Archive for category Agile
Knowledge-work, is serendipity-work
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business on July 26, 2012
Serendipity is core to the success of modern companies. While some may not have articulated their insights as facilitating serendipity, it was certainly what they were thinking, even if they didn’t realise it. Enabling Serendipity For example, Google’s 20% time, where employees can spend 20% of their time working on anything they like, has resulted [...]
This is not a manifesto: Valuing Throughput over Utilisation
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Lean, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on February 11, 2012
In a previous article, This is not a manifesto, I expressed the values I hold as a software development team member. Today, I’m going to talk about the first of these values. Before I do, I’d like to say what I mean by “software development team”. I mean a cross-discipline team with the combined skills [...]
This is not a manifesto
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Lean, People on February 4, 2012
Recently, I had cause to ponder the values I hold as a member of a software development team. Values that, alongside other values I hold, drive my choices and behaviours. They sit behind the things I do and how I do them. They underly my thinking when considering how we can improve as a team [...]
Scenario-Oriented vs. Rules-Oriented Acceptance Criteria
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, BDD/ATDD, Business Analysis, Software Development, Software Testing, Uncategorized on October 2, 2011
Acceptance Criteria, Scenarios, Acceptance Tests are, in my experience, often a source of confusion. Such confusion results in questions like the one asked of Rachel Davies recently, i.e. “When to write story tests” (sometimes also known as “Acceptance Tests” or in BDD parlance “Scenarios”). In her answer, Rachel highlighted that: “…acceptance criteria and example scenarios [...]
Sushi, Hibachi and Other Ways of Serving Software Delicacies
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business, People, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on July 1, 2011
Let’s say you own a restaurant. Quite a large restaurant. You’ve hired a manager to run the place for you because you are about to take the fruits of your success and invest in opening three more around the country. You leave the manager with a budget to make any improvements he sees fit. After [...]
Old Favourite – More Sharks and Delaying Critical Mass
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business, Business Analysis, Old Favourites, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on June 7, 2011
This article originally featured on my old blog on 19th January 2010. In a previous post I talked about Critical Mass of software. I showed how an ever-increasing cost of change resulted in it becoming more economical to completely rewrite the system than to enhance and maintain the original. I explained how this could be [...]
Old Favourite – Sharks, Debts, Critical Mass and other reasons to Sustain Quality
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, BDD/ATDD, Business, Business Analysis, Old Favourites, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on June 7, 2011
This article originally featured on my old blog on 18th January 2010. A while back I tweeted about critical mass of software: Critical Mass of Code – past which the changeability of the code is infeasible, requiring that it be completely rewritten. An elaboration of this might be: Critical Mass of Software: the state of [...]
What do special forces teams have in common with agile teams?
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business Analysis, People, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on May 30, 2011
In 2008, I wrote an article for Better Software Magazine… “Few would think that Special Forces tactics bear any relation to software project teams. But Antony Marcano draws a surprising parallel between the dynamics of modern Special Forces “room-clearing” methods and the dynamics of modern software development teams.” My thinking has moved on slightly since [...]
Cucumber – with step-free access
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, BDD/ATDD, Software Development, Software Testing on May 29, 2011
A while back I wrote about writing feature specs (acceptance tests) at the right level of abstraction. I explained how we want to pitch our scenarios at the “task” level… Goal: What we’re trying to achieve which has one or more… Tasks: The high-level work-item that we complete to fulfil the goal, each having one [...]
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About
Antony Marcano is a consultant in software craftsmanship, effective software processes, software quality and software testing. He has over fifteen years experience with... (read more)
