ZombagThe agile framework that helps you

surviving a software projectapocalypse

Alejandro Lopez Hermosilla

PhD student on Software Engineering

This framework is just a draft and it is still under development.Contact me at figaro.pobrecitohablador at gmail.com for helping

me out with your feedback

Zombag by Alejandro Lopez Hermosilla is licensed under a Creative CommonsReconocimiento-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional License. Creado a partir de la obraen http://globalagile.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/zombag-facing-a-zombie-software-apocalypse/. Para ver una copia de esta licencia, visite http://creativecommons.

org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.es_ES.

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Contents

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1.1 The first attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.2 The zombie figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.3 The entrenchment in the supermarket. Contextualizing . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.4 Choosing the character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.5 The state of the supermarket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.6 Measures to protect the supermarket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.7 New survivors looking for help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.8 How to combat viruses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.9 How to make this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.10 More about zombies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1.11 Help me too! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1.12 Todo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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The survival in a software development context is not muchdifferent from any other survival situations. If you think deeply,there is a great similarity among individuals who live in azombie apocalypse and the ones who develop software in ateam. Well, how many team members would you consider aszombies in your team? I guess quite a lot! Maybe even youcould say you are a zombie! At this point, you would probablylaugh if I say that you just have to think in a zombie’s movieto understand the nature of collaborations in a difficult context.You could learn a lot from these movies, seriously! Though,let’s get into Zombag’s ideas step-by-step.

Zombag is a framework that fits with Scrum or XP and youdon’t need to make any real changes to it. The only differenceis that some elements of Scrum will have a new label, but justfor being congruent all along. Also, the retrospective will takeyou a bit longer, but that is all. In contrast with Scrum, Zombagfocuses more on how to carry a better retrospective, to improvethe communication and to identify problems in the group, nomatter which kind. Concretely, Zombag is based on improvingcommunication, effectively identifying problems of any kindwithout ignoring certain topics, such as watching out the healthof the team members. It is also about facing these problems,fortify and create a good team spirit, the easier understandingof the situations that occur in software development, the reuseof experiences between teams and the continuous improvementof Zombag. Everything for the team to not only survive, butlive. Both are concepts that come all together in Zombag.

Note that Zombag by itself it does not work, so we recom-mend you to be familiar with Scrum and XP technical practices.

"We recommendyou to use Scrumwith XP technicalpractices"1.1 The first attacks

When a group of survivors ignores the existence of a zombieapocalypse, they usually will be in the phase of the first attacks.In the first attacks’ phase we will have to recognize the existenceof a zombie apocalypse and thus to take measures against it.

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Zombag is a serious framework, which attempts to show thatthere are a number of holes in current frameworks in whichindividuals do not know how to react, causing nasty problems.Zombag has a lot of psychology and welcomes it. Psychol-ogy does not need be regarded as a policeman who definesinsanity or not, but as a tool to understand and improve our-selves helping each other. Easy understanding and having funis fundamental and indisputable in Zombag. Many companieswithout knowing bet for something similar to this framework,and it is truly the next level to add.

Before starting with Zombag you have to:

A Get serious with Zombag but also enjoy the framework.You can be Zombies so admit that it has a certain charm.Be aware that the survivors’ psychological problems arenothing but a reflection of doing things wrong. Of course,people come with their own problems, but believe me,one of the biggest ones usually is the working environ-ment.

B Decide whether to apply Zombag. If you see Zombag asa positive help, entertaining and practical then go for it!If you are not convinced, do not force it.

C Having an open minded eager agile team or a strong willto establish it.

If you are curious keep reading! We are going to start withthe framework itself. Cut the bulls***!

1.2 The zombie figure

Let’s define first what we consider a zombie. For sure youalready more or less got the idea, but let’s just make it a bitclearer just in case.

Zombie It is defined as the individual who has been infectedby one or a set of Viruses (explained later). An individual mayclassify himself as a zombie or someone may alert that he/sheis becoming one.

Let’s just start with this idea. We will see later how this isimportant.

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1.3 The entrenchment in the supermarket.

Contextualizing

First of all, you have to realize what is your context. A bunchof guys lost and looking for resources in a pretty fu**** upworld, surviving the infection, living on the edge. Everyoneseems to be just another harmless regular survivor. You endedup locked in a supermarket (your office) and here you workeveryday for getting resources. These resources come from amore organized and richer group of survivors. They pay youwith some resources, you pay them with others. Generally,your survival depends on this group. They will keep you aliveand they need you too for being alive. You have a symbiosis.They are more powerful and dangerous than you, so to keepbreathing you better give them what they want. Life circum-stances make you end up with them being the only and bestallies you have. To Zombag you usually arrive in a state offrustration. Many discussions and problems, hatred and lies,and everything humanly possible to occur in times of stress.The reality is that most of the members in Zombag are actuallygood people. They just have had stressful situations, personalproblems and so on that prevent them from being happy.

