Agile Design and Development
So that you can get feedback on it and make it better
The most rewarding iterations
Building is never a straight line
Product owner vs. product manager
A Product Owner is focused on output i.e. how quickly can we build these features?
Product Management, on the other hand, is focused on outcomes i.e. why are we building these features in the first place?
Good design is redesign
Good design is redesign. It's rare to get things right the first time. Experts expect to throw away some early work. They plan for plans to change.
It helps to have a medium that makes change easy. When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted.
Finish designing as close to the end of a sprint as possible
The traditional process of delivering design, vs. delivering design just in time.
Designers are often working at least one sprint ahead of engineers. While one sprint might not seem like much of a lag, a typical product team learns a lot after the design hand-off. ...Instead of working ahead, we should finish designing as close to the end of a sprint as possible: just-in-time design.
We optimize what we measure
Scrum does not say “only focus on output”, but, unfortunately, humans will optimize for what they measure.
If you worry about story points & hitting your estimations, that’s what is going to consume your attention. That is what you and your team will optimize for.
And that is the core critique of Scrum as it is practiced: That it focuses a product team’s attention so heavily on delivery — on building lots of features quickly & efficiently — that teams fail to focus on spending time to discover what the right thing to build is.
How we can do better
It actually doesn't matter whether you actually have a formal retrospective. It doesn't matter whether you have four or five labels of things on your retro board, or exactly how you do the retro. What does matter is the notion of thinking about what we're doing and how we can do better, and it is the team that's doing the work that does this, that is the central thing.
The 'date scrum' anti-pattern
Date Scrum is an R&D pattern where developers are asked to estimate software project requirements upfront for the entirety of the project. After the project is green lighted and the budget is set based on the final estimates, the team then holds daily scrums to status and manage risk as they “iterate” the solution toward the release date. To some, this approach is described as doing Waterfall in sprints.
The fundamental problem with Date Scrum is that the team is de-focused from discovering the best solution. Instead they are heavily focused on delivering Something™ by the Date™. Engineers are problem solvers, and if the primary problem becomes delivering Something™ that will pass QA by the Date™, they will, with enough pressure, solve that exact problem.
That which requires caring
Today's real world of technology is characterized by the dominance of prescriptive technologies.
The temptation to design more or less everything according to prescriptive and broken-up technologies is so strong that it is even applied to those tasks that should be conducted in a holistic way. Any tasks that require caring, whether for people or nature, any tasks that require immediate feedback and adjustment, are best done holistically. Such tasks cannot be planed, coordinated, and controlled the way prescriptive tasks must be.
Prescriptive technologies eliminate the occasions for decision-making and judgment in general and especially for the making of principled decisions. Any goal of the technology is incorporated a priori in the design and is not negotiable.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
A DefinitionWe are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Agile Scrum is not working
The Agile founders had it right, one size doesn't fit all. What the founders perhaps didn’t foresee, or couldn’t agree on, is that in order for the world to scale and consume their wisdom, it had to be packaged as concrete practices, not as abstract classes with virtual methods to be defined in context. And to the proponents of Agile Scrum, give them their due, for their part, they made it concrete – Agile Scrum has been packaged and delivered. Yet much work remains to realize the promise of Agile, which in summary is, the realization of wise use of lightweight development practices and workflows that flexibly adapt to the changing and evolving needs of customers.
Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake
An Article by Gandalf HudlowWhat happens when you apply date pressure to software engineers working on high value software projects? The engineers will focus on delivering Something™ by the Date™! This fatal flaw results in delivery of a Something™ full of chaos and features that nobody really wants or needs.
Beware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness
An Article by Sean DexterThe Lean Portfolio Management function that controls funding, are given sole authority to approve which Portfolio Epics move into each stream. Epics are not explanations about a problem that needs to be solved. They are pre-formed ideas about how best to solve those problems.
Right away we can see signs of the old-school mindset of viewing teams as a “delivery” function instead of a strategic one. The high level thinkers come up with ideas, and the low level doers execute on those ideas. Ignored is the possibility that those closest to the work might be best equipped to make decisions about it. Escaping from this misguided mindset is a core goal of Agile thinking that SAFe fails to remotely accomplish.
Why Scrum is killing your product
An Article by Henry LathamDesign Systems, Agile, and Industrialization
An Article by Brad FrostI’ve come to the conclusion that “enterprise web development” is just regular web development, only stripped of any joy or creativity or autonomy. It’s plugging a bunch of smart people into the matrix and forcing them to crank out widgets and move the little cards to the right.
