Clarke Ching - Split Infinitives and Beyond.

Zoque

The last two speakers of the Mexican language Zoque, now in their 70s, refuse to speak to one another.

[from the utterly wonderful QI column in today's telegraph]

Simple TDD example?

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to find a moderately simple coding problem which I can do in Excel.  I won't something to compliment the Integer-to-Roman - i2r() - conversation I do:  http://www.clarkeching.com/2006/04/test_driven_dev.html in my training.

Why?  I figure that in order to help spread the word about EverydayAgile that it would help to do a simple screencast of my i2r() example.  But I'm concerned that if I do that then I can't use the i2r() example in my training - because people will say "we've seen it before".  (Although, that said, I've done it dozens of times and I never tire of it.)

Any suggestions?

You'll be making the world a better place ...

Olives to India

This is horrifying:

Across India as many as 150,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past decade after falling behind in payments to money lenders, according to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

[from the UK Times]

The good news is that they're starting to grow olives in the desert of Rajasthan in the north of India.  Even better: there's a world wide shortage of Olive oil.  A commercial success saves lives.

1k down

This is my 1024th post on this blog.

Porcupettes

Did you know that baby porcupine are called Porcupettes?

Agile adoption

Dr. Bruce Scharlau, of the University of Aberdeen asked,

Clarke, Would you hazard a guess at

A) What the current balance between agile (or lightweight) and waterfall, et al (or heavyweight) methodologies might be, and

B) when the majority of software might be done with agile methods?

If you don't want to do 'B', could you suggest what conditions might be necessary for this to happen?

That's a very hard question to answer - from my point of view - because I mostly talk to people who are doing agile or wanting to do agile.  I've seen some research that suggests that most organisations are piloting or considering piloting agile - but I find the numbers meaningless. 

But - given that I don't have a clue - here's my answers

A) I think that maybe 5% of organisations (perhaps 1%, perhaps 10%) are predominantly doing agile.  I suspect that 70% (perhaps 30%, perhaps 80%) are giving agile a little look-see (i.e. trying it out in a small, sensible sort of way).  I suspect the rest have heard of agile ... but think it is either totally daft or that even though it works in other organisations it wouldn't work for them.

B) It depends.  I'd say that in 30 years time most organisations will be working incrementally and they'll be doing programming in an XP sort of way.  If my (extremely ambitious) EverydayAgile initiative manages to convince more businesses that they can be "agile" by just-enough-agile to make things better, then maybe cut that down to 10 years. 

At the moment, I think the biggest hurdle to spreading agile wider is the agile community.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  It's just that what got us HERE, won't take us THERE.

Too many of us think that it is too hard to "convert" THEM and "if they don't get it already, what's the point?".  That's a very sensible opinion to take.  It is hard to convert people who don't automatically "GET" the ideas.  And most of us in the Agile community don't have the right skills to do so - we are, at core, a bunch of extremely clever and motivated techies ... who don't get along so well with people who wear suits.

That's where we have to start: finding people who believe it is not only worthwhile, but possible, to spread the ideas to the "suits" and everyone else who lives in "everyday land". 

I think I've decided that I'm going to spend the rest of my career - 30 years - focusing on the "everyday" problem ...  but I hope it only takes 5 - 10 years.

Chasm revisted

A few people commented on yesterday's blog about my assertion that there is no Agile chasm.

I agree mostly with what they've written - they're very clever folk.

But the examples they've raised - e.g. the UK government - or the assertions they've made - some people will see even the simplest evolution changes as disruptive probably apply to the "laggards" - they're way out on the right of the bell curve.  The chasm happens between the innovators/early adopters and the early (pragmatic) majority, not the laggards.

So, when I say there's no chasm, I'm not saying that everyone on the right side of early adopters will find it easy or buy in ... just that agile can easily be done in a way an  evolutionary way which (according to "The Chasm companion") the early majority like.  They'll still question it of course - that would be pragmatic (their other name is the "pragmatists")  but so long as it feels like a relatively smallish change many of them will do it because it is the pragmatic thing to do.  I don't mean that they'll embrace it without a little persuasion though.

The laggards - like the UK government as Dave pointed out in once comment - are just a fact of life, but they're not sitting next to the chasm.  I should have been clearer in my original blog

To be fair: I wasn't entirely truthful yesterday.  There is a chasm, but only because people see Agile as being disruptive, when it doesn't need to be.  It's a perception thing, so it's about marketing, which I guess was the reason why Crossing The Chasm was a marketing book.  That's my point: in order to make loads more people happier in their work and to make businesses LOADS more money, we have to show them the easy, incremental version, not the scary, disruptive, extreme version.  They'll value the version on the left far more than the version on the right.

Clever Christian Politician

Earlier today my wife heard a snippet of a British MP arguing against new genetic laws where he said, "You don't have to be a Christian to know that man is made in Gods image."

chapter 2 - podcast

Rolling Rocks Downhill chapter 1 and chapter 2 podcast.

RRD Podcast - chapter 1

RRD Podcast - chapter 1

The book will be out later this year (I hope) on real paper thanks to the Pragmatic Programmers.

But in the meantime, I am about to restart my 1-chapter-at-a-time podcast of the book. 

I warn you, it'll be rough - I may have a face made for radio, but my voice ... well pop over to www.rollingrocksdownhill.com, subscribe and download the first chapter.  It'll be available via itunes shortly too.

I'm going to put out 3 chapters initially, then 1 a week until I've read the entire book from start to finish.  That'll probably take a year ... or so.

I confess: this is the crappy, pre-professional-editing version, but it's free and it's useful, and you can listen to it rather than read it.  Oh, and right now, it is the only free version available. 

The book will be out later this year (I hope) on real paper thanks to the Pragmatic Programmers.

But in the meantime, I am about to restart my 1-chapter-at-a-time podcast of the book. 

I warn you, it'll be rough - I may have a face made for radio, but my voice ... well pop over to www.rollingrocksdownhill.com, subscribe and download the first chapter.  It'll be available via itunes shortly too.

I'm going to put out 3 chapters initially, then 1 a week until I've read the entire book from start to finish.  That'll probably take a year ... or so.

I confess: this is the crappy, pre-professional-editing version, but it's free and it's useful, and you can listen to it rather than read it.  Oh, and right now, it is the only free version available.