AGILE IN ACTION

Without really thinking about it until now, I've been seeing two types of technical debt. The first is the quick solution implemented with dirty code. I consider this to be irresponsible. That's not to say I won't do it, just that if I decide I should do it I make sure the necessary people understand the consequences and that it's an irresponsible action to take.

In the Lean manufacturing world there's a measurement called First-Time-Through (FTT), which monitors whether a cell is making products right the first time. It's a measurement of the effectiveness of the cell's standardized work and shows the percentage of product made without any need for rework or scrap.

So you're working on a user story with your pair, developing vertical slices and getting feedback from the tester and customer as you progress. You're ticking off the acceptance criteria as they're satisfied by the emerging functionality. Awesome! Everything is tickety-boo. Then the customer realizes that something is missing and asks for that something to be incorporated into the card. What do you do?

Over the past two years I've been seeing teams fail because people are not holding one another accountable. People tell me they are scared of being perceived to blame and so instead they say nothing. I asked some people why they don't hold people accountable. They responded with things like: "I'm really uncomfortable doing that." Or "I'm not good at saying that kind of stuff. I'm just a developer." And I empathize. I really do. I'm uncomfortable holding people accountable too. I'm guessing everyone probably is to some degree. And by the way, I possess those developer genes. That said, I still think these responses are phooey! Being able to communicate is a basic human skill. We all do it, admittedly some better than others, but just because something is difficult doesn't mean we should stop doing it. How will we learn if we don't practice?

Isn't it about time we started calling the Civil Service and the Government to account for the repeated failures and wasted money in Public IT projects? Don't delay! Sign the petition to the PM.

Over the past few months I've been reading Integration Tests Are A Scam by J.B. Rainsberger and following some of the responses to it, such as this one a few days ago which I've reproduced here.