To improve we need transparency. We cannot solve problems we don’t see. We can’t improve an invisible process. We need people to speak out about how they feel, how their work is affected. In order to improve, my team needs me to admit I’m late, and not hide I’m working for two weeks, digging a hole, and find out
I usually make fun of the “become a scrum master in 3 days”. I mean, what can you learn in 3 days? Glad you asked. Once a year or so, I get a chance of going through an exercise with my army unit. These few days are plentiful of agile post material. I’ll try to cram
You think that Arnold and Sylvester movie careers were head to head? Let me tell you the story of what happened before that. <Dissolve Effect> Arnold and Sylvester had a struggling software development business. Arnold wanted better code design. Because he was after better design, he chose TDD, with all the design goodness it brings.
Because we know what it is like to read and debug a 500 lines method . And we don’t want to go through it again. Because we’re sure the other guys’ code can use improvement. Even if they thought otherwise. Because we can’t think at the same time about both the solution and its readability.
Are sales people and developers like oil and water? As I was reading this article I recalled Michael Feathers’ presentation at NDC about “The mistake at the heart of agile”. To recap: Agile closed the developers behind a walled garden, in order to let them produce without interruption from other sides of the organization. On
My NDC 2011 talk in moving pictures form. Danger! Craftsmen Ahead! from Gil Zilberfeld on Vimeo.
At NDC 2011, there were a couple of presentations about the state of the agile today. Of note, were Uncle Bob Martin’s excellent “The land that Scrum forgot” (That man can give a show just by reading from index cards!) and Michael Feathers’ “The mistake at the heart of agile”. Until the videos are out,
The Agile Manifesto has 4 principles. In Agile 2008, Uncle Bob Martin in his keynote suggested a 5th principle: Craftsmanship over Execution (Yes, I’m 3 years late for the party, but bear with me. This came to me as I’m preparing to my NDC talk). All principles were written by technical people who emphasized communication
I have a confession: I’m an early adopter. I like new shiny stuff. And if I like what I see, I’ll continue to use it. I was wondering a few days ago, what is the difference between what I’ll continue to use and what I’ll drop. The first tool that came to mind? Ask around
ADC 2011 incidentally happened on a day when a meeting was scheduled for the Munich coding dojo meeting. Luckily, we were invited to the meeting by Ilker Cetinkaya. The first thing you’ll notice in the picture, is that I may seem shorter than the other people there. I’m still suspecting Adi used a fish-eye camera.