This is Mark Levison's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Mark Levison's activity
Mark Levison
Ottawa, On
Agile Coach, Consultant, Editor @ InfoQ with over 20 years industry experience.
Recent Activity
Have you looked into the most recent study from MS - that shows a reduction in the defect rate? I don't remember the details right this second but I think George Dinwiddie links to it.
Cheers
Mark
Misconceptions with Test Driven Development
In the past few weeks I've heard several misconceptions raised about Test Driven Development: Does TDD really work? I've written about this before: Advantages of TDD; In addition George Dinwiddie maintains a list of case studies (including one from IBM). Finally Keith Braithwaite has recently...
Thanks - Abby you saw the original at Agile2009, I suspect the short version won't add anything new. It will just demonstrate that a 15 minute talk is like a story card. Its an invitation to a conversation.
I’m Speaking at TEDx Ottawa
Its just been announced I’m speaking at TEDx Ottawa (a mini TED – ideas worth spreading) next weekend on my favourite topic: “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain.” I’m pretty good company sharing the stage with the founder of Bridgehead, a man who has run across the Sahara and many more be...
Adam thanks for reminding me of the corollary - I'm not sure if want to know where you count me :-)
Why use an Agile Coach?
From time to time I get asked the question why use an Agile Coach I’ve read a book or taken a CSM course. It seems pretty easy. So why would I want to hire a coach? With just a single team this is basically right, a good coach will still make a difference but you can bootstrap your efforts on...
Its a great idea Sandy the problem with that is my idea of a critical bug will be different from yours and Rally's (not picking on them in particular). In addition once you establish measures like this people will game them by accident or by design. I just hear the conversation now: "Bug, that's not a bug its just the way I designed it", or "There's a workaround for that bug so its just an annoyance and not critical".
I wonder if there would be useful object measures.
Tool Vendors Reply to My Agile Challenge
Last week I challenged Agile Tool Vendors and the post got a little bit of attention, I got replies from Rally: How Agile is Rally?; Danube: How Agile is Danube? and MicroTool: How We Use Agile to Develop Our Tools. In addition there were several comments with replies: Robert Dempsey: CEO and...
BTW the solution - Urlseek.vmn.net has a separate installation in the control panel. So you can uninstall it. In addition if we had paid more attention to the installer as it whizzed by we might have spotted this puppy and choosen not to install it.
Urlseek.vmn.net or the Evil that is Hidden in Toolbars
A few weeks ago I need to capture the output of a program in the form of a PDF. A few minutes googling led me to PDF Creator (hosted at SourceForge). The application itself is great however when you install it a toolbar is bundled with it pdfforge. You don’t get an option its simply installed on...
Victor - thanks for the comment - my list wasn't meant to exhaustive or perfect, just a quick test to see if people are really Agile. Think of it as a Litmus test no more.
My Challenge to Agile Tool Vendors
I keep on seeing announcements for the next great Agile Task Tracking tool. I just saw one posted to Scrum Development where it’s author said: “I haven't done much testing, so if you find a bug and want me to fix it let me know :-)”. My reply: Congrats I'm sure you have an excellent applicatio...
Thanks for the pointer. The full blown article (http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~gvwilson/articles/portals.html) says:
"Another noteworthy point was that almost all of the groups we interviewed acknowledged that they didn't use any well-defined process themselves (not even the agile methods they preach). When asked, "Do you use XP [XP]?" or "Do you use Scrum?", they invariably replied that their developers used a mix of best practices that didn't strictly adhere to any published rulebook. None of the interviewees were defensive about this; all clearly believed that they had above-average developers who could be trusted to use pair programming, test-driven development, and whatever else was appropriate in context. This emphatically does not mean that their processes were chaotic: in all cases there was close and frequent coupling between development on one hand and requirements gathering and feature prioritization on the other. However, the day-to-day mechanics of actually producing high-quality code was trusted to developers and their consciences. It remains to be seen whether the users of the tools do follow specific agile methods or, as the tool developers', they just use their own mix of agile practices."
So I suspect the relevant tools vendors (Rally, VersionOne and Mingle) could all give good answers to these questions.
My Challenge to Agile Tool Vendors
I keep on seeing announcements for the next great Agile Task Tracking tool. I just saw one posted to Scrum Development where it’s author said: “I haven't done much testing, so if you find a bug and want me to fix it let me know :-)”. My reply: Congrats I'm sure you have an excellent applicatio...
Marcin - we're in violent agreement. For me TDD is a design tool. 100% code coverage is neither realistic, desirable or useful. Code coverage is only useful as a hint about what you've missed. Nothing more.
My Challenge to Agile Tool Vendors
I keep on seeing announcements for the next great Agile Task Tracking tool. I just saw one posted to Scrum Development where it’s author said: “I haven't done much testing, so if you find a bug and want me to fix it let me know :-)”. My reply: Congrats I'm sure you have an excellent applicatio...
