Giving Back

Last year, I joined a group of people from the burbs that met in Detroit to tear down a house.  We often hear about Detroit's troubles, but do we feel some ownership of its problems?  Although some of us live in the Ann Arbor area, Detroit is still the major city associated with our region.  So, we probably should care.

Our One MSIS vision speaks of Balance.  One aspect of life's balance is balancing taking with giving.  I wrote about stewardship a few posts back and I mentioned how people have come to expect their governments to provide all required services for taxes paid.  It should be clear that model doesn't work.  There is no better example than the city of Detroit.

Detroit is easily one of the largest municipalities in the country.  At approximately 143 square miles, it is a sprawling mess.  Estimates put the number of homes that need to come down between 40,000 and 60,000 properties.  Whatever the number, we have a lot of work ahead.

One of the greatest feelings is doing something to help others without expecting anything in return.  The fact is, we do benefit when Detroit gets stronger.  Just ask the people who live in the suburbs of Charlotte or Bozeman -- cities that have seen robust growth.

There's a company in Detroit called Blight Busters that coordinates house demolitions.  You can go downtown any Saturday morning and help out.  We could also organize as a group and go down there.  If you are interested in such an event, shoot me an email.  If we have enough people to make a crew, I'll set it up.  C'mon!  When was the last time you got swing a sledgehammer?

First Iteration with Scrumban and Pull Workflow

We planned an iteration dedicated to learning for the DMS team. The goals were to begin working through the thinnest slice of the business data warehouse project to gain process and technical experience from touching all areas of the project, use the pull workflow the team designed and lastly to have no or minimal support work, which we are now considering support work to be any task that is not for the business data warehouse project.

 

Acquiring a product owner proxy has helped the work get split to smaller stories, prioritize work and move from working on silo-ed work-streams for each individual team member to the team working through a horizontal slice of the project using all their new tools and technology together.

The iteration focused on technical work related to data discovery but is setting the foundation to begin working on stories for data consumption. The team planned 13 project tasks across two stories and 7 support tasks. By the end of the week 14 project tasks were done, 1 story done and 14 support tasks completed and the backlog of tasks grew by six for the story in progress. The team focused on prioritizing new support work coming in and pushed 10 support tasks to the next few weeks.

 

Continue reading this BlogSpot at: http://curiousagility.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-iteration-with-scrumban-and-pull.html

 

The September 8th Reincarnation of the MSIS Ticketing System - Deadlines and Deliverables

-- Tony Markel

Setting deadlines, heck, even the word deadline, can inspire panic, ennui, a sense of hopelessness, or a sense of motivation.  I spent 5 years in the newspaper industry, and if it's one thing that drives them daily, it's the relentless approach of the deadline.  

It's amazing to see a diverse group of people rally to get a paper out. There's no "well, I guess we didn't get one out today".  The paper always goes out or the paper soon perishes. There's no mechanisms in place to handle the backlash of customer and advertiser complaints and requests for refunds if the paper fails to make a deadline.

I actually enjoy the tension working to a deadline requires.  It helps drive focus, and bring out essential issues to resolve where having more time leaves one with "well, someone will get to that someday".

Our deadline is September 8th, 2014

Here's what the project team must deliver on September 8th, 2014:

• A ticketing system in our current MSIS JIRA instance using JIRA Service Desk that provides the same level of customer interaction and measurement we use in Zendesk.
• The transfer of all tickets (~1GB of text data) from Zendesk to JIRA Service Desk.
• A customer feedback mechanism as good or better than what we have today.
• Communications that are timely and accurate to MSIS and our Customers

Here's how we're going to get there:

• Finalize Import Settings by August 8th
• Configure the User Interface with appropriate branding by August 22nd
• Finalize Product Configuration and Testing by August 29th
• Deliver training to MSIS Staff by September 5th
• Import tickets from September 5th through September 8th
• Go Live on the 8th

No miracles here, just lots of planning and hard work.

Why September 8th?  Isn't that a bit close?  Are you going to make it?

The goal for the project is to reduce costs while maintaining value.  We can't do that if we're running Zendesk 6 months into the fiscal year.  So, we've given ourselves until September 30th to be completely off Zendesk.  We've finalized this with our purchase of ZD licenses to terminate on September 30th.

