Lean Software and Systems Conference 2010 (Bletchley Park)

This is just a summary of the points I took from the Lean conference at Bletchley.  They all need expanding, this is just the stuff that struck me that I want to record.

A Kanban Multiverse – Karl Scotland
Points from his talk

• Meaning = visualise; interact; persist
• Kanban provides the translation between communities
• Remove columns from the Kanban board - no more chucking things over the wall to people
• Flip charts for design models
• Dots on cards for every day in dev, crosses for every day in test
• Exploration of UI is part of the card

Ideas applicable for my project

• Add broken acceptance tests to the Kanban Board?
• Start doing task breakdowns again
• Add issues and impediments to Kanban board?
• Mingle should be updated to reflect the Kanban, at the moment the states are incorrect

Converting a Scrum Team to Kanban - Mattias Skarin

Points from his talk

• Moved from releases per iterations to releases per week
• Shifted motivation from delivering at end of iteration towards delivering quality
• Establish release cadence and team rhythm
• Root cause analysis to find problems and target them
• Removed the need for estimates

Ideas applicable for my project

• Shift to focus on release cadence from iterations?

Product Development in the Land of the Free
Points from their talk

• Goal should be to “Delight Customers”
• Sitting together decreases waste
• Sysadmins belong to the team and rotate
• Deliver value fast enough and you don't have to ask for permission

Learn to Lean: Becoming a Lean Startup – Damon Morgan
Points from his talk

• Introduce a learning culture: blogs, brown bags, conferences
• Scrum introduces a half-day overhead of planning etc.
• Scrum implies a handed off release to QA / Ops
• Didn't have “QA” but “Developer/Testers” and “Tester/Developers”
• Lean = planning on demand. 
• Not sure when we're supposed to do retrospectives with a pull model?
• Definition of Done is not only released to production, but has two possibilities: Generating Value and Not Generating Value
• Cards that are “complete” but not released are inventory (and therefore waste)
• Need fast smoke tests
• Monitoring allows you to reduce errors and see if the release was good. Auto-rollback if not
• Releases can be small, feature-specific releases
• Have an ideas wall for anyone to contribute
• AB Testing very useful to this organisation.
• Reduced reliance on estimates
• Releases not a big deal – happen daily
• Measure outcomes, not activity
• Out of 20 ideas, maybe one works. But cost/benefit clear and well understood

Ideas for us

• Become more release-focussed
• Should we encourage developers to do (more) exploratory testing?
• Definition of done should be “released”
• Better automated monitoring

Using Kanban to Continuously Improve – Benjamin Mitchel
Points from his talk

• Quality First
• Flow important
• “What wasted your time?” to do root cause analysis
• Measure time taken to flow through the board
• Even if you show people metrics they still don't believe you

Ideas for us

• Thank goodness we're not a big enterprise organisation

Behaviour Driven Development – Liz Keogh
Points from her talk

• The term BDD and what it means has solidified over time, but it's nothing new
• Concentrate on your riskiest tests first
• Write your tests starting “should”
• Conversations are around behaviour not tests
• Development of stories is focussed on learning

Ideas for us

• We're pretty good at BDD

Value Stream Languages – Eric Willeke
Points from his talk

• Really just a summary of the day / Lean
• We should respect different languages
• Break things down into what you need to learn, not what you need to do and how long it will take
• Variation comes from time it takes to learn, not time it takes to do
• Ask “what do we need to know that we don't know now?”
• Break milestones down accordingly – High Learning → High Risk → Core Value → High Value
• Standup should be phrased “what did we learn yesterday; what do I need to learn today”
• When your acceleration of learning decreases it might be time to stop designing and start doing

Ideas for us

• Maybe a shift in thinking about “learning” instead of “doing”

Summary
Points frequently repeated and/or relevant to my project

• Aim towards no estimation
• Not focussing on iterations but on releases
• Releases are part of the definition of done
• Our BDD and basic Kanban is pretty good
• Visibility allows us to find bottlenecks and target them
• Focussing on learning might be a path to improvement
• Silos are Bad, mmmkay?

Comments on representations of our industry

I have not (yet) seen the presentation this post is referring to.  But I think many of the comments Ted makes are very valid, and our industry as a whole should occasionally stop and think.  I've seen Ted speak at QCon, and I've had a lot of time for his comments ever since.

I'm aware that this blog is rapidly filling with comments about gender and perceptions and people-y stuff, when I originally wanted it to be a purely technical blog.  But I guess this other stuff interests me more.  And there are less people talking about it than there are talking about pure technical solutions to problems.

Why changing jobs frequently is not necessarily a bad thing...

...in fact, it's actually a good thing.

Sexism in IT?

Let's celebrate our IT women

"Everyone" knows that there are more men than women in IT.  That it's a "boys" job.  Not a lot of people know that the first programmer was a woman.  Not a lot of people realise the number of women in IT is DECREASING.  And has been since the 80s.  In a working world where I honestly believe that *in general* there are more opportunities for women (OK, inline with the other stuff I've been reading I'll caveat this with white, middle-class women), it seems shocking that such a growth industry as IT is actually losing women, and appears unable to determine why, or stop the flow.

