Re: scrum

from Ward Cunningham (ward@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
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Stephen -- I assume I've been invited into a conversation already in
progress. It seems like an interesting conversation so I will join.

I think of software as having an inside and an outside. Most people
only know and interact with the outside. However, for decision makers
on a software project it can be valuable to understand large parts of
the inside.

I was invited back to consult on WyCash, an agile project started in
the late '80s. As we climbed the stairs to the office the customer rep
explained to me what was needed. I was floored by the precision of her
requests. On the top stair landing I had to ask, "Are you programming
now?"

Back when I had some say on the project, I had insisted that words in
the GUI map to class or method names in the code. When the GUI
changes, the code changed too. It was a pain at first until we rewrote
the Digitalk class renaming code.

We had what Eric Evans calls Ubiquitous Language. The customer rep
spoke it so well that I thought she was talking about code. She was
talking about the outside, but I had no trouble hearing her in the
context of the inside. She even asked for things that were doable
because she had developed a workable model of the inside without need
for details of syntax or libraries.

This is not unlike my understanding of my own family.

Agile methods achieve better than average communication because people
work on the same things at the same time. It is human nature for
people to make sense of words they hear. Agile plays to this human
strength by avoiding the traditional divide-and-conquer that keeps
people separated. I called the preferred practice  "Product
Initiative", the first pattern in the Episodes pattern language.

http://c2.com/ppr/episodes.html

The inside of a Web 2.0 application is amazingly complex. It is
allowed to be so because of the agile techniques that are now second
nature to the developers we hire. I've met young programmers who
didn't know there was another way.

Best regards to all. -- Ward