Tobias Fors

Category: Agile

  • Use, Adapt, Transcend

    This article by Dave West on InfoQ might be an interesting read if you’re interested in theories of software development.

    “Both Lean and Agile must stop applying, in a literal and rote manner, the tools and practices. Tools and practices are nothing more than expressions of values, principles and philosophy. They are not the only possible expressions and may not even be the best expressions. Neither side will be able to realize their respective founders’ admonition to “use, adapt, and transcend” until and unless they come to understand why the practices and tools are what they are.”

  • Solid Motivation

    Here’s a fun way to explain a few important software design concepts. I look forward to a surge of this new kind of motivational posters in team rooms everywhere …

  • Theory of Software Development

    In today’s Computer Sweden, Ivar Jacobsson plugs his company’s latest offerings and requests a theory of software development. I haven’t tried his latest products, so I won’t comment on them. They might be great. However, one thing that puzzles me about the article is the absence of anything concerning useful theories applicable for software development.

    Ivar Jacobsson rails at the prevalance of practices but, at least in this article, doesn’t even come close to touching on any relevant theories. Instead, it seems to me that he promotes even more practices. I’m sure things will clear up for me once I get my hands on his latest toolbox. Unless, of course, I have to pay a lot of cash to get it, in which case I probably won’t get my hands on it.

    In that case, I might just spend my time by learning a bit more from those who seem to come closer to a set of working theories useful for understanding software development work. Like Gregory Howell and Lauri Koskela, in their provocatively titled paper “The Theory of Project Management is Obsolete”. Or like Don Reinertsen, who uses queueing theory to understand certain aspects of getting stuff out the door. Or like Mary Poppendieck, who also likes lean thinking and has made her own attempt at translating those thoughts to our world. I’m not sure these three would necessarily agree with each other if they met, but they are trying to find new ways of understanding the theoretical underpinnings of development work.

  • Thriving Through the Credit Crunch

    Clarke Ching has written a nice little piece that’s available as an online read on Slideshare, and embedded below. It’s short and plain enough that it has the potential of becoming widely read. I’m predicting it will spread quite fast. Executive summary: releasing wanted software soon and frequently ties up capital for shorter durations, which is A Good Thing in cash-tight times.

    Rocks Into Gold – Helping Programmers THRIVE through the Credit Crunch – by Clarke Ching

    View more presentations from cching. (tags: critical goldratt)

  • Jeff Sutherland at Öredev 2008

    Here’s a video of a talk by Jeff Sutherland at Öredev 2008. Although I still find all his numbers suspect, because I don’t understand what he does to actually measure productivity of the teams he works with – I still like to listen to him speak. His ambition to push the envelope and find new ways to look at the things we work with is what manages to inspire me, not all his numbers.

  • Kom på Scrumkurs med mig

    Den 10-11 februari ska jag köra min nästa öppna Certified Scrum Master-kurs i Uppsala. Det finns fortfarande några platser kvar – så jag tycker att du ska komma om du vill lära dig mer om Scrum.

  • Johanna Rothman: “Lessons Learned in Project Management”

    Here’s a video of a speech with Johanna Rothman, one of the hosts of our upcoming PSL workshop, and also the subject in this mp3 interview.

  • Changes, Then Rules, Then Changes, Then …

    David Schmaltz writes:

    “Within SEI, there were (probably still are) two factions. I heard (just hearsay) that two principals at SEI approached two of the Agile Manifesto signatories to wish them luck shortly after the manifesto was made public. Apparently they had carried the same intentions in founding the SEI, but were compromised when the suits showed up.”

    I have no idea whether this specific story is true or not, but I wouldn’t be the least surprised, because this is something that seems to be happening all the time. It’s probably a part of How Things Are. Something new starts growing, and as attempts are made to describe and spread that new thing, it gradually changes from being new to being something stale and overly simplified. In fact, the very things needed to spread that new thing are the same things that prevent it from staying fresh. So the new things dies – or rather transmutes into a new form. Gradually, the pressure builds for some other new thing to emerge, and eventually it does. When the changes are great, the transitions are painful.

    So what can you do? I’ll tell you what I will do. I will keep checking my value compass, and if it shows me running off into the wild as I blindly follow my practice map, I’ll trust my compass over my map.

    David concludes, in the comments to the post:

    “I’ll serve spaghetti with sourkraut if I’m hungry and that’s what’s in the pantry. This because whenever a method gets embraced ideologically, whatever the method, the result is exactly the same. Mindfulness replaced by certainty. Thoughtfulness replaced by enforcement. Degrees of freedom transformed into degrees of imprisonment.”

    – – –

    Why not read a little tonight?

  • The Challenge of Making Knowledge Explicit

    What happens when we try to break down processes that are really too complex to explain in the details, and then teach the process as if it was a stepwise instruction? We run the risk of dumbing down the process to exactly that which we can transfer explicitly, as this classic Internet meme perfectly illustrates:

  • Computer Sweden missförstår om återblickar

    Peter Larsson på Computer Sweden ringde upp mig efter att ha läst om återblickar och Scrum på min Scrumtips-blogg. Han frågade om brister i Scrum, och jag svarade som jag brukar, att det är svårt att peka ut brister i Scrum som modell, för den är ganska liten och tajt. Däremot finns det vissa problem som många springer på när man börjar med Scrum. En sådan är att man glömmer att göra återblickar, som är väldigt viktiga för att få arbetssättet att fungera. Återblicken är ju vårt sätt att gradvis bygga upp vår kapacitet som organisation, genom att hela tiden reflektera och lära oss.

    Peter frågade mig rakt på sak om återblickar är en del av Scrum. Jag svarade ja, men uppenbarligen var jag inte tillräckligt tydlig, för i hans publicerade artikel skriver han istället raka motsatsen mot detta:

    Ytterligare en brist i Scrum är avsaknaden av bra stöd för återblickar, det som på engelska kallas för sprint review. Det är tydligt vad projektet åstadkommit i varje sprint, men när det gäller att diskutera hur detta gjorts så uppstår problem.

    De orden har, med rätta, lett till en del förvirring bland oss som intresserar oss för Scrum.

    Lärdomen från detta är väl att det är klokt att insistera på att få läsa artiklar innan de går i tryck. Det borde väl ligga i båda parters intresse att det slutliga verket inte innehåller rena sakfel?