Rally Fream Work

An information radiator for the Agile AllianceSpring 2006

3 Ways to Take the XP Plunge

Dive in. The water’s fine!

page 16

Plus...

Deliver true iteration quality page 12

Create an agile organization page 21

Don’t demand pair programming page 30

Editor Rebecca Traeger

Proofreader Heidi Amundson

DesignPixallure Design

Account Executive Alison Kincaid

Technical AdvisorMIke Cohn

Departments

5 Face-to-FaceYou’ll want to mark your calendar for these Agile events.

6 User Stories6 Cooking Up Some Agile Planning

by Laura M. Waite & Paul K. Goddard

9 Agile Gets Lean by Roman Pichler

26 Through the Looking Glass by Lori Schubring

29 ContextEvery Agile project needs a solid background. Find out what Michele Sliger is reading to strengthen her Agile foundation.

30 RefactorIn this issue, Alex Pukinskis reflects on the wasted effort of selling reluctant managers and developers on the virtues of pair programming.

Features

12 Checks and Balances Bring the power of QA to your Agile processes to ensure that your itera-tive releases are production ready. by Damon Carr

16 Take the XP plunge!When you’re ready to test the XP waters, pick a style that suits you and venture in at your own pace. by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres

21 Informed ConsentUse the decision-making principles of sociocracy to create an organization that is as agile as its software develop-ment practices. by Gareth Powell

An Agile Alliance publication

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� AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

Editor’s Letter

I’m so glad you downloaded the first issue of AgileDevelopment magazine. I hope you are as excited as we are about the changes and the possibilities for the future.

As you can see, the magazine is designed to be a virtual whiteboard for the Agile Alliance. In its pages you will find in-formation that is all relevant to the overall project we call Agile development. From features on delivering working software to articles that show how individuals and interactions really are valued above process and procedures, the concepts that were laid down five years ago in the now famous Agile Manifesto are brought to life here.

Don’t miss our regular sections: Face-to-Face (events where you can meet with peers and experts), Context (reviews of books and articles that discuss Agile topics), User Stories (tales from the Agile trenches), and Refactor (an Agile method or process as seen from the perspective of hindsight).

If you’d like to comment or contribute, please feel free to email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Traeger, Editor

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6 AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

Through the Looking GlassOur long day’s journey into Agile

by Lori Schubring, ADS Manager, Bemis Manufacturing

User Stories

They say a journey of a thousand miles

begins with a single step. Our path to Agile

started back in early 2005 when I received

an invitation to a free half-day seminar on

Scrum. Intrigued, I attended. After the semi-

nar, my interest was peaked and the ball

was officially in motion.

My next step was to enroll in the

Certified ScrumMaster Training course pre-

sented by Ken Schwaber and Esther Derby

in Milwaukee. I invited two of my team

members along so they, too, could learn

what Scrum was all about. The course gave

me a valuable head start, but I still wanted

more information before I made a commit-

ment to change.

To further my Agile education, I read

Ken’s book, Agile Project Management with

Scrum. As I read, I found myself scrutinizing the way we currently were approaching software development. I wondered if it was possible to make Agile work for our organi-zation.

Who We AreAs the Application Development and

Support Manager for a large manufacturing company, I am responsible for coordinat-ing and managing the efforts of both our support team (help desk) and our project development group. We support, maintain, and enhance some 3300, mostly internal, applications.

We use the traditional waterfall ap-proach to our software development life-cycle, with the requisite multiple hand-offs and business and technical specifications

that are often in the hundreds of pages. An average project lasts anywhere from three months to three years. We currently pro-gram in RPG IV. All of our testing is manual. (Hey, at least we test.) All this is to say that we are about as far away from Agile as one can be—all the more reason why Scrum could be such an important change for us to make.

Where We’ve BeenAbout a year ago, we began to ques-

tion the value in our process. We encour-aged our IS Applications Group to do the same. Several years ago, we had very little control or process—things were just short of a free-for-all when it came to making program changes and getting them into production. In response, we went to the

� AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

other end of the spectrum and became so formalized that we hindered our abil-ity to remain flexible for the business. It got to the point where we weren’t turn-ing around project requests fast enough: our process took so long people some-times thought the project had died when in fact we were still working on it!

