Progressive Development - All Comments

re: Motley says: "I am a developer - I don't test. Testing is for the test team."

James Waletzky — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:40:01 GMT

Thanks, Brent. I'll have to find some time to keep the story going. And I agree - it's always an uphill battle convincing developers of the value of testing, and how it hurts to skimp on this in the long run.

re: Motley says: "I am a developer - I don't test. Testing is for the test team."

Brent Jensen — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:37:23 GMT

Still one of my favorite posts. It's amazing how much (little) has changed in the time since you wrote this.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

John Quincy — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:38:42 GMT

I have never witnessed SCRUM working -- ever! Any project that started out as 'agile' but ultimately succeeded did so only because common sense finally set in and the decision makers decided to abandon the fad.

I'm convinced that the following video hit the nail squarely on the head as to why any company has ever attempted agile:

www.youtube.com/watch

John

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

demopublic — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:50:17 GMT

"Scrum, to me, has made software development fun again"

FYI, when you have fun, time goes by quickly. We're developing product here for pete's sake. It's serious business building good products, not college prototypes they always stay in beta.

Scrum is great if you want to pass your failures onto your customers. In the end, it takes a good lead, supportive management, and developers that don't act like kids and know where their domain knowledge lies.

In the end, a To-Do list works 100% better.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Tyrone — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:27:49 GMT

Jim, You are surprised that hackers bristle at the idiocy of accountants yet again running the development endeavor? Empowerment !? Are you serious? What self respecting hack uses words like that. You sound like the executive poster child.. Thats the kind of vocabulary that the talking heads use when they don't have a clue what you do and are trying to insert some kind of control.

re: Motley says: “Just build the features, and they will come. Who needs a goal?”

Lior — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:08:59 GMT

I mostly use goals as a longer term objectives. Mainly for releases (3-4 months) or to tie together a few sprints at a time.

But maybe that was because my sprints are usully vey short (1 or 2 weeks)

anyway glad to see that maven and morely are back at it ;)

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Ken Broach — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:35:07 GMT

Methodology Madness, that hits the nail on the head. SCRUM is just another is a long line of fluffy crap methodology that provides no benefits other than ridiculous role playing wank. The devil is in the detail not in the silly post-it note on the wall stuck by some idiot who believes "software is fun". We don't hear "accounting is fun" or being "a lawyer is fun" - so why do programmers have to be treated like five year olds handing them out crayons, and post-it notes or little cards in case too much info has to be read. I image the next agile methodology will promote the wearing of stupid hats and playing dungeon and dragons and everyone chanting "fun is good".

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

James Waletzky — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:36:19 GMT

Thanks, Dave. Interesting article. I cannot say I agree with it. I am actually pro-Scrum and have had good successes with it. The article above comes from someone who either hasn't tried it, hasn't tried it in the right circumstances, or tried it without a coach of some kind.

Scrum is not a silver bullet project management methodology, and I disagree with his claim that it is for cowboy programmers and non-technical managers. Scrum is less applicable when requirements are known, or can be determined up front. However, in a case like when we built Kinect, we had to discover what to build as no one had done anything like it. The iterative approach worked well, while keeping quality high.

His claims on waterfall working well in project environments where the client has a good idea of what the requirements are definitely apply. In a situation where there are lots of unknowns, there is no way I would want to understake waterfall.

I also think the cake metaphor can be taken too far. I disagree that his assertion that you need to bake the cake first before you can slice it. You need a high-level architecture design, yes, but think of the cake more as an architecture diagram vs. finished product. Agile still requires discipline - you can build in small pieces and iterate, with constant refactoring. It actually is an effective way to build software, given the right circumstances.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Dave Ziffer — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:38:28 GMT

re: Motley says: "The management team refuses to change. I give up."

Jordan — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 03:11:19 GMT

Well im 11 and i hate that u cant change the background!!!!!! CHANGE IT!!!!! What kind of kid or adult want a laptop that cant change a background!!!!!! IM MAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

SIck of Scrum — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:21:05 GMT

I agree with others here who have experienced Scum and the result. We've adopted it at my company and quite frankly developer moral has crashed. It has become micro-management h*ll with managers asking developers to arrive early to help them cut out the little colored bits of paper to paste on their white boards. This will never go on my resume. I get more work done at home in the evenings than I do at work. My job use to be great ... now after a year of agile-crap and scrum... it is truly a scum-environment. I hate scrum and I hate agile... It produces nothing but crap code... This stuff is a blight on software development that hope will soon die...