In order to be off Zendesk by September 30th, we need to smoothly transition tickets in-flight from Zendesk to JIRA Service Desk.  We need both systems to do this.  The average life of a ticket is 22 business days, or about 4 weeks.  Dial back 4 weeks from September 30, and you're in the neighborhood of September 8th.  If we really wanted a full 4 weeks, we could have set the deadline to September 2nd, but I don't think it's wise to switch systems on a holiday weekend.  So, September 8th.

It's just barely doable.  But, it is doable.

Onward!

Escape!

The week befor last, I was on vacation...and yes I took the picture to the right.  But, this is not a travelogue about Southern California.  Since many of us are taking some time off right about now, a common theme may be about getting away from the office and not having to think about it.

While I certainly enjoy some time NOT thinking about work.  I really like to spend some of my vacation time thinking about my professional life.  There are distinct advantages to thinking about your work when you're not engaged in it.

There's an old saying, "can't see the forest for the trees."  This refers to the tendency to lose track of the big picture when you're looking from the inside out.  Vacations allow you to escape "the inside" so you can have fresh view of things.  It's a great time to assess relationships and work processes.

I always seem to come back from a vacation with at least one idea of how I can improve my relationship with someone or change a process for the better.  The reality is that a good portion of the time, my grandiose ideas from afar fail to bear fruit.  But, sometimes they do.

One of the primary principles of the Agile Manifesto is to try things.  There are two components to trying things: 1) having an idea, and 2) committing to action.  Leveraging a little vacation time for ideas can be well worth the effort.  Furthermore, returning refreshed, invigorated and emboldened puts you in the perfect state for taking action...but don't forget to enjoy the sunshine, too!

Why I Stopped Facilitating Stand-Ups and Participated

Do you desire a more effective stand-up? Is your team struggling to find value in stand-up? Are stand-ups taking to long? Is the team addressing solely the scrum master, product owner, analyst, tech lead, manager, coach instead of the team? Are stand-ups becoming just status reports?

Checkout my latest BlogSpot: http://curiousagility.blogspot.com/2014/07/why-i-stopped-facilitating-stand-ups.html

 

Agile Gardening

I’m always a little envious of people with those picture-perfect gardens you see in books and magazines. This is a picture of my vegetable garden. As you can see, it’s not picturesque.  The weeds and grass have taken over large areas.  The squash has spread and mixed in with the pumpkins.  Next to that is a large barren area where I planted some shell beans that never sprouted.  

But that’s OK.  The goal for my garden is to grow as much food as I can without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers, with as little effort as possible.  The goals for your garden may be different.  Maybe you want the picture-perfect garden surrounded by a white picket fence.  Perhaps you have a homeowner’s association that has size restrictions for your garden.  Or maybe you dislike vegetables and want a flower garden.

In our Michigan Agile Philosophy (the MAP), we call this “knowing what done looks like”.  The Product Owner has a vision, and they define what’s important to them.  But the Product Owner can’t do it alone - they must take into account the needs of other stakeholders.  My wife wants to plant sunflowers in a spot I think would be perfect for my hops.  My son loves tomatoes, but hates lettuce.  The Product Owner must take these conflicting needs into consideration.

Iteration is another element of our MAP that comes into play in gardening.  Take our tomatoes for example.  

The first year we used those cheap cages they sell at nurseries to keep our tomatoes propped up.  They gave us so many problems!  Once the plants got large enough, the cages couldn’t support them any longer.  A strong thunderstorm blew several of our plants over and a couple of them died.  The next year I built cages out of steel concrete mesh.  They worked much better!  However, rabbits could get through the holes in the mesh and ate several plants while they were still small.  The next year we added some chicken wire to the bottom of the cages, but our troubles didn’t end there.  By the time August rolled around, the plants were so large we couldn’t get in between them to pick tomatoes.  So this year we’ve planted them further apart.  Probably too far apart, actually. Maybe next year I’ll get it right!

Working in iterations allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t work.  Getting some small successes under your belt helps to build some momentum and confidence!  We started with a small garden and now have over 1800 square feet of garden space.  Every spring we take the lessons we learned from the previous year and apply it to our new garden.  If we tried to do it all from the start we would have quit after the first year.  

