Agile Otter Blog

Listen, you know how it is if you go out to eat and your friend has a big ole chive stuck to a front tooth and you are thinking that you don't want to embarrass your friend by pointing it out, but you also don't want him to walk around looking goofy and let people poke fun at him behind his back? You have a decision to make. Because I love you and I care about your reputation and your perception in the world I have to tell you something. You sound like a hick. Not a southerner or a mountain person, a hick from some software jerkwater. It's when you say you are " writing the BDDs. " You are not writing the BDDs. BDD is a process. It's not the kind of noun that takes a plural... well, here let me illustrate: Imagine I told you I was going to " code my programmings ?" How about " I locked my keys in my driving? " Or possibly " I got a stain on my wearings! " How bout this one, " Waiter, will my cooking be ready soon?...

This is not the last sprint. There will be more after this. You don't have to have everything this week, and it's more important to deliver than to have every possible feature crammed in. Also, there isn't a good reason to not retrospect or plan if we're going to keep working. This is not the last test.  There are cases not covered yet, and the solution isn't complete. That's fine. We can write another test and then add the code to cover it. Working incrementally means we often have work in some in-between stage. Let's just get this test working, and then write the next. Programming, says Michael Feathers, is the art of doing just one thing at a time. This is not the last change. We could try to cram it in like it is an unexpected interruption and a special occasion, but it's not. Changes continue until the last user deletes the last version of the software from the last machine where it is installed. Probably better that we make changes like this ...

We talk a lot about changing cultures. There's a lot of inspirational, humanistic content in agile conferences and forums and books and blogs. We tell our success tales in front of rooms of people in both corporate gigs and public conferences, and even as some are applauding, we see people crossing arms and lowering their gaze and some even blushing or flushing. Inspirational stories are great, but not everyone is getting inspired. Some are getting frustrated, depressed, or even offended. The stories don't ring true to everyone, these storytellers seem to see the world through rose-colored glasses. There is an elephant in this room. In most software organizations the overt goal is to produce and release valuable code to customers, as early and often as possible. However, if you ignore what you hear and look at what people actually do, the organization is not fully focused on delivering valuable code. In fact, many of the things they do seem to be focused on preventing ...