Month: August 2007

Agile Bibliography

Do you have a hard time keeping track of those articles that you read and think “I could have used this when I was talking to ….?” Do you sometimes need an article to back up a point that you’re making, but don’t know where the data is? Well, I do. I’ve started lists a number of times, and keep misplacing them.

This time is different. When a discussion on one of the mailing lists got into studies demonstrating the effectiveness of Agile Software Development, I decided to start a list in a place that won’t get lost. That place is (well, was) http://biblio.gdinwiddie.com/, the Agile Bibliography Wiki.

I’d really appreciate it if you’d use it too.

UPDATE: After spending untold hours reverting changes from wiki spammers, I gave up. You can find the information archived on the Wayback Machine.

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Categories: Tools and Techniques

Carnival of the Agile Conference

The new Carnival of the Agilists is focused on the Agile 2007 conference.  You’ll find a bunch of references to blogs discussing the conference.  There’s some interesting stuff.  There’s even a pointer to my good friend, Jack Ganssle, who is not an Agilist and is highly allergic to people touting a New Methodology.  Jack is interested in things that work, and work well.  I was glad to see he had some good things to say.  The reason he did, is that people talked about things they had done and the results they got from doing them.  Telling those stories works ever-so-much better than telling your theories.

I found it amusing that the first response to the Carnival of the Agilists post was one complaining that the drinking water wasn’t obvious enough, being provided in coolers instead of bottles.  All I can say is that if this is the biggest complaint, the conference was a great success!

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Pair Programming techniques

Pair programming has been widely touted as a effective means of generating excellent code in a cost-effective manner. It has also been widely reported as a waste of time or as uncomfortable. Many people reject pair programming without trying it. Others, however, still don’t like it after being forced to use trying it.

I’m convinced that there’s an art and a science to pair programming. I don’t think it comes naturally to most people. It’s sometimes easy to pick up by osmosis, but I’ve heard too many complaints about pairing to think that’s a common occurrence. I’d like to hear your real-life stories about pair-programming situations. If you don’t feel comfortable leaving your story as a comment on this blog, send them to “pairprogramming at idiacomputing.com”. Read More

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Categories: Individuals and Interactions

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How to get people to do what you want

Back in March of last year, David Maister was interviewed by Wayne Turmel and he said some amazing things. I’ve been meaning to talk about this for some time, but the work of transcribing from audio has tempted me to put it off. I highly recommend listening to the whole thing.

David Maister is a business consultant, but what he says here is extraordinarily appropriate for most of us technical people, too. He describes starting out with the same vision of success that I had, and how completely wrong it was. Read More

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Categories: Individuals and Interactions

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