Re: scrum

On May 2, 5:22 pm, "Stephen Taylor <edi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>"
<StephenTaylorF...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Further from Ward Cunningham (w...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I can understand how any methodology's language neutrality claim might
> rub an APL programmer the wrong way.  I am an APL programmer and APL
> has had a profound influence on how I think of programming. No wonder
> modern APL programmers might think that agile is struggling to capture
> properties that have been known in APL circles since the beginning.
> They would be right.
>
> I am a fan of J and especially the J Phrase Book which is a beautiful
> collections of idioms. I have pointed this work out to design pattern
> zealots when they needed a whack on the side of the head. This is a
> whack most OOPSLA regulars could benefit from today.
>
> So, does Scrum have anything to offer APL programmers? More often not,
> I would think.
>
> The J team won the Judge's Prize in the  ICFP'98 Functional
> Programming Contest. They wrote an awesome retrospective on how they
> approached the problem and solved it over a weekend. (A link here
> would be appropriate but I could only find broken links from which I
> got the year.) Were I designing a methodology for APL programmers I'd
> want an agile method that was centered on the exact sort of
> cooperation exhibited by this team.

I have managed teams with vastly different scills in APL.
I always had a problem with upper management because when I created
teams and estimated times I wanted to place specific people in the
teams and then make estimate how long the task woud take.
They did not want to be dependent on individual people.
It was easily demonstrated when I did bring in development people to
bring down a huge backlog that was growing rapidly where a big team of
individuals with ordinary people had a backlog of many months of work.
The development guys agreed to come in a few weekends extra to bring
down the backlog.
The backlog was taken care of in one day.
I have also noted that two well coordinated people work very much more
than they would individually.
It is also very important that people like each other and have fun.