations, providing a real view of functions left over time,
illustrates the importance of keeping work in progress to a minimum. Also he covered the use of change control boards, task boards and the importance of
Stand Ups and Retrospectives.


Quotes:
"Scrum is a way to get stuff done."
"Kaizen Mind - if you're not better when you leave that when you arrived, its a catastrophe!"
"He who acts spoils, he who grasps lets slip. Because the Sage does not act, he does not spoil, Because he does not grasp, he does not let slip."
"Scrum is the only methodology that makes all the issues (both personal and technical) a part of thr project".
"Most scrums are introduced bottom up."
"Team of 3 is the smallest. Any less just ain't a team".
"Challenge the teams to move beyond mediocrity".


Reading:
HBR - Creating excellent teams.
Toyota Way - Liker JK, 2004
ABC's of Scrum - Jeff Sutherland
Scrum Developer
New York Times - Toyota Training Manager