You Call Yourself Agile?

We had our monthly Agile Users’ Group meeting today.  Did I say meeting?  What I meant was, announcement.  Or something.  It was a completely one-way affair; from us to them.
I have no idea how many ‘agile’ practitioners were on the line today.  The reason I don’t know is that we don’t take attendance, and very [...]

What is the Agile Sweet Spot?

An interesting question came to us from an executive sponsor of our initiative: “What is the sweet spot for Agile?”
My initial response was unspoken; “What do you mean, ‘sweet spot’?  Agile is best for all projects!”
Then, I thought better of that response.  He was, after all, an executive sponsor.  Too much passion may be passion, [...]

Moving on to New Responsibilities

Well, not moving on so much as transferring to a new position.
As of the first of the month I am transferring to an enterprise role in the Bank where it will be my official duty to help drive the adoption of agile processes in the Bank.
I know.  Agile and Bank in the same sentence?
The answer [...]

When is Helping, Hurting? Or, Another Example of Why Handoffs Should Not Be Documents

Sometimes, when you try to help, the outcome is less than desirable.
It’s like helping your kids with their homework.  Helping is one thing; doing it for them is something else entirely.  Sure, their grades are maintained, but at what cost?
The other day, I was working through a negotiation to get a non-standard package approved for [...]

Latest on the Reading List

It’s been a while since I posted about what I was reading; mostly because I was reading current events instead of books. 
But anyway, as usual for me, I have two books going at once.  Both are tech books: Implementing Lean Software Development: from Concept to Cash, by Mary & Tom Poppendieck, and The Productive [...]

No, YOU don’t get the point..

In this post, Stephan Schmidt says Martin Fowler misses the point because Scrum is not about engineering practices (see here).
Actually, Stephan, you missed Martin’s point.
Martin’s post says essentially, that Scrum is gaining a reputation as an agile process that doesn’t work.  That is happening because the people who are adopting Scrum as their process believe [...]

Yes I Can Get Some Support..

The day after my last blog post about the standards group’s seemingly knee-jerk reaction to our CI choice, the group collectively got together and decided that encouraging CI was more important than the tool being used.
They got it.  All I had to do was point it out, and after some thought, they agreed.
I feel better [...]

Can I Get Some Support Here?

I’ve been chasing my development comrades around for a year or so, convincing them that test-driven development is a good thing.  That continuous integration is a great way to show what  a great job we’re doing by being transparent – posting our success and coverage numbers for everyone to see.
All the developers I can get [...]

What? A Post About Software Development?

When I started this blog, my intention was to regale the reader with pithy and insightful pronouncements on the state of software development. 
Since I didn’t want to maintain multiple blogs, I thought I’d put the odd stray commentary about life or books or politics on here too.
Naturally, what happened was that I didn’t do [...]

Donald Knuth Doesn’t Get It?

I was surprised to read excerpts from an interview that Andrew Binstock did with the pre-eminent Donald Knuth regarding aspects of software development methodologies and the state of programming generally.  The summary was provided here: http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=276&thread=229705
The actual interview is here: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
What I found interesting is that, perhaps not surprisingly, the reviewer (Frank Sommers) doing the [...]