AGILE SWARMING

Being Agile means responding quickly to changes, being flexible, and delivering high-quality solutions incrementally. Agile Swarming aids in the enhancement of agility.

When a high-priority task must be completed quickly and cannot be completed by a single resource, the entire team or a group of resources is involved in completing the task. Agile Swarming is the process by which a group of team members collaborates to achieve a single goal (usually Stories).

This method is ideal for fast-paced projects. Swarming assists in ensuring that workflows are continuous and that WIP (Work In Progress) limits are met.

The Bee Swarming process inspired Agile Swarming. In his book "The Smart Swarm," Peter Miller outlines valuable business lessons from nature.

"We've learned from honeybee swarms that groups can reliably make good decisions in a timely manner if they seek diversity of knowledge." We've seen how even small contributions to a collaborative project can result in something useful by studying termite mounds. Finally, flocks of starlings have demonstrated how, in the absence of a single leader, members of a group can coordinate their behaviour with incredible precision simply by paying attention to their nearest neighbour."

Agile swarming is similar to bee behaviour in that a group of people collaborate on a specific task. Members of an agile swarming initiative must be willing to devote the necessary time and possess the necessary skill set. It enables one to complete tasks faster, improve the efficacy of activities, and easily transition to the next goal.

When multiple team members continue to work on the same project, the team begins to swarm.

How does Agile Swarming work?

Scrum teams discuss the Sprint backlog and select high-priority stories/tasks for Swarming based on the priority assigned to each item.

Swarming can also help with high-priority / high-severity issues reported by customers. Issues that have a significant impact on the Customer's business/revenue generation must be prioritized for resolution.

All team members with the necessary skills are gathered and begin working on resolving the problem. The team collaborates on the same problem until it is resolved.

Roles in Agile Swarming:

The agile Swarming process typically has the subsequent roles :

Swarmer: – A team member who can take the responsibility of transitioning from one story to the opposite, and also extends his Technical Expertise support where required.

Coordinator: One who owns the story to be swarmed.

TeamLet: Group of team members who are performing on the User story chosen to be swarmed. The Swarming Team usually gets disbanded once the goal is achieved as a collaborative task. Then each of the team members picks up different User stories/tasks and starts performing on those items. Pair programming and Mob Programming also enter alignment with Swarming with a couple of changes.

Pair Programming: A technical practice where two developers work together to finish a User Story or task. Both developers sit together and use one device to write down code, review, and test. When one developer is writing the code, the opposite developer gives his input and reviews. and therefore the process repeats with the opposite developer.

Mob Programming: Group of individuals, usually the entire team involves in building one item. Unlike, Swarming, the team doesn't get disbanded after the completion of the story. an equivalent mob picks up another story and starts performing on it. At times, a number of the teams may use this system to create a few of user stories, out of a bunch of stories to be completed during a sprint

Advantages of Agile Swarming:

1. Enhances Productivity
2. Reduces the time spent- on reviews and subsequent fixes Since the team is functioning together, constant reviews happen and thus reducing the extra time spent on reviews and defect fixes.
3. Reduces the Context switching thus increasing the efficiency – because the whole team is functioning on the only item until it's completed, there's no situation of context switching. Their entire focus is on one item. This also emphasizes – ‘Stop Starting and begin Finishing’.
4. Enhanced Quality-?as a gaggle of individuals involved within the entire process of completing the User Story / Task, Multiple reviews keep happening throughout the event during the Sprints
5. The enhanced Skill set?of the team members - Working together helps team members in improving skills by observing the practices / new techniques followed by others within the team
6. Enhanced Collaboration?between the team members- Teams support one another while performing on complex items, share their previous experience, and check out innovating new possibilities.

Conclusion

Agile swarming is all about contributing to help , and it’s a sure sign that the team is the collaborative, agile type. An agile coach can foster the conditions necessary for productive swarming by encouraging cross-training and fostering an environment of trust.

In numerous ways, swarms help the team and therefore the customer. It fosters effective teamwork, generates inventive and artistic solutions to issues, and accelerates project completion. So, the agile team should enthusiastically embrace swarming.

If you’re an Agile Coach looking to broaden your role and career choices, getting your ICP-ACC certification is a superb place to start out. ICP-ACC training gives a comprehension of the talents required to foster a collaborative and problem-solving environment within Agile. As a result, people with agile coach certification can move up in a corporation faster than non-certified employees