Kaizen – Innovation through 20% Time

October 18, 2012

We are always looking for opportunities to improve what we do at Atlassian. Here is one example from Michael Tokar of the GreenHopper team:

Hey all,

There are conversations currently happening in the JIRA team about 20% time and the way in which it is taken. … I wanted to get a feeling for how you all think about 20% time as it is right now.

Some questions for you to ruminate on as you drink tea. Feel free to discuss or reply privately. For this exercise, just think about the time on the GreenHopper team, not other secondments.

Do you feel like you get “enough” 20% time?

Do you feel like you have been “shipping” the fruits of your 20% time? Or do you put time in for not much shippable gain?

What motivates your choice to work on a particular thing for 20% time?

Do you ever feel like your choice in 20% time project will conflict with the product vision of GH / JIRA? Does this concern you?

How much involvement do product managers have in 20% time? How much do you think they should have?

Do you feel like you have great 20% time ideas but you have trouble getting access to the right people to help you finish them?

Is there enough visibility around what 20% time projects do get shipped, from an individual / GH / JIRA family team perspective?

Cheers,
Tokes

I’m talking about the Atlassian experience with 20% time at Rakuten Technology Conference tomorrow. Just thought I would share this email as it is more validation that we are constantly looking for opportunities to improve our practices. Love it.

In Innovation ,
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Is it common for a DevOps team to be made up of Dev and Ops?

October 16, 2012

A great query came through this morning:

Hey Nick, I have a question for you. We’re going through some org changes, and have put together a DevOps team. Traditionally, we’ve only had an Ops team. Right now, the DevOps team is made up of devs, and the idea is for them to work collaboratively with the Ops team (but Ops is still a separate team). Is that how most other organizations structure their DevOps team? Or is it more common for the DevOps team to be made up of both devs and ops people?

–
Chris

My response:

Morning Chris,

When I see this working well it is always Dev *and* Ops. Or, you put Ops on the product team and make everyone responsible for the shared definition of done – similar to incorporating QA, just extending the Definition of Done through to production.

At the end of the day the name doesn’t matter so much as the individuals working together. A shared definition of done really helps drive that alignment and collaboration.

How are things otherwise? Are the teams delivering frequently? What is the goal of the DevOps team vs the Ops team (as it stands today)?

Is your VP Eng on board?

Thanks Chris,
Nick

This is based on what I have seen from visiting other Atlassian customers. I am keen to get your thoughts.

How is your approach to continuous delivery and DevOps structured? Share your views in the comments below.

In Agile, DevOps
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Tokyo for Rakuten Technology Conference

October 11, 2012

Rakuten Technology Conference 2012

Next week I am speaking at Rakuten Technology Conference 2012, I will be sharing the Atlassian story of Agile and Innovation. I’m really excited to be attending this event as Rakuten is a fascinating company. I strongly encourage you to learn more about them by reading this excellent Wired article about Rakuten and their founder. Read it now, how can you not with an image like this?!

Image1

Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten Founder

Rakuten first came to my attention when I met Yasunobu Kawaguchi of Rakuten at SF Agile in June of this year. Yasunobu was visiting with Taichi Watanabe, a colleague from Rakuten. They were both in town to learn more about Agile.

We bumped into one another again at Agile 2012 in August of this year. This time Yasunobu had brought 20 or 30 friends from other companies in Japan. Amazing to see the impact on the Agile space in Japan that this one man is having!

Agile is Japan is poised to take off. I’m sure of it.

If you are in Tokyo next week. Ping me and say hello, we’ve got an Atlassian User Group on as well as a few other bits and pieces.

 

In Agile, Events, Innovation , , ,
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New Scrum Team – Getting Started Questions

September 20, 2012

Last week I received an email from a customer who was rolling out Scrum to his team. Fantastic to see the team preparing themselves by learning about Scrum and asking questions before they dive in.

Read on for his questions and my responses.

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In Agile ,
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Improving Processes with Scrum and Kanban

September 12, 2012

A week or so back I gave a demonstration of GreenHopper as part of a broader introduction to Scrum and Kanban led by Thad West, the co-founder of Isos Technology. View the recording for an introduction to improving processes and managing Agile basics such as user stories, estimating, backlogs, team velocity, visualizing team activity and reporting on team progress. Further, you’ll learn how Atlassian’s easy agile project management solution can unlock the power of Scrum and Kanban to improve your organization’s processes.

View the recording now.

In Agile, GreenHopper, Recommended Reading
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Mark Stiving on Product Pricing at StartUP ProductTalks, August 2012

August 27, 2012

At the August 2012 meetup for SF StartUP ProductTalks we were lucky enough to have Mark Stiving speaking about product pricing. Bloody brilliant talk, I thoroughly enjoyed this months meetup!

You want simple pricing if you have few competitors. If you are in a really competitive market you want to make the pricing complex to prevent customers shopping on price.

See? Nuggets of awesome.

Check out the video and follow along using my notes from the session.

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In Product Management ,
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