If you want to survive a zombie apocalypse, you have to takeinto account the psychological factor that occurs in situations oftension, as it is in software development cycles or in a zombieapocalypse. You have to identify these problems, either by thestudy of body language or other signs that let you know thestatus of your mates. In Zombag the team dies if a survivorbecomes a Zombie and it is not quarantined. A Zombie stateshould be overcome by a month. Later, it is proven that allbecomes contagious and everyone fall ill.

1.4 Choosing the character

Everyone has a character. The characters have a range of skills,characteristics and responsibilities within the group. These areimportant and one interesting thing in Zombag is that the char-acters rotate democratically. There is no more a static ScrumMaster, or testers, or whatever role and the team chooses whoperforms a role. Of course, the team should know what are thenecessary skills. We will detail those ones later. Rotating rolesis a mandatory thing in Zombag. The reason is that democracyhas a powerful impact in the moral of the individuals sincethey choose what they get, creating a feeling of decision and

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unity. Thought, stability is also necessary and within a yearthe selected roles should not change unless some exceptionalevents take part and the moral of the team decreased danger-ously. Also a benefit of rotating roles is the flexibility of theteam as well as developing empathy. When survivors exchangetasks, they understand the problems of the other tasks better.Not to mention that when you lose a member, there is alwayssomeone to replace them. You know well that this is quite likelypossible in this zombie-apocalyptic-full-of-turnover ages.

Notice one thing before going forward. There are some rolespurely technical that we don’t touch. Those roles won’t be men-tioned but you can apply democracy at your will. It is alwaysrecommended to rotate at least within a subset of people.

Let’s have a look to those characters.

Rangers These people are the ones who protect the team. Butwait! Was not the Scrum Master the guy who does that?Yes, yes, keep reading. There are some slight differences.In a software development environment these roles aretranslated to those guys that when there is a problem,they go first and they are happy to help and sacrifice, butat low level terms. Basically, rangers should be able tostop what they are doing to support other people in theirtasks. Their own tasks are not a priority in general so theyare able to move from one place to another without thepressure of having an important task in their back. In thisway, they protect survivors from turning into zombiesby helping them when necessary. Notice that they havea very good overview of the applications and that theywork in many tasks. But this does not mean they workfor everyone at the same time. People make a request ofhelp to the rangers and one ranger focus on one person.Later on, the requester and the ranger itself, they decideto continue their work together or to split again. Once theranger is free again, then it can be requested again. It alsodoes not mean the rangers work more since they have towork the hours everyone works. Have in mind that theymay even not have tasks since there is a lot of work forthem already.

Doctors There is always a kind of person that is able to identifyhow the people feels. Able to listen whenever you takea coffee with them and usually with good relationshipswith everyone. Doctors are the inner masters of emotionalintelligence. Though, it is not necessary they studied

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for that, there are always people in the team that takeemotional care of the rest. The role of these members isto identify these situations and act. They usually go tothe leader and warn him about the deterioration of thesurvivor’s mind/mood. Sometimes people don’t want toshow that they are in those states. The work of the doctorsis to talk in private with those people and care abouttheir feelings and problems. Sometimes survivors prefernot to reveal their names. Doctors then act as a proxy.Notice that rangers protect the people, but from workingoverload or complexity. Doctors protect the people fromthemselves, situations or the environment, but not reallyfrom the task load or complexity.

Medical researchers This is the proactive version of the doctors. They don’t fo-cus in an individual. They focus on the team itself. Theirrole is similar to the doctors’ role but in this case, themedical researchers check the team as a whole and theytake proactive actions for not having the previous prob-lems before. They don’t focus in a specific problem, butjust the complete set of viruses that happened or can hap-pen and how to fight them back. Somehow they developvaccines for the team not getting these viruses. They arein contact with doctors to get the impression of the team,but they do not need names.