In these structures, people are stripped of their humanity as they’re fed into the machine. It becomes “a developer resource is needed” rather than “Oh, Samantha would be a great fit for this project.” And the effect of all this on individuals is depressing. When people’s primary motivation is to move tickets over a column, their ability to be creative or serve a higher purpose are almost completely quashed. Interaction with other humans seems to be relegated to yelling at others to tell them they’re blocked.
Reading “AS PER THE REQUIREMENTS” in tickets makes me dry heave. How did such sterile, shitty language seep into my everyday work?
The value-destroying effect of arbitrary date pressure on code
An Article by Gandalf HudlowThe mandate from above is clear, just get it done! Avoid everything that's in the way: all advice, all expertise, all discovery efforts that detract from hitting the Date™!
What these organizations don't realize is that all software change can be modeled as three components: Value, Filler and Chaos. Chaos destroys Value and Filler is just functionality that nobody wants. When date pressure is applied to software projects, the work needed to remove Chaos is subtly placed on the chopping block. Work like error handling, clear logging, chaos & load testing and other quality work is quietly deferred in favor of hitting the Date™.
Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility)
An Article by Dave ThomasThe word “agile” has been subverted to the point where it is effectively meaningless, and what passes for an agile community seems to be largely an arena for consultants and vendors to hawk services and products.
…Let’s abandon the word agile to the people who don’t do things. Instead, let’s use a word that describes what we do. Let’s develop with agility.
- You aren’t an agile programmer—you’re a programmer who programs with agility.
- You don’t work on an agile team—your team exhibits agility.
- You don’t use agile tools—you use tools that enhance your agility.
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Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation, and
Responding to Change over Following a PlanTraditional companies are losing because they mismanage software engineers
An Article by Emma WattersonInnovation is messy, and frankly Anti-Steve [Jobs] can’t figure out why you wouldn’t just tell people the right thing to build and skip all the trial and error that comes with innovation. Anti-Steve and his board of directors that keep him in place fundamentally believe that they know what needs to be built. Or at least that they can hire the messiah that will come down off the mountain and tell everyone what to build. There is no such messiah.
Why we stopped breaking down stories into tasks
An Article by Adam SilverThe Scrum process says to break down stories into tasks to make estimation easier, encourage collaboration and to be able to show more granular progress during a sprint.
But after a few sprints, we decided to do the next sprint without creating tasks. As a result we drastically increased our velocity and never went back. Here I'll jot down some of the reasons we decided to do this:
- Breaking down stories into tasks is time consuming
- The tasks we came up with invariably would change as we worked on the stories
- Tasks are repetitive
- Tasks were often carried out in parallel
- Our estimates didn't improve
- It decluttered our task board
- It encouraged collaboration throughout the sprint
While we started our process by following Scrum to the letter, we soon realised that breaking down stories into tasks was something that wasn’t worthwhile for us. In the end we realised that it was overplanning and poor use of our time. In the end we used that time to get on with the work and deliver at a significantly faster pace.
Why We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups at Supercede
An Article by Jezen ThomasYesterday I worked on the widget.
Today I will work on the widget.
I have no blockers.Are you asleep yet? The developers are. You promise them an intellectually stimulating work environment and what they end up with is drudgery.
What value can be had from these meetings anyway? Using “alignment” for justification is so nebulous that it is essentially meaningless. Engineers align themselves. They talk. Especially if you hire good ones (which, you know, you’ll struggle to if you have a culture of coercing them into this kind of busywork). Where does the real discussion happen? It’s written down.
Software that nobody wants
An Article by Gandalf HudlowFinding value is the result of enabling individual and group-level discovery attempts. It's not the result of everyone following one leader's gut.
What just happened is a new software product/feature was created that no customer wanted. This happens way too often. In fact, most hyper important software projects that must be done by date certain or else, have deep flaws that cause some variation of this phenomenon, flaws that include:
- Not wanted - Company specified a solution to a problem that customers don't actually have
- No Rarity - Company is pursuing an iKnockoff of existing products. The market already has two scaled competitors with working solutions, customers naturally spend budget on products that are already successful to avoid risk
- Incorrect Packaging - Customers need a website, but the company created an iOS app instead
- Incorrect Pricing - Customers need SaaS pricing, but the company created a shrink wrapped, on-premise solution with CapEx and maintenance agreements instead
Making sense of MVP
An ArticleHenrik Kniberg:
The top scenario (delivering a front tire) sucks because we keep delivering stuff that the customer can’t use at all. If you know what you’re doing – your product has very little complexity and risk, perhaps you’ve built that type of thing hundreds of times before – then go ahead and just do big bang. Build the thing and deliver it when done.
