The ticket moves to “Dev Done” but there are no unit tests and the code hasn’t been reviewed. When challenged the developer says “That’s because I don’t have time for that stuff”. If I hear that I want to know why they feel they don’t have time, then I give them the time.
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Tag Archives: agile
Fluid Planning and Execution Creates Agility
Thought leaders in the US military are challenging traditional approaches to command and control. These military innovators are proposing a more fluid approach that allows simultaneous planning and execution. It is good to see they are catching up but as an Agile practitioner I already do fluid planning and execution.
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Whose responsibility is testing anyway?
I have a painfully small manual test team, sometimes 1 tester per 15 developers. The answer to the obvious question “who tests?” is “mostly the developers”. Of course this only works if you’re doing extensive automated testing including Specification by Example with a tool such as Cucumber.
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Cake Driven Development
I don’t know whether it is me or whether it is just people, but my teams tend to obsess about food. Particularly cake. Food entwines itself in the team culture. And that is why I think it is worth a blog post.
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No space to co-locate team – think again
I knew I had a big problem when I walked into the new programme space and found 18 desks. 18 wasn’t enough. I predicted I would have about 35 people on the team and I wanted them together. Co-location is so important to me that I will always challenge the assumption of “there is no space”. And I have found there are lots of things I can do to get my team together.
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When Buckets Go Bad
I use the term Bucket Planning for Release Planning. The metaphor works because buckets overflow if overfilled. There are risks associated with Release buckets corresponding to Minimum Viable Products (MVP). A large MVP bucket has gone bad and a MVP Bucket that continues to grow is a Bucket gone really bad.
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Cucumber: Who writes the Gherkin Scenarios
Gherkin, the language used in Cucumber to write tests, is meant to be understandable by folk from the business. I haven’t encountered product owners able to write their own scenarios. And I don’t trust either developers or testers to do it on their behalf. The only people I trust are business analysts trained to write and think Gherkin.
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What to do when Scope is Fixed
Sally was a prospective customer of mine. She worked for a high profile but rather old school company and wanted a fixed price contract. Sally genuinely thought her business analysts had nailed down the scope and was confident nothing would change. From her perspective all I had to do was price the work and deliver the product. Sounds perfect except Sally was wrong. My experience is that, fixed price or not, scope is never fixed. Pretending nothing is going to change is a form of self-delusion. Sally was deluded. What should I have done?
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Bucket Planning – Helpful Metaphor for Agile Release Planning
I sometimes call a Release Plan a Bucket Plan and the process Bucket Planning. I like the metaphor because if you overfill a bucket you end up with a mess on the floor – and the business gets that.
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Glad Sad Mad Retrospectives
The guys at Agility in Mind (AIM) recently ran a retrospective for me. I thought their approach was cute and worth a quick post. They prompted the team for things that made them glad, sad and mad.
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