About Myths

To every Myth there is always an equal destructive (Stupid) and opposite counter Myth: Here are some Examples Myth You do not need to design up front Counter Myth Design is a one time effort which is best done before you start Reality You need to design some of your system up front and some of your system as you go. How much you need atg each stage depends upon your understanding of the problem, you technical skills & your system. Myth All user stories may be implemented independently from each other Counter Myth We must analyze all the dependencies between all features in order to lay out our critical path Reality There will always be some dependencies between different user stories, however a lot of those can be eliminated...

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Posted in: Agile practices. Random Thoughts,Design,Engineering Practices

Creating a Mini-Waterfall

Some people refer to sprints as mini-waterfalls. Well that’s a mistake, sprint are not that.  But a mistake or not, doing a Mini-Waterfalls still seem to be a natural step for some people when they start with their Agile transformation. So how do you create a mini-waterfall? well its not very hard like anything else when you create a mini-X you start by taking the X for example: and then you make the same thing just smaller. like this: see where this is going? I encountered several contexts in which a companies, after getting some basic knowledge about Agile, seem to think that they are already mostly Agile, and what left for them to do is just start working in short cycles. So in order to become “Agile”, they take their regular...

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Posted in: Agile Management

Can your team agree to this?

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Posted in: Agile practices,Engineering Practices

Do you think this guy is Agile?

A few days ago I read a very interesting article in one of the the local news site. the site was covering a speech given by a key figure. I’ve taken out some parts which I found extremely familiar. And yes I deliberately have taken it out of context as well, Try to see if you can guess who said this, what is his role, and in what context it was said: The following was said at the start of his speech: When we ask ourselves what is the one thing that distinguishes successful human societies from failing ones. Answer is: the ability to change. Later on I found this part: When this is in your core, when you know how change, the difficulties you are experiencing are only minor glitches. The world is becoming increasingly competitive, more and...

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Posted in: Agile Principles,Agile Values

“Introduction to Agile Process Management” Slides

Had great fun last week at the ALM user group meeting. Great audience with great questions and feedback, as well as meeting old and new faces. For those who missed my presentation, and those who want to refresh their memory, here are the slide...

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Posted in: Agile Management,Events

Must programmers know how to Test?

I was never asked before if a programmer should know how to test. The underlying assumption is that programmers know hoe to test their own work, and therefore are skilled at testing. Problem is that they are not. And the sad thing is that so far they have managed to get away with it. I’ve been a professional programmer(that is writing code for a living) for more than 10 years, in all the places I’ve worked my managers did ask me if I tested my work. And my answer was always “of course”.  But never was I actually challenged on that. No matter how many bugs were found in my code, no matter how much empirical proof there was that I did a bad job at testing. None of my technical managers ever told me, “please take this work back and test it again, and this time for real”, ever. And never...

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Posted in: Agile practices,ATDD,Random Thoughts,TDD

Must Testers know how to Program?

One of the most common question that rises when talking to testers in an Agile context is “Does testers have to posses programming skills in an agile team?” For a long time my answer to that was no, since testing includes vast number of activities which doesn’t require programming skill there will always be room for testers who cant program. However I think that I was mistaken. these days I would expect anyone who claims the title of a professional tester to posses some level of programming skills.  Testers who cant program are obsolete. This fact can not longer be ignored.  As automation gains a firm hold in our industry a tester must be able to significantly contribute to all automation effort. And while certainly one can contribute to this effort without knowing how to program,...

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Posted in: Agile practices,Agile Testing,Random Thoughts