Doing It Right
An Article by Brad FrostDoing it right requires a different pace of working and a much broader thought process than “ok, let’s get this thing out the door.” Which is super tough because most workplaces place a huge emphasis on getting things out the door, and fast. Little agile tickets that are expected to be completed in micro sprints to me seem to be antithetical to doing it right.
Planning doesn't make for better software
A Fragment by Robin RendleMy own time in a Silicon Valley startup has proved this much to be true; planning doesn’t make for better software. In fact today our design systems team doesn’t have sprints, we don’t have tickets or a daily standup. Each day we come to work, figure out what’s the most important thing that we could be doing, and then we—gasp!—actually do it.
Watching so many other teams slowly flail about whilst they plan for quarter 3.2 of subplan A, whilst our team produces more work in a week than they all do combined in a quarter has been shocking to me.
After four years of working in a large startup, I know what I always assumed was true: you don’t need a plan to make a beautiful thing. You really don’t. In fact, there’s a point where overplanning can be a signal of inexperience and fear and bullshit. The scrum board and the sprints and the inane meetings each and every day are not how you build another Super Mario 64.
Instead all you have to do is hire smart people, trust them to do their best work, and then get the hell out of their way.
Agile as Trauma
An Essay by Dorian TaylorThe Agile Manifesto is an immune response on the part of programmers to bad management.
Yagni
A Definition by Martin FowlerYagni originally is an acronym that stands for "You Aren't Gonna Need It". It is a mantra from Extreme Programming that's often used generally in agile software teams. It's a statement that some capability we presume our software needs in the future should not be built now because "you aren't gonna need it".
The State of Agile Software in 2018
A Talk by Martin FowlerOn the surface, the world of agile software development is bright, since it is now mainstream. But the reality is troubling, because much of what is done is faux-agile, disregarding agile's values and principles. The three main challenges we should focus on are: fighting the Agile Industrial Complex and its habit of imposing process upon teams, raising the importance of technical excellence, and organizing our teams around products (rather than projects).
Product vs. Feature Teams
An Article by Marty CaganThis article is certain to upset many people.
Thermal Delight in Architecture
Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design.
Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms.
The Cinderella of architecture
An analogy might be drawn with the use of light quality as a design element, truly a venerable old architectural tradition. The light quality—direct, indirect, natural, artificial, diffuse, dappled, focused—can be subtly manipulated in the design of a space in order to achieve the desired effect.
Thermal qualities might also be included in the architect's initial conception and could influence all phases of design. Instead, thermal conditions are commonly standardized with the use of modern mechanical systems that can be specified, installed, and left to function independently of the overall design concept.
Indeed, environmental control systems tend to be treated rather like the Cinderella of architecture; given only the plainest clothes to wear, they are relegated to a back room to do the drudgery that maintains the elegant life-style of the other sisters: light, form, structure, and so forth.
Two thermal archetypes
The hearth, a refuge of dry warmth from a cold world, and the oasis, a preserve of coolness and moisture in a desert wilderness.
Sonorisms III
One way not to be there (without dying).
"Yes, we have felt happy and alive together."
The Finnish word loyly, meaning "the steam which rises from the stones" originally signified spirit, or even life.
The tradition of the great shade tree.
Anasazi dwellings
The Anasazi Indians of the southwestern United States were remarkably clever in choosing the sites for their cliff dwellings. They invariably chose locations shaded in the summer by an overhanging ledge of the cliff, but exposed to full sun all winter long. With their backs to the cliff, the dwellings were protected from the winter winds and also took advantage of the thermal mass of the earth to moderate the temperature flux.
Migration within buildings
Many peoples of North Africa migrate within their buildings in both daily and seasonal patterns to take advantage of the various microclimates the buildings create.
Fascination with control
Fascination with this potential for control of our environment has prompted the invention of mechanical systems that have made natural thermal strategies seem obsolete by comparison.
The notion of a thermal optimum persists
There is an underlying assumption that the best thermal environment never needs to be noticed, and that once an objectively "comfortable" thermal environment has been provided, all of our thermal needs will have been met. The use of all of our extremely sophisticated environmental control systems is directed to this one end—to produce standard comfort zone conditions.
