Calibrate Your Agile Approach: Bill of Rights

When eXtreme Programming first came out, one expectation it worked hard to set is who gets to make what calls on software projects.

For example, business has the right to know how long something is going to take and when it can expect things to be done.

Conversely, developers have the right to know what the priorities are, and to be able to do good work.

To that end, eXtreme Programming - XP - created the Customer and Development Team Bill of Rights.

A Journey to be a Digital Company - tangly llc

I long dreamed to work in a digital environment. I shall no longer print out a form, sign it by hand and use snake mail to deliver it to the receiving party.

Our software service company is an ideal candidate to validate if this assumption is realistic.

Profit is like the air we breathe. We need air to live, but we don't live to breathe. - Frederic Laloux

Agile@Scale - Are Common Patterns Emerging?

Your organization has decided to introduce agile at scale in all development departments or better in the whole company.

Your Chief of Agility COA, Chief of Digitalization COD or Chief of Change COC was in an expensive training and has selected the appropriate framework for your company.

Welcome to the club of companies introducing agile approaches and having no clues why they do it and how they could be successful.

Here some hardly learnt truths worth knowing when starting such an endeavor.

Imposing Agile methods introduces a conflict with the values and principles that underlie Agile methods -- Martin Fowler

Time to Migrate to a Modern JDK, Laggards!

Are you still using Java 8 to run your mission critical systems?

Are you truly using a six years old technology stack?

Are you already applying for a Java laggard club membership?

If you are still using Java 8 you are using technologies released in Spring 2014. You are missing all the improvements in the garbage collector, runtime engine and various API.

Java 11 LTS was released in September 2018.  The current LTS release is one year old. You had one year to migrate to this long term solution version.

It is time to modernize the fundament of your application and invest a small amount of effort in it. The payback is really good.

A Commons view on Scrum

Agile approaches encourage common ownership of artifacts during product development. Historically commons is the term used for shared resources. Can we apply the commons learnings to agile and Scrum approaches?

Interestingly economists were kind to state common ownership is doomed to fail through the tragedy of commons theory published end of the sixties.

Thirty years later Elinor Ostrom showed that commons can indeed work well if you follow a small set of rules. She found century old examples scattered around the world.  She was awarded the Nobel price in economics for her findings in 2009 and dissipated the previous fake news.

The picture shows a Suone in Wallis, Switzerland. The constructions bring water to arid regions and are build and maintained by communities. It is example of commons in place for hundred of years and is one of the concrete implementation studied by Elinor. Mountain pastures are also managed as commons in Switzerland. You will find a drawing of Suone on the hundred Swiss Francs note.

Agile Architecture within Scrum

You are applying the agile, lean approach to your software product development. Your teams use Scrum or Kanban to deliver running software every two weeks.

Agile architecture is a key element to improve the quality of your product and reduce cycle-time of your product outcomes.

Your journey toward greater business agility starts by identifying what outcomes are most important to your company’s success. A key component is to find out how to create great architecture within the Scrum framework.

The World is a Better Place and We Must Tackle Climate Change

The world has really improved in a lot of areas.

Stop whining we are doomed.  And yes we must act strong and fast to tackle the climate change disaster. 

But do not forget how much the world bettered the last centuries.

We are not doomed, we must solve the next challenges instead of just complaining and doing nothing.

Ask yourself if you need a car. Travel with train instead of flying. Schedule a video conference instead of a business trip. Each step reduces your carbon footprint. Millions of persons taking similar steps will be a huge improvement. Reduce your plastic and paper usage. Just do it!