f3yourmind

I finally uploaded the slide deck for the SD Times Practical Scrum webinar.  Get it from SlideShare (and embedded below).  The original webinar is available here (registration needed).

SD Times has started a series of Leaders of Agile webinars.  The last was on Continuous Delivery with Kent Beck facilitating a discussion with Jez Humble and Timothy Fitz.  The next in the series is on Practical Scrum which will, again, be lead by Kent .  I think it will be a interesting perspective coming from the person that brought us Extreme Programming and so much more.

Sign up, it’s free.

I am really, really thrilled to be speaking at Øredev in November, when I will be giving two talks.  It’s also a chance to spend time with good friends and just talking with amazingly, inspiring people – those people that always leave me feeling like I just slipped back a few rungs on the ladder.  Then I realise that the ladder was much higher than I thought.

You can check out the full program details here, but here is a personal perspective on the talks.

Architecture in an Agile World: On the agility track, this talk will have a distinctly technical flavor.  At the JCSE in July I gave a similar talk, but this will be more technical than that, I think.  There are many things that I observe in teams, but one screams at me most often.  Some  process/methodology is hauled in, some discipline is put in place.  People are set free, slavery is abolished.  Everyone is agile.  But the code is still imprisoned.  Then, you flatline and then you start the decline.  Agility is a lot about design too, and how you constantly need to find ways to move from ignorance to knowledge, and again, and again, and again, …

Truth and Reconciliation: Agile Lessons from the Rainbow Nation: In the S.African community I talk almost exclusively about agility at the code face, but there is another side with which I assist teams without casting labels – that is dealing with the social aspects of software development.  This talk is very personal, semi-biographical maybe, but something that I don’t see teams in S.Africa recognising, yet it is part of our history.  Ooops, that’s presuming a lot — it’s part of MY history, not yours.  This talk is on the collaboration track, largely about trust, but there are one or two twists and turns too.

And it’s time that Øredev heard some vuvuzela music!

For those of you that attended the Modeling out Loud deep dive at the S.Africa Scrum Gathering today, here are some things that I discussed.  It’s in no particular order, and it only makes sense if you attended the session.

• BDD Stories that are authored outside the team contributes to a hand-off which influences design decisions.
• Because we understand something does not mean that we know how to design it.
• Be aware of when you are analysing and when you are designing.
• Be concrete and abstract late.
• Use the scenarios to close the loop with product owners, stake holders, etc.
• Developers should write BDD stories and scenarios.
• We are less ignorant at the end of the sprint than at the beginning.
• Use code to close the feedback loop for your story.
• A story and it’s scenarios can be a representation of your model, just like a picture, UML, test code, production code.
• Seek out the behavior and express intentions.
• Use the value statement to explore alternative needs.
• Product owners should not write BDD stories
• Recycle stories if there are scenarios that you cannot commit to.
• Keep out the technical jargon.  The moment you get technical, then the story shifts to an implementation.
• Evolve and accept that it is ok to change … your story, your scenario, code, anything.
• Login is not a story

There was a lot more which we all discussed, so feel free to add what you got out of it as a comment for others to grab.

The slide deck which contained the code example is available at http://bit.ly/bhNkvQ.

And lastly, thanks for joining in.  I sincerely appreciate you making the time.

Remember that writing stories is a really difficult thing to learn, because is design is hard.  Persevere.

I got a tweet from Clive Seebregts which pointed me to an InfoQ article that made reference to an old Hanselminutes podcast that I did.  It’s nice to see that diversity is not being left in the wilderness and that other people are thinking about it again.  It seems like some people are trying to promote diversity and others are trying to manage the challenges of diversity.  Hmmm, somewhere there is point of brutal contact, but it will be for the good.

BTW, digging around on material diversity in agile teams I came across this video.  I didn’t know it existed at all.  Suddenly, the references to the FIFA 2010 World Cup seem sooooo dated.