Practical Agility

Test-Driven Development as a Design and Learning Technique - Introduction

2012-06-25T06:57:00.001-04:00

The company for whom I'm now working is a Ruby on Rails shop, and prior to starting with them I hadn't done much more than Hello World in Ruby and its equivalent in Rails. So, once I started I decided to use TDD as an approach and tool for learning the Ruby language and Rails framework, as well as a driver for everything I needed from an environmental perspective. I wouldn't add or start

Stoop and Scoop

2012-06-04T15:42:00.001-04:00

We have a dog... a big dog. Hannah is a very active Golden Retriever who is programmed to be one of two states - on a walk or wanting to be on a walk. She accepts swimming as an acceptable substitute for walking, but that's another story. So, each and every day in practically any weather we take her out for her exercise. Being a dog, Hannah isn't particularly fussy about where she, um,

Systems Thinking in the Back Yard

2012-05-29T09:34:00.001-04:00

A few years ago I wrote a post called Rounding the Corners, which discussed my early foray into process improvement, disguised as my teenage desire to spend as little time as possible doing yard work! Last fall my (now favourite) uncle was given a new riding lawn mower for his birthday, and he asked if I'd like his old one. We have a pretty big yard so I jumped at the chance! I only had one

Registration Open for Agile Coach Camp Canada - June 22-24, 2012

2012-05-01T16:32:00.000-04:00

Registration is now open for Agile Coach Camp Canada, to be held June 22-24, 2012 here in Ottawa at the Travelodge Hotel on Carling Ave.Registration is FREE, but space is limited so get your name in now! More details can be found on the Agile Coach Camp Canada web site, or you can register directly with the button below.

Pragmatic Agile - Remember the First Value!

2012-04-10T13:50:00.000-04:00

Everyone, I'd like you to meet Al. He's a real person, not a conglomeration of people or a fictional persona created for this post. Al is a ScrumMaster at a recent client... a ScrumMaster with a secret. I coached Al and his team quite a bit for the first few months I was engaged at that client, and then to a lesser extent for the next 18 months. That team was very high performing, avoiding

Agile in its Second Decade

2012-04-05T13:43:00.001-04:00

For quite some time I've been working on a post to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. I suppose that, as the 11th anniversary has now passed, it would be rather silly to continue to celebrate the 10th! :) Part of my foot-dragging has been the feeling that I wasn't adding anything to the discussion about a decade of Agile. Every now and then something would spark my

Occupy Agile

2012-04-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

I understand that the "Occupy" meme and movement is "so 2011", but after some conversations with friends over the past few days I've begun to realize that I'm not the only person who thinks that the Agile world has been moving further and further away from its origins in the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. I've had multiple people now say that they were beginning to feel that they

The Power of Community Agreements

2012-03-01T05:40:00.000-05:00

I recently attended and spoke at Agile India 2012 in Banglore, India. It was a wonderful experience - the conference was excellent, and my first trip to India was memorable to say the least. I'm quite sure that I'll be returning to see more of the country and experience people and the culture! Coming from North America, there was one particular aspect of Indian culture that was significantly

Pragmatic Agile - Be Principled!

2012-02-06T04:00:00.017-05:00

From Google: prag·mat·ic/pragˈmatik/ Adjective: Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Relating to philosophical or political pragmatism. In my previous post on Pragmatic Agile, I mentioned the 6th and 8th principles of the Agile Manifesto. Just to be clear, I'm not a religious zealot who has the principles

"Pragmatic Agile"

2012-02-02T15:22:00.002-05:00

From Google: prag·mat·ic/pragˈmatik/ Adjective: Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Relating to philosophical or political pragmatism. I've never been one you could call academic. I'd like to think that I've always had my feet firmly planted in the real world, however you define it. My focus has always

"Guaranteed to Pass"

2012-01-31T16:16:00.000-05:00

On Twitter today I saw a tweet that mentioned a CSM course that "guaranteed" that you would pass the CSM Exam. I already believed that the whole CSM thing was a bloody scam to make scads of money, although I'm willing to admit that it helped make Agile (or at least Scrum) more visible. However, I said several years ago that I didn't believe in these sorts of certifications because they

Agile Transitions and Human Nature

2012-01-25T13:38:00.013-05:00

Like many people, I've struggled with my weight since my late 20's. I'm currently in the process of losing weight yet again, and have passed the 20 lb. (approx. 10 kg) mark. This isn't the first time that I have lost that much weight - I attained a loss of 24 lbs. about 15 years ago, but each time the loss wasn't sustained (or even sustainable). This time, however, feels different and it has

Riding One Syllable to Success

2011-11-17T10:53:00.000-05:00

Flow. Play. Slow. Although I haven't read nearly as much as I would have liked, over the past decade I've spent a lot of time with my nose in a book learning whatever I could about the many facets of XP, Scrum, Kanban and other Agile topics. Over the past two years, though, my thinking has been markedly influenced by three single-syllable words and the books about them. Back in early 2010,

What I Do When Coaching

2011-11-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

In the past few months I've seen more and more articles, discussion group entries and blog posts that talk about Agile Coaches using words such as charlatans, snake oil salesmen and '#@$!!!#$%$#' (I'm not exactly sure what that translates to, but I believe I can safely assume it isn't complimentary). Of course, I have no control over what other people do to hang up their shingle as an Agile

Agile is a Cop-Out?

