Raymond Lewallen

September 2007 - Posts

• As a scrummaster, scrum is not my first option to a new client

  I had this discussion briefly at BarCamp Dallas yesterday.  The question came up as to how do I describe scrum to my client? When going into a new client, I don’t.  There are a lot of companies out there that are reading about scrum and learning scrum on their own, and then want to hire somebody to come in and implement it.  And if they bring you in, the thing you shouldn’t do is start implemeting scrum. I would argue that most established development groups have a process model that they are following, and do it reasonably well.  The real question you ask first is what is wrong with your current process?  What is and is not working?  Are you delivering stable software releases?  On time?  Within budjet?  Desired functionallity for the stakeholders and users?  I've gone into clients who want to implement scrum, yet are able to answer these questions with answers that are indicative that they are operating very well under their current process, but might just need a few tweaks, not an entire change to how the lifecycle in managed. Very often, its just a matter of finding out what is wrong with the current processes, and find a way to fix them.  Scrum can be a major disruption to the flow and efficiency to a partially successful development team.  Implementing scrum into an existing team, which more times than not requires and entire mindshift and replacement of most of their current processes, is difficult for the team, for management, for stakeholders, etc. Bottom line is don’t go into an existing team and just implement scrum because they think its going to solve their problems.  Scrum is much more about making problems transparent so that you are forced to face them and solve them by other means.  Scrum is not necessarily a solution to many of the problems you have.  It certainly helps clarify what problems are lurking within your team that you just may not be able to recognize. Scrum is my preferred process management solution.  Its not right for all teams and not necessary for all teams.  Help your client to clarify their problems and find ways to resolve them within their current processes before completely changing how the lifecycle is managed. Posted Sep 30 2007, 02:42 PM by Raymond Lewallen with 8 comment(s) Filed under: Agile, Alt.Net, Featured, Scrum

• Alt.Net does NOT equal Anti-Microsoft

  I've had this post sitting in the queue forever.  Not forever, but about 2 months.  Before I start, I'd love to be able to go back and quote the mass amount of Alt.Net posts that have come out of CB over the last few days, but to be honest I don't have time to read them right now.  I'm the busiest person I know and can't even find time to read. This post originates from the Oklahoma City CodeCamp we held back in July, where we had a Microsoft technologies track, and an Alt.Net track.  The Microsoft track consisted of things like Silverlight, WPF, WCF, C# 3.0 and the like.  Alt.Net consisted of BDD, TDD, pair-programming, DDD with NHibernate.  After the code camp was over, I had specific feed back come back to me that people stated that they loved the Microsoft and Anti-Microsoft tracks.  WTF!?! Disregard the fact everybody in the Alt.Net track used Visual Studio.  They all ran on Windows.  They all programmed in C#.  How do concepts surrounding great principles and practices around software development get viewed as being anti-Microsoft?  Seriously? This concept completely confuses me.  What mindset are the people in who make these statements?  Now I'm not going to go recite what is Alt.Net.  I think the community is flooded with this information right now and you probably know what those of us close to the idea are trying to convey.  How can you look at what Alt.Net portrays and publicizes, and believe these are things that go against what Microsoft tries to do?  Microsoft is in the business of making money.  They give us tools, some good, some bad, to help us create software faster (ok, maybe a few pieces help us deliver better software).  And we buy them.  We may or may not use Microsoft tools, and certainly shouldn't limit ourselves to a single vendor, framework, concept or methodology.  Alt.Net is about creating better software, and using the right tools and practices to help you accomplish this, be it Microsoft or not. Alt.Net and Microsoft should go walking down the aisle together, get married, and produce offspring that carry the dominant genes of both pools.  They compliment eachother.  They should reside together in your head and in your toolset as you accomplish the task of creating better software.  That goes for Alt.Net + any tool vendor + any methodology that you and your team understands, can grok, use and make your team the most productive team it can be and deliver business value.  I believe most of the folks close to Alt.Net embrace Microsoft and what it tries to do, even if some of what it does is poorly thought out and even unusable to some people, IMO.  Microsoft is getting better at listening and understanding the developer community.  Many Microsoft folks are coming to the Alt.Net conference in Austin in 2 weeks and I think its going to be valuable for all involved. Since I don't know who made the remarks specifically (they came back to me anonymously, and it was several remarks, not just one person), I can't go to them and start this discussion.  I have to bring it up here and see what comes of it to help me and my understanding of how I can help convey the ideas behind Alt.Net better to my community without somehow having them perceived as anti-Microsoft. Posted Sep 24 2007, 08:08 PM by Raymond Lewallen with 24 comment(s) Filed under: .Net Development, Agile, Alt.Net, Featured, OOP, Patterns and Practices, TDD

• Welcome Dave Laribee to CodeBetter!

  So this is a no brainer.  Where is there a better fit for Dave Laribee other than CodeBetter?  So many of us share the same ideals, the same goals, suffer the same pains and have common solutions for problems we encounter, that it only made sense that Dave Laribee join us at CodeBetter, where a family exists that he can join and feed off of, and provide support to.  Dave is a great asset to the software development community, and thus a wonderful addition to the CodeBetter community. We welcome Dave Laribee, the man most popular for his 80s style hair and attire, flashing his legs while wearing his daisy dukes (I have to photos to prove this), but you may also remember him from a term he coined earlier this year: Alt.Net. Welcome Dave!  Its great to have you! Posted Sep 17 2007, 10:09 AM by Raymond Lewallen with 8 comment(s) Filed under: Generalities