[LRUG] [JOBS] Extreme Programming Opportunities

Sat Jan 11 00:16:28 PST 2014

I don't believe in a "one true way" as you say. My first degree was in Physics, so the scientific method is, as I put it, close to my heart. I do scrutinise my own value, keep notes from project to project and try and figure out what works best based on context of client, project and organisation. I welcome honest open debate and constructive criticism. I've been doing this for 25 years, long enough to see the whole IT industry now embracing a fourth paradigm of software development, so I've been round this whole merry-go-round a few times now.

I apologise if the use of humour in my first post got on your nerves, or appeared condescending. "Humour is flat on the page" as one famous journalist wrote. I do stand by my original sentiment, which was that there are very many budget holders who don't possess the technical chops to know what good looks like. Those people are not my audience right now, and I'd be willing to bet believe that if you asked them what LRUG was, their answer would have something to do with Mexican textiles. It is these people who are the cause of the £800/day trainees, something which existed at Anderson's/Accenture a long time before Agile came about.

I find the various components of various methodologies to be useful tools, physical or mental, and find that a broad knowledge of tools, how to use them and where they are appropriate has helped me immensely, YMMV of course. I would not dismiss out of hand any new way of doing something, based upon its name, but rather give it a go and seek to understand what makes it work, how others make it work, and whether it is something I can make use of. I call this 'pragmatism'. 

People here who've met me know that I, like many of us, sometimes struggle to make myself clear on the written page. If you'd like to chat about software development, and stories from the trenches, please find me at LRUG this Monday or at one of my code dojos and we'll see if we can't find some common ground, because I suspect that despite what's been written, we're both fairly close in terms of our actual perspectives.

