Author Archives: pete

Yet Another Manifesto…….

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What is it with the recent rash of manifesto’s?

Since the signing of the Agile Manifesto a plethora of other Manifesto’s have arrived on the scene. Software Craftmanship, Project Management to name but a few.

They add NO value to development, in fact it seems their sole purpose is so that the signatories can make more money.

To me, this feels like the rash of CMM’s that arrived in the 90’s.  The original CMM was a useful tool for measuring the maturity of an organization. We needed one and only one.  The CMM was diluted by a number of new flavours; for Hardware; for Testing; for Software    resulting in a lack of clarity of objectives & direction.  Finally this was consolidated into CMMI and now it has become about implementing maturity (which even sounds ridiculous).

How long will it be before the various manifestos are consolidated into another chocolate teapot? See http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/about+as+useful+as+a+chocolate+teapot.html

Agility, Common Sense and Agilista Failings

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Much of Agile is simply about common sense. Do what is needed when it is needed!

Most of the real value of Agile methods is in how it enables us to knock the rust off old ways of working. The revelation that software development needs “people centric” is, in fact, no revelation at all.

The really big news is that developers need to engage in with the business. Oddly, this is the message that the vast majority of agilista’s fail to deliver to, failing to properly engage the business in the agile development process!

An interesting article in CIO magazine:”Why BAs Are So Important for IT and CIOs”

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CIO magazines article on the importance of BAs to IT and CIOs is an interesting read. In particular it reinforces the difference between BAs who slavishly “flog the dead template horse” and those who are communicators and analytical thinkers.  Take a look at the article here.  Which type of BA are you (really)?

 

Mobile and Agile: Why can’t they get along?

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This morning’s RE12 keynote was excellent. Steve Fickas described his use of a gaming engine and other resources to create a virtual environment for testing / requirement elicitation for mobile devices.

Fickas went on to describe how he interfaced mobile devices under development to the virtual environment and use this for testing in early stage development iterations (it is more controlled / manageable than the real world)