A simple pleasure that comes from just using it
People have a sense of warmth and coolness, a thermal sense like sight or smell, although it is not normally counted in the traditional list of our five senses.
As with all our other senses, there seems to be a simple pleasure that comes from just using it, letting it provide us with bits of information about the world around, using it to explore and learn, or just to notice.
There is a basic difference, however, between our thermal sense and all of our other senses. When our thermal sensors tell us an object is cold, that object is already making us colder. If, on the other hand, I look at a red object it won't make me grow redder, nor will touching a bump object make me bumpy.
Their opposites close at hand
We should note that all of these places of thermal extremes (Finnish saunas, Japanese hot baths, American beaches and mountains) have their opposites close at hand. There are possibly two reasons for having the extremes right next to each other.
The first is physiological: the availability of extremes ensures that we can move from one to the other to maintain a thermal balance.
The second might be termed aesthetic: the experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.
Substitutes for the thermal experience
Such clues from other senses can become so strongly associated with a sense of coolness or warmth that they can occasionally substitute for the thermal experience itself. For example, the taste of mint seems refreshing and cool regardless of what temperature it is. Similarly, the pressure of heavy blankets conveys a feeling of warmth quite independent of their actual thermal qualities.
The totality of its sensory stimulation
Perhaps the human fascination with fire stems from the totality of its sensory stimulation. The fire gives a flickering and glowing light, ever moving, ever changing. It crackles and hisses and fills the room with the smells of smoke and wood and perhaps even food. It penetrates us with its warmth. Every sense is stimulated and all of their associated modes of perception, such as memory and an awareness of time, are also brought into play, focused on the one experience of the fire. Together they create such an intense feeling of reality, of the "here and nowness" of the moment, that the fire becomes completely captivating.
We need an object for our affections
We need an object for our affections, something identifiable on which to focus attention. But in a typical office building, to what can we attribute the all-pervasive comfort of 70ºF, 50% relative humidity? Most likely, we would simply take it all for granted. When thermal comfort is a constant condition, constant in both space and time, it becomes so abstract that it loses its potential to focus attention.
The Skylid
The louvers automatically open to let solar radiation in when the sun shines and close in the evening to prevent radiant heat loss, controlled and driven by the shifting weight of freon.
We look into the greenhouse and watch the Skylids closing automatically, one by one and in no particular order, and we are aware of the hot air rising, cold air settling. They remind us that the earth is turning and the day is ending.
Retained as a quality
Thermal information is not differentiated in our memory; rather it is retained as a quality, or underlying tone, associated with the whole experience of the place. It contributes to our sense of the particular personality, or spirit, that we identify with that place. In remembering the spirit of a place, we can anticipate that if we return, we will have the same sense of comfort or relaxation as before.
Thermal aediculae
The inglenook, the gazebo, and the porch swing also have strong definitions of their spaces. They are each a bit like a little house set off for a special thermal purpose. They might be termed "thermal aediculae". Although the term aedicula is most often used in conjunction with a sacred or ceremonial little house, it can also be used to describe any diminutive structure used to mark a place as special.
Summerson contends that there is a basic human "fascination of the minitature shelter." Perhaps this is because the aedicula intensifies ones experience of the place by working someone like a caricature. By reducing some things in scale, it exaggerates the importance of other things, most especially the size of a person in relation to the space.
At a uniformly comfortable termperature
In America our tendency has been to get away from thermal conditions as a determinant of behavior. Instead, we have used our technology to keep entire living and working complexes at a uniformly comfortable temperature. As a result, our spatial habits have become diffused, and activities that were once localized by thermal conditions have spread out over a whole house or building. We forget, unless a system breaks down, that such wide-ranging use of space is extremely dependent upon the available heating and cooling equipment.
For their own concealed passion
Sharing the experience of a pleasant thermal setting may add an extra bonus to courtship. The gentle and cooling breeze of the southern porch swing provided a happy excuse for a couple to sit quietly together. A more technological version might be seen in the type of car that the teenagers of the 1950s considered ideal for a hot date—the convertible. Slightly more erotic, perhaps, were the atrium and green houses that were favorite settings for romance in Victorian England. The lovers could get lost among the leaves of the exotic tropical plants and possibly mistake the hot, humid atmosphere for their own concealed passion.
