Gathering Agility
DevOps, Agile, and Software Development
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TDD Update — My Life is a Hollow Lie
It’s been more than a year now since I last wrote about my TDD project to rewrite this blog. It’s not that work hasn’t happened — more on that later — it’s rather more that progress has been ridiculously slow.I have a day job that keeps me busy. My time to hone my TDD skills is mostly relegated to weekends. And, as I’m sure you have noticed, lately we have been dealing with this global pandemic that has thrown just about everything out of whack.
Is it Time to Ditch the User Story?
My colleague and friend Matt Philip has written a blog post with an intriguing premise: namely, that the user story is dead, and that we should, in the name of all that is good and holy, ditch them altogether.
Three Months Later, How’s it Going with TDD?
I cannot stress enough how much easier TDD makes things. As I mentioned above, my coaching duties leave me with precious little time to devote to side projects like this one. When I have to spend a week or more away from the coding keyboard, the TDD style allows me to get back on track immediately.
The State of The Blog
The problem is one that I find incredibly common with all JS development, and that is that every time I need to upgrade something, or any time I try to move to a newer version of Node or NPM, everything in the entire application goes pear-shaped, and requires a whole hell of a lot more expertise than I possess to hammer it back into reasonable shape. In short, this blog has fallen victim to exactly the same pattern of technical debt that I routinely warn my clients against.
Your Software Sucks
My clients listen politely. They are, after all, paying me for my advice. They nod. They agree. And then they go back to business as usual, which is spitting out unmaintainable software at an unsustainable rate of speed.
How I Fell Down the Arduino Rabbit Hole
My clients listen politely. They are, after all, paying me for my advice. They nod. They agree. And then they go back to business as usual, which is spitting out unmaintainable software at an unsustainable rate of speed.
Agile and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
What I’m getting at here is that Agile is, at its heart, a set of values. It’s a belief system. And, like many belief systems, believing that the system can work is the first step to making it work for you. If you can grasp this, you will understand why Agile has more in common with Alcoholics Anonymous than with ITIL or Six Sigma.
Agile is a Fractal
This image helps to explain both the Agile mindset, and why so many organizations fail so badly at Agile transformation. The same sort of person who finds hierarchy reassuring will be deeply confused, perhaps even angry, when asked to adopt a fractal thought pattern.
Books I Like
This image helps to explain both the Agile mindset, and why so many organizations fail so badly at Agile transformation. The same sort of person who finds hierarchy reassuring will be deeply confused, perhaps even angry, when asked to adopt a fractal thought pattern.