Agile Thoughts

Agile Thoughts

By Lancer KindBusinessTechnologyEducationSelf-ImprovementManagement
Download on the App Store

Agile Thoughts episodes

  • 014 Why Devs don’t TDD
    CONNECT
    Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet.
    014 Why Devs Don’t TDD
    Honestly, doing TDD isn’t that hard, although if you listen to how a senior developer bemoans to his management why they can’t do TDD on their software, you’d think you’d need to have a team of geniuses to succeed.
     
    But plenty of new developers pick the practice up and accelerate so it isn’t about being smart or experienced enough. The reasons of why developers fail to adopt TDD are varied. We’ll explore the common ones in upcoming episodes staring:
     
    Vanilla Pop: “But if we add tests as we write the code, we’d capture developer intent.”
    Junior Joe: “Would you believe I’ve got 5 unit tests for that method?”
    Code-Dog: “You what? Did you say write tests *as* you build the code? You mean after you build the code, and only if you’ve got some time left before the Sprint ends.”
    Big Pic architect: “I don’t want to just test code, I want to test systems!”
    Horst the PO: (German scientist) “Ja, we have ways of making you build more functionality. We start with by enforcing a NO Unit TEST POLICY!”
    Jose Wisenheimer: “You say I should run Unit tests? Unit tests? We don’t need any stinking unit tests! We get the quality without those stinkers!”
     
    Next episode, Vanilla Pop and Code Dog experience TDD FUD spreading.

    0 min
  • 055 Look for Solutions to Problems rather than a Scaling Framework

    CONNECT Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet. 055 Look for solutions to problems rather than a scaling framework Bas Vodde: I’m Bas Vodde, […]

    The post 055 Look for Solutions to Problems rather than a Scaling Framework first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

    0 min
  • 055 Look for Solutions to Problems rather than a Scaling Framework
    CONNECT
    Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet.
    055 Look for solutions to problems rather than a scaling framework
    Bas Vodde: I’m Bas Vodde, the “accidental” creator of the large scale scrum or LeSS framework, and I’m spending most of my time building products, writing code, coaching, and giving trainings every now and then. And having a lot of fun doing that while trying to figure out weird organizational dynamics, cool technical problems, and contribute to open source every now and then. And that’s about it. Most of the rest of the time I like to spend with my family
    Dhaval Panchal: Dhaval Panchal, based in Houston, I work with organizations for the transition to Agile. I prefer that they don’t have a choice of how to do it, but more interested in solving real problems that they’re facing. And I’m also a Scrum trainer so I do training for folks. I like motorcycles and if I’m not paying attention in a meeting I’m most likely dreaming about football or soccer. You can find me on twitter @DhavalPanchal
    Lancer: I’ve a question for Bas. A vice president is looking for a scaling framework. He goes up to you and says, “Hey Bas, I hear you have a scaling framework. I’ve been looking at these other frameworks.” He goes through the list of them and then says, “So tell me, what is LeSS all about?”
    Bas: I would be uncomfortable with that discussion to start with. Saying “we need a scaling framework” is the wrong starting point because he’s already assumed too much. So I might just tell him that LeSS is a way of scaling by creating a simpler organization or I would tell him that if he’s looking for scaling framework right now, then he can pick one of the others and come back when he would like to talk about the problems he has in the organization first. Then we’ll help him solve that particular problem. Just assuming that you know all the problems and then assuming the solution is a scaling framework would be an awkward starting point.
    Lancer: Does it happen in real life?
    Bas Vodde: Not very often. I guess it does happen, but because LeSS is such a seemingly simple way of working, that person will want to look for something complex and–
    Dhaval Panchal: —complicated
    Bas Vodde: —so they will not seriously look at LeSS and that’s okay. When I work with organizations, I like to help them to figure out their problems, and not necessarily hand them a solu
    0 min
  • 061 Kanban Thanksgiving Part 2, was it a Success or Failure?

    CONNECT Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet. 061 Kanban Thanksgiving was it a Success or Failure? ​Thanksgiving.  It’s a time for families to get […]

    The post 061 Kanban Thanksgiving Part 2, was it a Success or Failure? first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

    0 min
  • 061 Kanban Thanksgiving was it a Success or Failure?
    CONNECT
    Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet.
    061 Kanban Thanksgiving was it a Success or Failure?

