Agile Otter Blog

The story says "attach an e-commerce server." Well, maybe it says "As a product manager I want my system to incorporate an ecommerce server so that I can collect money." Can you get that done this iteration? It sounds like a three-story-point effort to me, right? Hold On A Second This story doesn't have a plot. It is a state of being. I don't think that  saying "once upon a time there was a little girl" would qualify me as a story teller.  Right away I'm nervous. What the heck does it mean? What do we want to do here?  Let's not throw this into the sprint backlog with (of all things) a story point number on it. Let's certainly not stick somebody's name on it. Let's think a little.  We're not aligned on what this "story" means.  The New Preplanning Poker You already know about planning poker , and the benefits of silently estimating first, then comparing results. You know that it helps av...

Quick pointers: See each test fail at least once (so you can trust it). Make test fail messages helpful because they fail when you are working on something else. Prioritize! Use a list for tests you want to write. "Ignored" tests will do nicely. Run all the tests so you know when your last change has broken something. Keep your feedback loop as tight as you possibly can. I get to see these all violated, so I thought I'd make a short list and save you some time.  The first two go together. You want each test to fail so you can see the message. Some time in the future you'll make a change, and an older test will fail and you'll see the test class name, the test name, and the assert message. Those three should work together so that you know what kind of mistake you made.  That goes with number 5, too. If you only run the one test you're working on, you may have dozens of breakages by the time you get around to running all the tests. If you ...

Agile's teaching of "thin, vertical slices" doesn't apply just to features. Organizations move forward in thin vertical slices too. Story mapping teaches us to do incremental, value-first programming and integrate the "threads of functions" all the time from end-to-end.  CI teaches us that integrating thin slices frequently avoids pre-release integration nightmares (and post-release nightmares).  Likewise, we leave room for learning and growing, because what we learn in iteration N may give us different options and opportunities in iteration N+1 and onward. We have an idea of where we want to go, but we are always seeking best value. However, too few agile transitions are done in an agile way. It's only reasonable that a pre-agile company would want a waterfall, Big-Design-Up-Front plan with staffing and milestones for an agile transition. But we, as post-transition coaches and consultants know better and are supposed to be ...

Pretend you have a really great programming day.   You only have to attend a few meetings, have only a few off-topic conversations, don't get distracted or interrupted much, don't have to do a bunch of status or time reporting, and you put in a good six hours of serious programming [note: this RARELY happens in an 8-10 hour day].   I want to review your work in the morning, so I print out a diff of your day's work before going home.   Sadly, overnight the version control system crashes and they have to recover from the previous day's backup. You have lost an entire day's work.   If I give you the diff, how long will it take you to type the changes back into the code base and recover your six-hours' work? Programming is 11/12ths Thinking I've been touting this figure for some time now, and people keep asking me where the study is that produced such an odd number. Well, it's not pulled out of thin air and it's not the result of a thoro...

Understand your office situation better w/RSA Animate & David Coplin Raised many interesting points. I still see value in being able to pair and mob, and would like to have heard more talk about that, but I think his idea about being in control of how you work is important. Enjoy.

Here is Christopher Avery shows us a mental model that will help us to become more responsible. I found it concise and helpful. I hope you may also.

Communication is a very human process. A quick model Every being has its own mental model of a domain Connected to it is a hearing/understanding apparatus. When you tell me the sky is beautiful, my mental model suggests it is a nice shade of blue and had some light, interesting clouds. But it could be that we don't share a model, and you meant really intense lightning and fast-moving thunderheads. Provided that there are not too many great disconnects, though, what you tell me may provide information that I can add to my mental model. This is true whether I understand the words I heard in the same way that you meant them or not. Recognize there is a difference between what I hear, and what I understand. It is sometimes said that "memory is the residue of thought" so my memory of our conversation may not be my memory of the sounds and words used, but of my thoughts/interpretation of the sentences as they occurred. I probably remember what I was thinking while you...