Tag Archives: Agile Software Development

Agile software development is an iterative, evolutionary practice based on a set of values that prize individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

The Beauty of Team

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Our team just beta-released our first consumer product. Along the way, they accomplished something of more strategic value. They matured into a performing, self-directed team.

The Team Ript Page

A decent manager encourages software developers to do their best work while allowing them full personal lives. The heart of this effort is fostering strong teams. Individuals have bad days, make mistakes, lose momentum. A team watches each other’s backs, challenges each other, teaches each other. They build upon each other’s creativity.

The beauty part for a manager is — if you create the right conditions, start with the right people, trust them and hold them accountable — the team does the hard work of becoming. They deserve full credit for their achievements including the most ambitious achievement which is themselves.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Getting this consumer product to the general public has taken fifteen months. From our first study of agile principles to our current practice has taken the better part of four years of continuous improvement.

Women & Agile Development

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Ken Schwaber made an audacious comment today. To paraphrase:

“One of my canaries in the coal mine is the number of women in the software industry. Women are smarter than men. They tend to gravitate to careers where they are compensated well and find the work rewarding. They are fleeing the our industry in droves.”

He was speaking at Agile 2007 on The Enterprise and Scrum.

The Stanford Daily reported that “13 percent of CS undergraduates are female this year, down from 24 percent in the 1999-2000 school year.” This despite National Science Foundation statistics that show more women are receiving bachelors degrees than men.

I agree with Mr. Schwaber, a software industry more inviting to women entering the workforce would provide a better, more humane environment for all employees.

Also, what potential innovation is being lost? History is rife with examples of gender inequality in service and outcomes across a wide variety of industries — most troubling being medicine. A male dominated field should not be confident it is best serving its women consumers.

My company’s own research indicates that women are men’s peers when it comes to the use, ownership and purchasing decisions around technology. So this is an opportunity as much as it is a concern.

A 2006 paper by McDowell, Werner, Bullock and Fernald found that pair programming practice “may help increase female representation in the field.”

Agile values and practices support a collaborative, empowering and sustainable work place. As practitioners, we should encourage research on whether this can contribute to a more diverse workforce.

Fundamentally, we have to make software development more conducive to the contributions of half our population.

Off to Agile 2007

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Oxygen Software Development is off to Agile 2007. Four of us are speaking:

Ript™: Innovation and Collective Product Ownership
by Ken H. Judy and Ilio Krumins-Beens
XR11: Product Ownership
Thursday, 4:00pm

In 2006, Oxygen Media CEO Geraldine (Gerry) Laybourne, the woman largely responsible for Nickelodeon’s early success, partnered with her XP/Scrum development team to create a new mission and new revenue stream for her company. This experience report covers product conception through initial release of a single product. It describes how Gerry’s leadership qualities paired with agile practices to engender deep mutual trust and collective ownership over technical execution and business outcome. This unbounded collaboration provides a template for future projects at Oxygen and other organizations with innovation as part of their agile product development strategy.

The Gentle Art of Pair Programming
Oksana Udovitska and Wendy Friedlander
Wednesday, 8:30am

The presenters build upon their experience as software professionals and the pair programming practices employed at Oxygen Media, the first and only cable Network owned and operated by women, to teach The Gentle Art of Pair Programming. This tutorial will cover the basic principles of pair programming, why it is a worthwhile practice and how to get started. Discussion will include how to take full advantage of pairing and how to cope with its challenges. For those new to pair programming, this will serve as a good introduction and include concrete first steps. For those already in a pairing environment, this presentation will include new viewpoints and interesting discussions on familiar topics. Additionally, everyone will benefit from the interactive and fun games for improving and enhancing communication skills. Being women in a male dominated profession gives the presenters unique perspectives and insights into pairing which they are eager to share in passionate and exciting ways.