Antony Marcano's blog
youDevise series on my new blog
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Sat, 24/07/2010 - 21:51.I've started a new series on my blog... it's a weekly diary of what it's like to work with youDevise as a developer. I thought it might prove interesting to those considering working there in the future... since they are frantically hiring.
You can read the diary on my new blog.
Wondering why I have a new blog?
You can read the diary on my new blog.
Wondering why I have a new blog?
Monsters, Names, Pot-Roast & The Waterfall Model
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Tue, 13/07/2010 - 00:47. agile“Antony” (without the ‘H’) is the anglicised version of Antonius. In victorian times (there or thereabouts I’m guessing), among those wishing to appear oh so intelligent, gossip spread that the spelling of “Antony” was wrong… For, so they would say, it is born of the greek word “anthos” (meaning “flower”) – oh dear… so many poor children with misspelt names…
Despite being completely wrong, the world forgot of my name’s etruscan origin and spelt it with an ‘H’… This misinformation established itself through the eras so much so that, today, the de-facto spelling is “Anthony”. It has even found it’s way into the American pronunciation of the name as: “An-thon-ee”.
Waterfall development has something in common with this story… somehow, through misinformation, what it once was has been warped, into something else.
The key difference is that Waterfall is now increasingly represented as was originally intended. Unfortunately for me, my name is not…
Read the rest of this post on my new blog...
Wondering why I have a new blog?
Despite being completely wrong, the world forgot of my name’s etruscan origin and spelt it with an ‘H’… This misinformation established itself through the eras so much so that, today, the de-facto spelling is “Anthony”. It has even found it’s way into the American pronunciation of the name as: “An-thon-ee”.
Waterfall development has something in common with this story… somehow, through misinformation, what it once was has been warped, into something else.
The key difference is that Waterfall is now increasingly represented as was originally intended. Unfortunately for me, my name is not…
Read the rest of this post on my new blog...
Wondering why I have a new blog?
My blog has moved... but don't panic...
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Thu, 08/07/2010 - 23:44.I’ve decided to move my blog. This is a sad day for me, but my posts have long-since outgrown testingReflections. The content of my blog posts is now about so much more than just testing that it doesn’t seem to make sense hosting it here anymore.
I’m still the curator of testingReflections and intend to continue to be so, as I still get many people telling me how valuable it is to them. I have many plans for it, to bring it up to date but I simply haven’t had the time. I am working hard to make that time, so I appreciate your continued patience.
Feature Injection User Stories on a Business Value Theme
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Thu, 13/05/2010 - 23:51. agileFeature Injection, an approach to Agile Business Analysis created by Chris Matts, is a much misunderstood thing –. It is a way of combining several techniques to understand just enough of a business problem to start expressing solutions to it. It provides specific techniques to incrementally and iteratively comprehend each of the following:
- The business value sought (the why)
- The problem domain (what specifically needs solving to deliver that value)
- The resulting roles, incentives and product capabilities (the solution)
Basically, it helps us to evolve everyone’s understanding of the business-need as we (by other means) also evolve the implementation of the product.
Developer Race-Tech: Continuous Testing
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Thu, 29/04/2010 - 00:12. agileGearboxes in competitive motor racing are designed to shift as fast as possible. A competitive race-car has computer controlled, hydraulically activated gear shifts that change gears up or down faster than you can blink (literally)! Compare that to the circa 1 second gear-shift a competent driver takes to manually de-clutch, change gear and re-clutch on a road car. Even automatic gearboxes on road cars can't keep pace with the rapid gear changes that a race car delivers.
Adaptive Budgets? "Pull" the other one!
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Sat, 10/04/2010 - 11:49.Recently, I wrote about my views on using and estimating with task-cards. I highlighted that tracking progress with burn-up/down charts showing effort completed/remaining is not a true measure of progress, especially if we subscribe to the idea that we measure progress with working-software.
I also highlighted how tasks "horizontally slice" a "vertically sliced" story.
I also highlighted how tasks "horizontally slice" a "vertically sliced" story.
Taking repetition to task
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Tue, 16/03/2010 - 11:56. acceptance testing | agile | test driven developmentOthers have talked about the virtues of stories as vertical slices of a problem (end-to-end capabilities) rather than horizontal slices (system layers or components). So, if we slice the problem with user stories, how do we slice the user-stories themselves?
If, as I sometimes say, acceptance tests (a.k.a. examples/scenarios/acceptance-criteria) are the knife with which we slice a story into even thinner vertical slices, then I would say my observation of 'tasks' is that they are used as the knife used to cut a story into horizontal slices. This feels wrong...
Keeping pace with an evolving understanding
Submitted by Antony Marcano on Fri, 26/02/2010 - 12:32. agileOne of my ongoing rants was described to me as "awesome" (thanks Amy). I'm sitting here at the early moments of XTC and rather than procrastinate about writing this post, I decided to do it now! Despite doing that, it seems that it took me a month to get round to publishing it!
My rant is often a reaction to conversations that arise about what makes something "Agile". Often, in these conversations the other person places emphasis on "Agile" branded practices. One of the key dimensions of agile methods is a recognition that human beings don't know or understand things 'instantaneously'. We learn in an evolutionary way. This is no different whether we are evolving our understanding of somehting on paper (e.g. in UML diagrams and other such paper based modelling mediums) or whether we are representing this in a tangible, interactive, real implementation of what we think the customer wants. The key difference is that the customer can learn more about their own understanding of the problem they've asked us to solve by using something real, rather than just working on 'paper' (albeit virtual paper).
My rant is often a reaction to conversations that arise about what makes something "Agile". Often, in these conversations the other person places emphasis on "Agile" branded practices. One of the key dimensions of agile methods is a recognition that human beings don't know or understand things 'instantaneously'. We learn in an evolutionary way. This is no different whether we are evolving our understanding of somehting on paper (e.g. in UML diagrams and other such paper based modelling mediums) or whether we are representing this in a tangible, interactive, real implementation of what we think the customer wants. The key difference is that the customer can learn more about their own understanding of the problem they've asked us to solve by using something real, rather than just working on 'paper' (albeit virtual paper).
