(luKa)

It is not possible to estimate what?

Luca Minudel — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:10:48 GMT

There are some uncertainties that cannot be avoided or reduced, while instead they can be recognized and managed

Putting more time and effort to improve estimations of the uncertainties that cannot be avoided or reduced, will not improve the accuracy and reliability of those estimations. It is a waste. And not recognizing those uncertainties increase the possible consequences.

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them - Laurence J. Peter

It is not possible to estimate what

you don't know
has never been done before
has more uncertainty that certainty
you do not know that you don't know
is not yet invented, discovered or explored
you can learn how to do it only doing it for real
has no definitive or agreed formulation of the problem
is changing more frequently than the frequency you re-estimate it
has neither an immediate nor ultimate test/validation of a solution
has no "stopping rule" (i.e. we never know when or if the problem has been fully solved).
has an unbound set of possible solution and you can know which work only after trying them
has no solutions that match world views and frames for understanding for all the stakeholders
change substantially in presence of minimum changes of the initial conditions or external perturbations
...

What else ?

And finally a Quiz to check if everything is crystal clear.
Given that:
- It is possible to reduce the consequence of uncertainty and risks, i.e. buy an insurance
- It is possible to have what you want at an arbitrary deadline, i.e. get a loan
- It is possible to make good profits from diversity in opinions/forecast, i.e. betting or investing in the stock market
What if someone want an high ROI without uncertainty/risks, at a pre-fixed deadline agreed by everyone?
Solution by Willem van den Ende : that is called a software project ;-)

See also:
- Requirement's principles
- The dimensions of Agile

The dimensions of Agile

Luca Minudel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:03:08 GMT

After hands-on experience with Agile practices, working in Agile environments and attending conferences with Agile experts, I have annotated what I think could be the dimensions of Agile that detail and expand the original motto Embrace Change:

dealing with uncertainty
managing the unexpected
recognizing the unknowns
exploring through discovery & invention
balancing anticipation & adaptation
combining instinct & thought & experience (as learning from action)
making sense in complex contexts
amplify the emergence of beneficial behaviors and outcomes
continuing the quest for craftsmanship

Dimensions are intended here in the sense that the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto, the values and principles and practices of XP, the 3 legs the 3 artifacts the 3 roles and the 3 meetings of Scrum as well as the foundations the roles and the activities and artifacts of OpenAgile and the values and the principles of Lean can all be directly related and derilved from one or more dimensions.

Can you suggest other dimensions?

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After 10 years of Agile Manifesto, Agile is mainstream, maybe the time has come for the next generation

Luca Minudel — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:39:38 GMT

10 years have passed, bringing successes [1], and bringing new challenges for the next 10 years [2][3][4][5].

Also now, Agile is mainstream.
And this can be the major change after these 10 years.
Indeed this is something that cannot be changed, controlled or forced into a predefined plan.
Instead is something to welcome and to adapt to, searching for the best possible outcomes.

This event, Agile that from a minority is turned into a mainstream approach, also has the potential to be a disruptive event, because it can change the game and this could fade away most of the original Agile ideas.
For example the lack of openness could lead to fundamentalist adherence to misunderstood rules and could cause the loss of the expected benefit/advantages of Agile. And the loss of the key Agile foundations could lead to a fictional representation of Agile that doesn't produce real benefits/advantages and that justify fake evolutions that are founded on misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Nat Pryce expressed the latter idea with these words: In software "X improves upon Y" seems to mean "X improves upon the bit of Y that the author of X learned about".

For what I understand, when a minority turn mainstream, to survive and to evolve needs to preserve the most valuable traits of its identity and at the same time needs to be open to changes and contaminations, be curious, exploit diversity [6] be inclusive and build bridges. A prerequisite for this is to deepen and strength the understanding of the key valuable factors of Agile, its identity behind rituals and conventions, and to spread the key knowledge and key practices, make them resilient to the ongoing Mash-up and crossover that is happening with lot of contributions from different sources, fields, people, background. And be open to let all the others non essentials/key things go.

How ?

