My mind wonders…

Our second day of Cat Skiing with Big Red Cats has been and gone. Having had in excess of 1 metre of snow in the last 5 / 6 days even with a knee that is giving me plenty of grief I wasn’t going to miss out.

What a day. There was almost too much snow (don’t shoot me down just yet, read on…), at least for the level of course that we were doing, some of the inclines were a little too shallow and made it a little hard work to get going. Once you had struggled through the thigh deep powder to get going it was awesome. The front thrid of your board would pop up above the snow, the rest deep beneath you and you would begin effectively aqua plaining. It was an incredible feeling, each turn was so sweet, each tumble I took bringing a giggle from me (trying to get back up didn’t though.), each face shot better than the last, the realisation that you are riding in waist deep powder from time to time. It’s almost indescribable.

Whilst I know that the experience is totally dependant on the weather conditions at the time, I must say though, if you ever get the chance to go, do it. You won’t regret it.

My knee prevented me from doing 3 of the 8 runs which didn’t really matter, the 5 that I had will stay with me forever, I did get the added bonus though of riding in the Cab of the Cat, something that I have always wanted to do. To be bounding down a cat track doing 30ks an hour in one of those vehicles is just incredible.

So not a full day but I still enjoyed it. I’ll be keeping one eye on the weather and one of the stand bys for the rest of our time here that’s for sure.

I’ve done a lot of reading about the topic of Project Management using SCRUM and worked on a project before Christmas in which I used it as a framework. I would like to think that one of the successes of the project was that it has opened a few peoples eyes to the fact that there are different ways of running projects other than perhaps the more traditional methods. It has led to a lot of people starting to talk of the use of Scrum in the organisation. This is no bad thing, I must confess though that I didn’t follow the framework to the letter, furthermore, nor would I suggest it, I do think it has a lot to offer but it is important that you implement it in a way that works for you rather than blindly following practices dictated by somebody else.

It’s better to understand the principles and the values. I have always suggested that people read some of the books that I have and also a number of blogs that I subscribe to. I suggest these with the intention that they get sufficient information to enable them to make their own mind up, for them to then be able to have a discussion with somebody else as to the merits of taking an approach like that.

Papers like Scrum and XP from the Trenches make very interesting reading and focusses on the outcomes of implementing practices but are certainly no starting point, rather perhaps the Agile Manifesto.

For me, the understanding is as important as the implementing, a point that is made very well by Tobias’s recent article.

Tobias makes some points that struck a chord with my own thinking. In his first point he suggests that Product Owners should be part of the team. One of the successes of the Skunkworks project that I worked on was the time commitment from the steering group, sure we suffered from a lack of direction at time though I consider this my own fault more than anything but they were always there when we needed them. If anything I would request for future projects of that nature that one Product Owner is nominated at the beginning of a project and that they, where possible, collocate with the team.

The point relating to length of Sprint / Iteration is interesting, I used one week Sprints on the Skunkworks project owing to the time scales that we had, this worked well for us but it was very intense. Thankfully we never hit any major problems that deflected our main efforts too much, in subsequent conversations that I have had with people though I have recommended a 2 week Sprint, in my mind a 30 day cycle would still be too long for the team to develop any sort of rhythm. This is my own personal feeling, I guess it’s just what works for you.

Having only used Story Points to estimate for a short while I can not really comment, however when we did use them I could see how they benefited as a tool to both gain a better understanding of any given problem but also to speed up the estimation process.

Points 4 and 5 are the ones that stand out the most for me. We didn’t implement a task board until about 3 weeks from the conclusion of the project but it had a profound effect in everyone’s (By everyone I include people outside of the team.) understanding of what we needed to achieve in the time remaining. From the outset I had maintained an Excel Spreadsheet for the Product Backlog which was fine but it wasn’t visible to the people it actually needed to be to. The more I think about it, the more I think that visibility is a key driver to the success of a project, it allows for people to make decisions earlier that can bring something back on track for example, rather than being confronted with something monumental at the end (The biggest failing of a waterfall approach in my mind.).

Finally, I can see that point 7 makes some sense, I do however think that new teams, either freshly assembled or established ones with some exposure to SCRUM, benefit from somebody taking the SCRUM Master role on. I think that an important part of the SCRUM Master role is for them to own the SCRUM process and that they should be able to act as a a reference point / coach to team members.

For me, the principles of SCRUM just make sense, what makes more sense though is doing what is right for you to get the project delivered. It doesn’t matter what you call it. As long as it works.

The tree won. Obviously.

I’ve sustained another injury, this time with a bit more of a story to it. I was riding with Nathan, Craig and a bloke from the hostel Richard, in a set of trees that we know as Stu’s Run, there’d been another 15 cms or so of snow overnight and so I was finding whatever I could to pop off of.

Richard highlighted a jump to Nathan and I, he rode at it first and landed in a heap on the other side, still smiling as there was so much powder to fall in to. Nathan was up next, caught some nice air and rode it out before falling and then to my turn. I’d paid attention to the speed people were taking this time (after the last time, when I hit a lip in Mini Bowls at warp speed and twisted my ankle on landing). Anyway, I got some fairly nice air, landed it and rode out like a hero. Or so I thought, I went in to a heel side turn and didn’t see a small tree poking up. My board went one side of it and my body the other, my front knee taking the full impact.

It hurt so much that I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I couldn’t move for a couple of minutes, in fact Nathan had to release my bindings for me. Not pleasant. I finished off the run and then took Long Squaw home.

It was still an amazing day with plenty of bottomless turns and grins all round.

Today has been less eventful. There was 25cms of snow overnight and it’s snowed all day and I have been sat in the hostel resting and contemplating whether or not I should go Cat Skiing tomorrow. I’ve decided to go, we’ve just spoken to them about a lift in the morning. In their words “It’s deep, mount your bindings back and bring a snorkel.”

I love this place.