Author: neopragma

An IT professional since 1977, I’ve served in a variety of technical and managerial roles. I’ve worked mainly as a consultant since 1984, keeping one foot in the technical camp and one in the management camp. A lifelong learner, I’ve always been interested in exploring better ways to deliver business value through information technology. I’m currently working as an independent consultant, trainer, and coach with an interest in bringing together the best of tried-and-true methods and the best of leading-edge methods to help businesses realize the maximum return on their IT investments and efforts.

Posted on July 3, 2021 by neopragma

An incentive to collaborate

Recently, I tweeted that I had presented a virtual training class in which we used remote mob programming for the lab exercises, and at the end the participants said their main take-away was not the technical content, but rather the value of direct collaboration. Colleagues who already understand and appreciate the power of collaboration were excited to hear the story.

But what about people who do not already understand and appreciate the power of collaboration? What was unique about the situation that brought collaboration to the fore, above and beyond the technical skills that were ostensibly the subject of the class? How closely does that situation align with more-typical software development realities?

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Posted on June 17, 2021July 12, 2021 by neopragma

Discipline

Premise 1: Self-discipline is the only meaningful form of discipline.

Premise 2: Simpler solutions are usually preferable to more-complicated solutions to the same problem.

Premise 3: Without self-discipline on the part of those using it, no process model or method or framework or tool of any kind provides the value its proponents believe it can provide.

Premise 4: A formal process that imposes strict rules tends to teach people to follow rules rather than to cultivate self-discipline.

Premise 5: The longer and more deeply a person invests in a given idea or habit, the more difficult it becomes for that person to let go of the idea or habit, or even to question it.

Premise 6: In the diffusion of any innovation, the main reason Innovators and Early Adopters achieve better results than Late Adopters and Laggards is the former are predisposed to try unfamiliar things and take risks, and not primarily because the particular innovation is intrinsically better than whatever it replaces (even if it happens to be a little better on the merits).

Premise 7: The factor that makes an innovation useful is that it comes at a time when it is needed, in a context where it is needed, and to people who are in a position to make use of it; not necessarily that the innovation itself is “best” in a general or permanent sense.

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Posted on June 15, 2021June 15, 2021 by neopragma

En casa del herrero, cuchillo de madera

I was reminded of that old saying when I was struggling to use one of the internal software tools we’re required to use at my current client. In this case, it was one of several time-tracking systems.

It led me to think about the difference in quality between the software the client creates to support customers, and the software they create for internal use. It seems to be a consistent pattern at many companies. They pay a great deal of attention to quality for customer-facing information systems, but when it comes to systems for internal use, they just throw something together quickly, and often carelessly.

The old saying, “In the blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife,” applies to our line of work. The question then becomes, Why?

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Posted on June 11, 2021July 21, 2021 by neopragma

The best agile environments I’ve seen

Looking back over who-knows-how-many “agile transformation” and “agile coaching” engagements, it occurs to me that five experiences stand out as especially positive.

When I ask myself why, two elements present themselves: First, (in three cases) the development team was physically collocated with the end users and collaborated directly with them daily; and second, (in the other two cases) the team and the organization did not “lock in” any rigid definition of “agile,” and actively explored ways to move beyond the usual Agile 101 level of practice.

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Posted on June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 by neopragma

What’s a time-box?

When working with people who are new to “agile” development methods, particularly Scrum, I notice there seems to be a great deal of confusion about the concept of a time-box.

Time-boxes are baked into Scrum at multiple levels. The Sprint is a time-box, and all the standard Scrum events are time-boxed. Yet, many people who adopt Scrum pay little attention to this aspect of the process. They begin their events late and they extend the time of an event if they haven’t yet met the objectives.

I don’t speak for the inventors of Scrum, but my understanding of the time-box mechanism is that it has two key functions for a team and organization. When people don’t use time-boxes in a way that enables those functions, it suggests they don’t quite understand what the time-box is for.

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Posted on May 17, 2021May 29, 2021 by neopragma

Product-Aligned Software Teams

For a long time now, and starting in earnest in the early 1990s, people involved with software development and delivery have been shifting various aspects of the work to the “left,” if you visualize a software delivery pipeline that runs from left to right. What’s the endgame?

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Posted on May 15, 2021 by neopragma

The Refried Beans of Agile

As a young computer programmer, I moved to Dallas, Texas, without ever having been there before, and with no idea what the place was like. There were three attractors for me: (1) Reputedly good prospects for a career in information technology, (2) no State income tax, and (3) good Mexican food. Those of you know know me IRL will be unsurprised by which of those was the strongest attractor for me. Indeed, as I rolled into town the first time, I was delighted to see a Mexican restaurant on nearly every corner.

Some years later, I was working with a guy who had just completed an introductory Six Sigma class and had started the journey toward Green Belt status. In other words, an Expert. As he listened to the almost-daily discussion about which Mexican restaurant we should go to, he had a brilliant idea. He would assess Mexican restaurants by the quality of their refried beans.

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Posted on May 15, 2021 by neopragma

Tips for Teleconferencing

With over a year of daily teleconferencing, and a strong likelihood we’ll continue to work remotely after the pandemic, I’ve noticed a few things that help or hinder understanding on conference calls and virtual meetings. These mainly pertain to audio.

Of course, we’re not trained broadcast journalists, and we didn’t ask for the pandemic to keep us working from home for so long. Nevertheless, there are some things we can keep in mind to help our colleagues understand us clearly on videoconference calls.

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Posted on April 22, 2021May 3, 2021 by neopragma

Tactical Agile

Once “agile” methods had crossed the chasm, organizations in the Late Adopter and Laggard categories began to try and roll out “agile” across their enterprises, or at least across their IT departments.

To support deep-pocketed enterprises that wanted to scale “agile,” consultancies sprouted up offering “frameworks” that could be dropped into place to achieve agility. They are generally based on Scrum and/or Kanban principles, in a way that often lends itself to fun (provided you aren’t the one paying for them).

As the years passed, large enterprises made multiple attempts to implement agile frameworks. With each attempt, they are growing smarter about what will or will not work at scale. But these lessons are excruciatingly expensive.

Despite the general results, consultancies that specialize in scaling agile methods continue to promote the idea. New books have appeared that explain how to scale agile in large enterprises. I checked Amazon books briefly, and got 14 hits for relatively recent books on the subject. But is it even a “subject?”

It occurs to me the basic reason for most of the difficulty is that “agile” as such simply does not scale. If that’s the case, then how can larger enterprises gain the benefits of agility? I think there is a way. It boils down to applying “agile” tactically rather than strategically; except perhaps to say that the strategy is to apply “agile” tactically.

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