Here I try to propose a possible answer, for example I would like to read more books/articles and see more discussions and teams deepening

more about Agile values and principles, enough to become able to recognize in everyday real situation whether an action/decision/practice in that specific context adhere to Agile values and principles and whether not and what are the practical consequences
the internals of Scrum and XP practices, know and understand exactly what effects each practice is expected to produce in combination with the others, enough to recognize when a team is already achieving all the outcomes expected from a practice and so the team does not need to enforce that practice explicitly anymore (e.g. as Kent Beck describes in Software G forces), and enough to understand how a modification to a practice could affect the overall productivity quality and chances of success (e.g. becoming able to adapt/modify Scrum effectively as Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber would do and not the way they wouldn't do)
social complexity and self-organisation enough to be able to distinguish between simple complicated and complex problems, make sense of complex contexts, have the tools to identify and explore the unknowns, deal with inherent uncertainty, inspect and adapt to react properly to unpredictable events, to make proper use of available levers to direct and influence the emergence of behaviors toward positive directions to the advantage of the organization the team and to the project success, to amplify the emergence of beneficial behaviors and to reduce or revert the non beneficial ones

And you, how would you answer to this challenge?

[1] http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2011.html
[2] http://10yearsagile.org/
[3] http://drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/229301128
[4] http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2011/11/agile-manifesto-10-year-reunion-full.html
[5] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh350860.aspx
[6] http://blogs.ugidotnet.org/luKa/archive/0001/01/01/abide-model-an-exercise-diversitydissent.aspx

Tags : Team Work | Agile | Creatività | Innovazione |

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Comprimi Tweet in Italiano rilasciata on-line (beta)

Luca Minudel — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:02:45 GMT

La app web che comprime i tweet piu lunghi in 140 caratteri, é rilasciata e accessible online qui: http://www.luca.minudel.it/tweeeeeeeeeet/

La lista delle abbreviazioni é migliorabile, si possono aggiungere abbreviazioni piu chiare, abbreviazioni che mancano e cambiare l'ordine cambiando cosi la prioritá con cui vengono applicate

Per migliorare le abbreviazioni in Italiano, clicca su
Switch to Italian Tweets e poi clicca il bottone
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Save e Load permettono di salvare i miglioramenti e ricaricarli in seguito, e inviano una copia dei miglioramenti al Server cosi potranno essere inclusi nei rilasci futuri della applicazione !

Cos'é per te XP ?

Luca Minudel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:02:55 GMT

Questa é una delle domande rivolte da Andrea Gervasini per la sua tesi sull'Extreme Programming come conclusione della sua laurea presso l'Università dell'Insubria di Varese.
Trascrivo qui la risponsta che mi sono dato. Commenti e visioni alternative sono ben accolte :)

Cos'é per te XP, la personale visione di cos'è xp tralasciando i libri ?

Riconoscere in ogni progetto e sviluppo software quello che sappiamo e anche quello che non conosciamo, non possiamo prevedere e non possiamo controllare. e adattare il nostro modo di lavorare di conseguenza. reagendo, adattandoci, esplorando, trovando l'equilibrio tra cio che possiamo anticipare e cio a cui dobbiamo reagire
Comprendere il ruolo fondamentale delle persone, immaginare e applicare modi di lavorare che non limitano la capacitá di collaborazione le motivazioni intrinseche e l'intelligenza collettiva che ci sono nelle abilita umane innate e in quelle acquisite da adulti maturi
Accettare il paradosso che le attivitá, le pratiche e i compiti piu difficili in assoluto diventano piu sempli di molto applicandoli in modo incrementale e continuo e che risultati e grandi cambiamenti a livello macroscopico si raggiungono meglio (a volte solo) lasciandoli emergere come risultato di un continuo lavoro a livello microscopico
Comprendere la complessitá intrinseca di alcuni problemi e come vanno affrontati questa classe di problemi e saper riconoscere nella pratica e nel lavoro quotidiano quali dei problemi che incontro hanno questa caratteristica di complessitá

Tags : Team Work | Agile | Progettazione Software |

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