AGILE IN ACTION

First cut of commutineer.com is now live

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:57:49 PDT

We put a new Web site live recently. It's called commutineer.com and it's a bit of an escape from the drudgery of UK commuting. Commuters can have conversations, share news, rant, be cool, flirt, and stand out in the crowd. They can form tribes around topics, stations, rail lines and networks. And earn vitality points, compete for top spots in the day and the chance to become the top commutineer. While on the move, commuters can do most of this with text messages from their mobile phones (standard mobile rates apply :).

It's got some ways to go and we've got lots more ideas but we wanted to push an early cut live to get some feedback from real users. We've been developing the functionality iteratively so there are some 'cheap' features on the site that we'll be enriching and improving over time.

If you commute in the uk, please join the mutiny and register to become a commutineer.

We'll be handing out freebies around London in the coming weeks and we're also sponsoring Boffoonery, a comedy event to help raise money for Bletchley Park, but we'd really appreciate your help to spread the word. Tweet about it. Put it on your Facebook profile. Please tell your friends about commutineer and ask them to tell their friends too. Many thanks.

You can also follow our progress on twitter as we continue to improve the site.

Don't remove failing tests from the build

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:14:07 PDT

Extreme Pair-programming

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:34:30 PDT

The 'trailer-park boys' at Energized Work have started extreme pairing. First up .. The Jerry Springer Show. Let me tell you, trying to fix the build with guys fighting in the background ain't easy.

Pairing on the Jerry Springer Show
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Extreme Pair-programming
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Pomodoro galore

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:48:31 PDT

Almost everything for us is now a pomodoro. Some time ago we replaced the per-iteration planning game with on-demand planning pomodoros and the end-of-iteration retrospective with a pomodoro retrospective.

Every Wednesday, the first day of our weekly iteration, we kick off with a 25-minute planning pomodoro to give us just enough stories to make a start. It uses a modified fishbowl format to stimulate the right level of technical discussion and keep energy levels surging. When the board gets short of stories (and the team is in danger of stalling) we run another planning pomodoro to top up the 'waiting' column. We keep doing this until the showcase on Tuesday but we're careful not to end with loads of stories still in progress.

Our estimation is simply: "Is this story less than 2 days?" and the team shows thumbs up or down. If it's not, the story is split there and then. A pre-planning pomodoro run in advance of Wednesday, looking ahead into the next iteration, helps to size stories appropriately and get the acceptance criteria on the back of the cards. Our velocity is the average-to-date, over all the iterations, of the number of cards that made it to done. This gives us a steadier velocity than summing the estimates of the stories that made it to done in that iteration. We're not really using the velocity for planning purposes though. We use it to calculate a per-story cost, in £, derived from what was delivered in the iteration and the overall capacity cost for the iteration. From this we can then calculate the cost of any inventory and outstanding technical debt. It's sobering to see these things in money terms. I'll blog separately about the simple profit-and-loss sheet we use based on lean accounting and the metrics we watch.

The pomodoro retrospective is conducted standing up. This keeps things moving and keeps people focused. 25 minutes doesn't provide a lot of scope for variation of activities but we can easily cover our standard format: brainstorming - affinity mapping - dot voting - and agree one action that will improve things. I expect this will eventually get boring so I'm thinking of ways to do pomodoro 'lets improve this, here-and-now' sessions that are triggered by a problem just encountered. I guess these are similar to timeouts. Ultimately, the challenge I've set myself is to focus these continuous improvement pomodoros on making an improvement that is not borne out of (and therefore constrained by) solving a specific problem. They just focus on making an improvement to get better.

We're also experimenting with a new board layout that helps us integrate iterative collaboration with designers. There's some serious thinking to be done here and, to be honest, we could do with a fresh project to try it out on.

What is it about technical discussions and weeds?

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:17:15 PDT

It's tough to prevent technical discussions getting lost in the weeds. Actually, it's the people involved who get lost in the weeds.

