The next Software East event on 19th November will see Lean and Agile software consultant Karl Scotland talk about Five Steps to Kanban.

Synopsis

A Kanban System for Software Development provides an alternative means of creating an Agile Development process using Lean Thinking. Creating a Kanban System is not as simple as adopting a previously defined process as a starting point. Instead, a team needs to come up a model of its own process which will form the basis for further continuous improvement. This talk will introduce 5 steps that a team can use to create their own Agile process using a Kanban System for Software Development.

About Karl

Karl Scotland is a versatile software practitioner with over 15 years of experience covering development, project management, team leadership, coaching and training. For the last 10 years he has been successfully applying Agile methods, and most recently has been a pioneer and advocate of using Kanban Systems for software development. Currently a Lean and Agile Coach with EMC Consulting, Karl is a founder member of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium and the Limited WIP Society, and has previously championed Agile and Lean Thinking with the BBC and Yahoo! Karl writes about his latest ideas on his blog at http://availagility.wordpress.com/.

Visit the Software East web site for more information.

The Call for Speakers for the 2010 ACCU Conference is now available.

Call for Participation – ACCU 2010
April 14-17, 2010. Barcelo Oxford Hotel, Oxford, UK
Submission deadline: 30th of September 2009

Highlight: Special track on software testing, please read on
Email proposals to: Giovanni Asproni, conference@accu.org

We would like to invite you to present a session at this leading software development conference.

We have a long tradition of high quality sessions covering many aspects of software development, from programming languages (e.g., C, C++, Java, C#, Ruby, Groovy, Python, Erlang, Haskell, etc.),  and technologies (libraries, frameworks, databases, etc.) to subjects about the wider development environment such  as testing, development process, design, analysis, patterns, project management, and softer aspects such as team building, communication and leadership.

In particular, this year we are going to have a special track on software testing–we are interested in experience reports, techniques, lessons learned, etc.

Sessions may be either tutorial-based, presentations of case studies, or take the form of interactive workshops. We are always open to novel formats, so please contact us with your idea.

The standard length of a session is 90 minutes, with some exceptions.  In order to allow less experienced speakers to speak at the conference without the pressure of filling a full 90 minutes, we reserve a number of shorter 45 minute sessions.

If you would like to run a session please let us know by emailing your proposals to conference@accu.org by the 30th of September 2009 at the latest.

Please include the following to support your proposal:

• Title (a working title if necessary)
• Type (tutorial, workshop, case study, etc.) 
• Duration (45/90 min) 
• Speaker name(s) 
• Speaker biography (max 150 words)
• Description (approx 250 words)

Proposals about specific products and technologies will be taken under consideration only if they are open source and available for free (at least for non-commercial use). If you are interested in talking about a proprietary technology, there is the possibility of “sponsored sessions” which are presented outside the standard conference schedule. Please email conference@accu.org for more information.

If you are interested in knowing more about the conference you may like to consult the website for previous years’ editions at
www.accu.org/conference for background information.

Speakers running one or more full 90 minute sessions receive a special conference attendance package including free attendance, and assistance with their travel and accommodation costs. Speakers filling a 45 minute slot qualify for free conference attendance on the day of their session.

The conference has always benefited from the strength of its programme, making it the highlight of the year for many attendees. Please help us make 2010 another successful event.

I’ve taken part in the past three ACCU Conferences and spoken at the last two. It’s a large audience – for a UK conference – and knowledgeable – so very rewarding for a speaker.

May’s Software East event will have as its focus a talk by Joseph Pelrine, one of Europe’s leading experts on eXtreme Programming as well as Europe’s first certified ScrumMaster Practitioner and Trainer. The event will take place at Downing College, Cambridge on 21st May.

This session, titled Making Sense of Agile is relevant for anyone who leads and/or participates in Agile teams, but is aimed at practitioners looking for new and novel ways of removing impediments and adapting Agile processes in organizations.

Booking is now open for this event. Tickets (including light buffet) cost £15 if booked on or before 14th May. £20 thereafter.

Agenda

• 18:30 – 19:15: Registration, networking & light buffet
• 19:15 Welcome to Software East – Mark Dalgarno (Software Acumen)
• 19:15 – 20:30: Talk ‘Making Sense of Agile Development’
• 20:30 – 22:00: Networking

About Joseph Pelrine

Joseph Pelrine is C*O of MetaProg, a company devoted to increasing the quality of software and its development process. He has had a successful career as software developer, project manager and consultant, and has spoken about it at such diverse places as IBM, OOPSLA and the Chaos Computer Club. His work focus is on field of organizational complexity and its application to Agile processes.

