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Agile Quality: A Canary in a Coal Mine

Presented by Ken Schwaber on Nov 13, 2006 Length 01:09:14     Download: MP3
Sections
Process & Practices,
Architecture & Design
Topics
Agile ,
Delivering Quality ,
Delivering Value ,
Agile in the Enterprise
Tags
Business/IT Alignment ,
Agile2006 ,
Planning ,
Scrum ,
Testing ,
Antipatterns
 

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Summary
Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber spoke at Agile2006 on code quality as a corporate asset. InfoQ presents video of his talk, The Canary in the Coalmine. Schwaber discussed how a degrading core codebase paralyses a team and negates any Agility gained through process improvement. He proposed strategies for management to identify, track and stop this downward spiral.

Bio
Ken Schwaber (www.controlchaos.com) codeveloped Scrum with Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990s. A 30-year IT veteran and an Agile Manifesto signatory, he subsequently founded the AgileAlliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to training and supporting Scrum practitioners.

About the conference

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  • This article is part of a featured topic series on Agile
A ray of hope by Cameron Purdy Posted
The importance of Transparency and Ethics by Noah Campbell Posted
Re: The importance of Transparency and Ethics by Deborah Hartmann Posted
Re: The importance of Transparency and Ethics by Noah Campbell Posted
  1. Back to top

    A ray of hope

    by Cameron Purdy

    I tend to disagree with a lot of the Agile(tm) Consultants(tm) and Speakers(tm), but I really do like the core idea that one can view "Code Quality as a Corporate Asset". Whether or not one can have get "the CEO [to come] into the room and [say]" anything seems about as far-fetched as the other Schwaberisms, but we (anyone writing code -- even test code and example code) should always view "Code Quality as a Corporate Asset", and we should also view it as our craft, i.e. we should build it with great pride of worksmanship.

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy
    Tangosol Coherence: Clustered Cache

  2. Back to top

    The importance of Transparency and Ethics

    by Noah Campbell

    Great presentation!

    I have to admit that I too find the Agile(tm) Consultants(tm) and Speakers(tm) to be a bit underwhelming in their rhetoric. Scrum as a management process is what usually draws me to these presentations and the key to this presentation is that Scrum builds in transparency into the process. That's not to say that RUP, Waterfall, etc. can have equal transparency, but short iterations do put the spotlight on potentially ugly practices...and that's the key to the this presentation. What do you do when presented with difficult decisions?

    In Beck and Schwaber's words: have the courage to do the ethical thing.

  3. Back to top

    Re: The importance of Transparency and Ethics

    by Deborah Hartmann

    Scrum as a management process is what usually draws me to these presentations and the key to this presentation is that Scrum builds in transparency into the process.
    Yes, this emphasis on transparency is one of the things that draws me to Scrum as well. But, as others have said, a good process cannot "fix" shoddy developers. Scrum relies on the team to bring skill and common sense into the mix.

    We can add: a good process cannot hide or compensate for a lack of coaching ethics. We need good processes and good people. If forced to choose... recent experience suggests: go with the good people :-)

  4. Back to top

    Re: The importance of Transparency and Ethics

    by Noah Campbell

    If forced to choose... recent experience suggests: go with the good people :-)


    Hopefully you're never forced to choose. I think your point about going with good people as a safe bet is that someone will emerge as a leader and put a process in a place.

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