Great article by David about how “lean” Scrum is or can be.

Inspect the inherent Lean qualities of the Scrum framework along with various ways to help Scrum Teams improve using Lean Thinking.

Full article
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj161049.aspx

Why not?

Look at these numbers:

• 1000 developers
• 1.6 GB of an application
• 1,000,000,000 of users

and this system is deployed twice a day.
Scary if you compare this to our “little” projects

FaceBook ships twice a day
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/ship-early-and-ship-twice-as-often/10150985860363920

—> Standardize to avoid wasting time on arguments

Example: coding standards

Software Engineers are not the only to blame #HappyDays

I always thought that our industry has the biggest problems, especially after listening to Juval Löwy in the Architects Masterclass.

Look at this table at the bottom of this entry from March 2009
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/government-cost-overruns#sampling

Read More

#quote

Quality Software Management - Volume 1: Systems Thinking, page 276

Non experts are more likely to say

1. Yes, that’s what the books say
2. This is right
3. We either do it this proper way or not at all
4. This is wrong
5. I don’t know {awkward silence}
6. You are not following methodology X
7. I said it from the beginning

Experts are more likely to say

Read More

Q: Why do we need a Sprint Burndown or BurnUp in the 1st place?
A: Some teams use it to monitor the progress towards the Sprint Goal.
Another good approach is to use a physical board where you can see the progress very easily!

I had a discussion a while ago about what do we burn on the burndown chart:

1. Nr of tasks completed?
2. Nr of user stories completed?
3. Hours remaining per task?
4. Story Points remaining/completed?

The problems with burning “time for tasks”:

Read More

Three bad examples of user stories:

“As a developer, I want to integrate with other system in an IntegrationEnvironment, So that I can test the Integration”

“As a project team, we want to setup SharePoint, So that we can share documents”

“As a developer we want TFS as a build server, so that we can build code automatically”

I experienced lots of projects where we had those and those are a huge problem! They go in the same direction as the smell of having a “Sprint 0”

Read More

Team Performance Model by Drexler and Sibbet

For everyone who liked the “Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing” model of group development by Tuckman, here is another one. Tuckman doesn’t tell you how to get to the next stage  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman’s_stages_of_group_development

Remember “All models are wrong, some might be useful”

from George E. P. Box wikiquote

————————-

Interesting if you start thinking about modelling tools like EnterpriseArchitect or Vision or UML in general

If you are modelling and spend a lot of time doing it, beware of the “Irrational Artifact Attachment”

what changes people is what they do, not what they read.

Amazing Article from Ron Jeffries about Practice

http://xprogramming.com/articles/jatpractice/

Not a single men (women) on the world knows how to build a computer mouse (entirely from scratch)
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

And now I read the same about a pencil
http://mises.org/daily/4736

#fascinating

Nice article about Scrum -> MUST READ if you are into Scrum

1. A Majority of Agile Teams Are Using Scrum 
2. Scrum Offers Multiple Benefits
   - Insert high-value features, even late in the development cycle
   - Respond to a dynamic marketplace
   - Have ground-truth-based progress visibility
   - Incorporate customer feedback earlier
   - End a project early with delivered value
   
   
3. Scrum Is Not a Cure-All
    -> Scrum is not a silver bullet
4. Scrum Does Not Solve All Problems
5. Scrum Is Successful in Diverse Environments

http://construx.com/File.ashx?cid=3636

…application development groups tell me of using NoSQL databases to do an end-run around the DBAs.

I can totally see the reason for this ;-)

a troubling bottleneck for many organizations’ application development

I wouldn’t call DBAs “troubling bottleneck”… but there is some truth in this

although the NoDBA strategy is sometimes appropriate, engagement is often better

+1

Article from Martin Fowler
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/NoDBA.html

Great explanation why ASP.NET MVC rocks by colleague Eric Phan

1. Testability
   MVC provides true separation of concerns, and makes it easy to test the whole application from Unit Tests to Coded UI Tests
2. Instant Pages
   Get your admin pages up and running faster than ever with improved scaffolding. Don’t get bogged down doing Create, Edit, Update, Delete
3. Better HTML Markup Control
   Every layer of obstruction creates new problems down the track. When so much development now involves jQuery or other javascript libraries, MVC simplifies development by putting the developer back in charge of the HTML that is actually rendered
4. Simpler Debugging
   This means that instead of complicated Webform lifecycles, your code either goes into the Route, Controller or View, so you can jump right into coding without an intimate knowledge of the page lifecycle
5. Mobile Support
   With Adaptive Rendering, MVC allows the same User Interface to Render on Different Devices, so users can check it out on their PC, their Tablet or even their Smart Phone

Watch the video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ugMkda9IBw