About Steven Thomas

Steven Thomas an independent Agile Programme Manager.

Which Gherkin Scenarios go in which Feature File

I believe that you should break the link between Gherkin files and the Epics / User Stories that triggered the Gherkin Scenarios. The Gherkin files should be organised in a way that usefully describes the evolving product. You need to accept that a User Story can affect Scenarios in multiple Gherkin files. Once the User Story is done you can and should forget about it. But the Gherkin Scenarios have a life long after the User Story is gone.

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User Story Dependencies are more Apparent than Real

What do I do when a User Story is dependent on another? Well, the most important thing is, to quote the Hitch Hiker’s guide to the Galaxy, “Don’t Panic!”.

I believe dependencies between User Stories are often over played. Sure there are dependencies but often these don’t require any particular management. But even more common are invented dependencies, i.e. dependencies that are more apparent than real. This means dependencies for me are a bit a of requirements smell, i.e. something to be worried about.
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You can go a long way with a Shonky User Interface

“Shonky” means poor or low quality where I come from. I realised it was a Kiwi phrase, or at least Antipodean, when I told my current UK based team to “give me a shonky user interface (UI)”. They looked puzzled, then laughed, then asked me what I meant, then laughed again, then adopted the phrase into the team vocabulary.

Aside from the entertaining aspect of my request, it does raise two questions:

  • What is a Shonky UI?
  • Why on earth would anybody ask for a Shonky UI?

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Reporting Percentage Complete on an Agile Project

What do you do when management asks for a percentage complete on an Agile project? The flippant answer is “tell them the percentage complete”. Agilists reject percentage complete when reporting on low level stuff. But for the project as a whole you can get quite an interesting metric, one that is based on real data, so why not calculate and share it.

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Three Ways to Control Scope in an Agile Programme

I both embrace change and also fight like crazy to reduce scope creep. On my current programme I use three main techniques to control scope: Programme Vision, Release Goal, and Requirements Trade-off. In different ways all of these put the business in control of what is in/out of scope. But they all help me stay within budget and time constraints.
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Research on Pair Programming by Professionals

Research on Agile technical practices are few and far between. The research that exists often uses students as the test subjects so doesn’t necessarily reflect professional practice, particularly not by senior professionals. In 2006 I got my company of the time involved in some research on pair programming. What was different about this study was that the subjects were professional developers. The results were interesting as, in general, they didn’t bear out claims that pair programming improved quality or speeded up development. But pairing does take a lot more effort. This is why I am selective about encouraging pair programming, restricting my active encouragement to discovery mode.
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