Agile methodologies favor effective team work. Team work is fun to do, hard to grow, and at times unpredictable to nurture. I might be biased here, but I have seen way too few good teams working effectively together. Let’s see what can happen with bad and with good team work in place.
Continue reading The Power of the TeamTag Archives: it-agile-blog-planet
The Curse of Refactoring
Last week I sat in a meeting with a ProductOwner, a ScrumMaster, and the Development Team. The team works on a legacy code base with about 2 million lines of code together with 13 other teams. Thus far there has been little to decouple the various components. In that meeting the topic of refactoring came up. The bottom line was that the Development Team needed to ask the ProductOwner for time to refactor their code for each story.
What a waste of your time.
Personally, I believe that if you have to ask your ProductOwner to plan in time for refactoring, the ProductOwner should stop all work on the product, and send you on a class on working effectively with legacy code if you are an internal employee. If you are an external employee, your client should fire you immediately.
Wait, what? That’s harsh? I don’t think so.
Let’s take a look at the underlying system dynamics.
Continue reading The Curse of RefactoringThe “I don’t want to” attitude
We live in a cruel world. Our profession of software development is very young compared to other fields such as banking, hotels, or carpenters. I truly believe we have taken a couple of wrong turns in our short history. In this blog entry I try to shed some light on it by some seemingly unrelated stories.
Continue reading The “I don’t want to” attitudeFixed price, fixed scope is broken contracting
Over the past week I came to realize that fixed prices, fixed scope contracts are broken. I am not sure who came up with the concept, but I sense a larger dynamic at play. Let’s explore what’s causing so much trouble around fixed price, and fixed scope contracts.
Continue reading Fixed price, fixed scope is broken contractingHow do you know you’re improving?
I remember a lively discussion at DEWT 4 around self-education, and how you would know whether or not you are improving. There are lots of ways to engage with self-directed learning – in software testing, software development, leadership, and other areas surrounding this field. But with all these methods around, a single question remains: How do you know whether you’re improving with whatever technique you follow?
Continue reading How do you know you’re improving?The No-Fake-Tester Rule
Have you every worked with a fake tester? How would you notice? How would you notice how much they are faking? Triggered by a discussion back at DEWT 4, I had an insight triggered by a book that I read earlier in my life: The No-Asshole Rule from Bob Sutton. Let’s see how fake testers and the no asshole rule connect in our workplaces.
Continue reading The No-Fake-Tester RuleOn Specialization
Over the past few months I have become more and more convinced about the fact that specialization in software development – which includes programming, design, architecture, and testing to me – is a terrible idea. I don’t know when this came up in the history of our craft, and I think we need to stop it – now. I also know that I am probably upsetting some folks with these statements, still I think you should critically read this blog entry, and make up your own mind about the matter.
Continue reading On SpecializationWhat is Agile Testing?
While I was cleaning u my bag that I carry around with on various travels, I found the following notes. They were part of my introduction for the keynote at the Agile Testing Days 2012 in Potsdam, Germany. My talk was on “adaptation and Improvisation”, drawing an analogy from the famous geek movie “The Matrix”. I wanted to keep these notes somewhere. That’s why I decided to put them up on my blog. Hope you like it. Imagine Morpheus’ and Trinitiy’s voice.
Continue reading What is Agile Testing?ATDD in scaled agile environments
Years ago, I wrote a book on ATDD. Only years later I notice the value that this practice can bring to an environment with multiple teams working together on the same platform. The connection to scaling agile in the larger enterprise wasn’t that obvious than it became when I started to dive deeper into how to scale agile. Though, most larger enterprise struggle with getting one team running, scaling has become the latest fuzz in the agile community. Let’s see why ATDD is relevant for this sort of environment, and how you can challenge your team colleagues about it.
Continue reading ATDD in scaled agile environmentsDon’t try to run before you walk
I have to admit: I am German. Us Germans are well-known in the world to deliver good results. That said, we are very dedicated to deliver efficient results. There is one thing that troubles me about that. Having our main business in Germany, I often face questions with regards to efficiency while introducing agile methodologies. You can efficiently drive your car right into a wall. That would be very efficient, but unless you try to kill yourself, not very effective. The English saying ‘don’t try to run before you walk’ expresses this gallantly from my point of view. Let’s explore that thought.
Continue reading Don’t try to run before you walk