Meeting Monday 30th June

The Wiki page is open for sign-up.

I have to say in advance that I'll probably not make it to the meeting this time, but hope there are enough others interested to do so.

In any case, I'd like to suggest a topic for conversation:

My experience with introducing what are currently called Agile methods is that while is is relatively easy to get buy-in on a team level it becomes progressively harder on a departmental or organisational level.

Many years ago I led one of three teams whose work would combine into a product. My team finished first (and on schedule with acceptable quality) and was reward by being broken up to throw people onto the teams running late and with high bug counts. (On an individual level we didn't get the overtime payments either.)

On another occasion I was told that although I'd reduced the cost overruns on projects from an average of 260% to an average 0f 16% I was "too expensive" to be retained. Many of the better developers and some of the managers left the organisation around the same time. And the development practices I'd introduced were lost.

I've heard similar stories from others in the Agile crowd - success in getting a team or two up to speed and a few successful projects are followed by a reaction from elsewhere in the organisation that destroys the process changes that have been achieved.

Anyway, the reason for these musings is that I've been contacted by a lecturer at Loughborough university wanting to document successful introduction of Agile methods:

"My research is about the adoption and adaptation of Agile in organisations. The idea is that Agile presents a case of organising that is fundamentally different than what organisations used to. So to adopt the practices of Agile, organisations need to overcome many challenges and in a way adapt to Agile or adapt Agile. We need to understand the process of how this happened because Agile presents a rare case where IS/IT field could provide a significant contribution to other fields. So before we jump to implement Agile in other areas of the business, we need to learn how the IS community dealt with the issues and challenges that surfaced. This study is more about learning from practice. I do hope that you perhaps know someone who might be interested."

If you have something to contribute I can put you in contact.

Meeting Monday 16th – recollections

I got to the pub just a few moments after seven and got myself a pint. I was well into a chess game (Keres-Botvinnik Moscow 1956) when Andrew arrived. I was updating him on the last meeting (Nancy and AndyM were there and both have said the'll try to write a report for the blog/Wiki) when Hugo arrived and claimed his J2O from me.

Hugo has been trying to write a blog about Systems Thinking as it applies to software development and was previously involved in a patterns group that used to meet in Leicester. He found out about Something In Nottingham from the accu-general mailing list.

We talked about how to get developers in the area networking and amongst other ideas discussed putting together a one day conference and scheduling talks in the evening. I doubt we have the resources for the former, but the latter is achievable. But do we know what would interest other people?

We also discussed a dysfunctional development process where the developers pass the completed system to a testing group and any defects found are fixed by a third group of maintainers. There seems to be a serious lack of both feedback and feed-forward here! The original developers won't find out what doesn't work and the maintainers have to guess the intended design. And I thought
Three Phantastic Tails was bad!

We didn't come up with a fix by the time I left – but we did establish that the management hierarchy was fluid following a merger. So some of the usual resistance to changing managers responsibilities and reporting may not apply. I think it would be interesting to talk to whoever is responsible for all three departments and whether this situation works for them.

Another discussion was about writing blogs – and how to stops posts turning into theses. My approach is to write little and often. So I'll stop here.

Meeting on Monday 16th

This is the one true meeting announcement - believe no other. The Wiki page is open for sign-up.

To everyone that was confused over the day of the last meeting: "Sorry!"

Between one thing and another I've still not found out what happened to cause it - but aim to prevent it happening again. (The meeting did happen, although at least one person found the right pub but not the meeting - I'll personally buy them a pint if they make this one.)

To help first-timers, I'll be there between 7pm and 8:40pm wearing a black ACCU T-shirt (and blond hair in a pony-tail).

Clarification: Meeting is Monday 2nd

http://www.xpdeveloper.net/xpdwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Sin20080602