After our brief exposure to the world of Agile, we began to look for ways to be more flexible rather than letting the process govern how we approached our projects. If it didn’t make sense to do something for a particular project, we encouraged the group to question it and think outside the box. If we didn’t need a technical specification, we didn’t write one. If we could combine the specifica-tions into one document to minimize the documentation, we did just that. We started assigning the project team at the beginning of a project to minimize hand-offs and the learning curve that goes along with them. We have begun to move from narrative test plans to reus-able test plans and would love to get to the point where we can automate our testing.

We have been taking some very small steps, and have made some great strides in improving our process with the goal of delivering value to the business

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� AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

faster—but we still aren’t anywhere near Agile.

Guides along the WayIn July 2005, several of us attended

Agile 2005 in Denver. It was a week of in-tense idea sharing and instruction that had more energy and passion than any other conference I have ever been to in all my fourteen years in the industry.

We all have helpmates on our jour-ney, and fate stepped in to give us one: in one session, I happened to select a seat next to Lisa Owens from ePlan Services. We began to talk and, as luck would have it, she was already doing Scrum— and her of-fice was a block away from the conference. She took us on a field trip to better explain their Scrum process and to show us their Scrum board, burndown charts, retrospec-tives, user stories, and other Agile tools. It was a great opportunity to see Scrum in action. She also spoke very highly of Mike Cohn and suggested that if I was serious about Agile I should find a way to bring him into our organization to help with the implementation.

Lisa wasn’t the only helpful partici-pant; many people were willing to share their experiences. I left the conference with an armful of books and more excitement about the potential Agile offered than I

had before. Unfortunately, despite all the information I had received, I also left with even more questions.

On the flight home, I began to real-ize the challenges that lay ahead. I needed to gain the support of our IT Director and our Vice-President of Information Services. I wanted to bring Mike Cohn in. I wanted to change our structure and form Agile teams. I needed to educate the business on what the benefits of Agile were. I would have to convince my group that Agile was going to be a positive change and I would have to provide them with books and information on what Agile and Scrum were all about.

I broke out in a sweat thinking about all of the different things that needed to be done.

Since then, for every one question I have asked and had answered, five more questions have popped up. Luckily, every-one I have been in contact with has been very generous in offering suggestions and guidance on books, articles, websites, groups, and contacts to talk to and share information with.

Mike Cohn has been instrumental in getting me in touch with individuals who have already gone down the path I am on. He suggested I join several Yahoo groups

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� AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

on Agile planning and Scrum development, so I did that and began posting my ques-tions to the groups. I purchased several copies of Mike Cohn’s User Stories Applied and Agile Estimating and Planning to share with my group. I am attempting to orga-nize a Wisconsin-based Agile user group (another new adventure for me). I even created an “Agile Corner” complete with whitepapers, diagrams, and other books on Agile, lean software development, and teambuilding. We add to the corner as we come across new material.

I have received emails from different individuals suggesting alternate reading, including Fit for Developing Software by Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham, I have

also received information on the Wisconsin SPIN Group, a group dedicated to software process improvements who recently com-pleted a four-part series on Agile. I have spent countless hours reading books and visiting websites trying to absorb as much information as possible. I have had confer-ence calls with complete strangers willing to share their experiences. It’s been great.

Thanks to all of the resources and the helpful people we encountered along the way, we have persevered and change is happening.

Where We’re GoingIn October, I received approval to

implement Scrum. In early 2006, Mike Cohn

came to us and delivered four full days of training and consulting. We’re on the road.

I had no idea what I was getting into when this all started. Some days, the pic-ture is still as clear as mud—well, maybe a little more watered down. Still, I am making progress. Members of my group are start-ing to get excited about what Agile has to offer as well.

