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Size or Estimate

Estimation, I think, has been one of the biggest problems of mankind. The Software development industry is no exception to this sad reality. We almost never seem to get it right. The problem with the word “estimate” is that it’s personal. It’s relative to the person who is estimating. Moreover, it’s a unit of time. That is why I prefer “sizing” stories rather than estimating them. Size is a non disputed (standard) unit, which measures the level of complexity involved in developing a piece of functionality, a story. The size is standard across a particular project team. Pizzas are a… Read More »Size or Estimate

Functional Goals

After this post, I have had a number of conversations with people about what I really meant by setting functional targets instead of story point (velocity) targets. In one such discussion, I was given an example where someone set a goal to run for 90 minutes!! At first glance you might not find the last statement worth the exclamation marks at the end of it. But this is exactly the difference between functional targets and velocity targets. I think it’s wrong to set a target of running for 90 minutes. The real goal is to burn X number of calories.… Read More »Functional Goals

Iterationless…

After working in week-long iterations for 2 and a half years, going iterationless left me a little confused on my recent project. Of course when I say iterationless, I mean using extremely small iterations to bring in a flow to stories. Lean? Distributed Lean, maybe? Firstly, I like the idea of trying something new. The team being small and the project being developed in ruby helps this experiment a lot. There are, however, somethings missing in this way of working. I’ll list them down and give my view on each of them in this post. To realize what we missed,… Read More »Iterationless…

Agile Business Analysts

Yesterday, Craig Brown asked Do we need Agile Business Analysts?. Two and a half years back when I joined ThoughtWorks, I would have said “No, we don’t”. Today I strongly disagree with the view that Business Analysts can be done away with on Agile projects. The objective of an Agile project is to provide maximum value to the client as soon as possible. Now I agree that the ideal situation would be when you have business users & developers who agree and abide by this sentiment. You can happily get rid of the BA in such a situation. Real life,… Read More »Agile Business Analysts

StubbornSoft & MammothSoft

I met a couple of villains today a formidable lot. StubbornSoft was one of them called, the other was MammothSoft StubbornSoft had it’s own ways for the user it didn’t care. MammothSoft would smugly say “Try, change me if you dare.” In a moment I then realized my dark and ugly fate. When both of them cried out to me Why, come let’s integrate We’ll make a heavenly trio they said our technologies cutting-edge So smart piece of code as us there’d ne’er be, we pledge “I am quite small” to them said I, “my features are too few. But… Read More »StubbornSoft & MammothSoft

Mountains to climb

Business Analysts work closely with the customer. Each new area is a challenge. There are discussions and problems and solutions. Both the analyst and the customer get comfortable with the idea of finding better, simpler solutions. This is especially true for fixed bid projects, as the project is at stake if the analyst fails to find a simpler solution and convince the customer too. Solving problems is always exciting. For an analyst, this is the juicy part of the job, because no human being can survive for long just writing word documents one after the other. One incentive is customer… Read More »Mountains to climb

How to eat an elephant?

The only way to do that is to cut the elephant into slices. Slices which are small enough to be eaten because the sole purpose of cutting the elephant is to make it possible for humans to eat it. You’ll need a certain number of people to eat a whole elephant anyway. If you make slices small enough, at least they won’t feel sick at the end of it. There is no overhead in the activities of choosing the piece that looks most delicious, putting it in your mouth, chewing it and swallowing it. There is some, but it definitly… Read More »How to eat an elephant?

Applied Integration

For a while, I have had a question on my mind that I couldn’t really find an answer to. I had almost forgotten about it but a friend brought up the same question and before I knew it I was giving him my take on it. Before I get to the question though, I want to write a little about integration. Last release I was involved in building some functionality to integrate with one of our client’s systems. As I understand it, there are four prominent characteristics of integration that should be kept in mind when we decide to integrate… Read More »Applied Integration

Embracing Bunker Busters

For various reasons, there are situations when there is no running away from a Bunker Buster. An agile team should therefore be watchful. Once the analyst finds a potential bunker buster, he/she will have only one parameter to tweak… The timing. Embracing a bunker buster is a a brave step, I would say. But then isn’t, bravery only relative to the preparation?? SymptomsHere are some tips out of my experience for identifying bunker busters. Note that these symptoms do not decide a bunker buster individually. Like gesture-clusters in body language, they work in combinations. VaguenessThe first and most probable characteristic… Read More »Embracing Bunker Busters

Avoiding Bunker Busters

“Prevention is better than cure” and one good way of handling Bunker Busters is to avoid them. Agile teams seem to be wary of handling anything by prevention, as it requires thinking ahead and taking care of things to come rather than things that are. While this makes perfect sense for Grenades and Shells, Bunker Busters have much more potential for damage and it is worthwhile trying to prevent them rather than handling them when they come. There are areas in every application which can prove to be huge bunker busters if not handled in advance. Teams are even aware… Read More »Avoiding Bunker Busters