Synopsis
People don’t make rational decisions – it’s not the way the brain evolved. Instead they make first fit (not best fit) pattern matches with prior experience (either their own, or others conveyed through stories) and then retrospectively justify them as “rational”.

This is no way to run a development effort (among other things).

This fact means that you either have to convey a new message in such a way that it “resonates” with an existing prior pattern of success, or disrupt those patterns so that people see things from a different perspective, with a disposition to act. The Cynefin (http://www.cynefin.net) multi-ontological sense-making framework provides an unbiased, pre-hypothetical basis for analyzing situations, issues and problems, and serves as a basis for discovering novel, oftentimes optimal solutions to them.

This talk will introduce parts of the Cynefin framework, drawing on a decade of theoretical research and practical experiments to work with the reality of human decision making, and will cover:

• Complex systems approaches to the forced evolution of systems – allowing applications to emerge from the interaction of objects with people and processes; avoiding end state design.
• New approaches to project management based on the ideas of social complexity, which legitimize formal, rapid and agile design methods within boundaries.
• Gaining senior management acceptance to radical ideas.
• The application of the Cynefin framework for problem-solving in the Agile domain.
• Understand Agile techniques by mapping them to the Cynefin sense-making framework.

As at previous Software East events there’ll be ample time both before and after the talk for networking and having a beer or two…

Manifestos have been all the rage in software development since the agile manifesto was launched in 2001.

Given the success of that manifesto, I felt it was time to put together my own manifesto to stop what I believe is one of the most serious problems in modern software development – copy-and-paste programming.

I launched my manifesto at the ACCU Conference in April and promoted it at Developer Day Scotland to great acclaim and general acceptance, so now is the time for a public launch.

Make a stand against copy-and-paste programming by adding your name in a comment here and by publicising the manifesto to your colleagues.

In order to get maximum consensus across the industry I have intentionally kept the manifesto brief:

With your help, we can stamp out this problem once and for all.

Dave Harvey and Pete Marks ran something a bit different at SPA 2009 last month.

The idea was that, working in groups, people would pitch the idea of using agile development methods to a group of industry veterans hand-picked for their ability to ask awkward questions.

In the scenario, each of the veterans worked for the same hypothetical big bank with a vision of ‘One Bank’ and each took the role of a senior exec – CEO John Nolan, COO John Daniels, CFO Dave Cleal & CTO Rob James.

Each of the four teams started by preparing an initial two minute  pitch based on two slides. This was then presented to one of the veterans who was given three minutes to probe our plans. This process was then repeated with a couple of the other veterans selected randomly. The veterans conferred while the teams updated the pitch for the next round.

At the end of three rounds the veterans had a ‘board meeting’ and our team emerged victorious, possibly helped by us having a few veterans of our own. We presented our pitch to the whole group and then as a whole we created some learning points from the whole session.

Here are the session outputs if you’re interested in more details (including photos).

This session is eminently plagiarisable so expect to see various ‘Pitching ???’ sessions coming from me in the future…

The annual BCS Software Practice Advancement conference starts tomorrow and I’ll be there to help to help Andy Moorley with the set up and to take part in some of the sessions.

If you haven’t been to this conference before you’re in for a treat – lots of great sessions and a very knowledgeable audience too. I’ve spoken at the last 4 conferences but decided to take a break this year so am under no ‘performance pressure’ this time around

Sessions I’m planning to take part in – and I mean ‘take part’, there are few sessions where you have to sit back while someone speaks at you – include:

Writing and Reviewing Technical Documents by Andy Longshaw and Nick Rozanski.

Enhancing your professional toolkit by Marina Haase.

Dealing with the Estimation Fallacy by Rob Bowley. (sorry Peter )

Retrospective Surgery by Rob Bowley & Matt Wynne.

and if time (and Andy) allow:

Consulting without Secrets by Marc Evers and Willem van den Ende.

Should be a great event and, with no session to lead, for once relaxing.

I’m afraid I don’t know whether the conference has now sold out, you could try booking here.

More on SPA 2009 later in the week…

Just a quick news snippet.

ACCU have joined as a supporting partner for our new Software East evening event series starting in Cambridge on 20th November. The usual cost of attending is £15 (including some food) but if you’re an ACCU member you can get 10% off this by using the ‘ACCU’ code.

Further to my previous post on Agile Product Line Engineering I should mention that I’m taking part in a research project that is investigating the integration of agile and product line approaches, specifically in requirements engineering.

