Comments for Managed Chaos

Comment on Slicing boulders in the 11th Century by Kalpesh

Kalpesh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:15:32 +0000

Try this on a coconut.
Pour water in the middle of the coconut shell in a circular motion.

it will break in exactly half.

Comment on Why is common sense so uncommon? by Prakash Krishnan

Prakash Krishnan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:55:36 +0000

I am totally disagree with you for following statement:

You know what scares the shit out of me, when I think of over 1 million people in the Indian IT industry who are out there. At least these people are taking an initiative and trying to learn something by attending these sessions. But what about those over million software professionals who don’t even have the drive or energy to learn something new?

How can we say people attending conference on their own or sent by their organization?

Decision for implementing Agile or any other New Technology are always taken at management level (or Customer, basically we are service oriented industry) so not all the people are required to attend the conference or training sessions which is not used by them any time soon.

Don\’t blame all the people for the mistake made by few people.

Comment on Why is common sense so uncommon? by Kalpesh

Kalpesh — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:29:03 +0000

I don’t intend to be critical here.

However, shouldn’t this be “Keep it simple”?
Isn’t one of the mantra of agile is not to add complexity unless required?

Comment on Why is common sense so uncommon? by Naresh Jain

Naresh Jain — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:20:17 +0000

Thanks CBas for your feedback. I agree with all your points. I don’t deny that its a bit complicated to get your position paper in. But, I have used this wiki for 2 other conferences in US and both times we never faced this issue. It might not have been the best wiki from usability point of view, but it did its job.

A part of me feels like we should simplify it and make it really dumb-proof. Another part of me says, its should be a little bit more complicated to really gauge the quality of people.

I’m planning to start a tech conf soon. It would be a free conf, but to attend the conf, I’ll put something as complicated (or simple, depends how you look at it) as sshing into a linux box, cracking a puzzle which would be the password to open a file. Using VI to update the file with your position paper.

BTW the google linke is a good alternative for simple solution.

Comment on Why is common sense so uncommon? by cbas

cbas — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:12:52 +0000

Naresh, I love the effort you put into the workshops, and I look forward to attending the Poppendieck workshop, but…

Maybe TikiWiki is not the most intuitive software?
Maybe a wiki is not the best interface for RSVP + submitting a document?
Maybe there’s something wrong with the GUI of this application?
Maybe double click to edit is annoying as heck?
Maybe not everyone has time to learn yet another wiki syntax just to edit one page and add a short text.

The position paper is a good idea but the wiki really gets in the way.

FYI, suggestion:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/add-data-to-google-spreadsheets-using.html

Comment on XPLite & ScrumBud by Steve Freeman

Steve Freeman — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:27:55 +0000

I think he meant “ScrumBut”, as in “We’re doing Scrum, but we’re not delivering to production”, “We’re doing Scrum, but we’re don’t talk to the product owner”, etc…

But, the Lite Beer metaphor is a nice accident.

Comment on If you can’t get Distributed Development working, your company is doomed! by Israel Antezana R.

Israel Antezana R. — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:01:32 +0000

If you would like to try some distributed project with Bolivia next year let me know I would be happy to do the experiment with you.

Comment on Process OVER People by Eric Brown

Eric Brown — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:12:27 +0000

Great post…I’ve always been a huge proponent of people over process.

In the last few years, I’ve seen the Agile world go from being people oriented to being process oriented…it’s gotten to the point where an Agile project is about as cumbersome to manage as a classical waterfall project.

Let’s get back to the agile mindset of putting people over process.

Comment on Pollution as a metaphor to explain Technical Debt metaphor by Naresh Jain

Naresh Jain — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:53:57 +0000

I think we either need a policed system or self-disciplined team members to avoid these issues. Unfortunately what I have found so far is that most humans (at least in the software industry) are not as self-disciplined as most good Software Development methods requires. So may be you are right, a policed system is what might work. But I hate the sound of policed system, esp. externally policed systems. Reminds me of the CMM days when we had all those crazy Process Police floating around doing nothing other than causing pain to people trying to build software.

With CI and analysis tools for Code Coverage, Cyclomatic Complexity, Dependency Management, Check Style, Aspects, etc I wonder if we can build a self-policing system. I’ve had some success with this approach. But there is a long way to go.

Comment on Agile Coach Camp - The Show Must Go On! by Naresh Jain

Naresh Jain — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:40:31 +0000

The facilitators of each session are updating the conference wiki with the summary of their discussions. Please watch the wiki : http://wiki.agilecoachcamp.org

We did not audio/video record any of the sessions. All we have is some pictures.