Presented at Agile Bath & Bristol (21st March 2017)
If software development is a co-operative game, as Alistair Cockburn observed, then what kind of game is Scrum? Lots of people are playing it — or say they are — but there seems to be some disagreement about what the point of the game is, how to play it and even, in many cases, what the rules are. This talk looks at Scrum and other agile approaches through the lens of nomic games, hypothesis-driven development and fun.
10. Scrum works by making visible the
dysfunction and impediments that are
impacting the Product Owner and the team’s
effectiveness, so that they can be addressed.
The Scrum framework will quickly reveal
these weaknesses. Scrum does not solve the
problems of development; it makes them
painfully visible, and provides a framework
for people to explore ways to resolve
problems in short cycles and with small
improvement experiments.
http://scrumprimer.com
11. It has become commonplace to suggest that failure is good for
entrepreneurs. In this view, failure that comes early in a founder's
career can teach them important lessons about doing business
and harden them up for the next start-up attempt.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html
12. In the UK, the evidence is that novices are neither more nor less
likely to have a business that either grows or survives than
experienced founders. In Germany, where much more extensive
statistical work has been undertaken, it is clear that those whose
business had failed had worse-performing businesses if they
restarted than did novices.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html
13. In short, the assumption that entrepreneurs use the lessons of
their own experience to improve their chances of creating a
series of profitable businesses is not borne out by the evidence.
Success in business remains, as in life, something of a lottery.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html
14. Man prefers to believe
what he prefers to be true.
Francis Bacon
15. No matter what humans
think about, we tend to
pay more attention to
stuff that fits in with our
beliefs than stuff that
might challenge them.
Psychologists call this
"confirmation bias."
When we have embraced
a theory, large or small,
we tend to be better at
noticing evidence that
supports it than evidence
that might run counter
to it.
16. As any psychologist will tell you, pretty much everything you
think and do is coloured by biases that you are typically totally
unaware of. Rather than seeing the world as it is, you see it
through a veil of prejudice and self-serving hypocrisies.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html
17. You have just experienced the illusion of naive realism - the
conviction that you, and perhaps you alone, perceive the world
as it really is, and that anybody who sees it differently is
biased.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html
18. If, at this point, you are thinking: "Yeah, right, that might be
true of other people, but not me," then you have fallen foul of
yet another aspect of the illusion: the bias blind spot. Most
people will happily acknowledge that such biases exist, but
only in other people.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html
19. If you want to learn how
to build a house, build a
house. Don't ask anybody,
just build a house.
Christopher Walken
20.
21.
22.
23.
24. empirical, adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by
observation or experience rather than theory
or pure logic
pertaining to, or derived from, experience
capable of being verified or disproved by
observation or experiment
Concise Oxford English Dictionary ∙ Oxford English Dictionary ∙ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
25.
26. The "defined" process control
model requires that every
piece of work be completely
understood. Given a well-
defined set of inputs, the
same outputs are generated
every time.
27. The empirical process control
model, on the other hand,
expects the unexpected. It
provides and exercises control
through frequent inspection
and adaptation for processes
that are imperfectly defined
and generate unpredictable
and unrepeatable results.
28. Plan
Establish hypothesis,
goal or work tasks
Do
Carry out plan
Study
Review what has
been done against
plan (a.k.a. Check)
Act
Revise approach
or artefacts based
on study
Deming/Shewhart Cycle
29. Starting from a position of incomplete
knowledge and gradually iterating
through hypothesis, experiment and
discovery towards — one would hope
— working software addresses part
of the question of moving from the
unknown to the known.
Kevlin Henney
"The Uncertainty Principle"
NDC Magazine 2009
30.
31. If a plot works out
exactly as you first
planned, you're not
working loosely
enough to give room
to your imagination
and instincts.
33. pantser, noun
Writer who writes by the seat of their pants.
In contrast to a plotter, a pantser doesn't
work to (or have) an outline.
34. Plan
Establish hypothesis,
goal or work tasks
Do
Carry out plan
Study
Review what has
been done against
plan (a.k.a. Check)
Act
Revise approach
or artefacts based
on study
Deming/Shewhart Cycle
35. Write
As the behaviour is
new, the test fails
Reify
Implement so that
the test passes
Reflect
Is there something in
the code or tests that
could be improved?
Refactor
Make it so!
Test-First Cycle
36. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C
37. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C
38. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C
39. Rock climbing, story-telling, and carpet
wrestling are not about winning or losing;
the game is all about having fun.
As long as the guessing or the story-telling is
interesting, the game is worth playing.
These are cooperative games.
The point of the game is to interact with each
other, or perhaps to help each other.
Alistair Cockburn
"Software Development as a Cooperative Game"
http://alistair.cockburn.us/Software+development+as+a+cooperative+game
41. nomic, noun & adjective
a game in which changing the rules of the game is
a legal move and part of the game
the original Nomic was invented by Peter Suber,
but the term is now generalised to describe any
game that has these properties
political constitutions, legal systems, software
development processes and many games that
children spontaneously evolve over an afternoon
of play are nomic in nature
44. There’s little correlation between a
group’s collective intelligence and
the IQs of its individual members.
But if a group includes more
women, its collective intelligence
rises.
"What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women"
http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/