Tag Archives: Design

You can’t let Scrum die

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In my last post I said we should let Scrum die.  We can’t let Scrum die.  It doesn’t behave like that.  It will only die off its own accord if we die first and then it dies because it has no reason to exist.  So you got to kill it.  Here’s why (again?).
Software development is about people and the way people work alone and together.  People create code in software development.  Without that code, these people don’t exist; they have no purpose.  Code is the creation of the people, and people live off this code.  When the code is good, then life is good.  When the code is poisonous, then people start dying slowly.  When the smell of death is in the air, they look for help.  Some stare into the mirror called Scrum. They see themselves and the way they behave.  It’s an ugly sight.  They realise that they should behave better.  After all, software is about the way people work alone and together.

Regularly looking into the Scrum mirror, they improve their behavior over time, and everyone is happier than the moment before.  That’s a nice view.  Just look in the mirror and it looks good.  Very rarely do they also look again through the window into the fields of code that feeds them.  The poison is still coursing through their veins.  They will die, eventually … by the host that they created that was supposed to nourish them.  The only way to survive is to deal with the fields of code.  Get rid of the toxins.  There are two fundamental ways(*) that you can get rid of toxins: (a) eliminate duplication, and (b) make the code as you wish it to be.

If they just stare into the mirror and hardly ever look out the window, they will just exist on the plateau of complacency.  In order to avoid that state of being, they need to focus on the fields of code.  The urge to look in the mirror is strong, and as useful as it was, it becomes a very unbalanced state of existence.

So, look in the mirror, but look through the window too.  Create fields of code without toxins so that you provide nourishment for the next person.  That is ubuntu coding.

Actually, the only mirror you need is the person working next to you.

(*) Think deeply about these two fundamental things and try it out.  Everything else will fall into place from this. For example, the act of eliminating duplication forces you to consider where to locate a single piece of code, how it should be used and where it can be used, etc.  That is design and architecture.  With duplication, you don’t need to consider any of those things.  That’s toxic.

Let Scrum die

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I live in Cape Town, South Africa.  Apart from the great beaches, a mountain in the middle of the city, good food, and good wine there is a feeling of enthusiasm for agile software development in this town.  It’s been around for a while but really started getting all hot and sweaty with the Scrum wave.  I estimate that it’s been at least 2 to 3 years since some teams in Cape Town adopted Scrum.  Of course, there are teams adopting Scrum in this community every year.  That’s all good, but I’m afraid it’s shaping to be just like Table Mountain.

Regardless of the hyper-performing tagline of Scrum, each team settles down to something with which everyone is comfortable.  The big change that has happened is that of changed behaviour.  Scrum does that – it alters behaviours.  When everyone plays by the rules (i.e. they behave consistently) then you don’t have chaos.  It’s better than better – it’s just nice!  It is very comfortable.  But I see signs of chaos not far away again.  This is what is happening and it is almost without exception here in Cape Town.  Some are off the table top already.

Let me make the Scrumvangelists feel better for a brief moment.  Scrum won’t kill you  – directly, but your adoption of Scrum can kill you if you ignore one thing – your code base.  It is a code base out of control that leads to certain death, and Scrum won’t be the saviour this time.  Bringing your code base under control is not easy.  It is all about architecture, design and changing your style of development to live the principles that end up characterising good code.  I don’t need to tell you what you need to do.  It’s been told so many times – TDD, refactoring, continuous delivery, single code base, etc.  At the code face it’s SOLID and DRY and lots more.

The plateau of complacency is an interesting place.  We may think we are collaborating but in reality we have just found a way to work together without causing chaos.  I call it co-operation.  It’s just keeping chaos under control so that we can make the sprint, again and again and again.  A sure sign of being on the plateau is when we can’t get rid of our Scrum master.  When we work the Scrum master out of the system, then the team will need to take on more on it’s shoulders.

A major limiting factor to get off the plateau will be the people on the development team.  Hyper-performing teams have talented developers(*) that are able to design and express that design in code without breaking their principles.  A team that is unable to bring a code base under control will compensate by leaning on a scrum master for support.

In the journey of dramatic improvements to bring your code base under control, there are few things that you should take notice off.

  • An architecture will emerge that supports the design of the resident parts.  Things fit together beneficially.
  • The code base will get smaller and the team will shrink to about 2 or 3 people.
  • Each developer will take on greater responsibility and will find it difficult to break core principles.  The act of living those principles will result in a values that don’t need to be listed on a poster on the wall.
  • The scrum master will become redundant.
  • The product owner will do more by working directly with the developers.

Then you won’t need Scrum, because the code base is under control, developers represent the interest of their customers, and the bottleneck is now at the customer.

Am I being idealistic?  No, it’s about pragmatic decisions and the pursuit of freedom.  It’s hippie Scrum.

(*) By talented I mean developers who have the ability to communicate, share, solve problems simply and elegantly, and can sniff out bad design and architecture.  Talented developers are not code monkeys that can churn out code.  Their single differentiating trait is the ability to design well and express that design in code.

The politics of software delivery

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Software is all about delivering something useful to a customer.  That’s it – nothing else.  Politics is about acquisition of power.  Nothing else matters.  Now mix the two together.  How often have you heard a developer say something like “It’s not my problem, it’s just politics”?   That poor developer doesn’t stand a chance.  Imagine trying to deliver software while there is a raging power battle going on.  I don’t think software delivery stands any chance of success in that battle.  In fact, software delivery just becomes a tool for the politicians.
When someone is plotting for power, nothing else matters, not in the least software delivery.  I’ve been there and done that.  It’s just messy, soul destroying stuff.  These days, I look for the power battle and try to focus on software by raising the delivery stakes to higher than the power battle.  If I can’t do that, then the software was never the focus in the first place.  Then I recommend pulling the plug.  Regardless, that’s my cue to leave.  Not because I am a coward, lacking courage, but for the simple fact that those power grabs are completely meaningless, except for the power-hungry.

As long as there is a political game being played, you simply won’t deliver software on time, on budget and keep customers happy.  BTW you can just forget about collaboration too.  That space will always be filled with contempt.

Let me put it another way: Any attempt at being agile in a political environment will always lead to failure.  While you are trying to learn, others are trying to gain power.  It doesn’t work!

Beware the Big Industry Specification Up Front

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If you have done any development in Java-land, then surely you came across the dreaded three letter word EJB.  And you were most likely duped into thinking it was great.  I did!  Then I realised it was just a specification.  It was a great big, furry, non-executable PDF.  A specification for managing objects but the creating of these objects were just horrid.  EJB3 was a clean-up exercise, but still far from nice.
A couple of months ago I ran into OSGi again, but with SCA on top of it.  Horrid!  SCA is yet another warm and huggable specification.  But it’s so ugly to work with.  Everything feels so over the top complicated and restrictive in expression.  And the tools that I saw built on this SCA implementation were just awful.  Beyond being buggy, the enforced paradigm was just counter-productive.  When will tool vendors realise that talented developers do not want a diagramming interface to write code?  But the root cause is that the SCA specification describes the diagramming notation. Yuck!  Same reason that I do UML sketches with a lot of bastardisations with no tie-in with my code.

And let me not go into domain specific big vendor specs, designs, blue prints, etc. like IBM’s Insurance Application Architecture (IAA). Nasty stuff.

More commonly, I see so many self-confessed agile teams fearing the dreaded big design up front, and the big requirements up front document thrown over the wall.  If there is such a fear for big-x-up-front, why is there no fear for big-industry-and-vendor-specs-up-front like EJB, SCA, IAA, etc?

Why?

There are deep lessons and principles lurking beneath this surface.  Agile demands you to be a lot more aware of actions, decisions and consequences.

So why do you choose not to be agile when you are trying so hard to be agile?

What’s worse than BIG DUF? A BIG DIC!

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Most agile people say big designs up front rarely pay off.  You spend so much time doing design that you delay the opportunity of feedback from real, working software.  But I sometimes do BIG DUF.  It’s not that the design is big, it’s the problem that is big.  So I need an up front big picture with just a few big parts.
It helps me conquer and divide.

That’s not a bad thing.  What I find really painful is casting the design in concrete.  When your design is cast, then your mental state is already cast in concrete too.  And that means that it is a lot harder to do the right things.  So, more gets added to the concrete slab and it’s real hard work to break anything off.  When I have a BIG DUF, I often look at how to reduce it, rather than increase it.

I don’t think it’s wrong to have a  BIGDUF, it’s worse if you have a BIGDIC (BIG Design in Concrete).  That concrete block will hurt you later … a lot.

In other words, the size of a BIGDIC does not matter, it’s the rigidity that’s the problem (— That’s so lame, I could not resist!)