Category: Tools and Techniques

Agile Usability

If I had time, I would re-read Tom DeMarco’s book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency, because I have precious little slack in my own life, these days.  So it is that I just now got around to reading Jakob Nielsen’s article, Agile Development Projects and Usability, which William Pietri noted on the Agile Usability list on November 17.

The statement

“For a project to take interaction design and usability seriously, it must assign them ‘story points’ (i.e., resources) on an equal footing with the coding”

jumped out at me.  Alistair Cockburn wrote a thoughtful reply where he noted the same statement.  I agree with Alistair’s comments, but I’d like to comment on this statement from a slightly different perspective. Read More

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Categories: Responding to Change Tools and Techniques Working Software

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AYE 2008 – Congruent Coaching

Continuing with my recap of the AYE Conference sessions I attended, I come to Johanna Rothman‘s session, Choosing the Right Coaching Approach: Congruent Coaching. This was a time-slot where I wanted to attend every single session. I chose this session because coaching is a big part of what I do, and Johanna is one of the best people I know to learn to coach more effectively. Read More

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Categories: Individuals and Interactions Tools and Techniques

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AYE 2008 – Remembering Your Resources When Stressed

On last Monday afternoon, I attended the session, Remembering Your Resources When Stressed: The Self Esteem Toolkit led by Jerry Weinberg. This session dwelt on a idea Jerry borrowed from Virginia Satir. We have the capability to do the things we need to do, but we often forget our powers when we’re stressed. The toolkit is a set of reminders of the capabilities we have. Jerry has added to Virginia’s original list, and published them in More Secrets of Consulting. Read More

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AYE 2008 – Unearthing the Data You Need

The AYE 2008 (Amplifying Your Effectiveness Conference) is now history. I never have time to blog about this conference during the conference–I’m always too busy. Besides, it’s so rich with learning that it takes me awhile to process it. This year (my fourth at AYE), I’m going to look back through my notes and blog a little about each session I attended.

The first session I attended was titled First Steps for Organizational Change: Unearthing the Data You Need and was presented by Johanna Rothman. I say presented, but like all the sessions at AYE, the word “presented” doesn’t convey the essence of the session. Johanna presented a lot of information, to be sure. (And you can find some of the same material on the AYE Wiki.) But the power of AYE lies in the fact that all the sessions are experiential. In this session, we took turns, in small groups, interviewing each other, and observing each other interviewing. And after each interview session, we examined the experience in a debrief. The debrief is the heart of the experience, for it’s where we make our actions explicit to ourselves. And it’s where we share our insights with others, and share theirs.

A few Johanna tidbits from my notes:

  • Don’t be afraid to ask for quantitative data before starting an assessment, but don’t expect to get it.
  • I take notes [when interviewing people as part of an assessment], but everything is off the record.
  • Pay attention to differences between expectations and reality.

Thanks, Johanna, for a wonderful and rewarding session!

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Categories: Tools and Techniques

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Advice to a CIO about Agile Development

Esther Schindler quoted me in her article, Getting Clueful: 7 Things CIOs Should Know About Agile Development, on CIO.com. Unfortunately, my advice got altered a little in the editing process. She says,

Consultant George Dinwiddie from iDIA Computing suggests using a burn-down chart to track project progress.

I actually recommend a burn-up chart to track project progress, and a burn-down chart to track iteration progress.  There are specific reasons that I think a burn-up chart is superior to a burn-down for tracking over the course of a project or release. I’ve been meaning to write a long post about this, but haven’t found the time. I just wanted to correct the record, in the mean time.

The full comments of my note to Esther: Read More

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Categories: Tools and Techniques

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What Test-Driven Development is…

I know this has been bandied about hither and yon by lots of people. But I still see statements like the one by James Bach quoted on Matt Heusser’s blog that “the part of the testing problem they address is a small fraction of the whole.” Well, yes. Of course it is.

Maybe that’s because Test-Driven Development (TDD) isn’t a testing technique. It’s a software development technique that happens to create a safety net of unit tests.

Or, to paraphrase Captain Jack Sparrow, Read More

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Categories: Tools and Techniques

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Refactoring a House

Some of you may remember that I started a house construction project. Things are moving very fast, now, and the actual construction may take less time than it took to get all the necessary permits. So far, the project’s about 100% over the time budget. And people say that software development should be more like the construction industry!

But the fact that the construction has run slower than expected is not the reason for this post. Neither is the fact that this project has been consuming a large portion of my attention, and hindering posts on this blog.

This post is about an example of refactoring found in the house construction domain. Read More

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Categories: Responding to Change Tools and Techniques Working Software

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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