Opinions needed.. (no, really! :))
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What I've seen is programmers now who are terrified of writing code. They don't feel like they can write a simple for loop without a unit test (written first!) to show it works. Then you take all the unit-test passing code and plug it together and find it is all still buggy because unit tests don't catch everything and the most subtle bugs occur in integration (especially with anything event driven). My favorite sayings are "you don't ship tests" and "customers don't buy tests". What ultimately matters to the business is to ship working code. Absolutely write tests for subtle algorithms or pieces of code that have proven buggy. Writing tests for code that has to be refactored (for performance for instance) is great to prove that the behavior is unchanged. But it seems the modern programming culture puts all the emphasis on unit testing as if that is a panacea for delivering working systems. And don't forget that writing test suites for code that doesn't ship due to being un-needed or because it is delivered too late is completely wasted time. Maybe these guys haven't been on a project that failed due to being delivered late, and they have to learn the hard way.
Great comments, I agree 100%..
Carlosian wrote:
Maybe these guys haven't been on a project that failed due to being delivered late, and they have to learn the hard way.
Their previous project took 4 years to fail and cost around £25 million. Odd how they haven't learned anything from that! Even odder that they weren't all kicked out.. :doh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
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160 points were promised but only 40 delivered OK - so now your velocity is 40, which means you cannot promise more than 40 in your next sprint. Then - if that gets done, slowly increase the velocity to towards your target. Also - use customer value to choose the most impactful 40 points and deliver them first. Don't make the stuff that delivers real value wait for the HiPPO driven requirements.
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
OK - so now your velocity is 40, which means you cannot promise more than 40 in your next sprint.
In theory that's correct. In reality it means little more than delivering a checkbox and a text field on a page.. 15 developers, 2 weeks, personally I'd expect more.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
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Yes, and if that does not works we can also get some chains and overseers with whips :-)
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a fucking golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?" "You mean like from space?" "No, from Canada." If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.You might be on to something.. get off it quick! :laugh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
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You might be on to something.. get off it quick! :laugh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
Dang, my last project management courses were in Egypt. We got some nice pyramids built back then.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a fucking golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?" "You mean like from space?" "No, from Canada." If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns. -
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
OK - so now your velocity is 40, which means you cannot promise more than 40 in your next sprint.
In theory that's correct. In reality it means little more than delivering a checkbox and a text field on a page.. 15 developers, 2 weeks, personally I'd expect more.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many. I'd suggest you work out how you could do a velocity of 20 with 2 developers, then cut your project into independent chunks of 20-ness.* (*20 arbitrarily chosen to define the point)
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raddevus wrote:
Many people (developers) have no real process.
We got processes.. lots and lots and lots of processes, all documented, all heavily enforced.. that's part of the problem :laugh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
Brent Jenkins wrote:
lots of processes, all documented, all heavily enforced.. that's part of the problem
Yeah, it really is the problem. And at the root of that problem is:
Quote:
the people who try to tell you what the process should be have never actually worked through the process themselves.
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In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many. I'd suggest you work out how you could do a velocity of 20 with 2 developers, then cut your project into independent chunks of 20-ness.* (*20 arbitrarily chosen to define the point)
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many.
It is.. our morning stand-up takes forever and covers a lot of stuff irrelevant to many in the team. Most places I've worked at I've been in teams of 1-6, and they worked much better.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
In my opinion, 15 developers is far too many.
It is.. our morning stand-up takes forever and covers a lot of stuff irrelevant to many in the team. Most places I've worked at I've been in teams of 1-6, and they worked much better.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
Also it sounds like you are project-managing at the "Task" level which is way too low level...see this talk: GOTO 2014 • Implementing Programmer Anarchy • Fred George - YouTube[^]
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Okay, so I'm working with a team that's (relatively) young and like to do things "the right way". This means Agile (naturally!), unit tests written up front, acceptance tests (Gherkin) too.. The problem is that very little gets delivered. In the last two week sprint, 160 points were promised but only 40 delivered. Same in the previous sprint. There's a bit of worry as they're working on a mission critical project that needs to be delivered in a couple of months. Personally, I think they're missing one major point mentioned in the Agile manifesto, in that.. > We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. > Through this work we have come to value: > > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools > Working software over comprehensive documentation > Customer collaboration over contract negotiation > Responding to change over following a plan > > That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. We're ending up with the situation that writing tests and refactoring is taking the bulk of the time. Things are being (IMO) over-tested and (also IMO) and there's an over-reliance on unit/acceptance testing to pick up all defects - real bugs are being missed and picked up at the point of actual system testing (or even worse, demo). On top of that, we've got developers going in changing working code simply because they think it should be done differently (in their opinion, better). And, if there's a complex way to write simple code you can bet this team will find it.. Has anyone else run into this? What was done to get the team focused on the important deliverables? I would like to understand how we can get away from delivering tests but very little product every two weeks.. :wtf:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
Maybe you've got a few things the wrong way around. Are you asking too much of the team in too short a space of time? If this sprint and the one prior is only delivering 40 points instead of the anticipated 160, then perhaps that is too much. Even if you didn't do unit testing and just went straight to system testing would the 160 be realistic? Remember to apply S.M.A.R.T. objectives for your team. That might help keep things focused. You're probably doing this anyway, but direct your team to complete the most critical changes in a sprint first, so the least critical changes can roll over. If you're delivering the important stuff then perhaps your management will overlook the shortfalls in delivery. At least for a while. Take another look at the project plan/road-map. Has enough time been allocated to testing? I'd say a rule of thumb would be 1 hour of dev should have 1 hour of testing. Even better to have 2 hours of testing. You could consider the act of maintaining unit tests goes into part of the testing time. Maybe that is the difference between 160 and 40 points - there is a whole bunch of time for unit test development that isn't accounted for. You may be able to justify an extension to the development based on actual performance and gaps in the project plan. If the subject of extending the team comes up in that context, definitely go for more testers, or more developers dedicated to supporting the testers and/or unit tests. Testers and junior devs tend to be cheaper so you could get more bang for your buck there. As you've pointed out in your post, a lot of time can be sunk into testing one way or another. Even if you didn't use unit testing & CI there would still be a test team that is likely to not inherently have the skills necessary to reset systems, write scripts and generate test data. Inadvertently the testers could be a drag on your dev team, so make sure they have access to dev skills. Even if that means assigning a developer specifically to that role. To put it another way, sacrifice one dev to testing so everyone else can get on with their jobs! If this still doesn't get the delivery you want, then don't be afraid to ditch the unit testing entirely. Your team will hate it. Maybe it will bite you in the arse later; but later is for those that survive the deadline. However, if you do, then make double sure that your system testing is giving you good coverage. Finally, my old PM used to say that the first thing he did with a failing team was to reduce (not
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Narcissistic Programmer Disorder - a mental disorder in which a programmer has an inflated sense of their own code's importance, a deep need for admiration of their code and a lack of empathy for other programmer's code. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism. :)
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
Reminds me of parents who love to take videos of their children, and when you go over to their place, those parents show (make you sit through) those videos until you are beyond numb.
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Ha.. back in the office this morning and there's an email asking if we're all available to work weekends through to January.. :doh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
It looks like its time to bail out of that company/project. It does not look like it will last 6 months.
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It looks like its time to bail out of that company/project. It does not look like it will last 6 months.
It's due in February.. I'm trying my best to stay clear of it! :laugh:
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.