There are opportunities to apply Agile thinking everywhere.  We don’t have to leave it behind at the workplace.  Try applying it to your next garden, home improvement project, or hobby and see if you notice an improvement!

Road to Team Transformation with Canvases

If you walked through the collaboration space in building 200 you may have noticed that the wall between poll location C3 and B4 has been lacquered with giant sticky posters, blue tape, and post-it notes. To find out more on what that thingamajig is checkout my blog post on "Road to Team Transformation: My First 30 Days" at http://curiousagility.blogspot.com/2014/07/road-to-team-transformation-my-first-30.html.

Help Me Now!

We recently launched the Help Me Now service in MSIS

What does Help Me Now mean?


The Help Me Now title is self-explanatory. You get help, right now, here.

What is the AV Team doing in Northville?

Front view of facility

On Tuesday July 15, 2014, The University of Michigan Health Systems will open their newest facility.  The Northville Health Center, Situated on the Southwest corner of Haggerty Rd. and Seven Mile Rd. in Northville Michigan is the amazing 100,000 square foot facility.  With specialized healthcare services offered, such as physical therapy, cardiology, cancer treatments, and much more, this building is a welcome addition to the Northville community.

Lower Level Check-in Area

A key component of this project consisted of ten (10) Digital Signs with custom queuing applications running on three (3) of them.  Each check-in attendant will have the ability to change the sign to reflect when they are available to check a new patient in.  Many thanks goes to Sam Keith and the rest of the M3 team for the work they did to the graphics for these signs

Conference room

A private Conference room adjacent to the executive offices consists of a flat panel display, a core imaged machine and HDMI and VGA inputs in the table.

Physical Therapy

The physical therapy area has four (4) tv's that are connected to a Crestron control system for on/off, volume up/down and channel up/down.  These Tv's will be displaying content brought in from Comcast cable.

Infusion Area TV's

The second level has a large patient infusion area that has twelve (12) TV's connected to a Pro:Idium™ controller in each bed for individual patient use.  We were even able to add the Northville Health Center Logo to the display upon turning them on.  That is the Michigan Difference.

There is a multipurpose room that will be used for staff training and professional development that has a large flat panel with a Polycom videoconferencing system on a movable cart.

Pediatrics Waiting Area

To round out this project, there are several patient rooms and waiting areas that have TV's installed and connected to a Crestron control system.

 This was a revolutionary partnership between Facilities, Planning and Development, MCIT and MSIS.  Many Thanks to Chris Goosman, Charlotta Jared, Rick Sawoscinski, Erik Alderink and Steve Perrin for their hard work and dedication to this project.

MSIS Visits the Century Agave bloom

It's poking through the roof!

It's a good thing to pack a few colleagues in a car and drive out and see something pretty spectacular. The American Agave plant that's been with the Matthaei Botanical Gardens is in bloom and it's amazing. They had to take out sections of the roof to make way for the towering blossom.  I've attached a few pictures from the trip.  At the end is a time-lapse video taken by staff of the gardens.  Enjoy!

The leaves at the base top out at about five and a half feet tall.

In the foreground is a Blue Agave (used in tequila and bad decision making) which was also in bloom.  It was about six feet tall.  The big bloom is (I'm guessing) about 30 feet tall.

 

MSIS Kiva Team

Kiva.org is a micro-credit web site that works to provide small amounts of money to people around the globe in order to assist with life improving projects and businesses. I have been dabbling in Kiva for awhile now and thought that if there was anyone else interested in similar things that they could join up to the MSIS Kiva Team.

Learn more about Kiva.org through their About Us page

Check out the modest MSIS Kiva Team site

If you are already a kiva user, all you have to do is join through the "Join Team" button on the MSIS Kiva Team site.

If you are not a Kiva user but are interested in joining, let me or Erik Z know first. If we use the "Invite a Friend" feature, they give us a bonus to lend out.

More links:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6668527


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_(organization)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance

Here is a team activity report:

Thanks,
Jack

Calling all Golfers....

Dust off your drivers and polish your putter.  It is time for some fun on the links with our co-workers and partners.