Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

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In recent times we have been exploring various software development methodologies to correct some of the issues that have arisen.

As Shane noted with respect to the development of NEM-Watch 8, we screwed up, and caused clients unneeded angst, and ourselves unnecessary stress.

When the company started (10 years ago now), we sort of “happened upon” an iterative development methodology that worked for us, much of the time.  However with employee turnover and a lack of specific focus, we were not religious in its application – leading to issues such as these.

This is one book of many on Agile that we are in the process of reviewing as one step in our strategy to refine our approach to development.

1)  Binary Review

The Book	What we thought
“User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development” by Mike Cohn	Very good content (and well written)

Read most of this book within a day out of the office, so it is an easy read – and very worthwhile.

read more »

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Well, 17 hours ago I was awake for an IEEE-organised Webinar featuring Kent Beck (founder of Three Rivers Institute) titled “Software G Forces:  The Effects of Acceleration” – so I’m beat!  Just another long day in a software start-up.

However I wanted to get this blog post up before it slipped my mind (please excuse me for any lack of polish in this one!)

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Following my previous post (book review of “Tale of Two Systems” – but really a consideration of Agile & Lean Software Development) I have continued to read, and think (yeah, dangerous, I know).

The following two posts will be of interest:

1)  This post from the HBR Editor’s Blog titled “How do innovators think?” provides many good points (and some of the added comments at the bottom are great as well) but I want to cut to the chase and highlight the “5 Discovery Skills” included in the article:

Skill 1 = Associating – a cognitive skill that “allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas”.  Like being able to find your way without needing a map.

Skill 2 = Questioning – like asking the “5 why’s”

Skill 3 = Observation, and (particularly) doing it really well – well enough to pick up nuances in behaviour, etc….

Skill 4 = Experimentation – try a lot of things and keep what works, as noted by Collins and Porras.

Skill 5 = Networking – the post notes that the key is that the networking is done with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

2)  I read in the comments that someone has already made the link with Agile Software Development.  Here’s commentary by Bob MacNeal on his blog.

In particular with respect to Bob’s post, he has omitted the 3rd skill. I am not sure why he has done this, or if it is deliberate.

However one of the comments underneath sums it up when they note “To write great software you need to observe the detail that’s not included in the written version of the requirements.”  (my emphasis added, as I totally agree)

Given the challenges, opportunities and uncertainties our business faces, we need all 5 in spades!