Episode 180: Extreme Programming & 3X Explained with Kent Beck

20/02/202020/02/2020 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

Craig and Tony are at YOW! Conference in Brisbane and have a rockstar moment and catchup with Kent Beck, the creator of Extreme Programming, the pioneer of xUnit and author of numerous books including “Extreme Programming Explained” and “Test Driven Development“:

Extreme Programming (XP) was born at Chrysler by letting go of conventional wisdom and pushing practices to eleven
Software development is a social process, not a sum of individuals process
Nobody cares about certificates, we care about competence
It’s time for a renaissance and reboot of XP – this time it needs to be inclusive and no barriers to entry
We know how to make a difference – it starts with execution and continues to empathy
Big tent agility can become an excuse not to tackle hard problems
“Not thinking about all the legs on the stool leaves you sitting on the ground”…

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Episode 171 – Beyond Legacy Code with David Bernstein

07/10/201907/10/2019 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at Agile 2017 in Orlando, Florida and speaks with David Bernstein, author of “Beyond Legacy Code“, and they chat about agile technical practices:

Agile does have something to with software development
Agile 2017 talk “Create Software Quality
The real value of Agile is in the technical practices so we can build iteratively, but still very few people practice them
The future is already here, but it is not very well evenly distributed – the same applies to Agile
Companies are being consumed by their technical debt and they don’t even recognise it
What is always cheaper in the virtual domain is building quality
Continuous Integration makes the most painful thing in software development (integration) our greatest asset – this in turn gives us feedback
We don’t necessarily know there is a better way to do things – but there is a better way to…

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Episode 159: What Colour Agile Would You Like Today with Nigel Dalton

16/03/201916/03/2019 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at YOW! Hong Kong and is sitting with Nigel Dalton, Chief Inventor at REA Group and the Australian “Godfather of Agile” and they reminisce about:

Anita Sengupta’s YOW! Hong Kong keynote “The Future of Mars Exploration“
Akin’s Rules of Spacecraft Design – “don’t mess it up, there are people involved”
Nigel Dalton’s YOW! Hong Kong talk “Agile is the Last Thing You Need“
The two early experiments of Agile in Australia – Lonely Planet and Suncorp
The success of the REA technology teams today was the move into multidisciplinary teams where the influence comes from product – it was a difficult decision and chaos at the time
John Sullivan’s YOW! Hong Kong talk “A Presentation to Myself on Organisational Agile Transformations“
ANZ is disrupting the power base of senior management – Shayne Elliott video about their way of working and Bluenotes…

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Episode 149: Continuous Delivery with Dave Farley

16/12/201816/12/2018 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig, Tony and honorary Revolutionist Pete Sellars are at YOW! Conference and sit down with Dave Farley, co-author of “Continuous Delivery” and they chat about the following

There are anti-patterns with doing XP at scale, continuous delivery was born from the learnings from that
Continuous delivery is just extending continuous integration to more of the software development practice (and continuous integration requires test driven development)
Continuous delivery works because it is the application of the scientific method to software development
If you work in an iterative, imperative, experimental way and you take continuous learning seriously and take cycle time as a serious measurement you will naturally drive out agile, lean, systems theory and DevOps
YOW! 2016 presentation “The Rationale for Continuous Delivery“
Most common two ways to introduce continuous delivery to your organisation – need to get cover from senior management to make change or…

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Episode 144: Mob Programming & #noestimates with Woody Zuill

22/09/201822/09/2018 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at Agile 2016 in Atlanta and catches up with his old friend Woody Zuill to talk about Mob Programming and #noestimates

Craig’s InfoQ interview with Woody Zuill
We need to work well together to get our work done
Mob Programming originated at Hunter Industries, identified we can get a lot done if we don’t have to wait for answers to questions from other people and if we are all in the same context all the time
Mob Programming – all the people on the team working at the same time, working in the same space on the same thing and using a single computer and working interactively the entire day
Work well together and turn up the good, need to pay attention on how to work well together
“Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck – “a great book”
The person with the idea expresses it…

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Episode 143: One Last Jam with The “Dude” David Hussman

16/09/201816/09/2018 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

The Agile community recently lost its friend and one of its most inspirational members in David Hussman. Craig and Tony were privileged to speak to him in one of his last interviews at YOW! Conference in Brisbane.

