Saturday, February 04, 2006

Agile Litmus Test

I was attending a seminar thrown by Rally in Bellevue last Thursday and sponsored by SolitionsIQ. I got talking to Lance Young over breakfast. I know Lance through the Seattle Java Users Group. Lance told me he was looking to create an agile litmus test and he was building a number of dimensions to the problem and the questions that need to be answered such as “How heavy is the documentation?” and so forth. I replied that I thought there was only one essential question,

How much trust is there in the room?

If the team is not all in a room together then that a bad place to start. Assuming they are all in the same room then the more trust, the less transaction costs will be. Documentation, contracts, reviews, memos, other non-verbal communication, verifications and validations are a reflection on the amount of trust involved. These represent the transaction costs of creating great software. Less trust more overhead. Less overhead for transaction costs means less waste. Less waste means better ROI. And a better ROI is ultimately what agile is all about. Technorati Tags: Agile, Trust, David+Anderson

Why, The Missing Five?

Rob Caron explains to customers that we didn’t manage to cover all 25 process areas in the CMMI model. In fact, five process areas (1 at model level 2, and 4 at model level 3) are missing. So why didn’t we add guidance for the missing five?

The first two are easy, SAM (supplier agreement management) and ISM (integrated supplier management) are really about supply chain management. The Visual Studio group isn’t in the business of managing suppliers. We don’t have any tooling for supplier management and hence, we just don’t have the expertise to supply appropriate guidance nor would we ever have any tooling to aid with automation.

The other three are OPF (organizational process focus), OT (organizational training) and OEI (Organizational Environment for Integration). These are all about the organization and are rightly the tasks of management. They are almost impossible to tool. As a result we made a decision leave out guidance on these topics. We had limited resources and had to decide where to spend them.

The result is that we have coverage of 16 of 21 process areas in model levels 2 and 3. We have partial coverage of model levels 4 and 5. The coverage of the 16 process areas at model levels 2 and 3 is very extensive and intensive. The result is that we strongly comply with the requirements for SCAMPI appraisal evidence in these 16 process areas while we chose to avoid the other 5. Customer will need to decide whether the other 5 areas apply to them - the supplier process areas may not. Technorati Tags: MSF, David+Anderson, CMMI

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Happy Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day. Perhaps its better known for the movie of the same name. Here is my Groundhog day resolution…

I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!
I will continue to do what I’ve always done, whilst expecting things to improve and the outcome to change!...
Technorati Tags: Groundhog+Day, David+Anderson

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Hear me, don’t read me

If you’d rather hear it all from the horses mouth I’ve got a few speaking engagements coming up. I know that not everyone reads the home page. The RSS feed on my blog is 5 times greater than the home page and the html page views are 3 times larger. Hence, many of you may have missed that I’ll be appearing at the Seattle SPIN on the 20th of February where I’ll be previewing (ah hem, rehearsing) my material for the SEPG event in March. I’ll also be in Chicago in March for Lean Design and Development. In April I’ll be in Vancouver, BC to speak to Agile Vancouver one evening and I’m scheduled to be in DC in May for the IRMA event, and then another management forum in Chicago in June (no details yet), and finally I’m hoping to get my panel session submission selected for Agile 2006. I don’t want to prejudice the judging for the conference, but I did manage to put together a stellar group for my proposal. So fingers crossed, I’ll be in Minneapolis in July.

So there it is, if you are reading this and you’d like me to come speak to your local group, your company or just meet for coffee and a chat, you know where I’ll be. Email me.

Brawn versus Brains

I’d been thinking about an idea for a blog entry on the social significance of Sunday’s Superbowl game - Seattle Seahawks versus Pittsburgh Steelers - while commuting on the bus this morning. When I arrived at my office, I found Mark Groves (two offices down) displaying some pro-Steelers imagery in his window and this cartoon. I think it sums up the rust belt versus silicon bit belt showdown rather well. Mark it turns out is a Pitt grad and his allegience is with the boys from the steel town.

Many years ago, I was on my second ever trip to the United States. I was visiting a supplier based in Orange County, CA. It was January. The LA Raiders (this will date the story) had just played the Buffalo Bills in a championship game and lost. Local TV reported it as “Well we might have lost, in a game where everyone was freezing their *** off in Buffalo, but back in LA it is 70 degrees. Who are the real winners?” It would be easy to think similar thoughts this time around. However, over the last year I’ve gotten to know Pittsburgh fairly well through my visits to the SEI. It’s a remarkably beautiful city with some interesting geography and stunning architecture (for an American city). It also has two great schools and a wonderful museum with some of the best dinosaurs you are likely to meet in person. It’s easy to see that Pittsburgh was awash with money in the golden age of steel, rail and the early telecom build out. Nowadays it struggles against the brain drain, failing to keep its graduates in the area. It reminds me of Glasgow (Scotland). If it were a baseball game on Sunday you’d always back the team in the bigger metro with the most wealth. However, the NFL’s draft system keeps all the franchises healthy and seems to spread the chance of winning fairly evenly. Hence, you won’t get me speculating about the result. I just hope my phone isn’t ringing on Monday with a 412 area code on the caller ID.