Agile Methods Quotes

Large portions of the productivity gains from agile methods come not from doing things better, but from not doing them at all.

A dependency on a private method of an external framework is a form of technical debt. Avoid these dependencies.

Traditional waterfall methods deliver value at the end of the project, often months or years after the project begins. Agile projects can deliver value quickly and incrementally during the life of the project. Capturing value early and often can significantly improve a project's return on investment, and utilizing iterative, feature-based delivery is the cornerstone practice in making that happen.

When applying agile practices at the portfolio level, similar benefits accrue: • Demonstrable results—Every quarter or so products, or at least deployable pieces of products, are developed, implemented, tested, and accepted. Short projects deliver chunks of functionality incrementally. • Customer feedback—Each quarter product managers review results and provide feedback, and executives can view progress in terms of working products. • Better portfolio planning—Portfolio planning is more realistic because it is based on deployed whole or partial products. • Flexibility—Portfolios can be steered toward changing business goals and higher-value projects because changes are easy to incorporate at the end of each quarter. Because projects produce working products, partial value is captured rather than being lost completely as usually happens with serial projects that are terminated early. • Productivity—There is a hidden productivity improvement with agile methods from the work not done. Through constant negotiation, small projects are both eliminated and pared down.

Recommended Reading The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Budget Approved by Johannes Ritter and Frank Röttgers provides a systematic guide for creating a financial business case. The book includes examples as well as the methods for using Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis to create the business case. The methods described in the book can also be used for quantifying risks and project costs. Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their book Lean Software Development: describe the lean principles and the types of waste in software projects.

When Ruby programmers say that some class “quacks like an Array,” they usually mean that it’s not necessarily an Array nor a descendant of Array, but it responds to most of the same methods as Array and can therefore be used wherever an Array would be used.

The five letters of the SOLID acronym stand for: Single Responsibility Principle: a class should have one and only one responsibility; that is, only one reason to change. The Lack of Cohesion Of Methods metric indicates the antipattern of too large a class. Open/Closed Principle: a class should be open for extension, but closed against modification. The Case Statement design smell suggests a violation. Liskov Substitution Principle: a method designed to work on an object of type T should also work on an object of any subtype of T. That is, all of T’s subtypes should preserve T’s “contract.” The refused bequest design smell often indicates a violation. Dependency Injection Principle: if two classes depend on each other but their implementations may change, it would be better for them to both depend on a separate abstract interface which is “injected” between them. Demeter Principle: a method can call other methods in its own class, and methods on the classes of its own instance variables; everything else is taboo. A design smell that indicates a violation is inappropriate intimacy.

More precisely, the Law of Demeter says that a method f of a class C should only call the methods of these: • C • An object created by f • An object passed as an argument to f • An object held in an instance variable of C

Returning null from methods is bad, but passing null into methods is worse.

There should be no grand, centralized choice made in the ivory tower. The minor cost-efficient advantage of the whole staff being trained in one method is far outweighed by the problems created—and the real cost, in ROI terms—by using the wrong process for the job.

An interface is said to be fluent if it returns itself from one or more of its methods. This allows clients to chain calls together,

Anyone who practices ad hoc development under the guise of agile methods is an imposter.

The scholastic method encouraged subtlety, intellectual agility, a sharpening of scholarly wits. It provoked a rage for philosophy, which occupied the schools at the expense of humanistic and scientific studies. Compromising by nature, it did not lead to the discovery of great final truths. It led, rather, to aridity, spiritual casuistry, and, with its ever more fine-spun distinctions, to absurdity.

to focus on scale and causation. Designers develop an agile mind to easily flip between divergence and convergence. Likewise, researchers must develop this same agility to flip between qualitative and quantitative. Innovation expert and management theorist Roger Martin called this the “opposable mind,” (Martin, 2007) and noted it is abductive logic (not deductive or inductive) that characterizes

A lack of understanding of the theory leaves you unable to differentiate between a necessary aspect of a method and an arbitrary one.