All the best,

Nigel Runnels-Moss
@sleepyfox

> On 11 Jan 2014, at 01:11, Najaf Ali <ali at happybearsoftware.com> wrote:
> 
> > As a consultant in the IT profession I do my best wherever I can to inform and educate, 
> 
> So would you say that the following is an example of you doing your best to inform and educate whenever you can?
> 
> > I've also struggled with finding employers (in the past) or clients (now that I'm running my own business) that even have agile.clue > 0 (as opposed to say, SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier)
> 
> > Most are rather like this guy: https://twitter.com/sleepyfox/statuses/416556441885896704
> 
> What you're saying here is that most of the people who don't agree with your vision of the one true way of developing software lack any technical literacy. As a consultant, I'm genuinely interested in how communication like this works for you in terms of informing and educating.
> 
> You're obviously an intelligent professional that has your clients best interests at heart. If you're anything like me, you ruminate tirelessly about whether or not you're actually delivering value. You keep copious notes, cross-referenced from project to project, and spend a lot of time thinking about what works well and what doesn't in a variety of contexts. 
> 
> You're constantly on the lookout for flaws in your thinking, and you bombard any assertions you make about best practices with as many counter examples as you can to see if they hold up to the cold, hard light of reality. As consultants we're especially prone to incentive-caused bias (along with confirmation bias in general) so staying on firm rational ground is generally an uphill struggle for us. As a fellow consultant, I think you'll agree that not applying this level of scrutiny is bad science, bad software and ultimately bad business.
> 
> After a deep, reflective analysis of your experiences, if part of your central thesis of an optimal software development methodology is that most people who don't agree with you can't distinguish between a warning from the "cyber-police" and error messages in a browser console, then I'd like to present a few counterexamples that will perhaps make you re-evaluate your estimate of the probability of that hypothesis being true. 
> 
> I've never claimed to be a particularly intelligent[0] or skilled developer, but I think I can just about manage that distinction. My clients all have the technical chops to definitely make that distinction. All of our agile.clue properties are set to 0. How many more counterexamples do you think you would need to re-evaluate that probability?
> 
> > so whilst I do see some people's awareness of Agile (and especially XP being close to my heart) being reduced to a buzzword, I take every opportunity that I can to open their eyes to what a real difference these values and principles have given us with modern development practices, tools and systems.
> 
> While we're sharing our findings here, I've identified a number of key areas where Agile delivers tremendous business value, above and beyond it's original mandate.
> 
> For large organisations: mass-consumption of departmental budget. Many departments in large organisations value using up their entire budget and more in order to receive a larger budget the following year. Spending this on top-tier Agile consultants is like /dev/null for expenditure. Peoples livelihoods demonstrably depend on this, so while it may seem like a perversion of the idea of "business value", it still does a lot of material good in the world, so is OK in my book.
> 
> For consultancies: being able to charge massively inflated rates with little accountability. You can bill out a team of fresh graduates for £800 per day (each!) as long as you define their value in terms of process instead of results. With Agile, if the project was successful you can take the credit, if it wasn't you can explain that the client wasn't acting in the true spirit of Agile. This provides plausible deniability for consultancies, allowing them to mitigate project risk consistently, definitely a useful advantage to have.
> 
> For me personally: client or developer qualification. If a client/developer professes a passion for a particular methodology or holds a toolkit 'close to their heart' then they're an immediate no-go for me. I'm not the kind of consultant they need and they're not the kind of client I want to work with. I'm always going to offer arguing from first principles, critical thinking and empiricism before best practices, argument from authority and cargo culting. Being able to disqualify clients that aren't a good fit as early as possible obviously means a lot to me in terms of opportunity costs. It's also good for them, as I only want to work with clients I can deliver outstanding results for and would prefer to refer unsuitable clients to more appropriate consultants as early in the process as possible.
> 
> > If people don't want to use Agile/XP/Scrum/FDD/whatever, that's fine by me, it's not a silver bullet.
> 
> It's not a silver bullet, but if you don't agree then you've missed the cluetrain and are so bad at building software that you think the cyber-police have got into your computer and are giving you warning messages about child abuse. Would you agree at least that there's some conflict in your stance towards non-believers in this comment and your previous email?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> -Ali
> 
> [0]: Indeed my IQ (the last I did the test) is 94. Below average in general and almost definitely below average for our profession.
> 
> P.S. If speaking negatively about Agile is against the LRUG code of conduct (but speaking negatively about people who don't buy into it isn't) then in order to avoid future complications, it would be very useful for me to have a list of topics added to the LRUG code of conduct that we're not allowed to speak negatively about. I'm only 10.39% joking about this.
> 
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Sleepyfox <sleepyfox at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Words have emotional attachments for people. I personally have to deal almost every week with prospects, colleagues or clients who conflate dictionary definitions of the word 'agile' with Agile methodologies, Agile tools or techniques and Agile principles and values, needless to say this is frequently a cause of confusion. 
>> 
>> As a consultant in the IT profession I do my best wherever I can to inform and educate, so whilst I do see some people's awareness of Agile (and especially XP being close to my heart) being reduced to a buzzword, I take every opportunity that I can to open their eyes to what a real difference these values and principles have given us with modern development practices, tools and systems.
>> 
>> I personally feel that throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't productive. 
>> 
>> If people don't want to use Agile/XP/Scrum/FDD/whatever, that's fine by me, it's not a silver bullet. If you get on just fine without TDD, pairing, CI etc. then fair enough.
>> 
>> Anthony's original post was aimed at people who do enjoy these things - a sentiment that I share. 
>> 
>> To further the discussion, I've run a Code Dojo at 7digital and they seem pretty switched on about these things, same for Unruly Media and Badoo, though I don't know whether either of these are currently recruiting.
>> 
>> All the best, 
>> 
>> Fox
>> --
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 10 January 2014 16:54, Najaf Ali <ali at happybearsoftware.com> wrote:
>>> Agile is a member of the set buzzwords, so technically just fine without either.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Sleepyfox <sleepyfox at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Najaf: just fine without Agile or just fine without buzzwords? 
>>>> 
>>>> Fox
>>>> --
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On 10 January 2014 16:31, Najaf Ali <ali at happybearsoftware.com> wrote:
>>>>> > Thanks Anthony, that's a great idea. I've also struggled with finding employers (in the past) or clients (now that I'm running > my own business) that even have agile.clue > 0 (as opposed to say, SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier)
>>>>> 
>>>>> As someone who's experienced more than his fair share of the church of Agile and other forms of buzzword-driven-development, please: send them my way! My clients and I get on just fine without it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 4:17 PM, Sleepyfox <sleepyfox at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Thanks Anthony, that's a great idea. I've also struggled with finding employers (in the past) or clients (now that I'm running my own business) that even have agile.clue > 0 (as opposed to say, SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Most are rather like this guy: https://twitter.com/sleepyfox/statuses/416556441885896704
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Fox
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 10 January 2014 11:52, Anthony Green <anthony.charles.green at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Frustrated at being unable to find roles with organisations that embrace XP practices: pairing, TDD, GOOS, CI etc I've created a Twitter account for those in the same boat: @XPJobs.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> It's low posting as you can imagine but if people know of genuine opportunities that fore fill that explicit criteria and you tweet them would you mind CC'ing that account.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> In the meantime here's James Courtois and Hugo Corbucci on the Joys and Sorrows of Metaprogramming:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> https://vimeo.com/83768983
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> best
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Anthony Green
>>>>>>> https://twitter.com/xpjobs
>>>>>>> Job announcements for companies that practice eXtreme Programming
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>> Chat at lists.lrug.org
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>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
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>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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