Agile Otter Blog

At my current gig, we are using Squish to test a new QT-based GUI app. It's been a hoot. Squish is frameworks, eclipse, and python. Oh, yes, squishy yummy python. To start with, we used the QT interface to start measuring and checking UI widgets. There are some very exacting standards on color, placement, and size of visual elements and squish is helping get the specs converted to a runnable form. This was my original goal for the tool. The team was recording tests post-facto, so I jumped in and we build up some libraries and syntax sugar so that it's easy to build the tests before the code. Hopefully we'll see a lot less code being returned over minutae now that programmers can run the specifications while they're building the code. The next step was to automate to the simulators that sit under the app. This was delivered last week, and we added some more sweet syntactic sugar to make it easy to script simulators in the gui tests. It's still not lightning-fa...

I'm working with Industrial Logic's newest Python album on microtesting (not yet released) and was lucky enough to get to test out the automated critique. So the way this eLearning works is that you download a problem to work on, and you're given tasks to perform. In this case, it's all about writing microtests for some simple python code. When you finish, you upload your results and an automated critique system digs through the code and gives you ratings and pointers. This is rather like having a mentor sitting with you, reviewing the code. I tell people that the eLearning here is something like they've never seen, but people think I'm marketing or something. Today I have a story for you: Yesterday I made a mistake and the automated critique busted me. The mistake was one where I constructed an object incorrectly and invalidated the premise of the test, yet I did this in such a way that the test passed for the wrong reason. I was feeling so sure I'd...

This first appeared on the Object Mentor blog in 2007, but I had to get a cached copy from google to reread it. I'm reviving it here so we don't lose it forever. I think it is still carries a valid point, and I would like to revisit it in the near future. Short Reach Posted by tottinger on Monday, April 23, 2007 I’m always trying to find newer, better, shorter, more powerful ways to explain what Agile is about. I suppose I’m some kind of obsessive about expressive power and economy. Finally I decided that Agile, as I understand it today, is about the short reach. It seems to me that all of the agile practices are about shortening our reach, the distance in time-and-space that one leaves an assumption, decision, or line of code untested and unconfirmed. All the practices seem to follow this one rule. The customer/analyst is kept in the same room, in the same short reach.  We feed back the iterations to the customer/analyst so that his every decision has a shorte...

There are hard times, and things can pile up. Don't wallow. Don't spend time trying to feel better.  Try to get back on track. Things can get you down, so you need to borrow energy from others.  Try user groups, pairing, friends, fun programming exercises.  Quit thinking you should be able to do new things all alone.  Getting up to speed is always dicey, and best done with someone who is already up to speed.  If problems are short-term, like a flooded basement, broken lawnmower, minor health troubles, a child's academic crisis,  take time for them so you can get back on track sooner. Get it over with. If the problem is long-term, start building up the emotional muscle to deal with it, which means getting on with life despite the long-term trouble and trying to cope with whatever "long-term trouble" is going to mean. When you're not feeling particularly confident (ie depressed) don't get caught up in large meta-issues. Keep your focus on smaller thing...

I was a little overwhelmed with how slowly I'm absorbing information, especially while dealing with household issues (like gas fumes from garage and flooding in basement) on top of trying to do something worthwhile (ANYthing) at work. It's just the way life comes at you sometimes. My escape for the night was running out to a meeting of Software Craftsmenship McHenry County (SCMC). This was my second meeting ever.  I mis-timed the trip and ended up a few minutes behind the start of Steven Degutis' slide show. Pizza and pop were in good supply though, so I settled in and enjoyed a presentation on the language Go. Go is a strange little language, but a lot of fun. We had a quick presentation, thankfully mostly consisting of code examples, and then were given time to dive in.  Even though I'd been kind of blue and a little angry all day, I was soon laughing and having a great time while we tried to find ways to clutter a perfectly simple little problem's solution w...

I spent the day at Chicago Code Camp .  It's a good thing because it's a pretty pure conference for programmers. It's all run by volunteers, all free, all in one day, all short talks (1 hour). CLC had good wifi, plenty of space. Actually, one of the problems we had was finding out where the registration desk and refreshments were "hidden" in the huge Technology Building.  I came in a different door than organizers expected, as did dozens of us who were found wandering the halls.  We like calling that the "mandatory fitness segment." One of the things that is particularly good is that you can quickly guage where you stand with the community, what people want to hear about, and what people want to talk about. The first presentation I attended was on refactoring javascript, and programmers were rapt. They wanted to know about testing and test frameworks, how to do the refactoring steps, and how to incorporate the tests in in CI. The introductory topic...

This is your turn to brag, complain, and post observations. If you were on an agile transition, it is likely that your company hired a coach.  The coach may have been awesome, may have been horrible, and may even have been me.   I'm interested in your stories. Were you pleased? Disappointed? Did you learn things you didn't even know you needed to learn? What was the long-term impact on the coach your team, your skillset, or your company?