Agile Contracts

Agile contracts is an interesting thing. one of the main push back against going agile I get in places is that while agile is nice and all there is no way we can convince our customer to work like this. “they want a fixed price fixed scope deal”. In any case this post is not going to talk about why Agile contracts are a good idea, or how to get buy-in from your clients to sign an agile contracts. This post is going to talk about: The forces against an agile contract The power of Inertia People don’t change easily. The fact that our industry has been using a “Fixed …” contract for several decades now goes against trying anything else. Especially if that something else is substantially different. An agile Contract is exactly that. Different. Risk An agile contract puts the risk on...

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Posted in: Agile practices

Can you spot the Contradiction?

Here’s a job description I got over the mail (the original message was in Hebrew so I’ve translated): Subject : Project manager – Control of Agile software A project manage with control of Agile software is need for an international development company dealing in Wireless Electronics Must – BSC in engineering 1-2 years of experience in project management or in project scheduling and task tracking as part of the project team Experience in Configuration management – significant advantage. Experience in production processes, moving from research to production – an advantage Must have knowledge in Excel, Ms-project, Agile software Great interpersonal skills, teamwork, ability to work under pressure Fast learner of systems and processes, ability to dive into details ...

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“I have a Legacy System” is a lame excuse

Q: “why have you not written any automated unit test until now?” A: “ look, we have a and complex big system. no one has written automated tests for it. it will take me too long to do it just now. I know its important but we have XXXXXXX so we cant do it now” This kind of excuse, which sadly I hear way too often,  rate high among the “list of most lamest excuses”. Don’t believe me? How about this? Q: “when are you going to cut down on your expanses and start saving money?” A: “Look, I’ve already have a big mortgage on my house, and the cost of living has risen lately. So now is definitely not a good time to start saving. In fact since I just need to replace my car with a new one I’m just on my way to the bank to get an additional loan.” or maybe this? Q: “you know that you were diagnosed...

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Posted in: AUT,Development Practices,TDD

Agile Practitioners IL– Fourth Meeting

Just wanted to let you know that the Agile Practitioner group will be meeting for the fourth time on November the 6th. This time I’ll be giving the first part of the session and I’ll be talking about how agile can be adopted by a small part (maybe a single team) inside a bigger organization that might be using other more traditional processes. Like always entrance is free but registration is required. So please register here (SAP our hosts did ask that you will remember to bring your event ticket to the meeting) You all are invited to attend and I also ask you to help us attract more people to the meeting. Please invite your friends, colleagues or anyone else you feel might be interested in coming. We really like to  grow up our relatively...

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Your code should Always be working

Source control branches is always a good topic to argue about. if you read any of my previous topic (or just know me a little) you are aware that personably I think those to be a complete waste of time and effort. My personal experience (which is validated against places I consult in) is that most usages of branches are covering some inherent process problems that best be solved instead of hidden. but that’s not what I want to  talk about. what I do want to discuss is one of the main argument people raise for justifying their need to use source branches. and usually it goes like this: yes we would love to work on one main trunk, we see the great value in that. However, not all programmer knows how to work their code without breaking...

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Posted in: Design,Engineering Practices

Agile Practitioners 2012 Update

I think this is my first post on the conference, so lets start from the beginning. On January the 31st. We will be having a big agile day conference locally in Israel. We have been working in the last few months to make everything happen, from bringing in international speakers, looking for great content locally to arranging for a place to host the event. we also brought up a website for the conference: http://agilepractitioners2012.com/. go there to get more details about what the conference is about. I would like to let you know (and remind those who do know) that the call for paper is still open and we are still looking for great sessions given by great people to have in the day. if you have anything worth sharing please come and suggest...

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Posted in: Agile Practitioners IL,Conferences

TDD for Legacy Systems

We know test automation is crucial probably even mandatory, and TDD is a great practice to use, but lets face it our existing system is not test friendly to say the least. so now what? TDD for Legacy system is  my way to help people tackle this problem. During this two day training we will learn how to cope with existing systems. We will go over the basics of Test First methodologies and learn how to turn a system from a big  chunk of legacy code, into something that is covered by a suite of automated tests. we will discuss issues of setting up a continuous integration server, different type of testing that can be applied, how to tackle existing system design and how to slowly but surely improve our code base while writing automated tests for the existing code. the training...

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Posted in: ATDD,Course,TDD