Repercussions from Agile Coach Camp Canada

[Dave Rooney]

Hi folks,

I attended Agile Coach Camp Canada in Waterloo, ON this past weekend and
connected with a ton a great people. Given my long standing animosity
towards the Certified ScrumMaster and penchant to bitch loudly about
things I don't like (!), I was naturally drawn to attend Jon Stahl's
session about the Certified Scrum Developer program.

I listened to Jon's passionate argument about living with the CSD as a
means to promote the goals of this group and ADS in general.
Essentially, Jon and others want to have the CSD do for the XP practices
what the CSM program did for Agile in general. The difference this time
is that the people in the ADS movement would be hands-on with respect to
defining the content for the CSD.

I came back with my usual rants about the end not justifying the means,
etc. blah blah blah, and even found out I wasn't the only one in
attendance who felt that way. What happened next, though, surprised me.

While we were discussing all this (and it was a discussion - not an
argument), I realized that I had built a wall that was blocking me from
seeing any possible good come out of the CSD. That wall was based on my
own personal biases and prejudices from certifications back in the
mid-90's, and my continuing view that the CSM is a farce that exists
only for revenue generation. While the CSM genie is already out of the
bottle and can't be returned, the CSD is not and we *can* influence the
content of the program. This was Jon's point and while the CSD isn't
exactly what we would like, it's a starting point that can get our foot
in the door to introducing much better technical practices than those
currently in use across the industry.

Given that I had just done a session on how badly the software
development industry sucks with respect to quality and what we need to
do to fix that, I realized that I need to get past my own issues, shut
the f**k up and start helping.

So, how can I help?
--
Dave Rooney
Westboro Systems
Web: http://www.WestboroSystems.com
Blog: http://practicalagility.blogspot.com
Twitter: daverooneyca

[Ron Jeffries]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Dave Rooney <davero...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

...

Given that I had just done a session on how badly the software development industry sucks with respect to quality and what we need to do to fix that, I realized that I need to get past my own issues, shut the f**k up and start helping.

So, how can I help?

Thanks for the confession ... you are absolved. :) I do think that there is leverage here and that some important influence can be gained.

Right now the group needs leadership. Got any of that on you?

Thanks!

--
Darn. If I use gMail, I'll lose all those cool sigs. What shall I do?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com

[Dave Rooney]

On 15/06/2010 9:37 AM, Ron Jeffries wrote:

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Dave Rooney <davero...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

...
Given that I had just done a session on how badly the software development industry sucks with respect to quality and what we need to do to fix that, I realized that I need to get past my own issues, shut the f**k up and start helping.

So, how can I help?

Thanks for the confession ... you are absolved. :)

I love being Catholic sometimes. :)

I do think that there is leverage here and that some important influence can be gained.

Yes, agreed.... now. ;)

Right now the group needs leadership. Got any of that on you?

Honestly, I don't know.  I may home some in a a cupboard somewhere, but it's likely well past its "best before" date.  Personally, I'm not the best programmer, tester, teacher or coach, but I'm don't mind trying things and failing in public.  Hell, I do that enough anyway without trying! :)

Something that I did talk about at ACCC was the idea of The Zero Defect Society.  I even came up with a slogan earlier this week - "From Hero to Zero!" :)  It's all a play on the Limited WIP Society, but focused more on getting the software industry to start moving away from "minimizing defects" and towards "preventing defects".  We completely accept that defects will happen regardless of what we do, and I don't agree with that attitude.  At a current client, the hardware people believe that anything > 0 defects is unacceptable, and I want that attitude to make its way into software.  While 0 defects may not be economically feasible in existing very large systems, the attitude that you can get to 0 defects most certainly is.

I think ADS and the CSD are a means to start getting developers and testers to start to believe that you can prevent many more defects than you can find later on. 

Is that helpful?

Dave...