Steve Neiderhauser

Constructing Great Characters

I took a writing class from Screenwriters University in November. Why do I take writing class when I work in business?

These classes teach you to avoid cliches, how to be entertaining. Adding value for your customer, consists of artistically treating your work and adding an entertainment dimension to the product you deliver.

The only way you'll learn to artistically treat your work is if you study art.

Completing a business course often means you receive a certificate. So I got a kick out of the fact that Screenwriters U also sent me a certificate. Great writing class taught by Ralph DiBacco.

Speed Boat Game for Process Improvement

I use innovation games for Agile development and product management. The game Speed Boat can be used for development retrospectives and product feedback.

Now I see many companies are using Speed Boat for process improvement. People often make connections and say things they normally wouldn't because the game evokes a creative response and sense of playfulness.

Love this description of an anchor (what slows the boat down).

"Yeah, I’ll tell you what I mean. This company is just like every other company. You think that all developers like Diet Coke. Well, not all of us like Diet Coke. I like Pepsi, and the lack of Pepsi is slowing me down. You want me to work faster and happier? Get me Pepsi!"

You'll have to read the article for the full story.

Agile's Sweet Spot

Joe Justice uses a Venn diagram to show the state of the art in Agile.

I may have added self-organizing teams to the Scrum circle. To become good at Agile, you will need to become proficient in all three areas: Scrum, XP Practices, and Object-Oriented Architecture.

Good object-oriented software leads to flexible software. And flexibility equals speed.

Benefits of Small User Stories

Agile Pain Relief explains the benefits of small user stories.

One of the things I like about small stories... They help the team get into a rhythm, a flow. And once a team gets into a flow state, they become more productive and creative.

Agile Test Plans

When companies convert to Agile I still see teams using the waterfall way of creating large cumbersome test plans. If these teams moved back to waterfall they wouldn't have to change a thing about their testing process.

And I've also seen team perform testing that added no value. Like executing a query to see if the selection in a menu was recorded in the database.

Karen Greaves offers a team approach for Agile test plans.

Let's take a look at two of her questions.

What tests does the Product Owner want to see to confirm it's working?

What parts need exploratory testing?

Product Owners will usually be more interested in testing scenarios or ways the customer uses the software instead of looking at some isolated backend component.

Too often I've seen teams mindlessly go through a test plan, when they'd get better results with Exploratory testing.

One-Piece Flow Machine

While coaching a Scrum team to work on and complete the highest priority backlog item, I've gained this insight.

In Pair Programming the pairing workstation becomes a one-piece flow machine:

There are two roles in pairing — a driver (person who codes) and navigator (reviews each line of code as it’s typed in).

In pair programming slack is built into the practice. Both people aren’t busy 100% of the time, there’s slack built into the approach to allow each person to think and design.

The two-person team performs many tasks in parallel. When using Test Driven Development, testing and development are done in parallel. Code reviews also happen concurrently. With one pair or multiple pairs, teams are better equipped to deliver user stories within WIP limits.

And that's why pairing stations are one-piece flow machines.

Who else wants to learn Acceptance Test Driven Development

Henrick Kniberg show us how to use Acceptance Test Driven Development.