Agile Otter Blog

For all the 'take back agile" and "agile smagile" and "apologizing for agile" and all the other post-agilists and so-called post-agilists in the world, I give you Otter's law: Any methodology followed via obligation and knowledge-avoidance cannot produce positive change.  I've ranted about change gone wrong and methodologies followed badly and horrible oversales and undersales and all, but it comes down to otter's law ultimately. Too many companies have huge gains from using XP and Scrum and what-have-you. Too many others tried "the same thing" with entirely different results. Some teams are whole-heartedly into the whole agile thing, and they seem to have pretty good. Others don't seem very excited and don't get much out of it. Is it excitement that they need? I don't think so. I think that the lack of excitement and the lack of progress have the same root. I think it's a lack of profluence in agile-a...

I was looking at the excellent work by appium, and saw this little snippet in an example: var el = driver.FindElementById ( "name_input" ); el.Clear (); el.SendKeys ( "Appium User" ); el.SendKeys (Keys.Return); There's nothing horribly wrong  with the name el, except that it's exactly what we ask people not to do with names.  El is short for element (a bit of mental mapping, but the length of the name reflects the shortness of scope). But it is not informative. The variable "el" (EE-EL) looks like "e1" (EE-ONE) to the casual reader. The name doesn't look right.  Also, "element" is what it's made of, not what it's for.  Yes it's an element. But it means "the name input field" so "nameField" or"name_field" or "name" might be better. Or even "input" if it's the only input field in the block....

I'm a software org/team/individual coach. What the heck does that mean? On a closed mailing list, Geepaw asked for our definitions of a software team "coach," and several offered opinions.  This one is entirely mine.  On reading my definition, John Kern interpreted it to mean "individuals" whereas I intended these to apply to teams and organizations as well. I thank him for bringing up the possible misinterpretation, and I leave it up to my readers to understand I mean it in a plural sense; organizations and teams have skills and habits and mindsets just as individuals do. Without further ado: A coach is someone whose: 1) work is with people 2) primary product is an improvement in their abilities  3) secondary product is an improvement in the way they interact with teammates and peers. 4) teaching comes through interaction , not mere lecture or advice (that would be a counselor) 5) work is done at the request and permission of th...