What usually starts out as objective and constructive often slides into a protracted subjective and opinionated 'jousting' event. Some people end up focusing on what's personally valuable to them (or motivating for them) rather than on the goal. Some people disengage because they can't get a word in, they've been shouted down, or they've become bored. Everyone walks away frustrated that consensus wasn't reached. Or worse they leave with the illusion of consensus.

Here are some tips for keeping technical discussions out of the weeds:

First and foremost, ensure people with the right skills and experience are involved.

Avoid subjectivity by putting personal code and architecture design styles aside.

Leave egos at home. (Easier said than done!)

Use simple words and aim for clarity, i.e. avoid jargon, including pattern names. Try to develop a language, and maintain a glossary on a wiki, so that effective conversations can be had without resorting to detailed and time consuming UML and documentation (a simple UML diagram can help in many circumstances).

Articulate proposals in terms of simplicity, testability, and technical debt.

Maintain engagement with props to avoid hand waving, e.g. use a whiteboard and draw pictures.

Be patient, stay focused, and keep listening to get through the groan zone and converge at consensus. To truly understand the points other people are making, work hard to hear what they are saying from their perspective.

It's one thing to talk passionately with the courage of your convictions, but consensus cannot be reached through force of argument. Remember, you must persuade people through reason not volume.

Keep assessing the discussion. Dont argue about whether X might do Y - pull-up the code on a projector and show that X does Y. If it has become speculation stop and run a spike to gather some facts. Then reconvene.

Focus on intent. Keep asking whether the discussion is still valuable.

If you've got a facilitator handy insist they sit in on the discussion.

Jumbo Wii Night

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:49:49 PDT

Photos from Jumbo Wii Night at The Energy Lab:

Dan and Jeff
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Snowboarding
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Riding rail
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Steve on Lead
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Ash riffing it up with Rob
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Action packed room
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Guitar Hero III
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Guitar Hero III .. playoff
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Zsolt and Roberta on Mario Karting
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Guitar Hero III .. loading
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Toby karting
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Mario karting
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Playing Numer of the Beast
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Gus and Jeff
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Steve and Gus
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Carving it up
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Gus pulling a stalefish
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Zsolt snowboarding
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Rob Riffs
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Reflecting at the Fun Day

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:37:22 PDT

We said there was a whole lotta fun to be had at our end of project retrospective fun day and that's exactly what we had - fun! And the various retrospective activities interspersed throughout the day produced a lots useful information and ideas. I plan to blog about these separately because we'll be running some experiments based on our ideas to simplify and improve the way we work as a team. In the meantime, here's some photos from the day:

Goldfish bowl
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Discussion in the Goldfish bowl
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

My Old Dutch Pancakes
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Mulling the tulip
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Mapping 'Technical Discussions'
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Thought provoking
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Gus bowling
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Kev gets ready to fire
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Si bowling
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Gordon bowling
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Mike the bowling shark
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Toby bowling
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Discussing the fundamentals
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Steve presents ideas
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Pool hustler Paul
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Watch this guy play!
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Steve on the 'Killer' Scoreboard
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

A whole lotta fun to be had

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:53:40 PDT

We're going to have a fun day on Friday to celebrate the success of our most recent client work.

We'll start the day at My Old Dutch Pancake House for brunch and a retrospective. As we do every week, we'll be seeking some small actions to drive our continuous improvement. In the afternoon we'll hit the Bloomsbury Bowling to shoot some pool and do some ten pin bowling while engaging in a 'beerstorm', i.e. brainstorming fuelled by beer. I'm keen to stimulate some transformative ideas that could take us to a whole new place. I have no preconceived notions and I'm excited to see what the team comes up with.

It's both productive and revealing to do things like retrospectives and brainstorming in a social setting filled with jokes and laughs, nom and drinkies. People relax, drop their guard, are less defensive and generally more open to things. And, importantly, our friendship helps avoid anything said being taken as offensive.