Marcin - Interesting you clearly know what your doing. One small detail - I wouldn't go after 100% test coverage. Instead I would ask where you find bugs in the glue code and let that guide your thinking. It seems like a small part of your, which I've not taken the time to play with (sorry) :-)
My Challenge to Agile Tool Vendors
I keep on seeing announcements for the next great Agile Task Tracking tool. I just saw one posted to Scrum Development where it’s author said: “I haven't done much testing, so if you find a bug and want me to fix it let me know :-)”. My reply: Congrats I'm sure you have an excellent applicatio...
Karl its complex - of the four books mention above Zull's "The Art of Changing the Brain" is the most relevant to teaching. Linda found John Medina's book "Brain Rules" more valuable - whereas I found it a bit fluffy. Finally if you're looking for the most interesting but least applicable read Norman Doidge's book "The Brain that Changes Itself". Great writing and good background.
Of course you could just invite me to present in Montreal :-)
Learning Best Approaches for your Brain Slide Deck
As regular readers of this blog will know I’ve given a talk based on reading’s in Neuroscience, called “Learning Best Approaches for Your Brain” – several times this year (Agile 2009 and Agile Ottawa). After several requests I’m posting the slide deck (pdf) here – but I’m afraid that it will r...
Daniel - I think that Agile Alliance calendar works only for people who already know its there. If I google Agile Calendar - there is an InfoQ news item from two years ago mentioning Deb's upcoming.com group and then this post. The Agile Alliance, Scrum Alliance etc don't even on the page. At least InfoQ is high traffic enough to find people who didn't know there was a calendar in the first place.
I'm open to any alternative that will get the support of the community.
Central Agile Calendar?
As an organizer of a small Agile user group and potentially a small Agile conference I’ve noticed that the Community lacks one good central calendar with a list of events. If we created one – would you find it useful? I’ve suggested that InfoQ create one and need to determine what the minimum ...
Thanks - Emmanuel although I was aware of these two references they didn't play a role in the session. Some of the ideas will play a role in my book (long time in the future).
Learning: the Best Approaches for Your Brain
In the past year I’ve been doing alot of reading on neuroscience and improving my understanding of how the brain works. It started with Norman Doidge’s book: “The Brain That Changes Itself” which I read for fun on vacation last year. As a I read this book, I kept thinking that there has to be ...
Jesse - thanks for the reply. My remarks were not well considered every Atlassian Employee I've encountered so far was decent. However the outline for the session really doesn't make clear that this approach would work well with any other tool, its not too late to amend it.
Better stated I don't think tools are the best way to conduct a code review: http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2006/12/online_code_rev.html as you see I've being saying it for years.
The usual caveat applies if your distributed you will likely need a tool, but otherwise I don't like tools getting in the way of humans. How often do you see email exchanges with people who sit 5 ft apart.
Agile 2009 Monday Conference Sessions that catch my attention
Last year just before Agile2008 I wrote a series of posts about my the sessions I was planning on attending. Last year was used to help coordinate a diverse group of IBM’ers, this year the audience is smaller: me. Monday Morning 9:00 – 11:00: will likely be open jam time for me. Come find me t...
Ruben - thanks for the quick reply. As it stands I'm certain that the public key token is the same. I've checked them and they're the same. I will check both the dll and the csproj to find what strong names they have.
GAC Madness
Using FxCop when I try to analyze projects that rely on Patterns and Practices, Enterprise Library Data (among others) 2.0.0.0 - FxCop complains that it can’t: “Locate Assembly Reference” - even though the application dll being analyzed was complied against this version and its in the GAC. If ...
Mario on this you're wrong. I'm not printing from Office but a development environment.
Urlseek.vmn.net or the Evil that is Hidden in Toolbars
A few weeks ago I need to capture the output of a program in the form of a PDF. A few minutes googling led me to PDF Creator (hosted at SourceForge). The application itself is great however when you install it a toolbar is bundled with it pdfforge. You don’t get an option its simply installed on...
Another reason not to use Rogers for my home internet. Thanks. As for Anonymous Coward, you're right if you pay close enough attention (as I just discovered) it does include a check box for a "Firefox and IE addon". It doesn't say toolbar and it is automatically checked, so I still think its deceptive.
Urlseek.vmn.net or the Evil that is Hidden in Toolbars
A few weeks ago I need to capture the output of a program in the form of a PDF. A few minutes googling led me to PDF Creator (hosted at SourceForge). The application itself is great however when you install it a toolbar is bundled with it pdfforge. You don’t get an option its simply installed on...
After a conversation with Elisabeth I'm convinced, be open and transparent is the right thing. Proposal authors should be informed of what you have to say. There is a small risk that a few noses will get out of joint but that's a risk we have to take.
