Retrospective in Scrum & Agile: A Quick Start Guide for Managers
Speaking of Scrum, retrospective meetings play an important role in this agile
framework for leading projects. Typically, retrospective reviews are held at
the end of each sprint. Unlike other types of analytical meetings such as
after-action reviews (AAR), project post-mortems, or agile sprint reviews
(more on this in a moment), sprint retrospectives are organized with the team
only (not managers or other stakeholders). It’s a ‘private’ ceremony,
facilitated by a Scrum Master, where each person is asked to share their
honest observations and feedback (without any blaming or shaming). A good
Scrum Master can elicit answers to the following questions from the
team: What went well during the sprint and what didn’t; Which areas
are due for an improvement (across people-processes-tech).; and What
should be added or removed from the current process? The purpose of such
project retrospectives is to locate areas for improvement (similarly to what
VSM does) and prompt the team to correct their behavior. But, unlike other
types of ‘reflective meetings’, retrospectives are held at regular intervals
during the project, not at its very end. ... In short, the difference between
sprint review and sprint retrospective is the intention behind each meeting.
The goal of a sprint review is to discuss the overall project progress
including ‘done’ things, future project backlog, any bottlenecks, goals,
plans, and timing.
6 Reasons to Start Managing Technical Debt in 2021
Technical debt is one of the reasons people leave - or asking themselves if
they should leave. The Codeahoy survey found that 50% of developers surveyed
are likely or 'very likely' to leave their jobs because of tech debt. Another
27% percent indicated that they think about it, but aren't sure. All in all,
that's a sizable chunk of people who could be swayed by a compelling job offer
from a competitor. Suppose your company is experiencing a high turnover of
developers. Technical debt might be a factor, especially amongst those who are
spending their time putting out fires in response to errors in legacy code at
the expense of more exciting projects. ... Every minute spent on maintenance
due to technical debt is a lost opportunity for innovation or value-adding
work. Research by Accenture into Federal IT systems suggests that technical
debt and resulting IT discontinuities impede Innovation and agility and
engineering velocity suffers. 83% indicated that technical debt severely
limits their ability to be innovative, and 79% report that it inhibits their
responsiveness to change. Notably, only 38% of those surveyed were even
estimating the cost of remediating technical debt.
Google: Our work to keep you safe and in control of your privacy
In 2020 we continued to invest in easy-to-use privacy and security settings,
which are automatically built into every Google Account and Google products.
How you use our products and services is a personal choice: When you sign up
for Google products and services, we offer you settings that let you choose
how to personalize your experience, and control what activity gets saved to
your Google Account. And you can change these settings at any time. These
privacy and security controls are available in your Google Account and the
products you use every day across platforms and devices, including on iOS. For
example, Your Data in Search, Maps and YouTube helps you easily understand how
data makes these apps work for you and quickly access the right controls,
directly in the apps. You can also just search for things like “Is my Google
Account secure?” and a box only visible to you will show your privacy and
security settings so you can easily review or adjust them. Google Pay, which
was recently redesigned in the U.S., has strong privacy and security controls
built-in that are easy to understand and simple to set up, access and manage.
How banks and financial services players will monetise open banking
“To provide real-time data sharing solutions through the pre- and
post-transaction processing lifecycles allows automation and streamlining of
operational processes as they [clients] do not have to rely on batch reports
anymore, which are now perhaps legacy,” Vadakath says. Alongside this and
fundamental to the success of the partnership between bank and corporate
client, she explores how the purpose of APIs have been reinvented and today,
they can be utilised as a client access channel and improves said access to
various payment rails and a suite of treasury data solutions. In the custody
space, as Wayne Hughes, head of data and digital for FI&C at BNP Paribas
explores, there is no regulatory requirement for APIs, but the bank’s business
goals are aligned with those at NatWest and BNY Mellon. Hughes explains that
in addition to enhancing client experience with self-service, BNP Paribas are
using APIs to optimise internal processes and build services that their
customers will require in the future. “In providing our clients a new flexible
means of interacting with their data, this will allow them to both directly
extract their data into their platforms as they require and when they require,
but also to allow us to implement new solutions and new packages,” such as a
client facing chatbot that leverages natural language processing.
The CIO’s next key role: Change agent
As roles shift, Darren Ash, assistant CIO for the USDA Farm Production and
Conservation Mission Area, says it’s critical for CIOs to act as an enabler
and a partner with the business—not just to identify and deploy technologies
to solve business problems, but to get everyone on board with new ways of
working. Ash and his IT team do that through direct and sustained outreach to
frontline workers in the various mission areas that comprise the USDA agency,
including soliciting feedback from agency personnel and final customers to
promote transformation. These efforts are designed to increase the stickiness
of any digital initiative and to ensure everyone is onboard with the art of
the possible when it comes to new implementations. “It’s our responsibility to
better educate the business on technology and how it can be used,” Ash
explains. “For us to drive change, we have to be better partners with the
business, specifically the frontline employees across the mission areas and
not just IT employees.” Ash and his CIO agency peers also make a point to have
their teams capture the voice of the customer—in this case, farmers and
ranchers dependent on agency services—to gauge what works or what can be done
better and to foster organic support.
What Is A Time Series GAN?
Built on generative adversarial networks (GANs), Time Series GAN or TadGAN has
been trained with cycle consistency loss to allow for effective time-series
data reconstruction. With a claim to outperform baseline methods in most
cases, the researchers are planning to present this novel framework at the
upcoming IEEE BigData conference. The research was done in collaboration with
satellite company SES, looking to leverage a deep learning approach to analyse
vast time-series data from communication satellites. ... According to the
researchers, there are two types of anomalies in time series data — point
anomaly and collective anomaly. To flag both anomalies in time series domain,
the researchers relied on GAN architecture, often used for image analysis, to
generate time series sequences and outperform state-of-the-art benchmarks.
Using the generator and discriminator functioning of the unsupervised learning
of GAN architecture, the proposed model was able to flag anomalous data
points. The researchers implemented five of the most recent deep learning
techniques and compared their performances with a baseline method from the
1970s, ARIMA. While some deep learning methods were able to beat ARIMA on 50%
of the datasets, two failed to outperform it at all, because of its ability to
fit anomalous data well.
IoT 2020 in Review: The 10 Most Relevant IoT Developments of the Year
IoT played (and still plays) a crucial role in navigating the pandemic. A few
IoT-centric use cases played (and continue to play) essential roles in helping
the world navigate through the pandemic. The most notable ones include
IoT-based contact tracing in workplaces, hospitals, and elsewhere (Example:
Concept Reply Tracking & Location System) as well as product tracking and
verification across the vaccine supply chain (Example: Controlant – see
below). Apart from those IoT 2020 use cases that support the “new
reality”, a number of additional themes emerged, many of which have
longer-lasting structural implications. IoT Analytics first published these
observations in April 2020 in an analysis called “The impact of Covid-19 on
the Internet of Things”. A survey of 60 senior IT decision makers in
manufacturing, transportation, and industrial companies, in October 2020
confirmed that nearly all of these 25 trends were perceived as having a
longer-lasting effect on their organizations (The results were published in
the “Industrial IT Outlook 2021” – available for download for corporate
clients).
2021 Technology trend review, part 1: Blockchain, Cloud, Open Source
Open source is winning, in databases and beyond. Gartner predicts that by
2022, more than 70% of new in-house applications will be developed on an open
source database, and 50% of existing proprietary relational database instances
will have been converted or be in the process of converting. That was our
opener for 2020, and if anything, it looks like the trend has accelerated.
Open source use went up while the economy went down, and open source jobs are
hotter than ever. Open source software is a boon for developers who use it, as
it lowers the barrier to entry, and makes their skills transferable. But what
about developers who create the software? They get the raw part of the deal,
it would seem. The reality is that in the majority of open source software
above a certain threshold of complexity, a core team of few people does most
of the work. This empirical fact is backed up by analysis on Github data. We
highlighted this theme in early 2020, following up on the New York Times
article on the relationship between AWS and commercial open source vendors.
Wired followed up with another article highlighting the ordeal of open source
creators. Salvatore Sanfilippo, Redis' "benevolent dictator", stepping down
from his role is another incident in a long chain of open source creators
burnout.
How to prep for becoming an IoT leader
One area that will be important going forward is understanding how IoT and
Industrial IoT (IIoT) will eventually merge. "There is a lot of existing
infrastructure that is working well, but under-monitored and -utilized," Floyd
says. It will be interesting to see how legacy industrial equipment will be
adapted for greater efficiency and cost savings, he says. The growth of IoT
and IIoT will likely lead to a "culture clash" between IT and
operations/facilities, Floyd says, "and anyone who can traverse these two
worlds, from either side, will find themselves indispensable." Overall, Floyd
thinks gaining IoT skills and certifications has proven to be useful in
advancing his career. "It provided a lens to view future technologies and
their interconnectedness, as well as an avenue towards 'the next big thing'
for a career," he says. "Understanding better how to guide a new technology
[from] concept to approval and then through implementation and delivery are
skills that can be applied to other enterprise technology projects." In
addition, Floyd says acquiring these certificates demonstrates a dedication to
advancing his career and displays a curiosity about future technologies. "When
this topic does come up in my organization, people understand that I have some
background, and I can advise if needed."
Productivity Life Hacks for Software Engineers (and All Knowledge Workers)
Why do we need sleep, anyway? Why shouldn't you routinely stay up late into the
night coding? After all, time spent sleeping is time not spent getting work
done. But, it turns out that sleep is crucial in retaining what you learn. It's
during slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep that the
information you've learned is consolidated and stored in long-term memory. We
sleep in cycles, so a short amount of sleep or a restless night of sleep means
less time spent in these phases. To that effect, it is counterproductive to
consistently spend late nights working and studying without giving your brain
adequate time to process and save all this new information. Lack of sleep can
also lead to irritability, the inability to focus, and lower productivity, which
hurts your work performance as well as your relationships with your
coworkers. Exercise is also important, not just for your body, but for your
mind. show that exercise is linked to reduced stress, higher work performance,
and increased creativity. Conversely, sitting for long periods of time is
correlated with lower work output and poorer mental health. So next time you're
feeling an afternoon slump, rather than reach for the caffeine, try taking a
short walk.
Quote for the day:
"The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be." -- Max de Pree