Explorer The client is an important figure. Product Owner tries tohave a vision about the product and lead the team in thatway. The explorer is an important figure that is usuallyneglected or not allowed. This person is responsible fromgoing to the client’s environment to understand them andencourage further works. He does not really care aboutthe project details but about the client situation, aboutthe client itself. How they think, what are the problemsthey have, how they communicate, companies politics, etc.It is a marketing person and a good politician. Createsnetworks for the team and gets a real idea of the clientmood, opinions and ongoing drawbacks. It is an eyefor the team and not part of the business layer. As youcan see, it does part of a Product Owner’s job. Though,when there are explorers, the product owner gets an extrahand since he/she can release some stress and focus ondefining the vision with the help of the explorer. ProductOwner and explorer are expected to work together in adaily basis, though the explorer can be a developer too.

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In that case, he listens to the Product Owner vision andhelp him transmitting it. We could consider him as the"Ranger" of the Product Owner.

Group leader There is always a group leader. Most of the time is notthe established group leader. This figure is the most im-portant. It is the person who morally has a clearer vision,inspire others respect, trust, responsibility, etc. It is aranger, doctor, explorer, etc. and deals with conflicts thatno one wants to bring a solution. It is the guy who de-cide what to do with a zombie in extreme cases. He is incharge to keep the team without chaos, in a good mood,motivated, etc.

As we know Scrum has Scrum Master and other roles already.The Scrum Master is the protector of the group, somehow adefined and maybe unintended leader, however in ZombagScrum Master’s tasks are more spread. The Scrum Master’swork becomes a collaboration instead of a single person doingall the tasks.

Another different aspect is the selection of the characters. No-body knows better than your team your team itself, and nobodyfeels comfortable with people that are performing roles becauseof tradition, many years in the company, etc. Talents are there,and sometimes arise in the most unexpected situations. Thatis why, the choice of characters is always done by voting. Forcarrying out this voting, we start by describing the propertiesrequired for each individual to all the survivors. Survivorsgenerate a list including the names of all the team members as-sociated with a character. From this set of lists, you can assignthe characters. You have to have at least one representative foreach character. If there are not enough members, names can berepeated up to two times. If there are not enough characters,characters may be repeated.

You could say, well, it is still a democracy, so people willstill complain if they don’t get what they think right. True.That is the way of democracy to improve. Though we are notgoing to enter in political discussions that would make us losea lot of time, democracy is more flexible and adaptable thandictatorship. You don’t have to think in a country democracythat repeats every 4 years and you have to wait to decide. Yourown team could set the voting per year or 6 months.

Democracy has their own tricky aspects that evil peoplecould completely destroy, and I agree with that, but nowadayswe have democracy for a reason.

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NOTE: Have in mind that everyone has the same workload.The tasks are the ones that changes. Doctors should pay atten-tion to that and Medical researchers should protect the futureworkload of people.

1.5 The state of the supermarket

The characters daily work in the supermarket as we alreadyknow. How they are working should be evaluated. In everyRetrospective it is necessary to evaluate the state of the super-market.

The states are:

Welfare state : Occurs when there is no significant problemin the group. Resources are produced and keep us all in a goodstate.

Infected state : There are individuals with apparent prob-lems that can lead to zombies. The mood is not correct, com-mentaries when taking a coffee seem discouraging, etc. Doctorsshould work harder to check out the virus in the teams and re-port to the team when they are entering in this state as well asfinding solutions. Have in mind that names are not revealed ingeneral when you are in an infected state except if the individ-ual asks for it. Nobody points anyone, and this is important toidentify this state. People needs their own privacy sometimes.

Zombie state : When there are one or more zombies in thegroup. Names are revealed to the team and the zombies coulddecide to express their situation with the team or the leader.The second option is discouraged but with special cases, forhaving sensibility, it should be applied. It could be done bysteps, first the leader, and second the team.

Extermination State : When the group has for more than1 month one or more zombies, the group possibly end deadsand the result of their work is lost. You can not guaranteeproduct quality. This state only can be corrected with altruistindividuals that take care of the problems. Those individualswon’t endure long and probably the company will lose them.

In the previous states a common situation can happen, calledSpecial Survival Situation.

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Special Survival Situation : I guess we all know this situa-tion unfortunately. Occurs when there is a rush for deliveringitems or there is a disrupt of the agile framework itself. Themoral and principles are cut by its root, the team suffers casual-ties more easily by forgetfulness caused by numerous reasons.This special situation complicates the remaining states mov-ing into a worse state. It eliminates welfare systematically andquickly creates zombies.

1.6 Measures to protect the supermarket

There are a few things you should to do in the bad states.

When Infected State, find a cure : The group must turn forit. Especially, the doctors are key to discover and find solutionsfor the problems. The people who is suffering more will behelped by the Rangers. If Rangers are the problem, you shouldrelease their workload. Leader should be always in contactwith the doctors having small chats daily.