David Hussman’s YOW! 2017 talk “Learning in Product: How Wrong are You Ready to Be?”
“Extreme Programming Explained” is Agile’s White Album, just don’t read it backwards!
We make stuff up in software too much, rather than learning from the past and patterns
You can’t look at code and tell it is going to be a good experience and we don’t know our ideas are going to be great until we interact with them
The tenth principle – simplicity is essential
A good developer needs confidence and war wounds, same for Product Managers – they have shipped something crappy and don’t want to do that again
Cardboard User Story Mapping app

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Episode 134: Unicorns, Distributed Teams and Agile User Groups with Mark Kilby

26/07/201726/07/2017 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at Agile 2016 in Atlanta and catches up with Mark Kilby, an Agile Coach at Sonatype and co-founder of Agile Orlando and Agile Florida. Along the way they discuss:

“Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck (the white book)
Memories of Jean Tabaka and her book “Collaboration Explained”
We should be collaborating with leaders rather than working for them
InfoQ interview “Mark Kilby, Stephanie Davis and Rick Regueira on Effective User Groups & Remote Agile“
“Can you be remotely Agile” Agile 2015 experience report
“Audacious Salon – Distributed Agile” session output from Agile 2016 conference
Virtual Team Talk group (started in Berlin, ironically at a conference)
“Communicating and Collaborating: How Distributed Agile Teams Can Thrive” Agile 2016 workshop with David Horowitz
Distribution tips: don’t force distributed teams, it needs to be a choice; it’s a…

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Episode 126 – Agile Snotfest

19/04/201719/04/2017 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Renee has been busy being sick (and Tony and Craig are sick of being busy) and thus it has been a long time between cough syrup for our Revolutionists…

The Scrum Guide was updated in July 2016 to add some value(s)
Renee has a copy of the Scrum Body of Knowledge (for $#!^$ and giggles)
The need for an Agile Manifesto 2.0, will it go away?
Ghostbusters, Splash and Top Gun
Modern Agile – “Agile is old, we need to make it modern” or Craig’s article “Agile 2016 Keynote: Modern Agile” on InfoQ as well as the original article “Modern Agile“
Tony and Craig already spoke about Modern Agile in “Episode 116: The Heart of Modern Agile“
Mike Cohn blog on “The Dangers of a Definition of Ready“, is it essential to teams and the crossover with the definition of…

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Episode 124: Talking Testing with Anne-Marie Charrett

18/01/201718/01/2017 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at YOW! Conference and catches up with Anne-Marie Charrett who is well known in the testing community as a trainer, coach and consultant but also for her support of the community:

Don Reinertsen talk “Thriving in a Stochastic World“
Context-Driven Testing
Testing is a verb – it’s a doing thing and not an output, but the challenge is you cannot see doing
Anne-Marie’s class in Exploratory Testing
Where there is risk and failure, there is a job for testing
Exploratory testing – the key is feedback and using the learning to feedback into the next test
Agile testing – don’t try and test everything and don’t try and automate everything either, rather adopt a risk based approach
Unit testing – the usefulness depends on the programmer and the context and figuring out what you are trying to achieve
Sydney Testers Meetup
Speak Easy – Speak Easy…

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Episode 111: M&Mailbag

01/07/201601/07/2016 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig and Renee, sitting in a shoe-box sized hotel room in Sydney eating peanut M&Ms, decided to rustle through the mailbag and answer a bunch of outstanding questions.

Note: this episode is not sponsored or endorsed by M&Ms but we certainly enjoy their product!

Crossing The Chasm

more and more organisations seem to be crossing the chasm to Agile, but too many are still just doing and not being Agile
inimal viable product (MVP) is still the trend word, the next stage is Minimal Viable Experience and then Minimal Viable Robustness to Minimal Marketable Product and finally Continuously Evolving Product
Enterprise Transformation Meta Model
Agile is a true north concept, not sure that you will ever get there

Suggested reading list on where to start with Agile: