Thoughts from a Thirsty Bear

Team: “ Coach! Coach! This agile process stuff you sold us doesn’t work! ” Coach: “ Did you build working software regularly? ” Team: “ No, it was too difficult. ” Coach: “ Did you extend your definition of Done as far as you could? ” Team: “ No, it was too difficult. ” Coach: “ Did you make quality part of your process? ” Team: “ No, it was too difficult. ” Coach: “ Did you review what you were doing at all? ” Team: “ Yes, but we didn’t like what we discovered, so we ignored it. ” Coach: “ So are you absolutely sure it was the agile process that caused you to fail? ” Team: “ Oh yes, absolutely…. ” Coach: " <sigh> " * honest....

Via various convoluted routes: Become a Certified Agile Software Specialist! Update : the link is now cobwebbed, but if you did the original then please get in touch! Update 2: It's back! FTW! Update 3 : the link has disappeared again. Boo!

Dear aspiring Software Craftsman, Here is my advice. Take whatever courses you think are interesting. Study closely the work of the Old Masters. Stop writing software that was only designed in your own mind. Stick with one technique until you perfect it. Buy a book on software structure. It's the only book you need. Until you can write a program without bugs you don't know how to program. Stay away from Javascript. You'll never master it. Very few ever have. Forget about commercial frameworks. Use Open Source. It's where the action is. Visit an old age home. Talk to the people who remember 8 inch floppy disks and punch cards. Learn to play chess. Take a business course. Do not use an MP3 player. Learn a foreign language. Scala should do it. Learn to cook. Please. Before you get scurvy or rickets. There are more food groups than pizza, coffee and chocolate bars. Learn to play a musical instrument. Learn to swim. Do not litter. Avoid politically correct people. Avoid anyo...

If you get an infinite number of non-test-driven developers programming in a room for an infinite amount of time, would you end up with the works of Shakespeare?

A recent exchange between me and a non-developer, trying to explain that some Scrum Masters are better than others: Me: "Scrum Mastering is pretty much the same as Team Leading. To find a good one you need to look at their past. They almost need a 'pedigree'." S: "Oh, you mean Pedigree Scrum ?" Me: "Yes. They need to eat their own dogfood....." At that point we had to temporarily abort the conversation. OK, maybe you had to be there....

How familiar does this sound? Your Friendly Neighbourhood Architect flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over the design without any sort of interaction with the user or codebase and flies out leaving the Team to tidy up as best they can.... Unfortunately Seagull Architects are still out there causing a nuisance on all types of project, not just agile. So please, Do Not Feed the Seagulls.... (Note - there are unconfirmed reports that Seagull Architects are evolving. Into Vulcan Architects. Here they walk in, Vulcan-mind-meld with the requirements and codebase (again without any real interaction with customer or real world code), and announce the design required. "That's illogical, Captain")