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Reinvigorating Daily Stand-Ups

devinhedge — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:20:47 +0000

In my last three positions I keep running across a common theme: Developers/Engineers not understanding the purpose of the Daily Stand-Up. As a result, the Daily Stand-Up always turned into a waste of valuable resource time and twice turned the team into mush as the first thing in the morning (a time that should be buzzing with hyper-caffeinated energy) into what amounted to an interment ceremony.

So how do you make the Daily Stand-Up valuable again? I always started back at the beginning with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and an article by ThoughtWorks’ Jason Yip titled “It’s Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meeting” on Martin Fowler’s website.

Searching around I found others who have run into the same dilemma. Ed Gibb’s blog suggests the reason for a daily stand-up is to sync up. I agree. Kevin Rutherford has suggested it be a physical activity: not just standing around reading spreadsheets, but people taking turns marking on status boards. I agree with that, too. Jason Yip also has been to reiterate how Mike Cohn emphasizes that Daily Scrums are about more about commitment than update status. I think commitment is the crux of the matter.

Commitment is one of the core principles behind what makes a team successful. As much as we don’t like to admit that we are Superhuman Programmers and thus need a team: we do. With people come all of the things programmers don’t do well: human interaction. So it you want a successful team, my bet is that you will have to build a team of committed individuals that have a personality that fits your team’s culture. How do you do that? Get the right people on the bus, says Jim Collins. He should know. He wrote the book on it. In my last three positions, Jim’s research was reinforced over and over again. First figure out WHO should be on the team, THEN figure out what they are going to do. Create the culture that will espouse the level of commitment to be create great products and be zealously prejudiced against any team member that doesn’t fit that culture… even if that means helping that team member leave.

Scrum Software Development Methodology Reading List

devinhedge — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:05:28 +0000

This is my Gold Standard reading list for learning and practicing the Scrum Software Development Methodology. Not surprisingly, Scrum can be used for any kind of project, not just software development as it’s Lean Management framework was largely borrowed from Lean Manufacturing principles from Lean Six Sigma, TQM, Kanban, Kaizen and the Theory of Constraints.

This list was originally borrowed from the Scrum Alliance’s reading list. In addition to the articles found on the Scrum Alliance’s website, the following books will help you on your journey to Scrum.

Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide by Craig Larman
Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn
Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle ‘
Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders by Jean Tabaka
The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber
User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn

All of these books are available via the O’Reilly Safari Books Online website.

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Silly software licensing models

devinhedge — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:43:47 +0000

I recently stumbled upon a situation where I violated the terms of my software license agreement. Following that, I almost bought another piece of software where I would have inadvertently broken the terms of my license agreement there, too.

What gives?

What would cause me to violate the terms of my software license agreement? A bad software license agreement. In both cases, one from the most well-known software company and one from a shareware developer. What they have in common is a two-tier software license model where you can purchase a license for personal use or a license for commercial use at a significant premium.

So here is the scenario that caused me to violate my software license agreement: I purchase the "Home and Student" version of a well known office suite. In the fine print is a clause that states I cannot use the software for commercial work. I assume that means I cannot create work products that are sold to someone. A colleague sends me a document at home which I open, review, edit and send back to him using the restricted software. Bingo. I just broke my license agreement. Or did I? Where does personal use end and commercial use begin? If I create a document and post it to my personal website and then, using the Creative Commons License model, allow for a derivative work with attribution with royalties… did I just violate my software license agreement? Isn’t the content what was being licensed and not the file format?

If a lawyer wants to pipe in on this, contact me. I’m sure that in communist, er… socialist democratic (gotta be P.C. these days) countries there are probably some kind of tax implications I’m ignoring such as valuation of software as an asset, etc.

The entire thing is silly. One price and quit jerking me around, please. As a side note: I’ve since found "free", open-source replacements for both products. Not only are they viable alternatives, but is actually a step-up.