What makes us tick

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:15:26 PDT

We're working on a new Web site with Tim Nicholls from Electric Light Box and we did some concept work to develop a brand that captures what we're about here at Energized Work. You'll see the visual brand when the site launches but I wanted to share what we've come up with on how we see ourselves. If you read this blog (or know us) you'll know that we're pretty straight-talking and say what we mean. When we wrote The Energized Way to describe how we work we used short, sharp, punchy statments. We wanted to use the same approach to capture our ethos. Here's what we came up with:

Our values at Energized Work
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

We show AWARENESS

We see the big picture
We sense what is important
We are tuned in
We see options

We seek CLARITY

We strive for simplicity
We pursue a vision with purpose
We are totally focused
We say what we mean

We build UNITY

We are a team
We collaborate intensively
We appreciate diversity
We invest in friendship

We pursue EXCELLENCE

We are craftsmen
We have discipline
We harness innovation
We deliver

We have the right ATTITUDE

We know our stuff
We shoulder responsibility
We operate with integrity
We are brutally honest
We are humble

We are FUN

We create energy
We enjoy what we do
We are fun to work with
We are refreshing

'No excuses' done done

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:14:59 PDT

Yesterday at QCon London, Gus and Kris talked about how we at Energized Work get from concept to cash every week. It's a simple message really.

Keep it moving:

Sustain throughput and maximize profit by 'shipping' running tested features to production at least every week.
Automate everything to achieve mobility and continuously invest in it to keep it cheap.
Don't track bugs, fix 'em.
Manage debt to keep moving fast.

Keep it working:

Eliminate individual anxiety and keep the team resilient by pair-programming all the time.
Roll ownership of each story through the team to facilitate collective ownership and knowledge transfer.
Maintain a rigourous test-driven approach through personal discipline.
Colocate because the conversations never stop.
Learn what's really needed by iterating with a full-time onsite customer at the wheel.

Keep it together:

Don't branch and don't stay away from the trunk for longer than 2 hours.
The build monitors are the focal point.
If the build breaks fix it immediately, otherwise what's the point of having it.

Keep it real:

Operate all the environments, including production, yourselves. And do your own support.
Non-functional and sysadmin work is part of development and not an afterthought nor someone elses responsibility.
Optimize at the right time and always in context of 'the whole'.

Keep it coming:

Write stories to be a little ambiguous to ensure conversation happens.
Plan just enough when it's needed to prevent stalling.
Make the showcase count because the client will decide whether to invest more money.

This stuff is as hard or as easy as you want to make it. It's not enough to be doing the technical practices and it's not enough to be living the values and principles. You gotta do it all and more, at the same time, learning all the while. It takes courage, willpower and zeal. And, dare I say, you gotta know what you're doing. There really are no excuses. Ultimately, for me, it comes down to having the right people, creating the right environment and working with the right clients.

Here are the slides (they're better quality than those downloadable from the QCon site).

When I get the official feedback on the session I'll post it here.

Actions from retrospectives

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:39:03 PDT

A retrospective is pretty pointless if you don't come out of it with an action, which you then take in the next iteration.

An action should be small, specific and clearly defined on a card; can be taken immediately; starts something new and good, rather than stops something bad.

Don't break the build

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:20:25 PST

Attitude drives skill

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:24:33 PST

Art Tatum, a jazz pianist, often improvised to incorporate the bad notes elderly and worn pianos made into his music. Arguably his attitude led to him developing this skill. ( Paraphrased from The Solutions Focus. )

I think the right people have the right attitude and create the right environment to basically get the right stuff done, despite other factors. I believe, in certain people, I'm seeing attitude and discipline drive skill and diligent application every day.

Well duh!

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:48:23 PST

Here's some excellent advice:

If what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it and do something different. And if that works do more of it.

Attitude of wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:43:13 PST

Bob Sutton describes the attitude of wisdom as:

The courage to act on what is known right now and the humility to change course when better evidence is found.

If speed is of the essence then so is high quality

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:45:18 PST

Ron Jeffries speaks out about trading quality for speed. Basically, you're kidding yourself.

Gus commented:

The 'cut quality to go faster' view represents a lack of trust in the capabilities of the people actually building the product (whether justified or not). Dropping quality simply means you get garbage, later. You're absolutely right that keeping quality high requires continuous attention (no broken windows), balance (don't try to do too much at once) and skill (focus on the right stuff).

