Category: Customer Collaboration

What is Agile?

There’s a thread on the Extremeprogramming yahoogroup attempting to define Agile. John Roth started this thread with a trial balloon of ways to recognize an Agile project from easily observed practices. I have a bit of difficulty with this definition; I think that it’s too prescriptive and, while it could be a useful heuristic, would miss the mark in numerous cases. To my mind, it doesn’t zero in on the heart of Agile practice.

So what is the heart of Agile practice? In the ensuing discussion, Dale Emery posts a message the turns attention to feedback.

The whole team focuses intensely on producing accurate, relevant, timely feedback about product, project, and process.

I’ve written about the importance of feedback, before. Using feedback is not the defining aspect of Agile, of course. Using feedback is the basic mechanism for any control system. Read More

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Categories: Customer Collaboration Responding to Change

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The Case of the Recalcitrant Customer

Over on the ScrumDevelopment yahoo group, a ScrumMaster reported problems getting the Product Owner fully involved in the development process. Part of the problem is that the Product Owner isn’t co-located with the development team. The physical distance will certainly make participation more difficult, and less sure. That’s something to work on.

The Product Owner is not following the “rules” of Scrum, and this is frustrating the ScrumMaster. He’s likely right that playing the game by the rules will benefit everyone. He asks for advice on how to handle the situation. Read More

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Categories: Customer Collaboration Individuals and Interactions

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The construction analogy — estimation

What got me thinking about the construction analogy with software development was a recent conversation I had with a design/build contracting company. We’re in the market for a new house. We sketched our design (which we’ve worked on for quite some time) and wrote up a list of general assumptions about level of quality and some details that we wanted. We sent this out as a letter to a bunch of builders.

That sounds somewhat like your typical business requirements document, doesn’t it? It’s too detailed (specifying implementation details) while simultaneously failing to mention important points. But it’s a starting point for conversations. Read More

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Categories: Customer Collaboration

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The construction analogy

I’ve always been of the opinion that software construction is not like physical construction. Or, rather, that the construction part, analogous to hammering two-by-fours together when building a house, is running the compiler. And, of course, you rarely tear a house down and rebuild it over and over, until you get it right. Therefore, software development is nothing like mechanical construction.

Except, of course, when it’s very much like mechanical construction.
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Categories: Customer Collaboration Responding to Change

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