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Wednesday, 13 December 2006 |
I came across a great set of responses to an IEEE Software Article by Ted Little that seemed to question the cone of uncertainty. Among the respondents were Phillipe Kruchten and Steve McConnell. This prompted me on a search for resources about the cone of uncertainty. Here is what I came up with:
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Wednesday, 13 December 2006 |
The November issue of The Rational Edge has three articles that are closely related to my ideas about applying what we know about software & enterprise "architecture" to the domain of SCM/ALM solutions (and another article about an SCM tool vendor "...
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
It is the day after thanksgiving here in the U.S. Many of us have been with extended families eating obscenely large amounts of wonderfully homecooked meals and desserts and remembering what we are thankful for.
I have a LOT to be thankful for right about now. My surgery was a success and I'm still healthy. More importantly my sister is doing well with her new kidney, and we are both thankful for that, and for our children and our families (our entire family was incredibly helpful and supportive to the both of us - it's amazing to have a family like that)!
Like I said, I have a lot to be thankful for. And yet, I'm also rembering that today is a year to the day since John Vlissides passed away after a long-term battle with cancer.
John was not only co-author of THE seminal work on Design Patterns, he was also the series editor for the SCM Patterns book: he encouraged Steve and I to write it and was a mentor to us both. I would encourage folks to (re)visit the wiki-page created in John's memory.
During this time of year with the winter holidays coming, many of us give money to charities. Before John battled cancer he endured the loss of one of his own children to cancer as well, and his favorite charity was the Children's Cancer Fund (for obvious reasons). This year, I'm also a big fan of the National Kidney Foundation as well as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (both for personal reasons).
Give Thanks! And Give Generously! :)
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
I received a copy of the book The Buildmeister's Guide: How to design and implement the right software build and release process for your environment, by Kevin A. Lee, who runs www.buildmeister.com (the book is also available on Amazon.com).
I really liked Kevin's earlier book on ClearCase, Ant and CruiseControl: The Java Developer's Guide to Accelerating and Automating the Build Process. Even though it was specific to ClearCase it had a lot of really good information in general about build/release process automation. The Buildmeister's Guide "builds" on that (no pun intended) and covers build automation tools (such as CruiseControl and BuildForge) as well as Version Control in general (including tool selection and branching/merging policies). It also covers more than just Java, and has sections on other language & environment factors like .NET and C++.
All in all, it looks like a very good, and short (~110 pages) guide for beginning and intermediate build-meisters to learn a whole lot more about effective practices, resources and tools for software building and releasing.
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
Back in May of this year I blogged about how
Simple ain't Easy: Myths and Misunderstanding about Simplicity
. That entry ended up being quite popular and very well received.
This month, a streamlined version of that entry is the featured article in the "Last Word" column for the November 2006 issue of Better Software magazine. The writing is a bit more compact, though I did end up having to trim a few thoughts I had really wanted to keep. The quotations and links from the original entry didn't make it into the article, but were instead made part of the online "Sticky Notes" for the November issue.
For those with access to the printed magazine who have a chance to read both the article and the blog-entry, I'd appreciate your feedback as to whether you like the article better, or the blog-entry better, and why.
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
My surgery went well. I returned from the hospital one week ago and am now able to get around on my own (and do some email :-). My remaining kidney is still learning to do the work of two and will be growing larger in the next couple months (in order to compensate). I'm still dealing with the usual to-be-expected-stuff and hopefully within another couple of weeks I will be mostly back to normal (except that I still need to wait another 2months before trying to lift anything >10 lbs, like my 3yr old & 4 yr old :).
I received a few more books in the mail that look like they will be very helpful to someone like myself trying to introduce/increase Agility in a large corporation that has already committed to the likes of SEI CMMI, ISO-9000 (TL9000 for Telecoms), and Six Sigma.
These books will help someone like me to "speak the lingo" when presenting Lean/Agile principles and practices to those well versed in the above. The Lean Sigma book will (I hope) especially show me how to use the methods and tools of Six Sigma itself to support Lean concepts and techniques.
