The Limits of Energy
Sometimes people just won’t do what you want them to do—what they should do—no matter how hard you try to persuade them. Why is that? Read More
Category: Responding to Change
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
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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Agility and context switching
A Steering manager uses the Law of Diminishing Response as a guide to successful control interventions. When you consider adding some pressure, the key variable to monitor is not people’s performance, but their responsiveness. How are they responding to the existing pressures? When they hear of a new “challenge,” do they drop their head a quarter of an inch and mumble an acceptance under their breath? Do they become annoyed and give a hundred reasons why it can’t be done? Do they show external signs of panic? These are all signs that they’ve reached the point where responsiveness has gone negative, yet they are unable to control their own response.
On the other hand, are people alert and genuinely enthusiastic, able to ask penetrating questions that need answering before accepting the extra work? Can they consciously trade off less important work for high-priority assignments? These are signs that their responsiveness is still above zero, so it’s okay to pile a little more fuel on the fire; but don’t make any assumptions about next time.
Jerry Weinberg, Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking
Last month, Dmitri Zimine posted a small rant against context switching. Read More
It’s all about feedback
It’s stabilizing feedback that keeps a simple amplifier working as an amplifier, rather than pegging the output at the maximum positive or negative voltage. The feedback mechanism observes the output and applies a small correction to the input to counteract overreactions. Because the feedback is swift, only a small correction is needed. In fact, if the feedback were delayed, the output would tend to swing back and forth, oscillating around the desired value.
In iterative software development, we use feedback to keep the project on task. Feedback from our unit tests lets us know if our code does what we intend. Feedback from our acceptance tests lets us know if our code does what the Customer wants. What could possibly go wrong? Read More