The Chicken Test is brought to you by W.R. and Bryce who live in Seattle. Bryce spends too much time on Twitter and posts photos to Flickr; sometimes you'll find him on Facebook. Look for both of them at BarCamps

Archive for December, 2006

EDS is agile?

So Crow has posted some videos on his site about EDS and agile development. I’ve seen most of these except for the first one he posted.

Now while watching this video I didn’t know if EDS was attempting to illustrate how agile they are
OR
commenting on how rediculous agile development can be.

I don’t know if you can equate building airplanes to building software because I presume that an airplane builder knows what an airplane is, how it should work and they have built one before. How do you do iterative builds on a flying airplane? If a wing doesn’t work while flying can you rip it off and rebuild it? Is EDS that good??? WOW!

I like agile, but I am not a true believer, some of it still feels like bullshit to me. The one assumption that has always bothered me is that your project has smart experienced developers building your software who can make educated guesses on interactivity and results based on their tacit :-P knowledge.

I work in a world of software development that has a new domain with new business practices, governance models, acronyms & language terms and regulator rules for almost every project.

NEWSFLASH
Many (not all) programmers are NERDS and therefore may not understand things like aesthetics, business practices or even everyday software conventions. Everyone knows at least one brilliant developer that can shell script a full length ASCII animation of Star Wars but could not buy penicillin from drugstore.com to save their dying chicks.

I think I once heard Ken Schwaber talk about how he was on a panel where he was asked by a CMMI guy how he planned to not make Scrum into the bloated beast that CMMI is because when they started they did not want a lot of process either. That is a bad recounting but I can’t find the reference, but what I am trying to say is that optimum processes tend to require optimum inputs and environments things get messy when you need to ensure predictable success while accounting for variants.

I truly wish I could depend on my teammates to make the correct assumptions but I can’t and that kinda depresses me… later.

Links for Dec. 28 2006

Help SEND NERDS! – Chickenmas

BarCamp Toronto presents Enterprise Camp

Enterprise Camp Comic

So what do you do when your company is about to tear up an old telemarketing office to make way for a new floor of developers… you hold a BarCamp that’s what.

We are going to do a more specialized BarCamp this time one whose focus is on enterprise development and solutions.

So if you are in the Toronto area and are sick of holiday cheer come out and join us for some inperson knowledge sharing.

Check out the wiki to sign up and for more details.

… oh and ok-cancel rules.