Archive for December, 2010
Posted by James King on December 17, 2010
I think risk management is really cool … and certainly more fun than the alternative.
Unfortunately many people find the traditional approaches to analysing risks dry and un-innovative; which is a problem because identification and analysis of risk is actually a creative process.
So here are a couple of “unusual” approaches that might work for your team. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Risk, Techniques | Tagged: risk analysis, Risk identification, risk management | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 13, 2010
I have recently been talking about elaborating stories in agile projects and the topic of architecture came up.
As as result Philippe Kruchten sent me a link to the “Hard Choices” game – a game that can be run in workshops and training courses to demonstrate the difficult tradeoffs involved in architecture on projects.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/tools/hardchoices/
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Observations | Tagged: agile, architecture, downloadable game | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 12, 2010
Some people worry that in our rush to become more agile we might be leaving good architecture behind. So I often reassure with the following statement:
Don’t worry – There is no doubt that the system’s architecture will emerge from what we are doing. The only question is whether it will be the architecture we want.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: agile architecture, elaboration, stories | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on December 9, 2010
Comparison tables involve listing stories and then comparing the components or factors relevant to each story. Generally speaking a comparison table is created as follow:
- Stories are listed as either column headings or row headings; and
- Story components or characteristics are listed for each story.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: elaboration, User stories | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 9, 2010
Abstract to concrete is a term I am going to use to describe the idea of elaborating stories by:
- Using a structured format to interrogate the story;
- “Abstracting” the context and meaning behind the story rather than just listing acceptance tests or task; and
- Making the abstract conversation more concrete by discussing what needs to be done in order to build the story.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: abstract and concrete thinking, story elaboration | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 8, 2010
Rather than breaking the story into tasks or acceptance tests, some teams simply break stories into multiple, smaller stories until they are small enough to build from.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: agile, elaboration, technical stories, use cases, User stories | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 6, 2010
In some teams, the iteration or sprint begins with the team discussing each story and breaking it down into the specific tasks that each team member will need to perform in order to complete the story. The team then track tasks on their story wall rather than complete stories.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: agile, elaboration, stories | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 3, 2010
Elaborating stories using acceptance tests involves defining the criteria for stories before turning them into code. This is the approach we often teach in agile courses.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: breaking down stories, elaboration, User stories | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 3, 2010
There are many approaches that work well when elaborating stories and the team should decide on the approach that works best for them.
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Posted in Idea management, Techniques | Tagged: agile, elaboration, elaboration techniques, stories | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on December 3, 2010
I have been on a lot of projects in my time and I used to prioritise ideas or requirements as “high”, “medium” or “low” importance.
If people classified their requirement as low,however, we would record the requirement in a long list, thank them for their idea and then never talk about it again. If they classified it as medium then we promised get to it in “phase 2”, which meant after we ran out of money.
People learned over time to classify all of their requirements as high priority so we started adding new classifications like critical or super ultra high, which didn’t help at all.
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Posted in Arguing, Idea management, Implementation, Techniques | Tagged: agile, ideas, prioritisation, prioritization, requirements, stories | 1 Comment »