I get asked a lot, as a girl programmer, why there aren't more women in IT.  This is a complicated issue and one I've been thinking about for years and still don't have any good answers, but I personally think it's more about perception than anything else.

I don't think it's because you get more outright sexism and laddish behaviour in IT than anywhere else.  I've worked in half a dozen companies, in a range of industries, including very male industries like manufacturing and banking, I've been a consultant so been onsite at a bunch more companies.  And I have to say I don't think I've ever seen the sort of behaviour that is mentioned in the article.

I would go so far as to say IT, certainly in terms of programming or IT support, actually attracts men that are quite the opposite to laddish.  So here I will succumb to gross generalisation and stereotypes myself, but the guys I've worked with are highly intelligent and more likely to rate you on your ability than on your colour, sex or background.  These are often guys who were actually studying at school rather than absorbing anti-female sentiments in the pub or from The Sun.

I find being a woman in IT both a blessing and a curse.  As a girl, you are, I believe, more likely to get through to interview, and since you stand out as different are more likely to be remembered and called back for a second interview.  I think once in the organisation, we suffer more with low self-esteem and find ourselves constantly trying to "prove" that we're not just some token bimbo hired by HR.  And do you know why?  Not because anyone ELSE thinks that, but because WE think that.  We are our own worst enemies.

We need to take a leaf from the boys' book and have more faith in ourselves, more confidence.  We might not be as good as that person over there at this particular thing, or this other person at something else, but we are good at what we do, otherwise we wouldn't be there.  And if we express our insecurities instead of our confidence, other people will assume we're as mediocre as we sometimes think we are.

Some of the very worst culprits for sexism in our industry are us, the girls who are already in it.  Yes, it does exist, I am not denying that for a second¹.  But the way to overcome it is to reflect it back at them, not to internalise it as our problem, something wrong with us for being in the wrong job.  The more we show that it's normal for us to be here, that we belong here, the better we'll feel about ourselves.  And maybe we'll attract a few more girls too.



^;1Take, for example, the CEO who interviewed me and said "I'm probably not allowed to say this, but how will you feel working in an environment full of men".  To which my answer was, have you read my CV?  I went to a boys' school for sixth form, I was one of 6 girls on my degree course (out of approx 150), I worked at Ford for 4 years.  Don't you think I would be more freaked out working with girls?

Scrum but...

Having experience Flaccid Scrum, I find this article interesting, and agree with most of it.

I'd also like to add though, that if you do the scrum practices (story cards, stand ups, retrospectives, etc) but don't buy into the fundamental principals, you will not succeed.  And that means everyone on the team, not just the people in charge.  In particular, if the team is not empowered, is not committing to the estimates and the iteration plan in its heart, and and does not trust, then you are probably better off using traditional processes.  Or just as likely to fail whatever process you use.

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Gender Stereotyping

I'm very interested in the subject of gender stereotyping, which probably isn't surprising as I'm a girl in a predominantly male industry.  And I like cars, and sports, and get irritated if people assume I'm not "allowed" to be interested in these things.

Far from being discriminated against, however, I find many people ask me why there aren't more women in the industry and what can be done to encourage girls into IT.  If these questions were easy to answer, they wouldn't have to be asked.

But one of my personal theories is around how we raise our children.  Yes, it's possible that girls are genetically, for some reason, averse to technical types of roles.  Or that the working environments don't appeal to the feminine mindset.  But if you tell kids from an early age that some things are for boys and some are for girls, there just aren't going to be enough girls studying "boys" subjects later in life to get a large proportion of them into "boys" jobs.

I have a lot more to say around all these possibilities but I only want to explore one small area today.  I was pointed this morning to an article on Gender and Toys.  I'm mainly recording it in here so I don't forget where it is.  But I found it interesting because it raises many of the same questions I have, and answers almost none of them.  At this stage, I think it's very difficult to say how much of a child's preferences are there because of parental or peer pressure, and how much is natural. 

I don't understand why a society can discourage the use of words like chairman (preferring "chair" or "chairperson") and that works hard to at least look like they promote equal opportunities in the workplace, can encourage gender-specific advertising to children (have you watched the adverts between cartoons?) and the blatant gender stereotyping the article talks about in toy stores.

The main point to take out of it, I think, is that we should be aware of how we raise our children.  Well OK so any parent will always want the best for the child and so that's a slightly fatuous statement.  What I mean is, I don't think we should inflict our own preconceptions of what a child will like based purely upon their gender, or they might grow up thinking that really is what they like.  We should be allowed to develop our own preferences and exercise any skills that interest us until we find what really suits us personally.


PS The assumption that Lego is for boys in that article made me very angry.  Of all toys I thought Lego was pretty good at not overtly targeting an audience, although the new trend towards Lego-for-girls has worried me since first saw it.  Lego is for kids!  Doesn't matter what age or gender they are!</rant>