Category
Agile
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06.03.09Typing is not the bottleneckThere is something about Mike Hill’s article about “How TDD and pairing increases production” that resonated in me: “Typing is not the bottleneck”. It’s a really simple message that affects to the way I want do software development. It’s the reason why I prefer to pair, the incentive that makes me write the test first, the rationale of why I think it’s wrong that some people refer to us “programmers” as “interchangeable resources”. It’s a message that I need to pass along, so inspired by the work done on arxta.net by Brian Marick, I created some stickers that are available to anyone ...
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03.28.09New team, new canvasIt’s Monday morning and your manager notifies you that you are going to be part of a new team. With mixed feelings, you start thinking about the next assignment. Who’s in the new team? What’s the domain like? What’s the code like? Like a painter finds himself in front a blank canvas, possibilities are endless. But where do you start? The painter is constrained by the canvas and knows how to work within the environment: colors, brushes, style. But you don’t know yours: people, stakeholders, code and physical environment. So you are anxious to start. You want this team to be the ...
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03.09.09HP’s early Agile garage rulesAndrew Binstock has an interesting post about the early days of Hewlett Packard. They had the following rules posted in their garage: Believe you can change the world. Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever. Know when to work alone and when to work together. Share tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues. No Politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage). The customer defines a job well done. Radical ideas are not bad ideas. Invent different ways of working. Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage. Believe that together we can do anything. Invent Maybe because I have seen the agile manifesto many times ...
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03.03.09The Gordon Pask Award is looking for volunteersLaurent Bossavit and J. B. Rainsberger are looking for volunteers to help out with the Gordon Pask Award. For the moment, they seek volunteers to help with work such as: advertise and promote our initiatives on weblogs, in discussion groups, in user groups, at conferences, and wherever you can garner attention design a physical Gordon Pask Award prize interview Brian Marick about the story behind instituting the Gordon Pask Award in 2005 interview past award winners and write articles about them connect the program with public relations or press outlets to help promote the award and raise its profile in the larger software community suggest changes to ...
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11.06.08The eight hour burnChad Fowler's book "My job went to India" is a must read. One of the chapters that I enjoy is the eight-hour burn. It all started when Extreme Programming introduced the concept that team members should work no more than 40 hour per week. Probably tagged as one of the most controversial practices of XP. Of course! The idea does not go well with Management. How can management accept that programmers are going to leave at 5pm? We have deadlines here! And on the programmer side, going above and beyond and being proud of burning the midnight oil is something that we ...
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10.17.08Adopting Test Driven Development through Performance ReviewsActually, if I back off the TDD subject for a second, how do you motivate people to do their job in a different way? Let's put aside the fact that the "new" way of doing work might be better than the "old" way. Maybe it's just a "different" way with the same results... so, let's find a stupid example. <drama> I work in a burger joint flipping burgers. I have been doing that work for over 10 years, I must like it I guess. I have my techniques down. I could cook you a burger to perfection in no time with my ...
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10.09.08Talking about Agile SmellsEvery couple of months, we host a Book Club meeting. Today was our second meeting. We decided to review the book from Amr Elssamadisy: Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption. We picked it because we are practicing Agile methodologies for a few years now. We were also looking to grow our Book Club participation by not choosing a technical book. Our analysts were not thrilled about choosing Martin Fowler's Refactoring book for our first meeting. Not sure why. So, Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption was an opportunity to evaluate ourselves and take a fresh look at what's next for us. The outcome of ...