Back in April 2007 I talked about how improving quality increases productivity. And I resolutely stand by this. Indeed it has become the cornerstone of Energized Work and our way of working and allows us to go from concept to cash every week.

Craft is ..

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:11:34 PST

I just stumbled on a note I made before Christmas on a tweet from Brian Marick that provided a definition for craft. I tweaked it ever so slightly.

Craft is ..

obsession with quality,
tamed by discipline,
attentive to technique,
with a gut feel for structure
and awareness of context.

You shouldn't need reminding

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:42:23 PST

Via Chris Pitts:

When do I test?
How often should I test?

A thought on empowerment

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:57:15 PST

For me being empowered is a property of 'the system' in which we play a part. It's constructed between people, by the actions they take individually in the environment they occupy.

Having the right environment is essential. When it's safe and fun people are motivated by trust. They begin to demonstrate the courage to be creative and they take risks and make mistakes. An environment that tolerates mistakes to cultivate learning helps people face their fears and act decisively. And when people are able to perform freely they become energized and create a buzz.

Empowerment is not something that can be assigned. I can't give you empowerment and you can't give it to me. So don't try to empower people. Concentrate on creating the right environment for people to construct their own empowerment and step back.

No excuses: Concept To Cash Every Week

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:40:13 PST

I mentioned before that we'd been invited to do a session at London QCon 2009 in the track: Turning on a sixpence: Technical skills for agile development. We finally got around to completing the abstract. It's ok. We could've done better but we were running so late due to other work that we just went with what we had in the end. Here's the abstract:

This session takes an inside look at successfully delivering from concept to cash, showing the technical aspects of what's required to iteratively build a robust product that always performs, and the skill and discipline needed to deliver high-quality software to production every week. We'll talk about how we use practices everyday to codify quality through intensive collaboration and driving with story tests; to build in repeatability through automation, system administration and environment ownership; to grow the end-to-end system through iterative contextual optimization, figuring out what to optimize and when; to improve the bang-for-buck by eliminating and preventing waste while maintaining options.

We know this because we wrote one of the busiest entertainment Web sites in the UK - 6 million page views per day - from scratch. Every week we delivered high-quality revenue-generating features to users maintaining the level of technical craftsmanship required to sustain repeated delivery. Our success is born out of an effective working environment and a rigorous approach that enables us to rationalize stakeholders, minimize dependencies, operate all environments including production, focus on what's important and deliver greater value by helping the businesspeople follow the money. Over the past few years we've worked hard to improve our approach and we'll continue to do so. It's the most effective way to deliver that we've found to date and we work with clients who appreciate this and are prepared to invest in their software as corporate assets.

I hope you can come along.

Simon's voice

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:49:51 PST

My old friend Simon Voice at Connections Recruitment now has a voice of his own.

Energized Christmas Pirating

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:58:24 PST

Last weekend our Christmas bash went off with a "Heave Ho, me hearteys". And that was from the Lock Keeper, over the tannoy, as we sailed free of the lock on the estuary in Ipswich. Srsly!

We hired the The Old Neptune in Ipswich from Friday to Sunday. You have to look at all the pictures on the site. This place is truly awesome. It's called an Inn, and maybe it was once, but basically it's a huge old house with abundant character. And we had it all to ourselves. The courtyard alone is so lovely that I'm thinking we have to experience it again during Summer.

Programme of events:

Friday night: Arrive. Nom and drinks in front of the fire.
Saturday: Gokarting. Pirating aboard The Black Thistle (Ok it's really just The Thistle) and drinking until loaded to the gunwales. Banquet.
Sunday: Chill for the day. Eat the leftovers. Drink the leftovers. Head back.

The weather was perfect for pirating on Saturday, sailing up and down the estuary. A clear, crisp Autumn day. Some swabs even got to work the ropes. You can't top days like this. Fun with friends doing something extraordinary.