Choosing an Agile framework is same as cooking same cuisine with same recipe and ingredients using available equipments but by a different method.

The goal was to discover methods to build software that were as predictable in quality, cost, and time as those used to build bridges in civil engineering.

Agile methods don't attempt to describe everything that any development effort might need in thousands of pages of documentation. Instead they describe a minimal set of activities that are needed to create swarm intelligence.

Conveying information that a method is stable or unstable is one thing; attempting to control how others use it is quite another.

DevOps and its resulting technical, architectural, and cultural practices represent a convergence of many philosophical and management movements (including): Lean, Theory of Constraints, Toyota production system, resilience engineering, learning organizations, safety culture, Human factors, high-trust management cultures, servant leadership, organizational change management, and Agile methods.

Our old methods of excavating for problems leaves us with more problems. Everything rides on changing the positions we hold, the questions we ask, and the answers we’re willing to accept. When we only mine for weaknesses, that’s exactly what we’ll find.

Innovation development, as we originally knew it, has changed fundamentally. It is increasingly a question of bringing new products and services into the market as quickly as possible. To meet changes in the market today means to realize new ideas with astonishing speed. Agile methods, such as design thinking or a focus on minimum viable products (see chapter MVP), help achieve

Agile Methodology: Learn from how terror networks work. AGILE methodology is about being able to iterate and reiterate till you get it right. You are always at the start and the end at the same time till the launch. You are more nimble than the waterfall method and more resourceful than the lean method.

Open, direct, and frequent communication is central to the agile method, enabling individuals to quickly raise issues to the larger team and work with managers to find solutions.

Systems are never final, they must always be evolving

The system needs to be managed, not the people. We don’t need to do more things or implement difficult frameworks, methods, or models; we need to learn how to allow people to give their best effort to the company by providing the correct structures. It’s a path of trial and error to find the best way for each company. The Agile principles and mindset can serve as a guide. The tools and practices work sometimes, but not every time. The only way to move forward is through continuous learning. The companies that learn faster than the others will be the winners. HR has the power to design the structures that either support people to perform or make it difficult to contribute in creative and innovative ways. If HR holds onto the old, traditional approach, the consequence will be rigid and fixed organizations chained to ineffective systems and processes. HR can either support or hinder the change toward a more Agile organization, which is why HR needs to go first! By providing different structures and focusing on customer value instead of rules, HR can lead companies through change that no other department is capable of.

The best product teams I know have already moved past how most teams practice these methods—leveraging the core principles of Lean and Agile, but raising the bar on what they're trying to achieve and how they work.

slow down decisions and can paralyze execution, allowing the adversary to dance around the methodical, process-driven approach. Skip-echelon will generally work to restore the speed of decisions and agility; if not, removing entire organizations can clear the pipes.

When resistance is overcome using positional power, it is highly likely that employees are acquiescing, while their behavior is actually passive-aggressive. When management’s attention is turned to something else, they’ll quietly revert to the old ways. They had no ownership in the changes, and they haven’t internalized them. It hasn’t become “how we do things around here.” It isn’t part of their identity individually or as a group. Evolutionary change is robust, while designed and managed change is fragile. The Kanban Method is fundamentally based in the belief that wiring a modern business with the means and mechanisms for evolutionary change—to have the evolutionary DNA that is able to respond to a changing environment and changing expectations, to evolve and remain fit-for-purpose—provides the resilience and robustness that organizations need to survive and thrive. The Kanban Method provides the operational means to maintain a fit-for-purpose organization that is built for survival.

A pivot is not just an exhortation to change. Remember, it is a special kind of structured change designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, business model, and engine of growth. It is the heart of the Lean Startup method. It is what makes the companies that follow Lean Startup resilient in the face of mistakes: if we take a wrong turn, we have the tools we need to realize it and the agility to find another path.

