REPOST FROM CODEBETTER

I noticed that CodeBetter is slowing down. Maybe dying. I’m preserving my original post from there, here on my own site.

Original post

We had set the system up for a test of how this A/B testing stuff could work for us. Would it be useful? Could we communicate it clearly to the others around us? Would the data be easy to understand and make something out of?

From http://www.mikebilleter.com/2009/08/impossible-captcha.html

In order to know what we where doing we picked a no-brainer feature to test it on: registration with or without CAPTCHA. You know, like the one to the left.

Since all of us (and probably you too) hate to type those strange, unreadable letters we were confident that we knew which one would win. Hence we had some really good test data for how...

I’ve started working in a very different organization, in a very different culture, and I see the same problems. For those who don’t know yet, I have moved to Indonesia and work for Bala Keselamatan, better known internationally as the Salvation Army. My task is to help the organization that oversees the Salvation Army hospitals (yes, 6 of them) and clinics (17, I think) become more effective and get more done with less. “Doing the most good,” in other words.

When I came here, I hoped (or maybe bet) that my knowledge of Lean and Agile would be helpful. I’ve seen similar problems here as I did with clients back home. In this blog post, I want to discuss one of these problems: long lead times in important projects.

Yes, I wrote “important” projects. It really stumped me at first. But then I realized that I’ve been in...

For the first time in years, I’m using a Windows PC as my main computer. It’s Windows 8.1, and thanks to a great introduction video, the transition was quite smooth. Of course, there are things that I miss and keep doing wrong (right-click… had forgotten all about that one), but overall I’m happy.

The first main issue I encountered was sharing my internet connection so that my phone could use it. Nothing strange really—I do this several times a day on my MacBook Pro, and it’s dead simple. Click the Network symbol, select “Create network…”, give it a name (and optional password), and you’re done.

So you can imagine my surprise when I started searching for this in Windows 8.1. There were guides on how to use DOS commands and other configurations or stuff to download and install, which ended up crashing on me anyway.

After a...

I fell in love with Nancy at first sight; so slick, minimalistic, testable and understandable, powerful and extendable when I need it. I later learned those features had a name; the SuperDuperHappyPath and I’ve been on it ever sense I first laid eyes on Nancy.

Christian Horsdal (one of the people that first showed me Nancy) had written a book on Nancy in the style of Nancy. This is a great companion to every Nancy-developer. I love the bundling in  recipes and how they are “graded” in from Simple through Intermediate to Advanced. Another thing that I really appreciate is that Christian has adopted the Nancy-style of writing tests first. It’s more code to read, but I would suggest that you don’t read it. Instead, type along as you read the book and you will get a overview and understanding of all the features...

We’ve just got our visas for entering Indonesia! Lovely!

But the process has been very long, trying and almost took the best out of us. It got me thinking about a big, and characterising difference between the agile and the non-agile approach (let’s call I waterfall for now, shall we?).

The process we went through for our visa application resembles the way many companies deliver software, sadly. Could there be another way?

When we applied for the Visas we were told that it should take about 2 months to get them. We acted accordingly and started to quit jobs, take kids out of school, end the lease for our apartment and a lot of other things - just to match that prediction.

But we got a couple of;

• “it will probably take 2 weeks more”
• “no news - probably a week or two more”
• “well… haven’t heard anything yet...

As most of you probably know I’m on my way to leave the country and do other type of work for a while. It’s been a bumpy ride and we’re actually still waiting for the work permits before we can leave. Any day now…

The last couple of weeks I’ve ended most of my commitments and different consultant contracts with my customers, but I don’t have anything else to do… so I thought I’ll make something up. Two things popped into my head:

• last year when I did some free presentations during a period between employments
• and the fact that I don’t want to come back in 3 years and just continue with the same material

From IMDB

People who read this blog knows that I love constraints, and people that know me knows that I’m a Seinfeld buff. He...

Often when I try to explain Lean and Agile there’s a couple of things that I fail to communicate clearly. Quite shortly these things can be summed up with these two short answers:

• Yes - I’m talking about changing the way we work
• No - I’m not talking about working faster (this post)

From http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Asterix/

This post is about me failing to communicate that I we shouldn’t be going faster, work quicker, beating the drum on the galley with a higher frequency. No - there’s something else.

Much of the things I try to help teams and individuals when I introduce them to lean and agile has to do with moving faster:

• faster, smoother flow
• shorter iterations
• faster feedback loops
• etc.

From http://loubega33.wordpress.com/

After stating a few of those I often feel a bit...

I’ve done numerous presentations on Lean and Agile, and there are a couple of things that I often feel I don’t succeed in implanting in people’s minds. I thought I’d write them down so that I can direct people back here, and also remind myself when I forget.

Quite shortly, these things can be summed up with these two short answers:

• Yes - I’m talking about changing the way we work (this post)
• No - I’m not talking about working faster

This post is about changing.

When I introduce people to Lean, I often play a little game with them. Pass the pennies or The Dot Game are my two current favorites.

We might end up with a result table like the one to the right. This is a result of running Pass the pennies. Each column represents the number of coins to pass...

Over and over again I’ve seen the main gain from using specification by example emerge in the conversations you have around the specifications. I’ve even been known to tell people to just make sure to do the specifications on a whiteboard, take a photo of it and then don’t use anymore of the practices. Just doing that will help an awful lot - I promise.

But lately I’ve come across a situation that have got me to think about the other end and what happens when we don’t automate our scenarios. It’s a continuity thing and it doesn’t hang together.

If you read my blog before you know I’m a sucker for stories and let me illustrate my point with two stories.

Only workshopping

The first story comes from a team at Spotify, that moved faster than any other I’ve seen. We’re talking...

I had the great pleasure to do my military service in the Swedish Army Band, that at the time (1992) was made up of conscripts. Not only did I get to wear stuff like the picture to the left and play in an awesomely great band, but also did we travel Europe and played, among other places the Casino in Monaco. It was a awesome year in many regards and I tied friendship-knots with a lot of people that still get to meet today.

On our last day in the band there were a lot of tears and saying farewell to friends and officers that had taken care of us. Through all the emotions that day I still remember one thing that an officer said as his part of his farewell speech:

Fellas - don’t fear mistakes. By all means, fail. But try to steer away from irreversible mistakes.

...