Some might criticize our slow imple-mentation, but I purposely chose not to rush into anything. Instead, I planned care-fully and considered our team structure and skill sets, office layout, company cul-ture, and potential issues that might arise. I am learning from others’ experiences and am trying to take it all in. The good thing

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(or bad thing depending on how you look at it) is that there is no cookie-cutter solu-tion. There is no silver bullet. Each of us has to determine what works best for us and our particular environment and situation. It is important to listen to what others have to say, yet it is equally important to realize that what might work well in one company may not work for us.

It is quite challenging trying to lead at the same time that you are learning. Agile is a whole new way of looking at things—it is both scary and exciting at the same time. I have learned and pushed myself outside of my comfort zone many times during this discovery process and I am hoping that my group will also do the same.

In a future article, I will report back to you on how well our implementation is go-ing. In the meantime, I hope our story will help those of you who are interested but unsure of how to approach Agile in your organizations. If we can do it, anyone can. I am truly convinced of that. Believe me—we are about as far away from Agile as the North Pole is from the South Pole. You may have to stretch yourself and think outside the box but there are plenty of people and resources available to help you along the way. You will never meet a greater group of people than those who are involved in the Agile movement. Good luck to you.

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Take the XP Plunge!Want to go eXtreme but can’t decide where to start? Stop worrying and start changing.

XP promises relief from the pitfalls of traditional development projects. But, when you’re ready to test the XP waters, how do you begin moving from how you work today toward an XP style of develop-ment? You want to start in the right place, convince the right people, and “do it right” so you can reap all the benefits. However, this need to “do it right” can keep many teams from doing anything at all. XP is a way forward; a way to find the courage to embrace the challenges of change. XP starts when you start and where you start.

Eight years of observing and coach-ing the application of XP has convinced me that there are as many ways of starting and sustaining change as there are ways to get into a swimming pool. Let’s stick with that analogy, as introduced in Extreme Program-

ming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition, to describe three stereotypical ways teams take the XP plunge: Toe Dip, Cannonball, and Racing Dive.

Toe DipSome people and teams value con-

tinuity. They don’t want to let go with one hand before they have a firm hold with the other. When they begin XP they introduce one practice at a time. They firmly instill that one practice before adding the next, while the rest of their development process remains intact. They are toe dippers.

The gradual path into XP has many entrances. Some toe dippers make a point of programming together in a conference room several hours a day. Others have developers write some automated tests as they code. Some start by simply dividing a

big risky release into two smaller releases.

Still other toe dippers begin by working on

XP individually if the team is not ready.

The sidebar “XP’s Safe Starts” (page

18) lists thirteen practices that are safe

places to start (covered in detail in XP

Explained, 2nd Edition). Any one of these

“places” will provide some immediate im-

provement, with minimum risk.

If you are a toe dipper, think about

the area you would most like to improve,

find the practice that addresses that issue,

and implement it on a trial basis. After a

month or two, evaluate the effects of this

change, barriers you met, and successes

you had, and share your experiences with

your support community. Then, refine or

repeat the process to add the next most

valuable practice.

By Kent Beck & Cynthia Andres

12 AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

CannonballSome teams want quick results and

are willing to deal with the chaos of radi-

cal change as long as they are in control

of the changes to their software process.

These are the teams that start doing every

XP practice they can at full throttle. The

result is, predictably for the short term,

chaos; but it can be constructive chaos.

Everyone is learning new techniques

every day and those techniques interact

in unpredictable ways. Some days work

smoothly. Others days are akin to driving

in bumper-to-bumper traffic. After a sharp

learning curve, things settle into a much

more highly interactive and refined team

that is able to leap small buildings in a

single bound. They produce more, make

fewer mistakes, and have confidence in

their ability to handle challenges.

The cannonball is attractive when

you want a fresh start and there won’t be

any catastrophic effects from the ensu-

ing chaos. If you are beginning a release

that’s scheduled to take nine months, for

instance, a cannonball might be a good

choice. Conversely, it is not a good choice

if you have just two weeks left before

deployment.

Amplified positive interactions

between practices, quick turnaround, and

the confidence boost the team gets from gaining control on their own are all good reasons to try a cannonball. Some of the chaos of the cannonball is mitigated by the synergies between the practices. For instance, the practice of developer-written tests is invaluable when incrementally improving the de-sign of the system.

One of the challenges of man-aging the cannon-ball is that groups outside the team quickly feel the ripples (or in some cases, waves) from the team’s changes. All of a sudden, the team will ask for communication sooner and more directly than they used to. They will likely break exist-ing power chains, skipping across the organizational chart to find the informa-tion they need to succeed. Whether

a cannonball results in lasting improve-ment depends not only on how the team does its work but also on how the rest of the organization responds to their change. Outside support can encourage a team to stick with their changes long enough to

XP: Dive Right In. The Water’s Fine!What You Get:

• Fewer defects• More predictability• Greater flexibility• Closer conformance between delivered features

and actual needs• Shorter lead time for new features

How It Works:• There are weekly milestone releases, each of

which is technically ready to deploy.• Programmers, testers, and business experts write

automated tests that are exercised continuously.• The whole team sits together in an open work-

space.• Project information is up-to-date and prominently

displayed.

What’s Hard:• The radical departure from the way some histori-

cally have developed software• The creative management necessary for large proj-

ects requiring more people than fit comfortably in one room

• Taking active responsibility for your work

13 AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

see improvement and form new habits. Executive support for the change is es-sential for breaking organizational log jams. Otherwise you’ll have a frustrated team unable to grow because they can’t get the help they need.

A limitation of learning XP on your own is that teams sometimes can’t imag-ine how far they can take XP principles and practices. I have pair programmed with self-taught XPers for whom test-first programming and refactoring were a revelation. They didn’t realize just how tiny the steps could be, how many tests could profitably be written, and how often they could be run.

Teams that do cannonball success-fully have a sense of pride and confi-dence in their accomplishments and flexibility. They know they can adapt to whatever circumstances they encounter.

Racing DiveTeams that want quick results and

are willing to trust outsiders often turn to XP coaches to learn a new style of working without the chaotic splash. A good coach can smooth out the rough edges of your team’s entry and save you some of the pain of learning. By “diving in” with professional support, teams that use a professional coach still experience

rapid change, but they have the support of someone who has been there before and who has the experience to eliminate some of the pain and accelerate the learning.

The racing dive is a good choice for teams who want quick results but can’t af-ford as much floundering and chaos as the cannonballers. It is also a good choice for teams who want the effects of XP but don’t have the courage or persistence to make and sustain change on their own.

The main difficulty for the racing dive is finding a compatible coach. Good coaches can be hard to find. You need to find someone you are willing to work with and whose advice you trust. The biggest downside I have seen to engaging a coach is the tendency to fall back on old author-ity patterns, treating the coach as “the ex-pert.” It is all too easy for a team to give up responsibility for their work to the coach.

Finding Your StyleEach of these strategies has its place.

Since people have very different appetites for change; a team may not even agree on which strategy they are using—after all, one man’s toe dip is another man’s cannon-ball. Here are some questions to help you find a style and pace of change that will meet your needs. Taking the time to think about and discuss these issues will smooth

XP’s Safe Starts• Whole Team—the team includes

people with all the skills and con-nections it needs to succeed.

• Sit Together—the team sits within eye contact of each other.

• Pair Programming—two people share programming conversations.

• Informative Workspace—plaster the walls with up-to-date informa-tion about the project.

• Weekly Planning—choose func-tionality to implement each week.

• Quarterly Planning—set quarterly themes to be addressed by the weekly iterations.

• Slack—include some optional items in any schedule.

• Test-first Programming—code by writing a failing test, then making the system satisfy the test.

• Incremental Design—invest in the design only what is needed to comfortably support today’s sto-ries.

• Stories—plan and track in incre-ments of business functionality.

• Ten-minute Build—automatically build and test as much of the sys-tem as you can in ten minutes.

• Continuous Integration—inte-grate your changes with the shared code every couple of hours at most.

• Energized Work—work and live so you can bring energy to your work.

14 AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

1� AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

your transition.

• How quickly do you need results?How dramatic do they need to be?What is the budget for outside help?

How strong are the relationships both within the team and also between the team and the rest of the organization?

