When the Engineering department moved to Scrum, we obviously had to change the way we conceived of an EPP.  As usual, the problems we encountered weren’t caused by Scrum – just highlighted by it.

The main problem we encountered was “how can we say we’re planning on doing anything since we don’t set our own priorities?”  In the past, this didn’t seem like a problem because we just subtracted the amount of time needed to complete our EPP objectives from the amount of available time for “PM-sponsored” projects – or we built in the fact that we wouldn’t be working 100% of the time on those projects.  Either route is a problem because it reduces visibility into what the team’s priorities and capacity are.

Another problem was “how can we claim to be agile while putting together six month long personal plans?”

The latest problem we’ve encountered had to do with personal/career/team development, e.g., writing more unit tests, peer reviewing code, experimenting with peer programming, networking with peers outside the company, etc.

I feel like we’ve addressed all three problems fairly well.  Here’s how:

Regarding EPP projects, we realized that engineers making themselves personally responsible for entire projects was simply the wrong approach.  Granted, we wanted to get these projects (mostly technical debt reduction projects) done and granted they are important, but cutting out the rest of the team and the Product Owner is simply not the best way to accomplish them.

We realized that we should not be focusing on the whole project but simply that piece which is under our control.  Thus, we are now adopting EPP goals such as “Advocate for refactoring product X” – with objectives such as “educate Product Management about the costs and potential benefits” and “submit requested user stories and Definitions of Done to our Product Owner”.  In this way, we’re doing everything we can to see that these projects get done without sacrificing the prerogative of the PO to set priorities.  We’re also doing what only we can do: identify, explain, and plan to reduce technical debt or capitalize on new technologies.

Regarding the fact that we’re using six month EPPs, we are very explicit that EPPs – like all plans – should not be written in stone.  Thus, we’ve taken the approach of having quick, monthly reviews of our EPPs to see if there is anything we want to add, remove, or change given our evolving situation and knowledge.  These reviews sometimes only last five minutes; sometimes they last 30.  The point is that they don’t introduce much overhead and they allow us to course correct fairly frequently.

Regarding personal/career/team development goals, the problems we were running into regarded how to measure success.  If we had an EPP goal to “ensure unit tests are written,” what defines success?  What do we say at the end of six months if we didn’t write as many unit tests as we could have for the first month or two, then were pretty good for the rest of the period until the last week when we again may have missed some opportunities for tests?

We realized that we were not focusing on the real issue.  At the end of the period, we didn’t so much want a code coverage percentage as we wanted to be able to say that we had adopted or internalized certain practices.  That is, that we had developed certain habits.  Thus, at the end of the period, the question we ask ourselves is not “what is our code coverage like?” but rather “have we developed the habit of always writing unit tests?”  While this is more subjective, we feel it is still more valuable and it more accurately reflects what we actually want to do.

Summary

• Plan to do those things where you add unique value – bearing in mind that no one person can tackle an entire project alone and, therefore, should not be solely responsible for that project.
• Review the plan often, making changes as necessary.  The plan is not written in stone.
• Don’t be seduced by “vanity metrics” like “how many units tests have I written per story?”  Rather, focus on those habits or practices that you want to develop or internalize and then judge yourself against how well you have become the engineer you want to be.

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I’ll also be attending the Lean Software and Systems Conference in Atlanta from April 21st through the 23rd.

I’m really looking forward to these conferences and meeting anyone else who might be attending these.  If you’re planning on attending, drop me a line and perhaps we can arrange to meet up.

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