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Scrum sucks — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 03:41:56 GMT

There is no replacement for good management, and it certainly isn't this retarded thing called scrum. The fact is that scrum fails to grasp basic human nature. As you become more experienced, do you want to have more freedom and responsibility in your job? Of course. You certainly don't want to be treated like a clock-punching manufacturing turd.

I've been subjected to scrum at multiple companies and the same thing always happens. The best people leave or are allowed to ignore its idiotic mandates... the daily meetings that micro-managers love because it makes them feel like they're on top of things, having the PO change decisions on a whim, etc.

In fact, I think if you have bad management, scrum will make things WORSE, not better. Do you want to build the wrong thing? Or do you want to build the wrong thing and make everybody miserable at the same time?

re: Motley says: "A good design is all in the eye of the beholder" (Part 1)

James Waletzky — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:12:01 GMT

Hi Helen,

Glad the blog helps! Feel free to let me and the community know what questions you have and we'll do our best to answer them.

What are your biggest challenges as an agile coach?

James.

re: Motley says: "A good design is all in the eye of the beholder" (Part 1)

Helen Macqueen — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:53:41 GMT

Hi James, just stumbled across your website. I'm a BA working as an Agile coach currently with a client that has some real challenges with its dev practices (or lack of them), so finding you has been extremely helpful!

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

James Waletzky — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:12:36 GMT

I am a little surprised at all the negative comments on Scrum. Perhaps teams are trying to do it "too-by-the-book". Perhaps they are misapplying it in places where it doesn't belong. Perhaps the people that have been successful with it are just quiet :-).

Our team uses Scrum with good success. That said, we are always practicing Kaizen (continuous improvement) to make things better. As a result, the Scrum process morphs into our own home-grown version that works for us.

Scrum is not for everyone - I agree. Depending on the needs of your project, some other process may be more suitable. No argument here.

The example you, Tim, give about just doing a simple task that takes 15 minutes avoiding the backlog formality is reasonable. Your team is empowered to make the decision to just do it. The worry is that the 15 min tasks become too frequent, cause too much context switching, and prevent you from getting the more important tasks done. If it is well managed, then this shouldn't be a problem.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Tim — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:41:07 GMT

We mostly like Scrum where I work, but it's getting pushback. We have a "Scrum Pro" QA person on staff, that we hired for basically this purpose. We also sent a bunch of people to Scrum Master training.

Mostly, we like it. It works for some of our projects. But we have some where it just feels like it's being shoe-horned. For example, if you have a small project with two team members, how much of the formal process do you really really need? Or if the customer is okay with the risks, but wants a simple change (that you know is simple and doesn't require a big process and only takes 15 minutes) is it really necessary to augment the backlog, push around features, go through QA to "okay" the changes, and tell the customer to wait until the end of the sprint?

Scrum is not one size fits all.

The funniest thing, to me, though is when you look on the intertubes for other critical comments about Scrum-gone-wild, you run into a very familiar comment. It's almost as if it's written by the same person.

Scrum cannot fail you! Only YOU can fail Scrum!

I see at least two comments in this thread on that line! "Teams that fail with Scrum are not abiding by the principles of agile and are generally mismanaged."

LOL. It's hillarious.

No, sometimes Scrum is just *not* *the* *solution.* And that's okay! Not every project is created equal.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

Tim — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:40:07 GMT

Scrum is not one size fits all.

Scrum cannot fail you! Only YOU can fail Scrum!

I see at least two comments in this thread on that line! "Teams that fail with Scrum are not abiding by the principles of agile and are generally mismanaged."

LOL. It's hillarious.

No, sometimes Scrum is just *not* *the* *solution.* And that's okay! Not every project is created equal.

re: Motley says: “Kinect is where he’s at”

James Waletzky — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:39:29 GMT

Okay, okay! Enough with the time travel jokes! I am amazed at how many responses I received through various forums on a basic typo. You people all think alike :-). Apologies for the confusion.

re: Motley says: “Kinect is where he’s at”

Keith Farmer — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:13:21 GMT

I wasn't aware MSR was working on time travel. When exactly did you join Xbox? :)

re: Motley says: "Contracts do me no good at run-time"

James Waletzky — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:28:33 GMT

Thanks, Brian! More great stuff going into Visual Studio. I will definitely check out Code Contracts in more detail in the near future.