Regardless of the style you choose, once you make a change, beware of the pressure to change back. When you make a change, it puts a strain on surround-ing people, resources, and organizations

••

•

related to that change. It takes awareness and persistence to stick with a change and follow through on its consequences in the face of pressure from those around you to make their lives “easier” by changing back.

An antidote to chang-ing back is being account-able to a supportive com-munity. If the whole team decides that they are going to integrate their changes every hour, and how often people integrate is public knowledge, it’s much easier to keep integrating often even if it feels uncomfort-able or seems inconvenient. Even if you are the only one making a change, you will find it easier if you partici-pate in an online commu-nity or attend your local area user’s group meeting. In time, rhythm replaces

strength. Where you need to go to get support

will be very different depending on your position in the organization and where the impetus for change began. In the early days of XP, almost all those wanting to apply it were programmers out to improve their own work. Project managers and customers

had little motivation to change their style of work until the programmers had demon-strated improvement. Programmers had to get started with the parts of XP that were purely technical: test-first programming, pair programming, continuous integration, incremental design. If you are a program-mer wanting support for changing your style of work, show why the change is good both for you and for those from whom you want support. Share the benefits you know about and what you have learned from others. Get a com-mitment for a trial. When you have tried the change, report back to your support-

Lane MarkersGuiding principles to keep your project glid-ing along:• Human speed—peo-

ple can only change so fast. When that speed is exceeded, they revert.

• Self-interest—peo-ple need to see why the changes are in their best interest.

• Grow or die—change must spread through an organiza-tion. If not, those who have changed will be forced to recant or leave.

• Safety—people need to feel safe. They need organizational support through both the hiccups and the successes.

Flotation DevicesNo matter where you start, these devices will

help you make the change to XP successfully. 1. Read XP Explained, 2nd Edition. This will

give you a shared vocabulary for the tech-niques you are about to try.

2. Share what you have learned with others. Change happens best with the support of a like-minded community.

3. Make a public commitment to change. Call-ing your shot in public is a great motivator to stick with it when it gets hard.

4. Make a plan for your changes. XP-style planning is a good way to prioritize when you have many changes to make all at once. Start with the area you can best leverage.

16 AgileDevelopment | Spring 2006

ers about how it went and what you would like to do next.

Increasingly, it is the business spon-sors who are asking for XP because they want to be able to see clearly into their projects, to detect problems early, and to be able to manage the scope of the system as it evolves. For customers, the first prac-tices to implement might be those related to planning: weekly and quarterly planning, stories, and slack. To improve on-time deliv-eries, the technical people on the team will need to begin applying the technical prac-tices, but establishing a shared understand-ing of the evolving scope of the system can be a big step toward working together.

Some people are in the position of being forced to apply XP. If this describes you, you’ll need to decide how you are going to treat XP. You can resist or you can make XP your own. Here is the case for try-ing XP when your instincts compel you to resist. One of the principles in XP is mutual benefit. As Gandhi said, “Only that solution is just that is in the best interest of all par-ties.” Changing to XP will likely be uncom-fortable at times, but it should serve your interests as well as those of the team and the whole organization. Take advantage of the opportunity to use XP to improve your own work and practice. Take a look at the practices listed in “XP’s Safe Starts.” If one

of them reminds you of times you’ve been especially effective at software develop-ment, embrace it. Try it out yourself. Find a buddy to try it with. Convince the team to try it early. The result will be a change process that intentionally meets your needs, instead of one driven solely by other people’s agendas.

Whatever your circumstances—whether you go in fast or slow, whether you make a big splash or just a few ripples, whether you have help or not—XP has something to offer you. Now is the time to get started. Find a style of improvement that suits you and begin the process today.

Software development has just begun to create value in business. These improve-ments are available to you as soon as you begin applying XP.

AUTHOR BIOS: Kent Beck has programmed for thirty years. He lives in rural southern Oregon with his wife (and co-author) Cynthia Andres, four of their five children, and a variable num-ber of domestic fowl.

Cynthia Andres has spent twenty years observing the evolution of programming culture. She works as a change facilitator. She is co-author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2nd edition.

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