When Zombie status, apply a quarantine : You have tolisten first the reason why they became zombies and make themunderstand that this negatively affect the group in case theproblem is generated in the person itself or help with releaseof workload, vacation days, or other approaches in case it is anexternal influence. The zombie also could propose solutionsand the team and the leader should carefully discuss themwith the zombie. It should be treated promptly by findingimmediate solutions. Be careful because in teams, zombiesusually come in pairs at least.

When Extermination status, just fight : There is nothingmore. You failed. But everyones fail at the beginning andthe key point is to learn and never come back again to thisstate. You have to convince your clients now, and they are notsilly. For sure your whole team will overwork. This will createturnover and bad quality and basically you cannot avoid it. Sonever come here.

All the previous bullets don’t provide a specific solution.You gotta select what are the measures that will be addressedregarding the viruses you identified and having in mind thesolutions you already proposed or other people did. If youpropose something new this should be shared globally through

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Internet so you get something and people get something. Theones who share become masters, and that gives you a bettermarketing. The ones who apply gets experience and likelysolutions. It does not matter if it is a good result or bad since itwill be taken as drafts of solutions or anti-solutions.

NOTE: A Zombag web is being developed to rank and clas-sify viruses. This can be used later in software projects. Unfor-tunately I have many projects in mind and not much time.

1.7 New survivors looking for help

Commonly there are many survivors who have nowhere togo. These survivors end up begging you to let them enterthe supermarket. Proper selection of staff is key to keep thegroup alive as you all know. In today’s society the candidatesare extensively tested and asked with many technical elementsthat can play a role in the supermarket.

Zombag considers wrong this approach. In Zombag, the sur-vivor does not have to be evaluated by their technical skillsin the first instance. The people in their overwhelming major-ity can learn to perform most jobs at least in a medium level,but what is not easily learned is to live with other people ina supermarket with a zombie apocalypse out there, with pres-sure, stress, complex relationships and trying to develop a teamwork. Below appears the indicators you should pay attentionfor selecting the candidates.

Indicator 1: A person joining a supermarket must notpresent any risk to the supermarket as the first require-ment. That implies that the person is sincere and respect-ful. First, it must be a person who is not aggressive forthe rest of individuals. Second, it must be a motivatedperson to be part of the supermarket and it should showsigns of some form. For example, through failed or evensuccessful projects, related or unrelated to the topic inquestion. Most indicators to hire a person must be ofbody language or verbal.

Watch out!, an aggressive person does not translate to aperson without opinion. An aggressive person is the onethat imposes his/her opinion over the rest, while a personwith an opinion is able to express their opinions withoutreproach and without forcing the rest.

Indicator 2: The way to communicate and their socialskills is the second indicator. The understanding is the

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key part of any group. Without understanding, the wholegroup is in danger. Why this is the second indicator isbecause there are very good professionals that have anintrospective personality.

Indicator 3: They have a special talent to protect the group,either technical or other reasons.

The other indicators should be distributed with respect tothe policy of each supermarket and always thinking about thesurvival of this one.

1.8 How to combat viruses

First, let’s define what is a virus in Zombag.

Virus : It is defined as each of the elements that negatively af-fect the project, or members, whether psychological or physical.Something like “anti-patterns", though not limited to software.Viruses can create zombies and eventually the death of theteam. For example, a virus may be that the product owner isaway for two weeks.

NOTE: In Zombag we don’t give all the viruses that exist. Weare developing a web page where the viruses are classified andgraded in terms of appearance or other properties. This webpage is plan to be developed by all the software engineers thatwant to collaborate. By voting, for example, software engineerscan highlight common problems that appears so newcomerscan be aware of them.

Nevertheless, we give an schema of some possible classifi-cations. Each virus have a class, depending on the area theyaffect. Also they should have a spread rate and hazard rate,which jointly are assessed in the Retrospective. The spreadrefers to the ability of the virus to occur again and the hazard,the threat that exists creating a risk of damage caused by thevirus when it arises. Though we know this is quite annoying,Zombag let you choose between specifying these numbers, justa general risk index or just to specify if it is expected to occuragain.

• Virus-P: Psychological virus. It is observed in individualsin whom there are depressions due to work or personalreasons. A good body language knowledge is necessary.The tone, the position they sit, etc. You can also realizeby anger, enmities, strifes, etc. or even by which peopleusually never talk.

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• Virus-A: Virus in agile. It affects the agile framework thatis being developed. Similar to ScrumBut’s concept.

