Blog posts on agile software development

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Deming and Software Development

  "Dr. Deming’s ideas are about finding ways to improve the effectiveness and reliability of delivering value going forward. That idea is natural for many software developers. I find that software developers understand the value of designing the process to achieve repeatable success over the long term more than others (including managers)."

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• Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers

  I feel strongly about the damage done by interruption to maker's focus. My appreciation for this damage to system performance was greatly enhanced as I became a software developer.
  
  In my work prior to software development I could see that interruptions were not ideal but they were not so damaging to my work and they do also have value. But work that requires extra focus, and software development sure did for me, the damage increasing greatly.

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• A Programmers Take on Agile Software Development

  I am also a strong proponent of agile software development. Information Technology projects have a poor success rate. The best method, I have found, to provide better software solutions is agile development (and I find a grounding in management improvement techniques is useful – customer focus, process improvement, systems thinking, understanding variation, data driven management…)...

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• How to Respond to a Request for Estimates on Software Development

  If they say they need some way of deciding if doing that work is wise or something that is going to be so difficult that it isn't worth it then some kind of estimate is sensible.  If they talk about scheduling, then other explanations make sense to me - talking about the issues with fixed estimates etc. but giving them alternatives of fixed schedule with variable features (if there is a business need to deliver on some date)., etc.

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• Software Testing and the Impact on Quality

  The aim for software testing is not just to fix the bugs software testers catch but to function as part of a system to figure out the reasons those bugs were created and improve processes so fewer bugs are created in the future.

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• The Edge-case Excuse

  I have found “edge cases” to actually mean we don’t want to fix it. Often the issue isn’t needing some special code to deal with an “edge case” it is the coding was done poorly and breaks in many different “edge cases.” It isn’t that those edge cases need to be coded for. It is that the code should have been written in a robust way that didn’t break for lots of “edge cases” but the excuse given for not fixing the fundamental coding fragility is the bugs found are just “edge cases.”

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• Applying Toyota Kata to Agile Retrospectives

  Retrospectives are a good method to help improve but if there is no time to think about the issues raised and come up with experiments to improve and review of whether those experiments worked or not and why failure to improve is the expected result.

  Creating a culture where it is expected that any improvement ideas are tested and evaluated is one of the most important changes on the path to a company that will be able to continually improve.

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• Examine the Results of Your Testing Practices and Continually Improve Your Methods

  The idea of delibrately examining your software development and testing practices will be familar to those using agile retrospectives. The power of continually improving the development practices used withing the organization is hard to appreciate but it is immense. The gains compound over time so the initial benefits are only a glimpse of what can be achieve by continuing to iterate and improve.

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• Testing Smarter with Ajay Balamurugadas

  Ajay:

   To be convincing, you might have to work on your reputation first. Work on it. People most of the times say "No" until they are convinced. Once you highlight the benefits of pairing and collaboration, people will listen.

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• Software Code Reviews from a Deming Perspective

  I think the “inspection” in code reviews is different enough that we can use code reviews as a valuable tool for managing software development. The waste of having processes that create defects and then use inspection to catch them is certainly something to avoid. A significant part of the effort in code reviews should be geared toward capturing learning that can be applied to current processes to improve them so fewer bugs are created in the future.

  In my experience this part of code reviews (using it to improve the existing processes) is not given the focus it should be. So I do believe that code reviews should focus more on why did we find something we decided to fix?

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• Agile Software Development and Deming's Ideas

  It's one of the reasons for "people over process" and all that; they believe that a software developer should be respected. Yes, they should. Factory workers should be respected, too. Everyone should be respected. That's what Deming was talking about. So then the idea that Deming was trying to impose on software developers some rigid controls that they shouldn't be subject to is not so. And not only wasn't he doing that, he wasn't doing that to factory workers either.

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• Testing Smarter with Matt Heusser

  Hexawise: You have written about the benefits of lean thinking in software testing. What advantages do organizations gain when they adopt a lean thinking view of software testing?

  Matt: You know that thing that happens, where you can't do your job because you filed a ticket and it will take the DBA's a week to add a column to a table, so you can't do your job, for a week?

  Or whatever else it is? Right now I've got a contractor billing on my team with no laptop. He'll have it nine days after he started ... if we're lucky.

  Typically, when a company goes to lean thinking, that kind of stuff stops happening.

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• Agility vs. Six Sigma

  Some people dislike the idea of managing processes. In my experience they then invent the idea that slow, boring process improvement is an alternative to innovation. That is just wrong. Process improvement should be part of a well run system, as should innovation. Deming, who many believe focused only process improvement, knew the importance of both. See several of Deming’s ideas on innovation.

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• Lean Software Development

  Software development can be extremely complicated and can benefit greatly from making problems visible – jidoka. 

  ...

  Lean thinking has a great deal to offer for those involved in software development.

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• If Tech Companies Made Sudoku

  We often seem to add unnecessary complexity to software; creating fragile code that is frustrating to use.

  Unnecessary complexity in internet development has increased greatly since I wrote this in 2006.  I can't believe how often simple actions like clicking a link on web sites with huge budgets fail because instead of just being a link it is some complex code that is fragile and fails.  The huge downloads needed for many websites today should shame them but the explosion of waste continues unabatted.  At some point it will stop, but I am amazed how long the extermely poor management practices have continued. 

  Related: The Edge-case Excuse

   

   

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