Reviewing the Review Process for Agile 2009
Sorry I’ve been more than a bit busy lately, working as an independent coach is very rewarding and time consuming. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing work reviewing sessions for the Manifesting Agility Stage at Agile2009: “This Stage is all about tools and techniques for rapidly deve...
Immo - thanks for the comment and the compliment. I knew of Cucumber (and a few other Ruby tools). However they didn't get mentioned because the client is a very conservative MS shop. Getting them to upgrade to VS2008, .NET 3.5 is a real effort. Getting them to install Ruby on their test rig would be an even bigger sell.
Functional/Acceptance Test Tools for Web Apps
I used to be rich client guy, but my current client is building web apps and so all of a sudden I'm a web app guy. Now I wish I’d paid more attention in the past. For my penance I promise to document whatever I learn on the forthcoming Agile Tools Functional Test Wiki (i.e. the wiki that we disc...
Thanks to Lisa and Ian - we be investigating Canoo more closely now.
James - I know and like Twist but it costs $$$ and my client is unlikely to budget for that right this second.
Functional/Acceptance Test Tools for Web Apps
I used to be rich client guy, but my current client is building web apps and so all of a sudden I'm a web app guy. Now I wish I’d paid more attention in the past. For my penance I promise to document whatever I learn on the forthcoming Agile Tools Functional Test Wiki (i.e. the wiki that we disc...
Thanks Richard and Patrick. Interestingly you've outlined the two options that are currently going through my mind - Either we record tests with a goal to eventually creating a DSL or we do as much testing as possible through the slightly lower level (probably via FitNesse .NET) with GUI tests only to check the UI.
Its also heartening to hear that people have had good luck with both WatiN and Selenium. On Twitter the responses have been 2 for Watin and 3 for Selenium.
In other words all the choices seem at least good and it should up to the team to decided.
Functional/Acceptance Test Tools for Web Apps
I used to be rich client guy, but my current client is building web apps and so all of a sudden I'm a web app guy. Now I wish I’d paid more attention in the past. For my penance I promise to document whatever I learn on the forthcoming Agile Tools Functional Test Wiki (i.e. the wiki that we disc...
I've just read your blog posting that is another interesting strategy my only question would be around how well does this scale. Can you handle 50 people this way? 200?
TDD Adoption Strategies Article
Eons ago I promised a blog posting on TDD Adoptions strategy. Well the posting grew and grew and grew (can you tell I read alot of kid's books?) and along the way morphed into something bigger. In end I decided this article would want a wider audience and so I published it on InfoQ. Here's the b...
Sarah some thoughts.
For me the value of these things is all in proportion to how much notice they generate.
My interest obviously is in coaching Agile/Lean Software development.
In my case the most important activities have been:
1) Mailing lists
2) Blog
3) Writing for InfoQ
4) Conferences
....
n) Social Networking tools.
So they can be useful but other things are more important.
Is LinkedIn useful? Hardly
Scot Herrick asks is LinkedIn useful? What do you get out LinkedIn? What would it take to make it more useful? I get only a little of value. When helping a friend conduct a job search recently it was helpful in figuring out who to introduce him to. Finally its just plain fun to see who you're ...
Anna - your comment is hardly too long.
You bring up a number of interesting points. I didn't go into anymore detail in the post because it was already way too long.
Companies need to focus on hiring the right people and involving the right people in the hiring process.
On the other side when all else fails HR departments need to act quickly once its been demonstrated that a person can't be helped to work in a given role.
Do You Suspect You Have a Less than Productive Person on Your Team?
In the past couple of days on the Scrum Development mailing list an interesting thread has developed around what to do with a poor performing team member. Too my mind there have been a number of key take away points Be very careful about the language you use: Strong language implies prejudice ...
Tiest - In fact I wasn't the one who had done the work testing the frameworks, I was just doing research on behalf of a colleague who had. I've passed your notes along to him.
Unit Testing in JavaScript
Last week a colleague asked for my help finding better unit test tools for Java Script. He's done some digging on the state of the art with JavaScript unit tests and finds the whole lot wanting. His discoveries: Tool Pros Cons Jsunit: we already use it for some of our js code. can be inv...
Thanks for the question Peter - I'm really not sure. The early time of 6:15pm is really going to require great forbearance from my wife is its the hardest time of day with two small kids.
So really my wife will decide - not I.
Agile Ottawa Meetup - Monday Nov 24th - 7-9pm
The Agile Ottawa group is getting going again after disappearing for the last year. The event is at: The Code Factory, 2nd Floor - 246 Queen Street, Ottawa, ON. Dave Rooney has kindly picked up the fees for using the space. Glenn Waters has outline an initial agenda: For the first meeting, we...
More...
Subscribe to Mark Levison’s Recent Activity