Kahn’s thinking regarding “barbarians” was prescient. It not only partially inspires agile and other lightweight software development methods, but it also reinforces a theme big companies are often unintentionally trying to forget: hacking is important.

Shaping a behaviour takes a bit more time and skill but ultimately dogs learn behaviours more reliably because they have to figure it out on their own. It is like a game of 20 questions. The dog does something and the handler uses some kind of marker (a sound, light or word) to say “yes that is (or close to) what I want!” The dog then learns to offer more behaviours in an attempt to get a reward. Dogs quickly learn that they can speed up the rate of rewards by repeating the last thing they did when they got rewarded. Shaping eliminates the need to first show the dog the reward because the dog has to initiate something to make the reward appear. This method gives you remarkable results in a short period of time but does require some experience with, and knowledge of, operant conditioning.

[Big Game Arcane Hunter (Epic)] – A true hunter seeks not the easy prey but a true challenge. Your hunt has taken you further than ever before as your methods improve, and you have embraced the arcane. The Avaricious Arcane Hunter has, through his many hunts, become more accustomed to facing higher-level enemies. Increases the user’s resistance to auras and gives a small increase to Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Willpower while facing enemies above your class or race level. The bonus is based on the disparity between the level of your prey and you. Limit of 1.25x your level or 50 levels, whichever is highest. May your hunt be fruitful, and your Avarice sated.

(Lindvall , et al. 2002, 197) Waterfall and spiral methodologies are plan-driven methods (also referred to as traditional methodologies.)

VersionOne indicated that the top three reasons for agile project failure are: Inadequate experience with agile methods Little understanding of broader organizational change required Company philosophy or culture at odds with agile values

Despite using the latest agile software development methods, the team had created the biggest waste of all: building a product no one wanted.

Recommended Reading Lyssa Adkins in her book Coaching Agile Teams describes the responsibilities and working methods for the agile coach. She provides details on the skills, techniques, and methods an agile coach can use to develop into a seasoned mentor and coach. Jean Tabaka in her book Collaboration Explained describes the content, structure, techniques, and tools for executing collaborative events. Kaner et al. offer practical advice on facilitating decision-making in their book the Dynamics of Group Decision-Making.

In the previous two decades, as NUMMI’s success had become better known, executives in other industries had started adapting the Toyota Production System philosophy to other industries. In 2001, a group of computer programmers had gathered at a ski lodge in Utah to write a set of principles, called the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development,” that adapted Toyota’s methods and lean manufacturing to how software was created.

The practices and artifacts of Scrum –backlogs, sprints, stand ups, increments, burn charts –reflect an understanding of the need to strike a balance between planning and improvisation, and the value of engaging the entire team in both. As we’ll see later, Agile and Lean ideas can be useful beyond their original ecosystems, but translation must be done mindfully. The history of planning from Taylor to Agile reflects a shift in the zeitgeist –the spirit of the age –from manufacturing to software that affects all aspects of work and life. In business strategy, attention has shifted from formal strategic planning to more collaborative, agile methods. In part, this is due to the clear weakness of static plans as noted by Henry Mintzberg. Plans by their very nature are designed to promote inflexibility. They are meant to establish clear direction, to impose stability on an organization… planning is built around the categories that already exist in the organization.[ 43] But the resistance to plans is also fueled by fashion. In many organizations, the aversion to anything old is palpable. Project managers have burned their Gantt charts. Everything happens emergently in Trello and Slack. And this is not all good. As the pendulum swings out of control, chaos inevitably strikes. In organizations of all shapes and sizes, the failure to fit process to context hurts people and bottom lines. It’s time to realize we can’t not plan, and there is no one best way. Defining and embracing a process is planning, and it’s vital to find your fit. That’s why I believe in planning by design. As a professional practice, design exists across contexts. People design all sorts of objects, systems, services, and experiences. While each type of design has unique tools and methods, the creative process is inspired by commonalities. Designers make ideas tangible so we can see what we think. And as Steve Jobs noted, “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like.