Category: agile

Allan Kelly from Allan Kelly Associates

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Testing isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about finding bugs. Type-1 Testing is about ensuring you can go to Type-2 Testing and get some useful feedback. Customer feedback is the really valuable stuff: does your product address the need you saw? Is there more to do? More value to be got? – and does the value delivered justify the cost of doing it?

Testing-Testing 1 2 is a 13-minute video blog rerecording of a private presentation I did during lock-down, I hope you find it interesting.

Now booking: September micro-workshops – spaced limited

User Stories Masterclass, Agile Estimation & Forecasting, Maximising value delivered

Early bird discounts & free tickets for unemployed/furloughed

Book with code Blog15 for 15% discount or get more details

The post Testing Testing 1 2 – video blog appeared first on Allan Kelly Associates.

Allan Kelly from Allan Kelly Associates

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From time-to-time people say to me:

“Agile is obvious”

When I’m being honest it is kind of hard to argue with them, it is certainly “obvious” to me. But at the same time agile is not obvious, or rather, the opposite of agile is also obvious. For example,

Agile says: obviously, you don’t know the future so don’t plan and research too far into the future.
Non-agile thinking says: obviously, failure to plan is planning to fail, obviously you need a plan of action, you need to plan for the future.

Agile says: obviously, people work best when they are self-motivated and given a say in what they do.
Non-agile says: obviously, people are lazy and will do as little as possible, therefore someone needs to manage them.

Agile says: high quality makes it easier to change in the future, obviously.
Non-agile says: obviously, quality is an endless quest, there is no point in polishing something which isn’t important, 20% of the effort gives 80% of the reward so don’t do any more.

Agile emphasises the here and now, the soon, obviously requirements can be handled just-in-time, so live for today.
Non-agile says: if we don’t think about the future we will obviously duplicate work and incur additional costs.

And my own entry: obviously, software development as diseconomies of scale therefore optimise for lots of small. The opposite is equally obvious: economies of scale are what makes modern business – and the cloud – successful so exploit them

There are a number of obvious examples that go with that:

Agile says: obviously we should test every change and new feature by itself to avoid the complications of interacting changes.
Non-agile says: obviously full test runs are slow and expensive so bundle work together and test it on mass.

Both agile and not-agile are obvious. What you consider obvious depends on your starting point. Once you start thinking “agile” a lot of things become obvious. But if you are not thinking agile then, if you are thinking some other model, then the opposite is also obvious.

Some would term this “An Agile Mindset”. However I don’t want to do that, I find the idea of “an agile mindset” too nebulous. I also note that most of the people I hear talking about “an agile mindset” seem to clinging on to some piece of holy lore which I consider not very agile and they believe is totally agile (the project model and upfront requirements usually.)

Instead I find myself going back to Theory-X and Theory-Y. In general people fall into one camp or the other. If you, your philosophy on work and life, align with theory-Y then all the “agile is obvious” statements above are indeed obvious. Conversely, if you generally follow a theory-X philosophy then all the non-agile statements are obvious.

Perhaps surprisingly I find people can flip, and be flipped, from X to Y. What is more difficult is getting people to unlearn behaviours and actions which they acquired with a theory-X mindset. Even if some element of theory-Y (and agile) is now obvious people need help to learn the new way and let go of the old. Some people can do this by themselves, others need help – or at least help speeding up the change.

Yes, thats part of my job as an Agile Guide. Sometimes just talking (and reflecting on recent events) helps. Sometimes exercises (or process miniatures they are sometimes called) help. Sometimes it is by experiments, exposing people to others can help as well – so conferences, user groups.

Rarely do people change because they went on training and were lectured too, but good training incorporates talking, reflection, exercises, etc. Such training is less training and more about practicing the future.

Obviously, my training is like that: I aim to make my training courses a rehearsal for future actions. Actually, while I “sell” training I prefer to think of it as a rehearsal or kaikaku event – kaikaku events also call a “kaizen blitz”, they are big change events from the people who brought you kaizen, more on them another time.

So when someone I’ve worked with turns around and says “Agile is obvious” I take it as a sign of success. They no longer seem agile as something strange, it is normal, it is onbvious.

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The post Is Agile is obvious? appeared first on Allan Kelly Associates.

Allan Kelly from Allan Kelly Associates

I’m running all three of my half-day workshops again in September:

• User Stories Masterclass, 14 September
• Agile Estimating & Forecasting, 21 September
• Maximising value delivered in agile, 28 September

You can read reviews of these workshops on the Allan Kelly agile training pages where you will find more details too.

Tickets are on-sale now with Tito – with a 20% early bird discount. (I’m using Tito this time because it promises to handle VAT better for those of you outside Europe.) If you have any problems with Tito or would prefer to receive an invoice contact me directly via e-mail, allan at allankelly dot net.

Blog readers can get another 15% off with the code “Blog15”.

Plus, if you book and pay for one workshop you will receive a code for 50% off the other workshops – buy one get two half price offer.

As before there are a few free tickets for the unemployed and furloughed. I might release more unemployed free tickets nearer the time so join the wait list if you are unemployed and miss out.

The post September micro-workshops appeared first on Allan Kelly Associates.