How To Dive Into Agile Projects?

From Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
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I came across this post today ( Agile Architecture: How Much Is Just Enough? ) in my news reader and wanted to add some comments to my future self and the few others that might read this journal. In my day job, I'm struggling with a few projects because of their complexity, support debt of previous projects and some stakeholders that are adding more projects to my roadmap without due diligence of checking (respecting) my availability. It is a wicked collection but something that can always come about with a string of successes, lots of folks want a piece.

This is why I'm becoming more enamored with LEAN and utilizing some of its keys internally for my own needs. This is an edited list from ( Agile Architecture: How Much Is Just Enough? ) that I think I might bring to one of my key stakeholder meetings. By key stakeholders, I mean the users because I don't share the philosophy that upper management play much of a significant role beyond financing budgets. Here is the nugget ... 

To put things in perspective, if we want to set guidelines on getting started with an Agile architecture, we can put down a few simple steps that will help us understand how we dive in:

1. Identify business objectives.
   
2. Establish architectural objectives.
   
3. Identify key scenarios/actors.
   
4. Draw an application overview.
   
5. Identify design coupling points.
   
6. Create candidate architectural solutions.
   
7. Inspect and improve. 

By all means, please read the entire article and I think you will understand why I think this content could be used to help guide the user / designer team a nice unified software tool creation process. It may become a key artifact in all kickoff meetings and perhaps even an internal roadmap for the team to follow.

How To Open PMI Document Links On A Macintosh (ashx extension)

From Dwayne Wright PMP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

Are you having troubles opening the links from PMI for their handbooks on your Macintosh? Chances are, you are using a browser other than Safari. I use Firefox as my default browser and the PMI ashx files don't work properly with Firefox on a Macintosh. Go to PMI via Safari or simply copy the download link and you should get a screen that allows you to view and save as a traditional pdf.

Interesting Post About Valve Getting Rid Of Bosses

Came across this link on GeekWire and thought it very interesting, "Valve designer Greg Coomer: How getting rid of bosses makes for better games". Not sure how effective it is but it sure we would interesting to see a comprehensive "pros vs cons" document to get that overhead view of the concept.

Schedule Slack Based Upon ...

From Dwayne Wright PMP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

I was studying for my PMI ACP test with the test environment provided by GR8PM (by the way, they have been awesome) and came across the following question that I've missed twice so far ...

The amount of slack that you build into your iteration plan depends on the __________ of the problems that your project team experiences.

and the possible answers include complexity, difficulty, number or randomness.

If you are like me, you thought there must be a hidden "all the above" choice. The correct answer is randomness and (for some reason) I don't want to accept that answer. I want to say that randomness is something that can be controlled and therefore not an acceptable answer choice. The reason this is the most correct answer (most correct is always being something to deal with on certification exams) is because you just don't know if you have controlled it until after the fact.

Just thought it was an interesting point and wanted to share it.

© 2012 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded.

Interesting Point / Counterpoint Blog Posts About Agile

From Dwayne Wright PMP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

Please Note: If you are viewing this page in a news feeder, the images may get munged up a bit or other formatting of the posting may fail. For the best experience, please visit the journal directly by clicking (here)

This morning I began reading a post from The Agile Forest called "7 things I hate about people that don’t know Agile" and it started off by referring to another article on the Assembla Blog called "Seven Things I Hate About Agile". So I decided to read the original point before progressing to the counterpoint article.

My viewpoints of Agile has evolved since I attended a ACP preparation class last week from the good folks at GR8PM. One comment from the class kept ringing through my head as I read both articles.

Agile and Waterfall are only the tails of the bell curve, hybrid approaches are the middle.

Back to the "Seven Things I Hate About Agile" article, it seemed to be quite harsh but yet contributed some valid viewpoints. The author actually comments that individuals over 40 "have the smell of death" in regards to a comment about the people attending Agile events. When I see things like this, I normally disregard an entire blog as a whole but I kept reading this time. His comments about Pair Programming seemed very valid to me and only see if useful when working on products that their bugs ... could actually kill people (airline navigation software, medical software, comic book inventory software and the like).

Moving over to the "7 things I hate about people that don’t know Agile" response article, I found it (as you might suspect) a bit reactionary. However, I also found it a quite interesting read and enjoyed the counterpoints made. Again, I am drawn to the concept of intelligent hybrid approaches that are customized to meet an organizations or an individual projects needs.

I also think that selling a hybrid approach to an organizations "powers that be" could be extremely challenging. I continue to be amazed and depressed by how many times these "leaders" look for "off the shelf" solutions because they feel that exploring the granular details of a problem is too beneath them. I literally cringe everytime I'm in a meeting with a suit that explains that his/her time is too valuable to "be in the weeds" on an issue and cite how they are "strategy" focused. In cases like this, it is hard to sell a hybrid approach, much less implement one!

© 2012 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded.