Recently announced on the SATURN software architecture blog: A tool to support evaluating an architecture for usability, based on collaboration of ABB’s Pia Stoll with the SEI and Carnegie Mellon University. Their A-PLUS tool supports efficient evaluations of software architecture with respect to usability concerns, and is now available for download. Check it out!
Dave West gave the opening keynote speech today at RE09, titled “Delivering Business Value with Agile Approaches to Requirements”. The keynote description had definitely caught my attention, and I confirmed in a quick chat right before his talk that Dave was fresh from the Agile 2009 conference (he was sporting his Agile Alliance/Rally logo’d lanyard).
I took extensive notes on my laptop, but wasn’t able to ‘live blog’ - we’ve got free wireless, thanks to the conference organizers, but power connections are scarce. My battery’s not as good as it once was, and having the wireless on during the day today would have killed it. So I apologize for the delay in getting this post online, but hope you find it worth the wait!
In a nutshell, Dave delivered - he was entertaining and provided some hot-off-the-press stats on agile adoption. The only ‘promised’ topic which I didn’t feel was well addressed was how ‘formality and discipline play just as important role with Agile methods as with traditional approaches’, and it was a bit under the bar re ‘provide concrete recommendations on organizations can resolve the conflict and build a better requirements discipline’. Everything else he covered was up to, or exceeded, my expectations. There were also some thoughtful questions from the RE09 audience in the limited time for Q&A.
Below are my detailed notes. Be advised that most of the percentages cited below are either subject to transcription errors, or were my approximations from reading column heights on a chart. Also, the bulleting is still a little rough/confusing, and I know I’ve used some personal abbreviations in here - with your permission and understanding, I’ll clean those up later.
I’ve completed Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference. This book on cultural differences was a quick read, amenable to being read in short bursts, and I think GSD teams may find it useful. It’s not by any means a comprehensive guide to help you get out, and stay out, of trouble: I expect one of the other books on my shortlist to fill that purpose. I think it can serve as a good introductory book for raising awareness among experienced people who may question whether these cultural misunderstandings actually occur, or to help anyone realize just how much more common they are than they might have realized. I’m probably more attuned to these incidents than the average software person, and I still found myself saying, “Oh yeah, I never did understand what was going on there” more than a few times. Get a copy for each of your global sites, and have your teams pass it around - I’ll bet it starts a few conversations.
Next up: Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures (and, nowadays, who isn’t?).
Aldo, Andy, and I have just co-authored an article entitled “Metamorphosis: Adapting rapidly to change using the IDEAL improvement model” for the Q2 2009 issue of the ABB Review journal. Here’s the abstract:
Corporations must adapt rapidly to changing markets and adopt new technologies to remain competitive. Such adaptations are particularly important in a rapidly changing economic climate. Flexibility and a willingness to change are important qualities that must be fostered and encouraged, at all levels, if businesses are to respond effectively to shifts in product demands or to altered customer requirements. To encourage a positive environment for such change, the process for change must be carefully planned, well managed, properly justified and applied with sensitivity. ABB uses the IDEALSM 1.0 model as a framework to guide improvement processes so that effective changes are deployed efficiently.
The article discusses use of IDEAL for both process improvements, such as within the CMMI framework, and technology improvements guided by architecture evaluation methods such as AHEAD. We hope you enjoy it - comments welcome here, or on twitter @agile_teams!
Last Thursday I attended the IEEE ENCS chapter meeting, for which the featured speakers were two Special Agents from the regional FBI office. The topic was cybersecurity: “Computer Crime, Computer Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Combating High Tech Threats”. The session was nearly full, as well-attended as recent smart grid sessions.
Both speakers kept the audience’s attention by adroitly mixing cybersecurity fundamentals with highlights of local cybercrime cases. I didn’t gain any new insights, but I did pick up a few good reference URLs I hadn’t yet explored: cybercrime.gov, consumer.gov, cert.org/homeusers, governmentsecurity.org, sans.org/newsletters/risk/ or sans.org/newsletters/ouch/, infragard.net, ncinfragard.org. The NC Infragard organization meets every month, alternating between Raleigh and Charlotte; membership is free, and they offer a free newsletter.
Bonus: At the end of the 90 min talk, the agent from the foreign intelligence squad offered this interesting suggestion for safe surfing without the overhead and system slowdowns of security software: run your browser through a VMware server (or, an audience member suggested, Knoppix).
For a current project investigating the use of collaboration tools on GSD (global software development) projects, I’ve been assessing the impact of videoconferencing on development team activities. On the plus side is the great potential benefit of visual feedback. On the negative side, I’ve realized, is the great potential to inadvertently offend never-met teammates of a different cultural background with one’s gestures or body language.
To help me better understand these factors, and so I can assess whether they might be useful references for our development teams, I’ve picked up a few books on the topic, including:
Gestures: The DO’s and TABOOs of Body Language Around the World
Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference
Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands (updated edition)
Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures
Also, towards the general topic of GSD and cultural differences, I’m [re-]reading:
The Psychology of Computer Programming
Cultural Diversity: Its Social Psychology
Recommendations for other good resources on this topic are welcome! I’ll summarize my opinions of the usefulness of these books for GSD purposes in this blog.
During a recent stay at a reasonably nice hotel, I was looking for a place to hang up my wet raincoat when I noticed this sign on the wall, up high. Clearly there had been problems in the past with sprinkler malfunctions, and after one or more incidents of ‘defect correction’ (fixing the sprinkler malfunctions), someone did root cause analysis (e.g. why? … why? …), identified coat hangers as the culprit, and took this action to try to prevent future defects.
Commendable, right?
But I looked around the entire hotel room and realized I still had no good place to hang my wet raincoat.
This exemplifies a saying I recall hearing in an SEI Six Sigma training class last year, and earlier in a QFD class: ”Just because nothing is wrong, doesn’t mean anything is right.”
Taking corrective and preventive actions, and driving defect levels towards zero, may be useful and necessary, but is not sufficient to achieve true high quality. Satisfaction of real customer needs matters most. It would be neither hard nor expensive to install a coat hook somewhere in the hotel room for wet/snowy/dirty/… outergarments. Adding this small amenity would not only dilute the temptation to guests who might otherwise hang wet coats on the sprinklers, they’d be less likely to drape them over the chairs in the rooms, which probably isn’t good for the wood or upholstery, …
Thanks to a tweet by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), today I found a great NYT magazine article: “The Green Issue: Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” It quickly segued from the specifics of poll results on the importance of climate change into an interesting discussion of how humans make decisions under uncertainty and risk - highly relevant to software development!
The automated translation links below are provided as a convenience only. Translated content varies in its accuracy and readability; automated translation technology is still far from perfect. It is provided as a convenience only. Click the American flag for the original English version.
