Chad Howell @jchadhowell

Software Developer Austin, TX Joined April 2009

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Jayme Edwards @jaymeedwards

2 years ago

Calling developers a “team” when they: - Are independently measured. - Must create tickets to help each other. - Feel like asking for help is failure. - Need PRs approved by specific people. - Pull rank when decisions are made. …is delusional. #mobprogramming

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

Velocity is never valuable because measuring output is never valuable. Creating a large volume of useless software at a high velocity benefits nobody. Output has little to do with productivity. Delivering maximum value does.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

"Looking at our data, we didn’t find any additional value that story points provided us (related to progress tracking). As such, we have transitioned from story points to story count" (thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/…)

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

'We believe that the key to progress reporting is not an “accurate” prediction, but visible signals that we can act on. ... Our burn-up chart [tells] us: “... we might not be able to get everything done by the expected date. Let’s have a conversation.”' (thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/…)

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

1/4 Re "technical debt:" The biggest sort of debt falls into the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" category. It's not a bug, and it's usually firmly entrenched into the code at the architectural level. That's very difficult to refactor away—a rewrite is often required.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

What topics or areas within Agile [and Lean] do you feel you personally would like to know more about?

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

Somebody who directs other people is not a leader :-). That's pushing from behind (goad in hand), not leading.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

I've just heard that IBM internally reviewed 60,000 user stories and concluded that estimating those stories had added no value to their delivery process. Is that true? Can anybody cite an article or study?

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

The best measure of value: does it make your users awesome? Not you, not your company, not the designers or the product people, the users. The fact that your program is awesome is irrelevant if it doesn't make your users awesome. (see Kathy Sierra).

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

@zogface Also, make your stories smaller, and work on them one at a time. The whole team works on a single story. Not finishing a story you never started is not a big deal.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

If you're looking for a single thing you can do to vastly increase team performance, reduce their WIP (work in progress). Teams and people who work on only one thing at a time are considerably more effective.

Kent Nabors @KentNabors

6 years ago

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

My take on ppl who think that defect counts > 0 on release are okay is that they're creating a lot of expensive downstream work, & those defects, once they accumulate, slow down the teams, perhaps to the point where agility is impossible because they can't move fast enough. 1/

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

It's not an accident that "courage" is one of both the XP and Scrum core values. Agile is radical, and it's not for wimps :-)

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

There is no such thing as top-down Agile. Agile is all about empowering the teams to do the work however they see fit. If control is coming from the top down you’re not doing that.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

1/5 In "User Story Mapping" @jeffpatton tells a joke about a lumberjack who encounters a man trying to fell a tree by beating it with a hammer. The lumberjack says, "here, use this saw, it will work better." The man thanks him, then starts beating the tree with the saw.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

The thing to build next is the thing your customers value most. If you lose sales by not implementing, you can't choose not to do it. If it's not going to impact sales, why are you considering doing it at all? Time estimates let you juggle people, but don't impact the choice.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

Talking to your users in order to flush out a story is not a simple matter of gathering requirements. What you are actually doing is building a shared understanding of the problem that you’re trying to solve. You are collaborating in order to jointly decide on the best solution.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

To quote one of my clients: "We had a single 13 point story in the last Sprint, and now that the Sprint is over, we still have 13 points of work to do." Points are useless for estimation purposes. The larger the value, the lower the accuracy.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

I've been hearing a lot about Agile haters, lately. To me, even bad Agile is better than what came before. My guess is that, if you look at what the haters prefer, there's a lot of Agile in there. They just don't call it Agile. And the stuff they hate probably isn't Agile at all.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub @allenholub

6 years ago

The notion of "overseeing" is about as far from Agile thinking as you can be. No amount of control instills trust, and without trust, agility is impossible. Things just take too long. Build trust by working collaboratively on a day-to-day basis. No amount of overseeing does that.