As you may be aware, an emerging problem in the product line engineering community is how to effectively integrate agile development principles with product line engineering techniques, which have tended to be more plan-oriented.

Our research group is investigating this problem. More specifically, we are focusing on the definition of a collection of re-usable process patterns to support the requirements engineering (RE) activities for single and product line development. The process patterns are going to be tailored versions of the (standard) Unified Process, defined by the OMG. RE activities include elicitation, negotiation, specification, analysis, and management. The process patterns will support different degrees of agility for projects.

Recognizing there is a substantial body of knowledge in the community (both researchers and practitioners), our group is working to collect and embody the expertise in a system. The system will be freely available for use.

We would sincerely appreciate your contribution to this collection of knowledge by filling in our questionnaire.

Your contribution (individual or organization) can be either anonymous or publicly recognized, as you choose. This is an option when you fill in the questionnaire.

The questionnaire is at: http://129.110.92.41/REProcess.aspx and takes around 10 minutes to complete.

Thank you very much!

Kunwu Feng, University of Texas at Dallas
Kendra Cooper, University of Texas at Dallas
Mark Dalgarno, Software Acumen
Frank Maurer, University of Calgary

The second day of the annual Software Product Lines Conference saw me attending a session on Agile Product Line Engineering. The session, advertised as a panel, was led by industry veteran John MacGregor.

In an innovation for SPLC the audience were divided into small discussion groups and tasked with answering three questions:

1. What are the advantages, if any, of using agile techniques in a PL organisation?
2. Where in the operation of an SPL is the agile approach possible/appropriate/advantageous?
3. Are changes to the ‘usual’ product line approach necessary to take advantage of agile techniques? If so, what
   • Research issues should be investigated?
   • Practices should be adopted?

John volunteered me and a few other SPLC regulars to lead the discussion in our respective groups so I rounded up 8 willing participants and we kicked off by introducing ourselves and describing our product line and agile experiences.

In a nice twist of fate we had a couple of researchers who are already looking at combining agile and software product line methods, one representative from a company trying to implement Scrum in a product line setting and a mix of sceptics and optimists when it comes to combining the best of the two approaches.

John will write up the session outputs at a later date but here are a few notes our group made:

• Some people have perceived a conflict between agile methods (e.g. Scrum) and Software Product Lines but the group’s experience was that there wasn’t necessarily a conflict.
• The communities around either approach are probably not known to each other. If they are aware of each other then their perceptions of each other are probably not accurate (e.g. thinking of agile as ‘hacking’ as opposed to a highly-disciplined but lightweight approach)
• Do SPLs need more documentation than agile can support? Some specialised product lines in regulated industries may do.
• Would an agilist resist core asset development (development of a highly-reusable software asset base)? Do such developments violate the principles of avoiding Big Design Up-Front or You Ain’t Gonna Need It? Maybe there’s a role for Agile development after the core asset base has been developed.
• On the plus side, agile’s focus on Test-Driven approaches would sit well in an SPL.
• Agile’s focus on the customer and a strong emphasis on prioritising requirements would also fit well with an SPL. The question would be how to collate and prioritise requirements from a massive customer base across multiple locations.
• Is there a problem with hardware co-development. (Although one participant’s organisation had hardware development done in an agile way through rapid prototyping).
• Size of project may be an issue? Can agile be scaled to an SPL effort? Lots of people in the agile community looking at scaling up agile. Anyone looking at scaling down SPL?

In response to the set questions our thoughts were:

1. What are the advantages, if any, of using agile techniques in a PL organisation?
   • Lightweight methods (SMEs) can adopt SPL more quickly?
   • Strong focus on testing (TDD, CI)
   • Strong focus on prioritising requirements.
   • Refactoring
   • More customer involvement?
     • Distinction between a customer for the product and a customer for the product line.
     • Deliver early and deliver often is typical in SPL already.
2. Where in the operation of an SPL is the agile approach possible/appropriate/advantageous?
   • Define an architecture/ platform first and then become agile when developing products? Can a PL architecture just emerge? But you need stability of architecture in a PL.
3. Are changes to the ‘usual’ product line approach necessary to take advantage of agile techniques? If so, what?
   • Research issues?
   • Practices?
     • Have a strong separation of concerns to enable smaller agile teams? Must still have a hierarchy e.g. Scrum of Scrums.
     • Have agility but keep stable component owners? (As in the InnerSource model discussed in the keynote)
     • If you know you’re going to need something then do develop it for reuse otherwise just do opportunistic reuse as in agile.

So, there you have it. Look out for more on combining Agile Methods with Software Product Lines in the future…