Cap'n Haddock
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Cap'n Haddock's bit o crumb
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Odette's Pirate Power
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Lily-livered Lander
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Pirate Lord Nye and his sidekick Santa Smee
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Kev Turpin. Pillager of the high seas
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Gentleman Pirate Rob
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The Canadian Corsairs
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Hungarian Madam and Grog
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Admiral No Sticky Tache
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Deckhand Daz and the Polish Privateer
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Crisp, Scallywag Sal and Pirate Polly Parrot
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Pirate Queen Sukhvinder
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Sandal Andy and his pirate wench Alison
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Pirating we go
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Who's got the map?
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Heave-ho
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Land Ahoy!
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Banquet Hall
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Yarrrrr!
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Yarrrrrrr!
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And again, yarrrr!
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Pirates gone beddy bye
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Bro at XPDay

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:56:07 PST

Finally, we got along to XPDay today, albeit only for a few hours. We went specifically to see my brother, Marc Baker, and Dan Jones from the Lean Enterprise Academy do their keynote. It was great to meet Dan and talk with him over lunch.

Dan talked about the evolution of Lean. Marc talked about Lean thinking and how they're conducting 'experiments' in various industries, particularly healthcare, to compress value streams, eliminate unnecessary waste and increase throughput. It was a good talk. Refreshingly different, I thought, but still pertinent. The anecdotes were amusing and the metrics were both shocking and impressive, in terms of what was going on before the experiments and what the experiments achieved. And I'm actually glad they didn't talk about Lean in the context of software.

The slides are here.

Dan Jones at XPDAY8
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

Marc doing keynote
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Dan Jones doing keynote
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Marc talks Lean at XPDAY8
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Pomodoro-powered promiscuous pair-programming

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:50:49 PST

At Agile2008, Gus attended a session about the Pomodoro Technique by Stefan Noteberg and has been using it since.

Pomodoro
Originally uploaded by sjb140470

He's running a session on the technique internally at Energized Work next week. Then we plan to experiment by combining it with pair-programming to see if we can achieve even more effective pairing sessions and greater promiscuity. I'm imagining a pairing session being multiples of 2 Pomodoros, lasting about an hour with a 5-minute break after each Pomodoro. Potentially we could then achieve swap pairs every hour.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the hurdles will be, e.g. synchronizing the Pomodoros while allowing for 15 or 30-minute breaks every 4 Pomodoros and fitting lunch in.

Quality, relativism and a fetish

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Baker) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:16:05 PST

Sooner or later the manager says: "We've got to ship this thing". And, whether it's a conscious decision or a consequence of the ensuing pressure, corners are cut; defects get introduced and quality drops. The response is habitual and simply makes the situation worse.

Anxious people working alone introduce the most defects. Efficiency leads to breakages. Quality goes down and technical debt increases with every corner cut. When prioritized against the next feature promising to deliver business value, debt never gets repaid. There's no common language for talking about quality. The business-value-fetishists pay little attention to technical debt. They just assume quality is being delivered regardless of the decisions they make. They do, however, understand the cost of goods returned, the cost of rework, and the loss of customers but they choose to remain ignorant of the fact that these are typically the consequences of not valuing quality.

We believe that quality is the result of:

Good behaviors and practices that are mutually reinforcing, where the practices are applied with discipline and rigor, and
having the right attitude towards quality throughout the entire company.

We were going to use the above blurbage as a preamble in our session at London QCon 2009 in the track: Turning on a sixpence: Technical skills for agile development. You've probably heard people say: "It's good enough". Or "investing in more quality will provide diminishing returns". We wanted to talk about why we think the real obstacle to achieving high quality is the prevalence of relativism and to discuss who's really qualified to make these calls on quality.

Unfortunately, this isn't consistent with Steve's plan for the track with us representing the "extreme position" on technical practices. So, instead, we'll do some talking about our way of working, which is full-on Extreme Programming surrounded by a shit-load of lessons learned through compromise (yeah, well, everybody starts somewhere) and experimentation, and the continuous investment we make to keep quality high.