Now if I could only get back to the world of managed code. Not much of that happening on the Xbox team :-).

re: Motley says: "Contracts do me no good at run-time"

Brian G. — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:22:52 GMT

You may be fascinated to read up on this DevLabs project:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/dd491992.aspx

Code Contracts involves a syntax for writing contracts in code and verify them at runtime. There is also a static checker to find bugs at build time. Another Microsoft Research project (Pex) can increase your code coverage, and code contracts increase the effectiveness of this code coverage by providing a correctness metric.

Brian

MS CLR Base Class Libraries Team

re: Motley says: “Branches are for trees, not source code”

James Waletzky — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:25:22 GMT

Hi Duncan,

Yes, the blog has been a little quiet lately due to another project that is, actually, related to the blog. I may have more to announce soon. With that project and my day job, doesn't leave much time for anything else. I hope to get back to blog posting shortly, and thanks for the query.

On branching, I always recommend keeping branches to a minimum. The overhead of forward and reverse integrates can be large, but it looks like you are doing them frequently in small chunks, which helps. Depends how big your team is.

For merging, I have used Beyond Compare in the past (and still do) and I have heard Araxis Merge is very good. I am not familiar with the tools you mention.

Keep us posted on how things go! I always check and try to respond to comments.

James.

re: Motley says: “Branches are for trees, not source code”

Duncan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:12:27 GMT

I'm on my third month on a project with my current client. I have three branches already (replacing ASP's TreeView control with the CSS Friendly Control Adaptor, switching from class.name to class.id for key in a name-value collection, and a large refactoring in behaviour to a central class).

I came to this article while trying to decide if a fourth branch was a good idea. My environment is poorly organised, so I never know when my lead will walk over and request a build. Anything that's going to take more than a few hours makes me want to branch, so I can give him what he wants without undue delay. Having said that, my trunk is already 200Mb (I store all libraries, tools etcetera) so branches aren't free.

I am the only agile practitioner in my team (I'm on contract), and I'm a neophyte at best. I use CC.NET to call NAnt, and because my .build file is in my trunk, it's replicated in each branch -- I can do builds of each branch, mitigating an earlier concern about losing the benefits of CI when branching.

I use VisualSVN as the server, and TortoiseSVN as my client. I've used the TortoiseMerge and WinMerge for my tools, and I've settled on WinMerge though I'm not sure I use it to extreme, but I'll confess I'm at a loss to understand the comments about SVN making merges a pain. To date every conflict I have seen made sense to me and was easily resolved, but so far I have been merging trunk-to-branch (bug-fixes) pretty frequently, usually after each bug-fix.

Anyway, it has been a while since you posted. Any updates? You have a new subscriber to your blog... :)

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

James Waletzky — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:38:17 GMT

Hmmm... let's try and keep this constructive, shall we?

Scrum doesn't work in every situation. I have seen it succeed in situations where you have a team with previous communication and collaboration issues, and I have seen it fail in situations where leadership mandates a different development process, or where you have people set in their ways and see no benefit in adopting Scrum. Additionally, Scrum can fail when improperly practiced, just like any other process or methodology.

I am sensing a Part III to this series coming on where Mave and Mot talk about some places where Scrum fits and why Scrum can fail.

On the blog comments, keep them coming. I read them ALL. I'd prefer to keep them more constructive, if possible. WHY is Scrum "micromanagement"? WHY don't devs need to collaborate more (i.e. be "touchy-feely")? WHY did people leave the company because of it? I'd love to hear about these situations.

re: Motley says: "We tried Scrum, and it sucks" (Scrum Part II)

CleverPete — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:51:40 GMT

LMAO, I mean really:

Mr Old School and Mr Altruism?! This reminds me of primary school.

This blog is just more proof that scrumming sucks just like most religions. They followers continue blindly from one week to another because somebody said so and if you question it you are doomed.

Developers are nerds and are people persons. They are not touchy feely lets all work together all the time people. Yeah sure they can be friendly and at times do that, but sprint after sprint after bloody (work for you daily bread) sprint????

NO!!!!!