Agile Complexification Inverter

Here's an outline of Jason Arbon's arguments for Agile methods leaving traditional test engineering in the dust. In the Better Software (May/June 2012) article "Traditional Test Engineering, Your Days are Numbered; Turing Software Quality on Its Head." "In this shift to agile, late cycle or manual testing efforts are often dropped or, worse, the program management and development teams embrace agile and continuous practices, but the old world regression test cycle is left hanging around like an archaic ritual that adds a few days or weeks to an engineering process that wants to be continuous." Test Plans - quick cycles out pace the ability of managers to create the traditional test plan. Modern software development teams do more concurrent testing than was ever done in traditional processes. Regression Testing - ninety some precent pass all the time, is this a good use of time and energy. Create a risk view of the application under test. Use a...

Learning to listen is a difficult skill to teach. On the surface it appears to be a passive activity. It is the reflection portion of the listening activity that might need enhancement. Here is a group exercise that will strengthen your team's ability to listen. The 5 Second Rule. After a person speaks, everyone must count to 5 (5 seconds) before anyone speaks. If you wish to speak next, you must physically count on your raised hand via fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Practice this a few time, counting slowly (maybe extend it to 10 seconds if there are lots of fast counters). If two or more people raise their hands to speak next, then they (not the group) decide the speaking order. This pause in the immediate point, counter-point might allow the conversation to become multi-perspective, rather than percussive-discussion, like a ping-pong match. Most teams will expand their views and learn to be inclusive during dialogues with this technique. When multiple people want to speak to...

What are the affordances that are missing from the virtual task board?  There are quite a few. The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson coined the term in the late 1970s to mean the relationships that an actor (person) can have with objects in the world.  Then Donald Norman popularized the term in his book " The Design of Everyday Things ." You may think these affordances don't matter much.  But after you have them (via using a physical task board) you will find they are sorely missing. I can: Hold a task and show it to you. Now you know exactly what I'm talking about. Many virtual task board have no way of denoting a selected task.  Pick a different task and hold it. Now I know you are talking about that one, but I'm still referring to the one I hold.  Move a task. The motion is the affordance. Not the before and after location of a task - don't confuse position with motion.  Pass a sticky note to you, now you have it and this denotes res...

'I would ask 500 Whys ' When I stand up yeah I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who stands up next to you When I unit test yeah I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who tests along with you The Proclaimers - I Would Walk 500 Miles If I get drunk yes I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you But I would ask 500 whys And I would ask 500 more Just to be the man who asked 1000 whys To help your process improve. When I'm working yes I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you And when the  praise  comes in for the work I'll do I'll pass almost every accolade on to you When I program yeah I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who pair programs with you And if I falter well I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the man who's...

A Timeline by definition is an iterative document - it is incrementally built minute by minute with no known completion point. However the historical entries on the time line might be elaborate also. This is a rough draft... please comment with new (better - more important, more accurate) events. Or point me to better resources - other historical time lines etc.  Thanks! Watch Earth's history  on a 100yd football field timeline. Agile Software Development Timeline 1202 Fibonacci introduces Arabic numerals (0-9 and place value) to the West via book “Liber Abaci” (Book of Abacus or Calculation).  The Zero is born! 1950s Demining teaches in Japan 1960s NASA’s Project mercury uses test-first development and micro-increments 1971 The Psychology of Computer Publishing by Gerald Weinberg - largely ignored 1976 EVO Methodology by Tom Gilb 1980s Japanese car companies expand into Europe & Americas 1986 New New Product Development by Takeu...

Why do people schedule meetings and work-session into an arbitrary constraint of one hour blocks? Are we not capable of looking at the purpose and expected outcomes of the gathering and then estimating the appropriate duration needed to achieve the outcome? Do we not account for the cost and waste of having to reset context each time we meet and get to a partially finished state. It is the tyranny of the clock face, broken into one hour increments. The clock is just a human abstraction of time, an arbitrary measuring instrument. It is not a prescription for scheduling. I think we are misunderstanding the purpose of the clock. One doesn't drive a car by the speedometer. This obsession of one hour increments of work is ridiculous. I wonder where we learn it. Oh - yeah, school, where we learn many bad habits. See Also: HBR article Yes, You Can Make Meetings More Productive The Hummingbird Effect: How Galileo Invented Timekeeping and Forever Changed Modern Life by Maria...

I'm wondering if there are better techniques or resources for finding new interesting useful words than the techniques I'm currently using. My current technique is to just happen upon a good word - either in print/web/conversation. I have to admit, however, that few happen in conversation, fewer still in print such as news (typically a 5th or 6th grade reading level) - most new words are sourced via books and web articles. How do you look up a word that means, what you want it to mean - yet you don't know the meaning of? The inversion of the Humpty Dumpty quip in Through the Looking Glass. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all." The web has...

Here is an info-graphic that while interesting makes me a bit sad. How the Internet is Ruining Your Brain I do believe than we have entered into a very volatile micro-evolutionary portion of human history.  I do find that I off-load to various electronic media pieces of information and knowledge that might have years past be committed to memory.  I'm not sure this is a bad thing, yet we may surprise ourselves at the brink of our extinction.   We are in the exponential age - or as some call it the anthropocene . So there are some controls one could place on the rot of your mind.  Try SelfControl an application that blocks the internet for a period of time - perhaps long enough for you to be productive.  I also tried RescueTime for a while, but found it not very helpful.  It did not motivate me to change my behavior. I do find that many of us are delusional about our abilities to multitask.  My superpower is a...

