http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog Thoughts on Agile Software Development Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:08:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This is a long overdue announcement as I joined Pivotal Labs in 2006, after I left Nominum. But we are trying to raise our profile recently as we no longer want to be “the best kept secret in software.” (This is a quote from more than one client.) Anyway, check out ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/51 Most software practitioners I’ve met think the choice of technologies (programming languages, tools, libraries, etc.) has the largest influence on a project’s success. I actually think it is a minor influence and I think the project’s alignment with market demands is the single largest determinant of success. While there are those ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/50 A good friend of mine, Iraklis Kourtidis, coined the phrase Costco-style programming. He described it by example: “I’ve had spinach in one of my dinner dishes each night this week. Not because I particuarly like spinach or it actually went with the meal, but because I bought a big bag ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/49 Every now and then someone makes a call for collective brain power; it may be someone in a blog posting or a CEO addressing his staff. The odd thing, at least to me, about such requests is that they frequently occur after some suboptimal individual attempt at solving the original ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/48 Okay, so my title may be little exaggerated, especially since there isn’t officially an Agile 2.0. However, for the agile development community, there are many shifts, trends and new ideas that make it feel like a new generation of agile development. (More on this later.) Anyway, I’ve been following some of ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/47 Agile development is structured on iterative and adaptive development. The application evolves over time and, at least hopefully, closer matches the user’s needs. The basic process of agile development is a genetic algorithm; after each iteration, adaptations are made and the whole process repeats with each iteration. The success of a ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/46 Superficially, there are many ideas and practices that are in common with agile development and waterfall development. There is a Agile Unified Process, for example and an “XP plugin” for the Rational Unified Process. However, I think agile development is quite different than waterfall, though it is not always easy ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/45 In a previous blog post, I ranted a bit about how candidates can make themselves more attractive to employers. While I still am interested in things from a employer’s perspective, there are three critical consideration for a candidate: Do I want to do the role offered? Is there an opportunity ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/44 I have interviewed a lot of people over the years. (I’ve hired over 50 people, interviewed hundreds, phone screened many more and read thousands of resumes.) While I don’t claim to be any sort of recruiting expert, there are two things I can intelligently (as much as I can for ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/43 In a recent blog post I discussed the “Market / Application Gap.” In order for a software product to succeed, it must align with the user’s needs. The faster an organization can bridge the gap between the market and the actual application, the greater its competitive advantage and its opportunity ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/42 Lowering the cost of change is a frequently cited benefit of adopting agile development and extreme programming, in particular. You’ll frequently see graphs drawn that show an exponentially growing cost curve as the cost of change for a waterfall project and graphs that show a level or even down sloping ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/41 I think in a software project there are varying notions of reality regarding the actual application being developed. They are: actual needs of the market or user base product owner’s vision of the application developer understand of the goals and requirements of the application code base and actual executable application This is represented in the ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/40 My blog has not seen a post in a long, long time… My last post even promised that I would post more. Excuses aside, I do sincerely plan a lot more posts in the coming future. As I noted in an earlier post, I have taken a position at one ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/39 This is my first posting since March. That’s a long time. Since my last post I’ve left consulting and I am now currently the VP of Engineering for Nominum, Inc. I started at Nominum as a consultant, to lead their Scrum and XP adoption. I decided to stay and a major ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/38 There have been many discussions about the appropriateness of the term “tests” in describing the unit tests created during test driven development. Most of the debate has centered around the overloaded use of the term “test”. For many, the expectation of testing is to discover bugs. There are also many ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/37 This is a revised posting. I got a little carried away with my math in the example. Sorry. I was working with a team that had been gradually adopting agile practices, but the developers were resistant to practicing Test Driven Development. At one point, I decided to start tracking how ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/36 Maybe the customer shouldn’t write the acceptance tests, or at least all of the acceptance tests. I know this sounds like heresy, especially coming from an XP coach. But let me explain… I’d like the customer to write the acceptance tests. I think they must be intimately involved in the acceptance ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/35 Lately, I’ve been trying to explain the reasons why dummy-data classes are a smell in software. Dummay Data classes are classes that do not have behavior, only data. I thought of a different way to illustrate the problem, as the common arguments have not seemed sufficient lately. Consider scrabble. When someone ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/34 Brian Marick recently posted a blog entry noting the importance of marketing agile development to executive management. As stakeholders, management stands to gain the most from agile development. The timing of Brian’s post is somewhat coincidental, as this topic has been on the forefront of my mind. I think the next ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/33 Currently, I am working with a team that is transitioning to XP. Besides coaching the team, I am coaching one individual to be a coach so he can eventually be the team’s coach. As a result, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of coaching. In an earlier ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/32 I think the mission of an agile coach is to keep a project on the road to success. He monitors the effectiveness of the team and makes adjustments as necessary. My father compares parenting to bumper bowling; a parent’s job is to keep the ball out of the gutter. But, ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/31 I used to be plagued by nagging concerns about certain omissions and shortcomings of extreme programming (XP). Over recent months, I have come to the conclusion that my thinking on the topic was flawed; I used to criticize XP for not addressing a variety of issues such as the integration ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/30 I have been struggling with this question for some time. I don’t think I have an answer, but I do have an idea. An agile process is a process that promotes: discovery Requirements, risks, architectures, strengths, weaknesses, proficiency, and throughput are examples of project and team elements that emerge or are discovered ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/29 I have been