A recommendation for Boston Scrum Training

I have rarely had the pleasure of dealing with a company as human and transparent as BigVisible here in Boston.

http://www.bigvisible.com/

If you require CSM, CSP, CSPO or other Scrum training, I can say that I have spoken to the vast majority of the big players and BigVisible is by far the coolest.

Short but sweet; I felt compelled while looking at my calendar for March.

I will let you know how the course goes. It will be interesting to see how they present Scrum after having the pleasure of attending a 2 day workshop by Agile Bob of www.agileforall.com and discussing it for what seems like eons, practicing it for a number of years. The more perspectives, the better… IMO. Bob had great visuals and exercises. I am a fan of learning through visual, auditory, tactical, and as many senses as possible.

Best,

Josh

Stop the Line. I mean, stop the car!

Some problems or failures of development do not manifest until the product goes live (the servers go up, the car hits the streets, etc). The Stop The Line mentality of manufacturing and the Just In Time (JIT) practices are great at rolling out product, but when things happen quickly, there is not a lot of time for forethought and there is very little time for testing outside unit testing or TDD. What other kind of testing is there? Human testing… user error testing… real life, this thing is now rolling along and we got it out fast but damn, I am not sure that was the best way to do it testing. Analysis is lacking. Isn’t a tenent of Agile that you cannot know everything up front? Does that mean that we say, “oh well, we will figure it out when we get there?” Classically it does – with a little bit of “keep it in our sights” thrown in. However, there are cases where it should not and this latest fiasco is a great example of not putting on the Lean hat and setting out to conquer the world, nor the Scrum hat, nor any hat in particular.

I find it interesting that the Prius was held up for so long as an example of Agility and Lean principles. It was amazing. The spec was something like “fit 4 people and get 50 mpg” and the engineers surpassed the spec in an extremely short period of time.

We need to be more holistic as we deliver products. Think about the road ahead. Our code might be extensible, but is our set of assumptions? Have we tried extending it? Has anyone driven the car?

It got 50 mpg and fits 4 people, but you might want to make sure the floormat doesnt catch on the gas or worse: that the electronics are bad. Surpassed the vision, but killed people in a way that is downright ridiculous. I would like to say it is over-intellectualizing of process, but that is the pot calling the kettle black.

Everything in moderation, please, as informed and practical professionals. Let’s not have cults.

Best,

Josh

Toyota: Floor it! I mean, Floormats!

I have to go to a meeting but I have to at least say that I am excited at the scandalous possibilities the recent developments with Toyota may have in the Agile community.

If they *did* know there was an issue with the electronics (and if there even was one), where does the JIT / Lean come into play? The product is shipped (delivered), yeah?

Nope. It lives out there and carries, in this case, human lives. This carries risk and manifestation of a different type of muda, if it is true.

Goodness I don’t understand English-speaking people who use that word. It would be one thing if muda meant something more complex, but it means “waste”. Ya’ll cant just say WASTE? Fo rizzle?

Anyhow, lesson:

Just because it has shipped it does not mean you are done! Waste can come back and manifest as an ass whupping.

Gotta read more about this and get back to you. I know you are holding your breath… give me a few.

Thanks,

Josh

Disabling Google Buzz The Easy Way

I’ve been saying for a long time that “Don’t Be Evil” is a nice slogan, but in reality we all know what comes with tremendous amounts of data and information – tremendous power. Google may not be outright evil, but this centralization of all things G- and movement towards high speed fiber, cloud processing, etc., I just think that this article about disabling Google Buzz is useful. I did the silly tweaks that you could do before and was in the process of changing free email providers for personal use, but I am glad CNET points this addition to the settings tab within GMail. I would not have noticed.

I have been known to be a conspiracy theorist and really want to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, so I get where you are coming from if you shrug this off, but every time there is a new shiny gadget I am the first to want it. I had every Nextel phone that came out, as they came out for no real reason. Google Buzz is about as useful to me as Google Wave – but is extremely useful to data hoarders.

Anyhow, I found this on Twitter @andrea88 - I actually have the flu and just turned 36 so I am not doing much besides moping around today. Thanks, Andrea.

Thanks, be well. Don’t get this bug I have. Enjoy your dogs. Eat something bad for you. Be easy.

Best,

Josh

Scrum added to Scrummy Environments

Was on my mind, so now you are subjected to it.

Have a great weekend.

Josh