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 existential joys of agile practice: I want to live in our imperfect reality

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At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the second of four parts.

I want to live in our imperfect reality

Extreme beyond this pointAs agile becomes popular it becomes a buzzword. It gets promoted as a tool that solves problems when at its heart it is a set of values that encourage you to confront problems.

We should all recognize these organizing principles…

  • Collaboration over negotiation
  • Working software over specification
  • People over process
  • Responding to change over following a plan

In addition, Bob Martin’s “Quality over crap”

Worship the plan. The plan is good.Let’s talk about following a plan… worshipping a plan

I think of this every time I think of worshipping a plan…

A driver put her faith in her satellite navigation system. It told her to turn onto a bridge. Problem was the bridge had been washed away. She drove her $160,000 Mercedes into the flood where it was swept away. She had to be rescued as it sank.

black holeWhere the customer doesn’t entirely know what will succeed… Where they aren’t entirely steeped in the technology…

Specifications become a black hole so dense with detail that even light cannot escape.

Project schedules become the most boring fairy tails ever told.

Mocks mock us.

dandelionAnd process gates (“handoffs”) kill collaboration.

We put a lot of energy into delivering the wrong thing on time and on budget.

And we don’t even recognize or care about that thing by the time it goes live – if it ever does.

walk don't walkI want to live in our imperfect reality.

…Focus on what I did, what I’m doing and what I want to do next.

I want to know what we are trying to achieve and converse with people I’m achieving it with.

Dart arrows missing targetI accept failure if we call it out as we recognize it, applaud the attempt and make changes so that we don’t repeat that exact failure again.

In short, I love an iterative, reflective way of working because I dearly want to spend each day doing a little less crap and a little more not crap than the day before.

And I want to do it without simply handing off my crap onto others.

The existential joys of agile practice

  1. A family tradition of care and craft
  2. I want to live in our imperfect reality
  3. People over process
  4. Angel on your shoulder

The existential joys of agile practice: a family tradition of care and craft

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At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. I’ll post in four parts.

A family tradition of care and craft

Brocade ClothMy mother is college educated but made her living through physical labor. She made valances on fancy drapery and upholstered fine furniture.

She took pride in her work matching the pattern at the seams no matter how complex. And she worked long hours.

She has arthritis from years handling heavy fabric.

Vacuum TubesMy father is a retired engineer.

He’s always pursued hobbies with an engineer’s precision. Book binding, restoring tube amplifiers, annealing, reshaping and tempering fishing hooks into an authentic 19th century fly fishing hook shape.

If people offered to pay him for his hobby, he’d move on to something else. He did these things for pleasure.

Fireworks by Ken Judy, All rights reserved.My ten-year old daughter aspires to be an engineer or scientist. She been a member of a Lego FIRST Robotics team since she was seven.

When she first tried out, her teachers wrote:

“You were chosen based on your ability to work well with your team and how well you cooperated with others.

We also looked at your ability to problem solve, on your own and within the group, your endurance, enthusiasm, and your handle and care for the pieces.”

My girl is a born agilist…

The existential joys of agile practice

  1. A family tradition of care and craft
  2. I want to live in our imperfect reality
  3. People over process
  4. Angel on your shoulder

Life lie (Excuses)

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Are there lies you tell yourself to face work each day?

“If you take the life lie from an average man, you take away his happiness as well” — The Wild Duck Act V, Henrik Ibsen

Developers often feel powerless in their workplace. At agile conferences I’ve heard:

  • it’s the nature of the business
  • it’s not my responsibility
  • I don’t have the authority
  • I do what I’m told

Yes, we have to pick our battles and yes we can’t always win. Fear is a hard thing. But it seems obvious that a way of working doesn’t mean anything unless we use it to change what we do.

A personal manifesto (Agile Values)

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In my decisions and actions, I balance the following:

  • I care about the people who use what I create.
  • I care about the quality of what I create.
  • I care about the people with whom I create.
  • I honor my commitments to my employer.
  • I am loyal to people who have earned my loyalty.
  • I provide for my family.

I reflect on my decisions and actions to avoid:

  • negligence,
  • incompetence,
  • deception,
  • waste, and
  • harm.

Agile practice is a means to these ends.

The existential joy of retrospection (agile practice)

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Spiral JettyEvery two weeks as part of our Scrum practice my team holds a retrospective to ask:

  • what were our goals in the last two weeks,
  • what did we do that helped us achieve those goals,
  • what did we do that got in our way, and
  • what essential set of things we should we keep doing or do differently.

Retrospection is a process focused way of doing more and more of the things that are important and a less and less of the things that are not important.

And our efforts at inspecting and adapting are themselves a work in progress.

We need to rely on each others’ strengths to work past our own weaknesses.

We need to expect more of each other and to demand more of ourselves for each others’ sake.

We thread this path to trust and loyalty, to collaboration and self-knowledge, to craft and achievement.