• Virus-E: External Virus. These virus comes from thehands of external survivors, who intentionally or unin-tentionally come to sneak into the supermarket.

• Virus-T: Technical Virus. Come from technologies mis-management, misconfiguration, etc.

The virus should be identified by individuals from the su-permarket, especially those with medical knowledge. Medicalresearchers are proactive and they should read about virusesand report them. Doctors are based on previous knowledge ortheir own knowledge.

With Zombag the retrospective is the only element that reallychanges, taking more relevance and some work is expected tobe done when idle to facilitate the retrospective.

Every computer has an infection index, calculated similarlyto the speed in agile methodologies. Also a virus tolerance canbe calculated in retrospective. More details in the next episode.

1.9 How to make this work

Basically each character plays a role in a daily basis whendeemed appropriate and these roles should not take more than10 minutes on average. No need to write anything, just think,keep that in mind and communicate later in the retrospective,to the person who is affected or the leader in question, depend-ing on the situation.

We know that all workers spend some time relaxing viewingweb pages, etc. That is extremely necessary, but from that time,it would not be difficult to pick 5 minutes to sit to think andanalyze the situation regarding our roles. You may look up tothe ceiling or sometimes you realize about things when youjust take a coffee. The roles do not carry an arduous task andcan be interesting to disconnect from typical work. There areroles that take a lot of time, but actually those are productivetime. For example, in the case of Rangers.

Regarding the retrospective, it changes and instead of lasting15 min, could be extended to 30-45 min. Retrospective in Zom-bag is considered as the key and not as an element to despise.That is what is happening nowadays and it is because peopledon’t realize how important it is. It reinforces the need andusefulness of this.

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The retrospective would proceed as follows:

Step 1. Everyone votes considering their own state. Doc-tors and medical researchers vote depending on theirstate or the other ones’ state, whatever is worse. Theoptions are: welfare, infected and zombie.

Step 2. The votes are revealed and the current state isthe worse of the voting states. Notice that you only canreach Extermination state whenever you spend more than1 month on a Zombie state. Then automatically you enterExtermination state.

The votes that are not the worse ones are used to calculatethe hope of surviving. For example, if there are 5 teammembers and 1 voted zombie, you are in a zombie stateas a team, though if the other people voted welfare, yourstate is 1 Zombie and 4 welfare hopes. Your state is clearlyworse if you have 2 Zombies and 3 infected hopes. Thatis the way you can compare between different Sprints.You could have many combinations and it is up to you toanalyze what kind of situation you are going through.

Step 3. Afterwards deciding the states, we define theviruses that have taken place in the current Sprint andthe ones that remain from last edition. For the definitionwe just need one or two sentences, classify the type ofviruses and provide a hazard and propagation or if it isexpected to happen again, whatever you prefer.

If you decide to provide hazard and propagation, youhave another number that can help you pro-actively de-tecting future states. The hazard and the propagation canbe decided in a more informal way than a Planning Pokerbut it is advisable to use the same numbers. The sum ofthe hazard and propagation is called viral risk.

Step 3. Each virus is stated aloud with a brainstorming ofpossible solutions. It is not necessary to discuss them, justreach an informal agreement among all of which seemsto be the best to apply.

Therefore, the output of each Retrospective is a list of activevirus, a list of already overcame virus, a list of proposed so-lutions and a viral risk if you wished to. As with the speed,you should learn to understand the situation by using the risknumber. These numbers are attached to the state looking thenlike this.

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Current state: Zombie. Perspective. 2 Zombies, 2 Infected, 2

Welfare. Viral risk: 60.

1.10 More about zombies

The zombies are a very dangerous and must be eliminated assoon as possible. It is not necessary to reach the retrospective.The leader will always have to be aware of such zombies butthe zombie can decide if the rest know his/her state or not.Nevertheless, when extermination state is reached, the zombiesare revealed to everyone and god save the queen!. Havingzombies is a difficult situation that have to be dealt wisely.

Create also a column in the wall where each individual canreflect a virus and for self declaring himself/herself as a zom-bie.

1.11 Help me too!

Please collaborate with Zombag by adding the viruses identi-fied and solutions implemented or helping the author with theframework itself.

Zombag is still under development! Collaborate with theauthor! It is a completely open approach.

1.12 Todo

This is an interesting article to have in mind.Gurpreet Singh. Wet Scrum

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Bibliography

[1] Leslie Lamport, LATEX: A Document Preparation System. Addison Wesley, Mas-sachusetts, 2nd Edition, 1994.

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