Test-Driven Development and Design Patterns

Last month, in my conversation with Scott Bain on Impediments to TDD, I wanted to explore how he was incorporating TDD and Design Patterns, two areas of particular expertise for Scott. That is the topic of today's conversation.

Emergent Design (audio of the webinar)

What is design? An opportunity to mitigate risk. A way to look for eliminating waste. It is certainly not simply the "thinking" part of software development.

When are you doing design? Just up front?

While I usually don't use the blog for cross-promotion, this webinar is probably something you want to listen to if you are at all interested in Lean Software Development. This is the basic 60 minute seminar that Alan Shalloway gives all around the country on Lean Thinking. Definitely worth a listen. Find it at www.netobjectives.com/webinars/aligning-with-lean This webinar is available to all registered users of the website until December 9, 2007 and then to Net Objectives customers after that.

After Action Reviews are one of the primary methods for learning-while-doing. One can think of the Scrum Retrospection as one type of AAR. I have implemented the AAR widely in organizations, both technical and business, both small team and larger organizations. It is a simple technique that you should consider using in your organization in your journey toward lean.

Now, Quality Press, the publishing arm of the American Society for Quality, has published a new book on this powerful technique called How Organizations Learn: Investigate, Identify, Institutionalize by Patrick Townsend and Joan Gebhardt. It is certainly recommended reading.

Note: If you are a member of ASQ, you can get the book for a 40% discount.

If you have any questions about AAR, I would be more than happy to talk with you!

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Michael Kennedy is a leading expert on Lean and Product Development. He is the author of Product Development for the Lean Enterprise: Why Toyota's System Is Four Times More Productive and How You Can Implement It, a book you definitely want on your bookshelf if you are interested in Lean Product Development.

Enterprise Agility

Often, organizations invite us in to help them think about how to bring Agile into their development practices. The initial focus is often at the local team level. Our experience is that this is not the best place to start. Instead, we prefer to look for pain points that the organization is feeling in their development work, and we talk with local teams to get indicators of these points.

• What is stopping you from delivering the value to customers that you feel you should?
• What opportunities do you see and what waste is there?

We can predict some of the answers depending on whether it is an IT organization or a product organization. IT organizations tend to have people working on more than one project at a time whereas in product organizations, people usually focus on one project. This means that IT organizations often have less connection to the business and have more contention for resources. These are all opportunities for improvement that may or may not involve changes at the local team level.

Enterprise Agility, Systems Thinking

“Enterprise Agility” focuses on helping the overall development organization be more able to respond to the needs of the business. It starts by looking at what needs to be done and then on how to do it. Probably, this will involve Agile at the local team level, but that might not be the best place to start.  read more »

 Announcing Scrum Certification by Net Objectives 

Scrum Certification by Net Objectives is a new program by Net Objectives to help the industry and especially our clients have a reliable, repeatable, and meaningful process by which to assess the competency of individuals and teams to be on a Scrum Team, to be a Scrum Master, or to be a Product Owner. This podcast announces the program and the motivations behind it, including the following:

• What this program is and what it covers
• The motivation behind this program
• Why the industry needs certification in Scrum
• What we mean by “certification”
• What certification will involve
• When it will be ready

The need for this is borne out of our experience having trained almost 20,000 people in Scrum and working with many major corporations rolling out Scrum, what people need to get proficient with Scrum.

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Alan Shalloway has started a regular series of webinars on Lean and Agile topics. The recordings of these webinars are available to registered users of the www.netobjectives.com website in the Resources Page for 30-days and to students and customers after that.

Here are some webinar recordings on these topics:

Lean Anti-Patterns: Overview

It doesn’t have to be this way. Haven’t you felt that in your tummy sometimes. You and your team end up doing the same thing again and again, and you just get the same results again and again. And here you area again, starting out on that familiar path and it is going to be painful again. Around and around. That is an “anti-pattern”: Repeated patterns of work and behavior that produce counterproductive results.

Alan Shalloway has been training companies across the country in lean for software development.  read more »

Completing the Agile Development Puzzle

Bob Hartman is Net Objectives’ Vice President of Business Development and Marketing. He has over 20 years experience in the software industry and has seen it all. Maybe it is all those years in the trenches or maybe it is the gray in his beard or maybe it is living in Colorado, but I find his perspectives to be refreshing. He sees what organizations truly need and does a great job helping them.  read more »