Emphasis on ownership and team play
Agile development can be successful only when every member of the team can step-up to take ownership of the task and at the same time, keeping in mind the overall project objectives. Symbioun has recognized this requirement. The recruitment process at Symbioun is aligned with this requirement. Ability to visualize the big picture and take educated risks in filling gaps in specifications are key evaluation parameters for all new hires at Symbioun.
Ongoing training and agile lab sessions
Symbioun believes in periodic refresher courses and opportunities for agile teams to put in practice new concepts before applying them in customer engagements. All Symbiounites get an opportunity to participate in mock agile sessions, once every quarter, to specifically improve on areas identified for improvements based on project-end appraisals and customer feedback.
Dedicated product owners
Every agile team at Symbioun has a dedicated product owner that plays the role of the customer. The role of a product owner is rotated among team members so that a majority of the agile team members gets exposed to the customer's vision for the product and agile team members can take ownership of the assigned tasks.
Weekly Scrum of Scrums
Weekly Scrum of Scrums is a standard practice at Symbioun to resolve cross-team issues and functional issues between projects or modules. This practice also helps in escalating obstacles between teams/projects for faster resolution. SOS meetings are attended by representatives from each of the several Scrum teams to track the progress of the individual teams, address issues faced during the week, and also to plan for the upcoming week.
Frequent Online Interactive Demo Sessions (IDEM)
The key to successful project engagements in an agile model is the constant involvement of customers and inputs from the customer engineering and product management teams. Symbioun facilitates such communication and involvement from the customer through weekly demo sessions that showcases the incremental progress made by the agile team.