spending a lot of time thinking about testers and XP lately. It has caused me to start thinking about other typical roles and their place in XP. So, what about software architects and XP? The short answer is that they have no place. I say this with ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/28 Brian Marick, in a related blog entry, discusses an interesting perspective on the issue of comments in source code. As he frequently does, Brian brings another dimension and perspective to the topic. Brian discusses the expectations of your audience and provides an example of code in C, that ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/27 I have been ranting for a while (see this post) that the agile development literature is severely lacking. I am mostly concerned with the actual implementation of an agile process and all the real world issues that arise. “How do you train a customer to be a good XP ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/26 I was reading a rather long winded comment in some source code and I started to hear the voices in my head rant about comments in code. This particular comment was written by a rather bright individual who insists on commenting his code. (To make matters worse, he uses C# ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/25 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction. –Albert Einstein I have always believed in Einsten’s quote. There is a related one: Everything should be as simple as possible but ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/24 Upon recent refelections of Agile Fusion and the corresponding forum discussions, I’ve had a couple of “aha” moments. We have been asking the question, “What is the role of testers in XP?”. Perhaps this is the wrong question. It is a little too general and implies its answer is prescriptive ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/23 I frequently read and hear about claims that “XP won’t work for us” or “I can’t see how we could do XP”. XP isn’t appropriate for every development context, but it works in suprisingly more settings than it may first seem. There is a mathematicl technique known as reductions that I ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/22 At Agile Fusion, Michael Feathers demonstrated a technique he learned from Ron Jefferies, that Ron called Ironman CRC. While at Agile Fusion, a few of us used the term Naked CRC, which I think is much better as it is more memorable and better describes the technique. This is really ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/21 While a freshman in college, I took an introductory physics class where one of the professors, though a really nice person, insisted on using the adjective “obvious” to describe most concepts. Every now and then, something was “more or less clear” or “relatively straightforward”. A few of my friends ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/20 QUESTION: I plan (hope) to make frequent postings about NBuilder to organize the project and provide a basis for reflection. For xTeamWorks I started a separate blog in anticipation of it becoming a distraction for anyone reading my normal blog. Anticpation is bad (not to mention my arrogant presumption that ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/18 In a previous entry, I noted that I am beginning to work on NBuilder again. As I am starting a new, I am trying to be quite disciplined in adhering to the principles of XP and TDD. (I hope to be critical and consider if I follow these principles ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/17 “NBuilder is an application framework for developing enterprise and information system applications. It provides support for the development of an object-oriented persisted domain model. It includes tools for modeling the domain, generating code for the domain entities and application, and a series of base classes that allow the rapid development ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/16 During a recent dinner conversation in my home, one of my guests asked what I do and I started talking about agile software development. There was a general response as to why doesn’t everyone develop software this way, as if it was so logical it would be common sense. The ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/15 Bill and I started to work on xTeamWorks. I am not sure what is the best method of organizing all of this and I don’t know how many people will actually be interested in reading all of this. Anyway, this will be few of several cross posts between two blogs, ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/14 I am starting work, with the help of William Rakocy, on a web based collaboration tool for managing an XP project. I work remotely quite often so it would help to have online access to story cards to other project items. I have experimented with some wikis, MS Excel files ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/12 I recently presented this paper at a talk at Agile Development Conference 2003. Agile Development and Remote Teams: Learning to Love the Phone I’d love to get people’s impressions and feedback. http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/11 Based on interest to my talk at the Agile Development Conference on remote agile development, I have started a yahoo group on the topic. I encourage you to join the group if you have any interest of experience with agile software development, remote teams or just want another group to ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/10 I had a discussion recently with someone about something I read in the Pragmatic Programmer, by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. They write of the importance of developing proficiency with keyboard commands and text editor, to increase productivity by reducing keystrokes and mouse movements. There is merit in the book’s ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/9 I was at Agile Fusion last week, an event intended to explore the ways testers could be integrated into XP, and though there was a lot of good dialogue, there was no resolution. I am not disappointed by this, as this issue is not something you simply “solve” in one ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/8 Lean Development Toolkit I went to Mary Poppendieck’s tutorial on the Lean Development Toolkit. The following is a sampling of ideas that were most important to me: An organization’s ability to embrace change and deliver fast is a competitive advantage. I see this as a core motivation of agile development. Software is a ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/7 I don’t think all development teams should always try to go faster. I think they should always try to improve, but this doesn’t always imply speed. I am responding to an attitude I see prevalent in the agile, particularly XP, community, where speed is worshipped. It isn’t that I think ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/6 Yesterday, during an open space discussion about introducing agile development to an organization, questions were raised about what is the role of product managers and project managers in an agile process. Most agreed that this isn’t addressed in the literature (at least to the group’s knowledge of the higher profile ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/5 I have a lot of random ideas that spark my interest. Some of these are worth formulating and exploring; other are nothing more than a mental soundbite. I am trying to capture and record them, in the hope that I may either one day explore them or, in the process ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/4 I am at the first Agile Software Development Conference this week. I am excited because I am really interested in agile development and I will be presenting a paper on remote agile development, a topic of particular interest to me (more on this in a future posting). I am ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/3 So I have finally done it. I have started my very own blog. I have been intending to keep a journal for some time now. It was just one of those things that I hadn’t got around to doing. Andy Tinkham convinced me it was about time, though it didn’t ... http://www.christiansepulveda.com/agileblog/archives/2