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Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 17
314 essays in the archive
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The next step, Agile hungover
So, it is starting to happen. All around us we see people like James Shore or Rob Bowley proclaiming the end of Scrum, that we don’t really get it and that many teams do cycles, but forget about the rest. If you have been following the different waves of software process adoption this should be …
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What is Velocity? (in agile software development)
Velocity is a term used in agile software development to illustrate the “rate of progress” for a team or a set of teams (i.e. a project/program). The simplest way to define velocity is: the number or user stories a team/project can do in one sprint (“do” here means that it really is done and potentially …
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Punished by the Annual Performance Review
Many of us in the Agile community have voice our opposition to the individual performance reviews and target setting.Now, a professor from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has come out with a similar position and not less than in the serious Wall Street Journal (copy of the article), yes, the same that your …
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WAgile is hot, it’s the new craze!
Have you heard of WAgile? No? It’s the new craze! Check it out here. PS: it’s a joke and it’s supposed to be a stab at all of that lip-service agile! In the best Dilbert style! Enjoy
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Apple on unfair claims in advertising
Part of being a cool company is that you respect your customers. This is not a show of respect by Apple. Seriously, this is just used car salesman tactics. Apple, shape up!
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Continuous integration requires a good SCM
Lately I’ve been discussing SCM (Source Control Management) systems and how that impacts the continuous integration efforts of the teams and the projects where they work. I could not have expressed this better than Dean Wampler, check his blog post out.
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The cost of un-fixed bugs or Good Code on top of Bad Code
While discussing with a colleague we started talking about the costs related to not fixing a bug immediately (yes, this does mean that you have a way to immediately figure out if you introduced a bug). The reason for fixing bugs immediately is not only the cost of content switching later on when you have …
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The hard reality of life as developer…
If any of this is familiar, then you should really be reading this blog! 🙂 Hug a developer today. Blogged with the Flock Browser
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Testers are developers! Stop breaking them apart
First one clarification. Testing is needed, required, critical and very much a MUST. With that out of the way let’s go to the post. Many people have mentioned the need to include testers in Scrum or agile, and planning your processes with a testing step somewhere (normally close to the end). All of these ideas …
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Learn or else…
Through Elisabeth Hendrickson I got to Brett Pettichord’s post about the role of feedback in Agile. Read it if you haven’t yet. Here are the pearls that made me post this: “If you don’t have meaningful feedback then you’re not agile. You’re just in a new form of chaos.” and “Agile practices build a technical …
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You are not ready for agile if…
This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. Who am I kidding, I don’t have the time right now, so I’ll let Andy do the talking: You’re not ready for agile if you: * behave territorially. You mark your territory like an aggressive dog, refusing to share power or information, …
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Only build products you would *NEED* to buy!
This may be the reason why so many people love Apple. This thing is that those that build Apple products love the products they build! If it happens to be a failure? So what? Let’s build another one that will not be a failure. Steve Jobs clearly has an influence on this culture because he …
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