    ​Thanksgiving.  It’s a time for families to get together, interact, and feast.  The only question is, is your Thanksgiving high quality enough?  Are you and the important people in your life preparing for the event in an effective way?  Could we increase our joy with collaboration and could Agile processes help with that?  Mike Holton shares with us how he used Kanban to bring more joy and quality to his families Thanksgiving.

    What do you think? Is Mike going to succe

    0 min
  • 060 Kanban Thanksgiving

    CONNECT Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet. 060 Kanban Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. It’s a time for families to get together, interact, and feast. The […]

    The post 060 Kanban Thanksgiving first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

    0 min
  • 060 Kanban Thanksgiving

    CONNECT
    Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet.
    060 Kanban Thanksgiving
    Thanksgiving. It’s a time for families to get together, interact, and feast. The only question is, is your Thanksgiving high quality enough? Are you and the important people in your life preparing for the event in an effective way? Could we increase our joy with collaboration and could Agile processes help with that? Mike Holton shares with us how he used Kanban to bring more joy and quality to his families Thanksgiving.
    What do you think? Is Mike going to succeed? Will it blow up in his face? (Sound bite about Mike and wife conflict) Will Mike he kicked out of the house before Thanksgiving? Will his family deliver a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner? Find out next episode.
    Attributions:
    Sound samples from Freesound.org: klankbeeld, TyroneW, ancorapazzo, ivolipa, simosco and Robinhood76.

    0 min
  • 054 Ownership by Team and PO

    Dhaval: Here's what I liked is that at the end today's class, we were talking about the fact that competitor analysis is added as another product backlog item for the team to actually go and investigate on their own and take more ownership of the product, which is contrary in some respects. And you should correct me on this Bas.

    The post 054 Ownership by Team and PO first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

    0 min
  • 054 Ownership by Team and PO
    CONNECT
    Visit Agile Thoughts and register to receive free development, analysis, or leadership and management materials and learn to excel at developing software. I’ll also send information on my low cost email courses you can take via the internet.
    054 Ownership by Team and PO
    Lancer: Dhaval Panchal starts the discussion about teams and management.
    Dhaval: In 2010 there was a need to have a mobile development team and a web development team. Now when responsiveness came into play, the need to have two kinds of focus areas went away, because technology allowed them to take care of rendering into different kinds of devices, but that technology would have never come until the problem in the first place. So it’s almost like, you know, taking two steps forward, one step backward, and then some technology allows you to move a little bit ahead. Right? So when you look at the question of “what does scaling mean?” To me it means, “can we build the tools that actually help us to get better?” As opposed to “how can I find a lot of work for all the people?”
    There will always be new technology that is going to make what you were completely obsolete. And if you have the capability to build your own tools, to build your own improvement by building your own tools, then you’re not dependent on an external agent to come sell you that tool.
    Dhaval: There’s a lot of motivation for someone to build the technology tool to actually solves the problem.
    Like for example, in one of the companies that I was working with did gaming design. The tool they were using to do design was an internal tool and that was the least funded effort in the entire organization when instead it should have been the largest funded effort because it saves the designers a tremendous amount of time. Instead the designers were making their own internal hacks and shortcuts to overcome the tool shortcoming and they were hiring more and more designers to cope with the fact that they have to do a lot of design. And that problem will never be solved by adding more people to the design department when the problem is you have really bad tools to do the work.
    Lancer: Does scaling your organization well avoid that?
    Bas: I guess you can generalize it as simply when you grow larger, gradually people take away more and more responsibility from the team. So you get less responsible teams. And the tools aspect is just just one of the symptoms.
    Lancer: So if a teams are becoming less responsible than something else is stepping in to provide things. Um, so maybe we’re talking about those like, “hey, we’re going to h
    0 min

About Agile Thoughts

From the publisher's feed

In the time it takes to receive a Starbucks coffee, Lancer Kind covers how to consistently release software with zero defects, and how to guide teams and organizations through changes necessary to do Continuous Delivery. The Mandarin edition is at (中文版):