Crisp's BlogPage 27

I am planning an introductory course on TDD. In that process I have been thinking about how to convey the productivity gain with TDD.

Being a visual person, I had an idea that would illustrate this in a few pictures. Here they are for your scrutiny and enjoyment!

Superstition is a bad thing. At least that’s what I have always believed, regarding myself as totally devoid of the stuff. I mean, me, Mats Henricson, superstitious? No way! But superstition grows out of ignorance, and that’s a valley I must admit I have walked in. And some time ago it struck me that I

My paper about Agile Support has been translated to French.

On March 4-5 Tom & Mary Poppendieck will once again come to Stockholm and teach a lean course with me. "Leading Lean Software Development" is aimed at leaders in organisations that are serious about succeeding with Lean software development. There are still a few spots left, more info and registration here: http://www.crisp.se/leadinglean Join us!

As a part of this weeks Kanban Applied course, the teams had to solve problems using Lego robots.

It was good fun. So fun teams almost forgot about Kanban 🙂

Programming the bot:

A year ago I held an Open Space at Scrum Gathering in Stockholm about Agile Support. I have since received several requests to expand on the topic, so here it comes. Download the article about Agile support with Kanban Good Luck! /Tomas

Are you looking for some concrete expression for Test Driven Development? Let me give you a glimpse of what I am working currently on – the TDD Tetrahedron.

The idea originates from when a colleague at Crisp, David Barnholdt, wrote about not focusing on one step at the time. So I thought for a while and came up with this idea, a tetrahedron where each side displayed “failing test”, “implementation” and “refactor”, respectively.

You turn it and look at the first side where you read “failing test”. You write a failing test and turn it again, reading “implementation”. Write the implementation and run the test to get the green bar. Once again you turn the tetrahedron and read “refactor”. You look for something to refactor, confident that if you do, you will be supported by unit tests all the way.

Or the thing just sit on your table to tell everyone how cool you are as being a TDD programmer. At least wish to be. 🙂

Anyways, here are some sneak preview pictures of the greatest thing that ever happened to the world of programming, ta da – the TDD Tetrahedron!

If you coach a scrum team but you’re not around to observe them during the sprint, how do you know how they felt about it?

Use Emo-lines

I’m happy to say that my Scrum Checklist has been translated to several languages: Russian (thanks Alexander Plutalov) Japanese (thanks Yasunobu Kawaguchi) German (thanks Marc Bless) Portuguese (thanks Demetrius Nunes)

Here are the slides from my breakfast seminar "Agile – ett verktyg inte ett mål" (= "Agile – a tool, not a goal"), hosted by DSDM Consortium. The presentation was in Swedish but the slides are in English. This is more or less the same presentation as my keynote at Integration Agile 2009 conference in

I was interviewed by Mitch Pronschinske on Agile Zone, this turned into two articles: Kanban isn’t better than Scrum, it’s just smaller Scrum and XP are new – their principles are not I think Mitch did a good job of turning the interview into coherent articles (not an easy job). 

Doing a road map can be a tricky thing. There are plenty of constraints and dependencies to consider: how to we balance long and short term improvements? how do we rate future revenue opportunities for our clients? how well do the separate steps tie together to a coherent product? is this fun and challenging? are we keeping our team motivated? can we stop half way?

I find that pair programming is by far the fastest way of traversing the decision tree. Basically, if you are a Product Owner, construct the road map together with another person. Lay out the plan that best meets the constraints and business goals and let the other question the options. (Of course, don’t forget to switch).

Altogether, it helps you check  the different options and prepare arguments. You will be better prepared when meeting the stakeholders. For when you do, there is always something uncertain waiting for you.

How would you present Scrum (agile) and Kanban (lean) as building from a common principle? What is the common core of these methods? These questions were the topic of recent discussions with colleagues agile coaches Joakim Sundén and Marcus Hammarberg. Based on our reflections, I would like to propose – yet another – definition of

Here’s a video recording of my 10 minute lightning talk "Kanban vs Scrum, a practical guide" at Agila Sverige June 8, 2009. It is basically a 10 minute summary of my book "Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both". NOTE – the recording is in Swedish.

My and Henrik’s book on is out. Get a downloadable version, or buy the full copy at InfoQ. The book includes: Foreword by Mary Poppendieck and David Anderson A comparison of Kanban and Scrum – their approaches as process tools in software In-the-trenches case study of introducing Kanban in operations Hope you enjoy the reading!

For further reading about the case study,  see my presentation at Devopsday’s 2009.

My new book "Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both" is done! The purpose of this book is to clear up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your environment. The book includes: Foreword by Mary Poppendieck Foreword by David Anderson Updated version of my

Here’s a Traditional Chinese translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches (not same as Chinese translation). Thanks Ko Jen-Chieh! The other 8 translations are listed on the InfoQ page for the book. Feel free to email me (henrik.kniberg AT crisp.se) if you want to translate the book to your language.

Configuration Management (CM) is crucial to any software project as neglecting it will easily get you in big trouble. It may look like bad luck, but it is not.

A CM-plan will deal with several matters, from simple to decide things, such as naming of releases to more advanced subjects, such as branching strategy. I will talk about the latter today.

There are of course different ideas about what a good branching strategy should be. It is my firm belief that it must be aligned with the subject at hand, namely changes.

If you are near Atlanta and want to meet me and the rest of the Agile Alliance board feel free to come to our Agile Alliance Board Reception on wednesday evening! We’ll host a winter holiday networking reception for Agile Alliance members, partners and friends. We’ll provide refreshments, a preview demo of the new website,

Ever had this thrown at you?

"This production bug is unacceptable, it must never happen again!"

And that event, outside your systems control, formed a policy that affected all your every day life. Failure to distinguish between uncertainty under our control and uncertainty imposed by outside events is a bad management habit.

Instead;
"Manage the normal – treat exception as exceptional"

And have a happier life 🙂

Nu när det finns en första "Hello, World"-version av Eats-o-matic i drift, är det dags att fundera på allvar på den vidare utvecklingen.

För att det skall bli något så behövs det bland annat möjlighet att lagra data, samt ett ramverk för att skapa själva webbapplikationen med.

Jag har kollat igenom ett antal av de alternativ som finns för GAE och kommit fram till ett val som jag tror passar mig som utvecklare och Eats-o-matic som applikation.

Google har en Eclipse-plugin som automatiserar bygge, integrationstest & driftsättning av applikationer för Google App Engine.

Men hur gör man om man liksom jag tycker att det skall gå att bygga och driftsätta från kommandoraden?

Mitt svar är Maven. Tyvärr finns det inte (ännu) någon Mavenplugin, så det blir lite meckigt att få det att fungera.

Feeling busy? Not ready when the deadline approaches? Many things in action?

Maybe you should consider a personal kanban. Now,  I will admit the first to admit I heard about the concept I thought "but isn’t slight over administration? What about just saying no?" But not all events are under our own control and as this story will tell; I’m now convinced it actually works.

The personal kanban can help address three problems:

• "Constant reprioritization"
• "I need to be able to focus"
• "I want to feel the reward of completing work"

Det är mycket prat om Cloud Computing nuförtiden. Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, SpringSource CloudFoundry, och nu snart Windows Azure.

Detta är första delen i en serie som beskriver utvecklingen av Eats-o-matic, som kommer att köras på Google App Engine (GAE).

Häng med!

This coming spring we will host a course with Robert C Martin on advanced TDD. I would really appreciate the input from my experienced TDD readers on what they consider to be the largest obstacles when it comes to TDD. This is your chance to shape the event so that it is customized to meet your needs.

A few months ago we hosted a very popular course with Michael Feathers. He talked about refactoring legacy systems and of course, unit tests which are an essential part of that. But the crowd cried out for more.

I have been practicing TDD for two years. I program in Java and frequently use Mockito and Wicket. The latter has support for unit testing web interfaces and it is great although it has its quirks.

But what is everyone else doing?

Here the the slides from my presentation "Kanban and Scrum – a practical guide" from QCon in San Francisco today. The presentation is mostly pictures. If you are curious about what I was saying, check out the free online book “Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both”. Great feedback! 77 green notes, 7

Why do we level out? In many agile teams I have met the introduction of Agile methods have made the teams to take a big leap. But then, after a while, they level out. Why so?

I will present at the Lean Software & Systems Conference, April 21-13 in Atlanta.

 Looks like a promising event, with speakers like Don Reinertsen and David Anderson.

Ps: There are some new exciting events in Stockholm this spring coming up with David Anderson, stay tuned.

Here is a detailed example of a fairly typical 2-tier Kanban board, for teams that know the basics of Kanban and are taking their first steps towards implementing it in practice. Translations: German Japanese Turkish It is sort of like a code example, or a condensed Kanban patterns repository. Print it out and use it