2011-10-13T12:00:00.005-04:00

In a blog entry entitled "Agile Software Is A Cop-Out, Here’s What’s Next", Forrester's Mike Gualtieri makes some bold statements about what he sees as hype and a lack of empirical evidence of success from the Agile community. Now, Mike's post is bound to raise the hackles of many people in the Agile community, but I do agree he has some good points. He doesn't specifically use the term "hype",

Great New Scrum Extensions!

2011-10-10T11:25:00.001-04:00

This past week, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber annouced via Scrum.org that Scrum is now open for modification and extension. This is good, and an issue that has been simmering in the Scrum community for some time now. Fortunately, there have been some forward-thinking folks who got a jump on the rest of us, and had their extensions ready to go at the time of the announcement: This extension

Goodbye Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T22:08:00.001-04:00

It was about this time of year in 1981 that I dropped into my high school's Computer Science and Data Processing classroom to talk to a buddy of mine. At the time I thought I was on a track that would lead me through high school to an aeronautical engineering or commercial pilot program somewhere, and I would become a professional aviator. That would have surprised exactly no one, since I had

Slow

2011-10-03T03:00:00.001-04:00

Some recent events came together in one of those "The Universe is trying to tell you something, Dave" sort of ways. It could all just be a coincidence, of course, but that wouldn't make much of a story, would it? First, I've been reading Carl Honoré's book "In Praise of Slow", which discusses the rather negative effects that closely watching time has had on our society. In the book Carl looks

The Need for Speed... and Why That's Bad!

2011-09-28T10:00:00.002-04:00

I've written before about how software development teams are obsessed with going as fast as possible, and how that isn't necessarily a good thing. That obsession isn't something that magically appeared with Agile methods - it has been around as long as I've been in the business. I would assume that the mantra of "we want it yesterday, perfect and for free" came from somewhere! :) I would

Who Should Perform the Sprint Review?

2011-09-22T11:01:00.000-04:00

A concerned ScrumMaster came to me recently lamenting the fact that a Product Owner "ran" a sprint review. My response was, "That isn't necessarily a bad thing." The ScrumMaster then went on to describe how the PO in question directed everything in the meeting and didn't allow much discussion. OK, so some context helps clarify things. :) The question remains, though, is it always a bad thing

Technical Excellence in Scrum

2011-09-16T09:44:00.002-04:00

Jeff Sutherland recently posted a message on the Scrum Development Yahoo Group regarding Scrum and Technical Debt. Jeff mentioned why Scrum eschewed technical practices, specifically: In 1995, Kent Beck asked me for everything on Scrum. In a famous email he said he wanted to use everything he could and not reinvent the wheel. The first Scrum team was doing all the XP practices in some form.

The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work

2011-08-18T07:59:00.000-04:00

In April 2011 I attended the Agile Games 2011 Un-conference in Cambridge, MA. Given it's proximity to MIT, I'd like to believe I came away smarter simply through osmosis, but time will tell. :) On the first day after Luke Hohmann's keynote, I hummed and hawed about which Deep Dive session to attend. While many of the games sessions sounded interesting, I kept coming back to Adam Sroka's Coding

I'm Not a Resource

2011-08-15T14:23:00.003-04:00

A good number of people have written that we should not refer to people as "resources", and there are plenty of reasons why this is so. However, I continue to hear the term resource applied to human beings on a daily basis. I've created a video on YouTube called, "I'm not a Resource". If you agree, please comment either here or on YouTube. If you would like, send a short (no more than 10

They are All Wrong

2011-07-28T07:09:00.000-04:00

My wife grew up spending a half of every summer living in Algonquin Park. My father-in-law was a bush pilot for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and was based there for all of August every year, living at the cottage at Smoke Lake. While she was there, she had the opportunity to live with a whole lotta nature literally right at the door step, from chipmunks to moose to black bears.

Whither Requirements?

2011-07-25T07:24:00.000-04:00

We accomplish what we understand. If we are to accomplish something together, we need to understand it together.Signature from Ron Jeffries e-mail, circa 2005. A common issue I've encountered with teams starting to use an Agile approach such as Scrum is that they feel they must abandon all existing methods of requirements gathering and start writing nothing but User Stories. Requirements for a