Hot Needle of Inquiry

There’s a discussion going on on the Scrum list about whether the phrase “Agile Project Manager” might be a problem — since there really isn’t such a role in most “Agile” methods. In a comment on that thread, I found myself saying this:

Scrum works, in my opinion, because it requires two things:

1. Produce Done-Done software on a regular basis;
2. Remove every obstacle to doing item 1.

Agile teams often stall not because “Agile doesn’t work,” or because “Agile doesn’t fit our real world,” but because they don’t recognize that things like “We can’t get done in one Sprint because QA needs a whole Sprint to test a Sprint’s work” is not a description of the “real world” but a description of an obstacle to be removed.

This is, of course, no more than a restatement of my long-running Running Tested Features notion, as found, for example, here. My views often drift over time, but this one has not drifted for quite a while now. I might be onto something here …

I’ll take an early opportunity to ressurect the other blog articles on this subject, and reset my links to them.

In a long discussion on “Leverage in a team” on the xp list, Ilja Preuss posts this gem from Ralph Stayer, CEO of Johnsonville Sausage: How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead.

That’s how you do that!

Now that my blog is working again, I’m going to see if I can get more active on it. As part of that, I need to update my links. Should I be linking to you, or someone you know? Drop me an email. See About on how to do that. Thanks!

Michael Feathers asks “Are Nested Classes Really a Good Idea”.
I have tried them from time to time, but as with Michael, find that I hardly ever use them.
I wonder: what would make something worth of being a class, but not worthy of existing on its own?

There are a lot of people who become outraged when someone says what many people are, or should be, thinking.

A recent case is a comment by one of McCain’s people that a terrorist attack would be good for McCain. Now we are supposed to be all outraged that anyone would say that. But answer this multiple choice question:

If there were to be a terrorist attack between now and the election, would the effect be to:

1. Improve McCain’s chances of being elected;
2. Improve Obama’s chances of being elected;
3. Make no difference to the election?

Some might think “I don’t know, could go either way.” Personally, I think it would improve McCain’s chances, because it would increase people’s anger and willingness to take warlike action, and McCain is at least somewhat perceived as The Warrior. I don’t want that outcome, and I certainly don’t want to be attacked. But if it happened, what would happen next?

I don’t think we advance ourselves by pretending that some thoughts are unthinkable. Thinking about what might happen is how we avoid falling into the pit.

It’s going to be a long time between now and November …

As careful readers know, I’ve had my web site moved to Apache from Windows. (Long story.)

Since Chet and I implemented my blog in .NET, it no longer works. Clearly something has to be done. I’ve decided to bring up the new blog on Wordpress. This is that beginning. Stay tuned.

Any and all advice on how to make the Wordpress setup, or the blog in general, better, will be gratefully received. As always, email to ronjeffries at acm dot org and include [ron] as part of the subject.

Thanks, and stay tuned.