A while back, I was working with a young and cocky software developer. He was a smart guy, and sure of his abilities. He had seven years of Java experience, he said, and he knew how to write code.
As he was a new member of the team, I described the strategy I’d planned for a bit of code. I showed him what I’d already written, and asked him to complete the functionality.
“But I can do it another way.” And he described a different technique. Read More
Some of you may remember that I started a house construction project. Things are moving very fast, now, and the actual construction may take less time than it took to get all the necessary permits. So far, the project’s about 100% over the time budget. And people say that software development should be more like the construction industry!
But the fact that the construction has run slower than expected is not the reason for this post. Neither is the fact that this project has been consuming a large portion of my attention, and hindering posts on this blog.
This post is about an example of refactoring found in the house construction domain. Read More
Our teams sometimes have multiple projects. I am wondering what is the best way and what is the SCRUM way of handling this. My feeling is that the best way is to have a single backlog per team (even if this means that in a sprint the team is working on backlog items belonging to multiple projects). I think the purists will recommend splitting the team and having multiple backlogs.
That’s what Gilad Gruber asked on the Scrumdevelopment list. This question reminded me of a client I once had. Read More
Sometimes people just won’t do what you want them to do—what they should do—no matter how hard you try to persuade them. Why is that? Read More
I’m just back from XPDay Manhattan, one of those small conferences that Matt Heusser and I have praised before. This conference was a mix of prepared talks and open space. I think this is an excellent format. It provides material for those who haven’t yet identified a topic they want to discuss, and it also draws in active participation from the attendees. The participation was enthusiastic! Some people traveled a considerable distance to attend.
Coming up very shortly is the Simple Design and Testing Conference. This is an open space conference in York, PA starting Friday evening, November 30, at 5:00 PM and running through Sunday lunch, December 2. Last year’s was my first experience with the open space format. This year, Naresh Jain, the organizer, is asking people to submit a position paper with their registration application. This doesn’t have to be a big thing, and I don’t think anyone will be denied based on the content or position taken. The point of this exercise is to encourage participants to think ahead about the issues that are important to them. It’s a small price to pay for a free conference. I hope this helps fan the flames of passion for the craft and career that you’ve chosen.
P.S. The slides from my prepared talk are available.
Or the business customer?
As I talk with developers and team leads who are leading agile initiatives in mostly non-agile companies, I continue to hear comments about managers who “don’t get it,” and Product Owners who won’t participate, and other complaints that suggest that not everyone has reached the new status quo (per Satir’s Change Model). Sometimes communication issues seem to be delaying progress. Sometimes some of the participants don’t seem to be aligned with the goals of the agile team. At least, it appears that way from the developers’ point of view. In all honesty, perhaps the agile team is not yet aligned with the business needs.
I’m trying to get the point of view from the other side. When these problems arise, I want to know how the Managers and Product Owners feel about the way things are going. Surely they see things from a different vantage point, and have different insights. I’d like to know what those insights are.
I’m looking for real stories and feelings–not descriptions of the way things are supposed to work. I want to know what you see happening (or not happening) around you. I realize that such real-world stories may be a little too sensitive to post in public comments. If you’d like, email them to me at blog-response AT gdinwiddie.com and I’ll keep them in confidence.
And if you’re not an upper manager or product owner, but you’re having difficulty with one. Please ask them how things look from their side and let me know. Or have them let me know. Or invite me to come and discuss it with both of you. I’m really interested!
Do you have a hard time keeping track of those articles that you read and think “I could have used this when I was talking to ….?” Do you sometimes need an article to back up a point that you’re making, but don’t know where the data is? Well, I do. I’ve started lists a number of times, and keep misplacing them.
This time is different. When a discussion on one of the mailing lists got into studies demonstrating the effectiveness of Agile Software Development, I decided to start a list in a place that won’t get lost. That place is (well, was) http://biblio.gdinwiddie.com/, the Agile Bibliography Wiki.
I’d really appreciate it if you’d use it too.
UPDATE: After spending untold hours reverting changes from wiki spammers, I gave up. You can find the information archived on the Wayback Machine.
The new Carnival of the Agilists is focused on the Agile 2007 conference. You’ll find a bunch of references to blogs discussing the conference. There’s some interesting stuff. There’s even a pointer to my good friend, Jack Ganssle, who is not an Agilist and is highly allergic to people touting a New Methodology. Jack is interested in things that work, and work well. I was glad to see he had some good things to say. The reason he did, is that people talked about things they had done and the results they got from doing them. Telling those stories works ever-so-much better than telling your theories.
I found it amusing that the first response to the Carnival of the Agilists post was one complaining that the drinking water wasn’t obvious enough, being provided in coolers instead of bottles. All I can say is that if this is the biggest complaint, the conference was a great success!
Pair programming has been widely touted as a effective means of generating excellent code in a cost-effective manner. It has also been widely reported as a waste of time or as uncomfortable. Many people reject pair programming without trying it. Others, however, still don’t like it after being forced to use trying it.
I’m convinced that there’s an art and a science to pair programming. I don’t think it comes naturally to most people. It’s sometimes easy to pick up by osmosis, but I’ve heard too many complaints about pairing to think that’s a common occurrence. I’d like to hear your real-life stories about pair-programming situations. If you don’t feel comfortable leaving your story as a comment on this blog, send them to “pairprogramming at idiacomputing.com”. Read More
Back in March of last year, David Maister was interviewed by Wayne Turmel and he said some amazing things. I’ve been meaning to talk about this for some time, but the work of transcribing from audio has tempted me to put it off. I highly recommend listening to the whole thing.
David Maister is a business consultant, but what he says here is extraordinarily appropriate for most of us technical people, too. He describes starting out with the same vision of success that I had, and how completely wrong it was. Read More