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
This will be my last blog-entry for at least a couple of weeks. I'm going in for surgery tomorrow to have my kidney removed and transplanted into my sister. It will take me about two weeks to recover to the point where I can sit in front of the computer for any length of time - and another two weeks before I return to work. (Well wishes and prayers for both my sister and me will be warmly welcomed :-)
I received two pretty cool books from O'Reilly the other day. They're not your normal fare. And I havent finished either of them yet. But I'm leafing through them and they both look waaaayyy cool and extremely useful:I'm looking forward to making my way through the rest of these two books and learning more about how my mind works and how to make better use of it (and better "maintain" it :)
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
I published a bunch of entries with numerous resources on different aspects of Scaling Agility. I wrote most of them several days apart but many of them got "pushed out" (published) together in sudden bursts. Here they are again:
Feel free to post a comment with other links are anything you feel warrants a new category (e.g., melding Agile with any of Lean, TOC, or Six Sigma)
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Monday, 04 December 2006 |
There has been a really great discussion thread on the Lean Development YahooGroup on the subject of "
How do I find bottlenecks?
"
I particularly liked a reply by Alan Shalloway that linked things back to W. Edwards Deming's 14 points for management from his Theory/System of Profound Knowledge. Allan's translation has a bit of a "Lean" slant to it, and doesn't explicitly mention eliminating/reducing variation quite so much. Here is how he summarized it:
Re respect for people, the best place to start, IMHO, is Deming. Here are his fourteen points (Chapter 2 of Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming, MIT Press, 2000; originally published in 1982.):
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The world has changed and managers need to adopt a new way of thinking. Delays, mistakes, defective workmanship and poor service are longer acceptable.
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Quit depending on inspection to find defects and start building quality into products while they are being built. Use statistical process control.
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Don't choose suppliers on the basis of low bids alone. Minimize total cost by establishing long term relationships with suppliers that are based on loyalty and trust.
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Work continually to improve the system of production and service. Improvement is not a one-time effort; every activity in the system must be continually improved to reduce waste and improve quality.
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Institute training. Managers should know how to do the job they supervise and be able to train workers. Managers also need training to understand the system of production.
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Institute leadership. The job of managers is to help people do a better job and remove barriers in the system that keep them from doing their job with pride. The greatest waste in America is failure to use the abilities of people.
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Drive out fear. People need to feel secure in order to do their job well. There should never be a conflict between doing what is best for the company and meeting the expectations of a person's immediate job.
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Break down barriers between departments. Create cross-functional teams so everyone can understand each-other's perspective. Do not undermine team cooperation by rewarding individual performance.
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Stop using slogans, exhortations and targets. It is the system, not the workers, that creates defects and lowers productivity. Exhortations don't change the system; that is management's responsibility.
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Eliminate numerical quotas for workers and numerical goals for people in management. [We add: Eliminate arbitrary deadlines for development teams.] This is management by fear. Try leadership.
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Eliminate barriers that rob the people of their right to pride of workmanship. Stop treating hourly workers like a commodity. Eliminate annual performance ratings for salaried workers.
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Encourage education and self-improvement for everyone. An educated workforce and management is the key to the future.
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Take action to accomplish the transformation. A top management team must lead the effort with action, not just support.
These go back 60 years. And (I can't help myself) these principles are in the context that process causes 94% of the errors - so work on the process to support the people! (people and process, people and process, people and process, ...) ;)
Alan Shalloway, CEO, Sr. Consultant
Net Objectives, Gold Level Sponsor of Agile 2006.
Integrating people, process and technology through training, coaching and consulting.
Alan's website also has some really great articles, papers, presentations and resources on Agile, Lean, Scrum, XP, Design Patterns, and all things related to Agile development and object-oriented design.
For some slightly different interpretations and summaries of Demings 14 points and Seven Deadly Sins, see the following:
There has also been a thread on another discussionlist (sorry - the name escapes me at the moment) on the relevance (or lack thereoff) of Deming's writings and philosophies in the world of today.
What are your thoughts?
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