Pragmatic Agilist

Did you wake up this morning and think to yourself, "gee, I think I'd like to try some agile today?"  Allow me to leap between you and your coffee to announce that your adoption of agile requires more than just management techniques (stand ups, burn downs, and card walls).  You are going to need a framework for running automated tests on a scheduled and ad-hoc basis, and some well-engineered tests within that framework, if you are hoping to get your company's software faster, better, and more transparently for more than a couple of weeks. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/coffee/images/25055460/title/love-coffee-wallpaper What, you say?  Yes!  You must act now to avoid the following: Bad Quality.  For starters:  How were you planning to know if your software is okay after the first two weeks?  I'm already worried for you, if your plan is to follow a book of some kind and simply have "a product owner" do some "inspection" and say "t...

I've been following a LinkedIn forum discussion with interest entitled " Could we use Agile methodology with a fixed bid contract ."  There are some quick, snappy answers to the question which came up immediately which I will quickly put into two categories: Straightforward :  NEVER NEVER NEVER.  Run away!  Screaming!  These people don't understand agile.  It's a smell.  It's a TRAP!   I'm embarrassed for you. Nuanced :  If you must do this, here's how to make the best of a bad situation (offers advice with implied background nose holding). Of course, there were also some really useful answers , pointing to blogs like t his really nice one from codesqueeze , recommending "target scope" or "target cost" models rather than either "fixed bid" or "time and materials." from http://www.cytrion.com/businessmodel Let's talk about "fixed" things though.   I'm always intrigued by people who...

If the Agile Founding Fathers had written a Manifesto about US NASA Space Shuttle trips to the International Space Station, it might have read, in part, "we have come to value the safe delivery of astronauts, space station parts, and experimental moss, gerbils, and other stuff to the space station over creating a dignified-looking Saturn 5 rocket." http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/Endeavor%20Docking%20525.jpg As the years passed, if we had all found ourselves employed at NASA in the shuttle program rather than in the IT organizations in small businesses and big insurance companies, our artifacts, processes, people, and procedures might have played the following roles: How we think user stories fit into software development, as described by the ISS analogy: The role of "the shuttle" would have been played by our overall defined software development lifecycle (SDLC) -- the process supports delivery of the payload. ...

You probably think it's simple.  Your boss wants "good news."  The way it will work is three steps: You will do "a good job" at your job You will tell your boss They will reward you "Brotherhood of Man" from "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," http://armchairactorvist.blogspot.com/2011/06/friday-dance-party-attention-every.html And yet one day, something goes wrong.  "Something bad" happens, or, worse, you "make a mistake."  Or maybe over a few weeks or months, you do some stuff and then one day you realize you have "been a major idiot," and "something bad" is going to happen.  The world is full of unpleasant cocktails of "something bad" and "making a mistake."  And let me also note that "you just got dealt a losing hand" can happen to you, and maybe it takes you a while to figure it out.  Maybe your choices are among alternatives which are all ba...

Did you know... From http://www.encroach.net/info/chicago_fire_spinning/poi_sacred_geometry/sacred_geometry_nature_images.html That is all.

In 2004, Thomas Friedman famously argued that in the age of "Globalization 3.0," The World is Flat , by which he seems to have meant that with current technology, big companies can shop all over the world for the cheapest and best laborers, rather than building local teams.  The book brought the issue to the attention of the general public, particularly in the US, and spawned a big discussion, including this entertainingly polemical review from Matt Taibbi .  Instructions for making your own flat globe are available here:  http://makingmaps.net/2007/09/19/making-flat-earth-globes/ Whatever you think of Friedman or Tiabbi, software development people can tell you that indeed, the modern "enterprise" team will most certainly include participants from some assortment of Western countries as well as some subset of the BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), or maybe new players like Vietnam or the Philippines.  Distributed software development is the norm ...

Are you tired of being lectured by "Pure Scrum" fanatics?  Some people are so quick to judge!  They will tell you "that's not agile!" or "that's a smell!" when: you have a defined Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) team members are distributed to different rooms, cities, or time zones you write anything down on paper larger than a 3x5 card you spend more than a few days planning your work, even for a large project you don't release to production at the end of every sprint you start requirements an iteration ahead of development you have a management structure more than one level deep you use MS Project to do resource planning you work on fixed cost projects you have a PMP certification on your resume (even if it's the PMI-ACP ) you advocate use of HP Quality Center, which is Kryptonite to legions of agilists world-wide you perform end-of-year performance reviews Agile friends, let's take a look at ourselves.  Am I ri...