Just imagine proper form and you can increase strength in your pinky finger 35%. Imagine Increased Muscle Strength!-Experiment In a fascinating experiment, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation discovered that a muscle can be strengthened just by thinking about exercising it. For 12 weeks (five minutes a day, five days per week) a team of 30 healthy young adults imagined either using the muscle of their little finger or of their elbow flexor. Dr. Vinoth Ranganathan  and his team asked the participants to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as they could. Compared to a control group – that did no imaginary exercises and showed no strength gains – the little-finger group increased their pinky muscle strength by 35%. The other group increased elbow strength by 13.4%. What's more, brain scans taken after the study showed greater and more focused activity in the prefrontal cortex than before. The rese...

What is the difference between a test and an experiment? I propose that in the 21st century and the realm of software development that these definitions must morph to our needs.  There is little difference in the general definition. Yet many people in quality control or quality assurance departments appear to dislike the word experiment.   Defining actions a person takes to perform a 'test-case' as an experiment appears to rankle feathers.   I find this interesting. Test - (verb) take measures to check the quality, performance, or reliability of (something), esp. before putting it into widespread use or practice. Experiment - (verb) perform a scientific procedure, esp. in a laboratory, to determine something. I would like to define that within the modern software world that the word test have a more specific meaning.  I propose: Test - (verb) a highly repeatable measure to check the quality, performance or reliability of (something), esp. before (somethi...

A typical impediment sticky annotating the blocked task. Just making an impediment list is not good enough.  Yes, it is a start.  But only the start.  Raising impediments at the daily stand-up meeting shows that a team is mature enough to recognize that all problems are better solved in the light of day.  Problems are easier to solve when more than one person is working on the issue.  One of the first steps to getting multiple people working on an impediment is to make it known to the team. Yet this is the start, not the end of the process.  Yes many newbie teams believe that the Scrum Master's job is to resolve these impediments.  That is a wonderful misconception and will work for a while as the newbie team learns the power of an agile mindset.  But only the maturing teams learn that it is their job to remove these impediments. So what are 7 aspects on a great impediment card living on the top of your impediment list? Title - th...

Agile Games 2012 conference in Cambridge. " The Marshmallow Challenge is a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity." David presenting the challenge at Agile Games conference. Watch Tom Wujec's TED.com talk about his many experiences with this exercise.   Agile Games 2013 ! See Also:   Results Oriented Web conference Marshmallow Challenge workshop Don't mistake the Marshmallow Challenge with the Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel.  One is a design challenge - the other is an experiment designed to see if personality traits such as self-control are malleable. Cephalopods Have Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children Cuttlefish were given a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results may demonstrate that there's more going on in their strange little brains than we knew.

Pictures from a recent Product Owner Scrum Immersion workshop. Agenda for Scrum Immersion workshop Here are some Panoramas of the simulated sprints (also see photosynths ). what do you want to get out of a Scrum adoption by the team? Scrum Immersion simulation roadmap What we learned at the Global Sales Conference Clients - Wish list (that's not a backlog) Management "launches" a new team Project plan - simulation of 2 product releases What is Agile Release Planning Release Planning - a simulation Product Backlog (has Size & ranked for business value delivery) Sprint Planning (the What & the How) Sprint 1 - Bootstrap team's capacity to forecast unknown velocity A schematic of a 5 min. Simulated Sprint 15 sec. for a simulated Stand-up meeting The prime directive - DO IT! 5 min. for Simulation Sprint review meetings 2 sprints then Release 1 - demo with Cu...

Compare Titanic to Costa Concordia :: 100 yrs apart - what have we learned? Titanic has 19th century tech but barely able to use it to the fullest ( wireless radio - morse code - very small message payload - poor distress procedures & discipline in industry).  Used 18th c. tech - flares to signal distress - but ignored by closest vessel.  Left the ship watches binoculares in port (I've done that).  Capt'n made errors in judgement - full steam ahead through known ice flow with no binos on watch... stupid move. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-extraordinary-story-of-the-titanic http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/costa_concordia The Costa Concorda's captain made several big blunders in judgement.  He may wish he had gone down with his ship, as Capt'n Smith of the Titanic did. While both captains made blunders of judgement, the state of the art of sea distaster has changed in 100 years.  The two disasters are not very compara...

So I hear someone say: My company is not thinking of hiring Scrum Masters for the current Scrum adoption initiative that is underway. We appear to have plenty of Project Managers (yet that community believes they need more "heads"). Yes, "heads" is the unit of measure for our "resources."  So the apparent logic that I have explained to me - because I'm just too illogical to arrive at the obvious is ... we will just let the PMs do the SM roll. Right, no problem there. It shouldn't take too much time to do the Scrum Master's job... just a few meetings and that silly 15 minute stand-up each day. Yep - that's the plan. So now lets look at one metric and ask ourselves why this trend is happening.  Let's compare salaries of Scrum Masters to Project Managers.  You can get the   latest info via  Indeed.com .   data from Indeed Salary survey   David Bland (Scrumology) did this some time back and reported that a SM in 2009 average...