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Don’t go too fast
In his keynote at XP Day Toronto 2007, Brian Marick cautioned against the team going too fast early in a project, because it sets up false expectations about the team’s long-term velocity. He said, in essence, that if your customers are really happy, then you’re probably going too fast. In a blog comment, Mike Wasserman… Read more…
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Post-agile? I don’t get it; I don’t know why I care so much
I just finished reading some of Jonathan Kohl’s writings about “post-agile”, which he describes (and I paraphrase) as going past the agile doctrine by taking what works and leaving what doesn’t work behind. He seems to emphasize leaving “the hype” behind, too. I don’t know why this line of thought bothers me, beyond a very… Read more…
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What is your customer’s job?
In listening to Ron Jeffries talk about Running, Tested Features, he reminds us of something very important for us to understand. Our customer’s job is to envision a product with more features than could possibly exist, sooner than it could possibly exist. Our job, as software delivery professionals, is to work with them to define… Read more…
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An obsession with Agility
I attend the XP/Agile Toronto User Group fairly irregularly these days, but I still consider myself a member and contributor. This week, Dmitri Zimin(e) presented “Agile Enough”, a case study of Opalis Software. In it, he mentioned their early setbacks, among which the biggest obstacle was an “obsession with agility”. When I read this, I… Read more…
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Kent Beck on the attitude of spreading Agile
In the process of catching up with the extremeprogramming mailing list, I read the following, and found it hit home. It is a reaction to Martin Fowler’s observation that management imposing Agile is rarely successful. We think that we, as programmers or consultants, have the right to say “We should all be working in an… Read more…
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Shotgun Programming
This entry comes from a guest blogger who wishes to remain anonymous for now. As he wrote to me I’d blog about this but some parties to whom this is directed might end up reading it and get offended. So prepare for a rant. The image is so vivid that I had to post this… Read more…
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The first goodbyes: Labball 2006
This past week I said my first goodbyes as we prepare to move to Dauphin, Manitoba next June. For eight years, I played a variant of softball most accurately called “recreational, sexist three-pitch”, because it’s six pitches for women. When I first joined the team, it was a rag-tag bunch. There was plenty of enthusiasm,… Read more…
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The Daily Scrum and accountability
These days I have been going back through some of my favorite books, including Patrick Lencioni’s Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I am certainly interested in team dynamics, not only as a coach of software teams, but also because I use these principles in my daily life in relating to my wife, my… Read more…
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Toronto: the disengaged customer
The last leg of the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway Experience was last night in Toronto with the XP/Agile Toronto user group. Once again, I split the group into two and asked each to develop a plan for my talk, the theme of which was Steering the Ship: the Joy and Heartbreak of Planning. It went well, on… Read more…
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Stand-up/Daily Scrum: focus on achievement and commitment
I’ve just finished reading an article by Jason Yip collecting some patterns and smell related to the daily stand-up or Daily Scrum. Rather than review the article, I wanted to emphasize a point you can find in the article, but that I believe is not adequately highlighted. Here is one smell Jason did not mention… Read more…