The kairo
The Japanese have notoriously unheatable houses. They have traditionally preferred to design their houses to be cool and airy in summer and then to get by in the winter with localized ways to heat the body. Smallest of all means is the kairo, a little case carried around in pockets or between layers of clothes that contains a warm charcoal ember.
The ritualized use of a place
The association of comfort with people and place are reinforced by the ritualized use of a place. Using a place at a set time and in a specific manner creates a constancy as dependable as the place itself. It establishes, in time and behavior, a definition of place as strong as any architectural spatial definition, such as an aedicula, might be. Ritualized use can do more than reinforce the affection for a place. Through ritual, a place becomes an essential element in the customs of a people.
Functionalism can be a kind of religion
We are not now inclined to regard modern heating and cooling systems as representative of a spiritual realm. The physical principles involved in their operation are thoroughly understood; there is no mystery about them. They are simply functional, designed according to straightforward engineering practice to serve their intended function as efficiently and conveniently as possible.
And yet functionalism itself can be a kind of religion.
...From the fifties and sixties we have inherited numerous heating and cooling systems created within an ethos of universal convenience. Machines to maintain our thermal comfort were conceived of as mechanical servants, providing for our every need while, like an English butler, remaining as unobtrusive as possible.
Protected, yet tuned in
Karen Terry's house in Sante Fe, designed by architect David Wright, is perhaps one of the most compelling passive designs.
Stepping down its hillside site in four tiers, it nestles low into the ground. Thick adobe sidewalls create a strong sense of shelter and its banks of windows look resolutely to the sun. The image is very much of a house attuned to sun and earth.
Rather than providing the convenience of a constant indoor temperature regulated by a thermostat, a passively solar-heated house may go through an air temperature flux as great as 20ºF per day. People learn to live with this flux.
Living in a solar house is a whole new awareness, another dimension. I have the comfort of a house with the serenity of being outdoors—protected, yet tuned in.
Blessed by the four elements
The Indian stone temple also included, in its architectural form, the means for being blessed by the four elements—earth, wind, water, fire.
- Before entering the temple gates, one removed one's shoes to touch and be blessed by the earth.
- Then upon passing through the temple gateway, one is blessed by the air with a gust of wind.
- A blessing by water is obtained by bathing in the temple tank, or at least descending its steps to touch the water.
- Finally, on entering the cool interior of the sanctuary, the worshipper is given a mark on the forehead with ashes taken from a sacred flame by an attendant priest. Even this blessing by fire has a slight cooling sensation to it.
Perhaps it is only coincidental that each of these four blessings is associated with a cooling sensation; and yet, the use of forms and materials that inevitably create coolness is quite remarkable.
Each ruler commissioned his own garden
The Mughuls of India developed a tradition where each ruler commissioned his own garden. Then, "At the owner's death the pavilion, generally placed in the center of the site, became the mausoleum, and the whole complex passed into the care of holy men."
The ancient fire spirit who lived in the hearth
The garden is as central to the concept of an Islamic home as the hearth is to the European home. It is interesting, then, that the hearth-fire in old traditions has a similar association with the life of the inhabitants of the house.
Commonly, the fire of the hearth was not allowed to go out. It was carefully covered with ashes each night at curfew so that a few selected embers would survive until morning. (In fact, the word "curfew" originated from the French word for cover-the-fire—couvre-feu.) Raglan comments that "the alarm and horror felt if the hearth-fire went out are out of all proportion to the inconvenience caused" by the need to relight it.
The housewarming ceremony
The connection between the life of the fire and the life of the inhabitant is also reflected in the custom of the housewarming ceremony. In contemporary America a housewarming party is given when a family moved into a new house. Perhaps all of the friends and their good wishes are thought to warm the house metaphorically. In traditional cultures, however, the warming is quite literal, for it involves the bringing in, or the first kindling, of the hearth fire, which then creates the proper spirit and sanctity to transform the house into a home.
Fire, the animating spirit
We can easily imagine from our own experience why fire might be used as a symbol of the life of a house and the family that lives there. The fire was certainly the most lifelike element of the house: it consumed food and left behind waste; it could grow and move seemingly by its own will; and it could exhaust itself and die. And most important it was warm, one of the most fundamental qualities that we associate with our own lives. When the fire dies, its remains become cold, just as the body becomes cold when a person dies. Drawing a parallel to the concept of the soul that animates the physical body of the person, the fire, then, is the animating spirit for the body of the house.