Eclipse Community Forums: EPF » Scrum

Help

Home

Home » Archived » EPF » Scrum - OpenUP mapping

Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator

Scrum - OpenUP mapping [message #45416]

Tue, 06 November 2007 14:41

Roman Smirak

Messages: 136
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi,

I have been trying to introduce OpenUP to projects following Scrum
(early stage => they are lacking support & other practices/disciplines) -
surprisingly they don't terms like iteration work-items list - they have
just adopted the sprints and backlogs. As well as customers - it sounds
pretty hard to negotiate again about the terminology.

Questions:
1/ Have anyone noticed the same problem?
2/ Is anyone about to invent sort of mapping table or synonyms available in
context (e.g. if I opened Artefact: Work Items list I could see Synonym:
Sprint back log - or even switch among "intermethodizations")?

Regards,

Roman

Report message to a moderator

Re: Scrum - OpenUP mapping [message #45504 is a reply to message #45416]

Wed, 07 November 2007 05:09

Per Kroll

Messages: 60
Registered: July 2009

Member

Hi Roman,

I would recommend that you read Philippe Kruchten's "Voyage in the Agile
Memeplex", see
http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage &pid=501

One of the challenges is that parts of the agile community on purpose have
defined a unique terminology, to set them apart. The unique terminology gels
the 'people that get it', making them different from all others that 'do not
get it'. The claim is that you need to show from day one that this is not
the same old stuff, by calling things by different names... I am pretty sure
I have heard Ken Schwaber saying something to that point as a motivation for
using different terms. I think there is some truth in that, but it also
makes it hard to bridge gaps... as you point out... It also means that many
Scrum people will not have a desire to change to more commonly used names
for things, such as Iteration instead of Sprint. I am sure that there are
cases where OpenUP are using less common terms, but if we have suggestions
for better / more common terms, I for sure would be interested in
suggestions for improvements...

I think that having a terminology map as you suggest, to help bridge gaps,
would be a good idea... Some obvious
Iteration - Sprint
Work Item List - Backlog
Iteration burndown - Sprint burndown
Project Plan - Release Plan
....

Other things are harder.. The roles are not clean maps...
Analyst is not quite a Product Owner
Project Manager is not quite a Scrum Master
and so on...

Cheers

/Per

"Roman Smirak" <roman.smirak@tietoenator.com> wrote in message
news:fgpuec$jv1$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying to introduce OpenUP to projects following Scrum
> (early stage => they are lacking support & other practices/disciplines) -
> surprisingly they don't terms like iteration work-items list - they have
> just adopted the sprints and backlogs. As well as customers - it sounds
> pretty hard to negotiate again about the terminology.
>
> Questions:
> 1/ Have anyone noticed the same problem?
> 2/ Is anyone about to invent sort of mapping table or synonyms available
> in context (e.g. if I opened Artefact: Work Items list I could see
> Synonym: Sprint back log - or even switch among "intermethodizations")?
>
> Regards,
>
> Roman
>

Report message to a moderator

Re: Scrum - OpenUP mapping [message #45680 is a reply to message #45504]

Mon, 12 November 2007 09:55

Roman Smirak

Messages: 136
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Per,

thanks for your answer. I have just read the Philippe Krutchen's material
and it rather touches quite general point, I guess, common to all people -
no matter whether they are agilists or traditionalist. Actually I see the
point as this: most of us understand just a surface of any theory not
exploring or understanding the core principles or deeper relations,
cause-and-consequence dependencies. As Einstein quoted: "Any fool can know.
The point is to understand."

I have seen many projects claiming "We follow RUP" or, Scrum or replace with
any other method, and violating fundamental principles (e.g. several
iterations producing just papers, late integration, etc.)

I agree with you the point behind different naming in Scrum, for instance,
is to avoid following same old habits. Or at least to try to avoid it. The
aggressive or extreme people in community is a side effect IMHO related to
human nature rather than evocated by anything from the theory.

Few days ago I was listening to a debate about some cancer disease and the
way to fix it. An expert told we are much better now than few decades ago,
however, we still don't know so much about causes. An editress finally asked
how one can prevent it and the expert claimed: healthy style in fact -
something we already know several decades (food, don't smoke, don't drink
alcohol, etc.) "This is actually the cheapest way to fix the problem.
Unfortunately, it is not wide known in our society." Why? The editress
asked. "First, people don't think so much about the future. Second, we as
the scientist, somehow lack the ability to motivate people, to make this
attractive, write understandable, readable articles about this." Well, when
I was reading the article by Philippe, or when I'm listening podcast from
OOPSLA, or reading any book/stuff from CMU, ISO, etc. I constantly ask
myself: how does this relate to my problems? Are we living in the same
world? And constantly fail to get the answer.

That is actually expected by my customers or team-mates as well. That is why
I love to read Mary Poppendieck's books/essays, XP & Scrum from trenches,
listening Scott Ambler's presentations, etc.

This is quite challenging task: rather than blaming anyone I need to find a
way how to uncover the idea to him/her or actually understand I have applied
wrong assumptions. On one hand I need to convince a group of people there
are certain inefficiencies in their current way of working/deciding, on the
other hand I also try to explain Scrum it self is not the silver bullet and
you need more to the other group. Actually that this OpenUP is excellent mix
of great ideas:-) If you have any helpful ideas (except the tool itself)
please share it with us.

I have been thinking about additional view, called let say Scrum view,
explaining how OpenUP implements the Scrum practices (XP practices, etc.) -
ie. in form of a link to a library element, providing translation to the
Scrum terms, etc. How do you see this?

Regards,

Roman

"Per Kroll" <pkroll@us.ibm.com> wrote in message
news:fgrh9s$g3e$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi Roman,
>
> I would recommend that you read Philippe Kruchten's "Voyage in the Agile
> Memeplex", see
> http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage &pid=501
>
> One of the challenges is that parts of the agile community on purpose have
> defined a unique terminology, to set them apart. The unique terminology
> gels the 'people that get it', making them different from all others that
> 'do not get it'. The claim is that you need to show from day one that this
> is not the same old stuff, by calling things by different names... I am
> pretty sure I have heard Ken Schwaber saying something to that point as a
> motivation for using different terms. I think there is some truth in that,
> but it also makes it hard to bridge gaps... as you point out... It also
> means that many Scrum people will not have a desire to change to more
> commonly used names for things, such as Iteration instead of Sprint. I am
> sure that there are cases where OpenUP are using less common terms, but if
> we have suggestions for better / more common terms, I for sure would be
> interested in suggestions for improvements...
>
> I think that having a terminology map as you suggest, to help bridge gaps,
> would be a good idea... Some obvious
> Iteration - Sprint
> Work Item List - Backlog
> Iteration burndown - Sprint burndown
> Project Plan - Release Plan
> ...
>
> Other things are harder.. The roles are not clean maps...
> Analyst is not quite a Product Owner
> Project Manager is not quite a Scrum Master
> and so on...
>
> Cheers
>
> /Per
>
> "Roman Smirak" <roman.smirak@tietoenator.com> wrote in message
> news:fgpuec$jv1$1@build.eclipse.org...
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have been trying to introduce OpenUP to projects following Scrum
>> (early stage => they are lacking support & other practices/disciplines) -
>> surprisingly they don't terms like iteration work-items list - they have
>> just adopted the sprints and backlogs. As well as customers - it sounds
>> pretty hard to negotiate again about the terminology.
>>
>> Questions:
>> 1/ Have anyone noticed the same problem?
>> 2/ Is anyone about to invent sort of mapping table or synonyms available
>> in context (e.g. if I opened Artefact: Work Items list I could see
>> Synonym: Sprint back log - or even switch among "intermethodizations")?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Roman
>>
>
>

Report message to a moderator