One use of the information radiator displays the Hindsight rapid board view. This board has a column to show features branches (issues) that need to be merged back to master and we conduct peer code reviews at this stage (using pull requests) and the non-assignee will perform the merge and close the issue. We use JIRA workflow rules to enforce this with the help of the visual workflow designer.

Hindsight, a startup in the London Silicon Roundabout, are a great example of how Atlassian software has helped companies get productive quickly. Our GreenHopper and JIRA software help Hindsight manage their work and focus on the most valuable activities to gauge how much return they are getting from the investment they put into their ideas.

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I was asked recently what were the agile trends at the moment and off the top of my head I came up with the following: Kanban, Functional Programming, DVCS in the Enterprise, Devops & Continuous delivery and Data Visualisation. Here is why I believe these areas are important.

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Extreme startup is a practical workshop which simulates the excitement and insanity of working for a high pressure startup company, where every decision (or lack of) can make or loose you money - or in this case points!

Lets delve deeper into the misteries of this kind of coding workshop.

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Scrum is a framework for agile product development. Products are built iteratively, with each Sprint creating an increment of the product, usually starting with the most valuable and riskiest.

More and more Sprints create additional increments of the product. Each increment is a potentially shippable slice of the entire product. When enough increments have been created for the Product to be of value, the product is released.

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“If a thing like this is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right” - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

This is my simplified way of describing the approach of extreme programming. Everything that is valuable is done all the time, because it is valuable. So as creating a test has value for the design of your classes you should do it for all of your code.

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Estimation is a dark art to start with and is often missuesed and abused to the detriment of the development team. As any valuable project has a level of uncertainty, estimates should never been seen as promises.

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A man is in a hot air balloon and he realizes he is lost. He spots a man in the field below him and calls down:

“Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I’d be somewhere half an hour ago but I’m completely lost. Can you tell me where I am?”

The man replies:

“You are about 30 feet above this field, you are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 W. longitude”

“You must be an engineer” says the balloonist.

“I am!” says the man, “How did you know?”

The balloonist laughs, “well, everything you’ve told me is correct, but I don’t understand what you are talking about and I’m still lost”

“Ah, you’re a manager” says the engineer

“Indeed I am!” replies the balloonist, “How could you possibly know that?”

“Well…” says the engineer, “you don’t know where you are and you don’t know where you are going. You’ve made a promise you can’t keep and you expect me to solve your problem. You are in exactly the same position as you were before we met, except now somehow it’s my fault!”

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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Having used kanban as a catalyst for continual improvement I feel more capable, confident and way more productive than I have ever been in my life. Starting with a simple plan-doing-done approach to my kanban boards, I quickly evolved them to meet the needs of particular situations. I’ll describe how I have used kanban to adapt my approach and get more things done.

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Being a tyrant can be very hard work. It is easy to exploite most people as the world is full of people who want to be part of something and make their lives more meaningful.

Its quite easy to take this drive and exploit it for your own benefit and it is amazing how much people will tolerate.

Ah, but there is the rub. People will tolerate a situation and maybe complain about it to each other but generally do nothing to make change happen. There is general high tolerance for my tyrannical actions only encourages me to do more to see how far I can push things. This is often fed by a few close individuals that I consider my loyal entourage. Eventually I can push too hard and a few people of character get together and do something about my reign.

But by the time this happens I am in deep doo-doo! I have already gone too far and as a tyrant by nature I cant back down so I must go on fighting to the end, or preferably find somewhere else to go while my loyal troupe fight it out for me :-)

Your friend,
Darth.

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I find the lyrics of this classic Rolling Stones song to be very apt way to describe software development, especially when you take the agile approach to creating and delivering that software.

You cant always get what you want…
… but if you try sometimes, sometimes you get what you need

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