Achieving Test Driven Nirvana

Car Cuba

Cuban Car: Martin Harris

Well perhaps not Nirvana then, but at least having a suitable level of test coverage.  ;-)

I wanted to write an article around the uptake of test driven development. Scrum and agile are hard to do well. If you break these down, you often find that the components are pretty challenging too. TDD is difficult but it has gained widespread recognition at the intellectual level.  On the ground though the practice can be patchy. Why?

Before writing this article I had a look around to see what else had been written.  This article on Geiger’s Counterpoint sums up my thoughts exactly.  Its such a good article that I hardly have anything left to say.  In fact neatly I can just provide some bullet points!

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Influencing self organised teams

Fragile, Pink Rose, Beijing: Martin Harris

Pink Rose, Beijing: Martin Harris.

I have been reading chapter 12 of Succeeding with agile by Mike Cohn.  The chapter title is Leading a Self-Organising Team. I have been reading it in the following context:

Strive for technical excellence and Improving technical practices is not optional.

Why is it that improving technical excellence is sometimes neglected on a project?  Why do developers think its ok to check in classes with warnings, leave essential and easily written tests out or add to messy code.  You must of heard the phrase “nobody cares about a building with broken windows.”  One more broken window will not matter. The same applies to software. Often you will find developers harboring some kind of guilt for not fixing things.
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When Change is hard

Just found out about Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard – Chip and Dan Heath,
from some of the Lab49 consultants.  I can’t wait to read it.  Take a look at this clip:

Clip from Switch Change book

The experiment in the hospital, reminds me of what happens when I am pair coding.  When you are working in a pair, people are less likely to interrupt you.  I think it contributes to the extra throughput for pairs.  This book is going on my reading list.

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6 Tips for Good Scrum

Pushing the cart, Matheran, India: Martin Harris

Pushing the cart, Matheran, India: Martin Harris

I went along to the London Scrum User Group yesterday evening.  For a change it was a quiet night.  Christmas is around the corner so we had less attendees.  Nigel Baker of AgileBear kicked off and suggested putting together 15 tips for good scrum.  After some discussion, we came up with 6 good ones, and in true Agile style, we decided that if you did these 6 well, you would be in front of the pack.  So we stopped there and got on with eating the snacks and drinking the beer.  The night was sponsored by Rally Software, cheers for the food guys.  So here is what the group came up with, look at your team and ask yourself if your doing these, if not, perhaps its time for a scrum experiment?

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