layout: true name: centered class: center, middle .footnote[ \#path16 ### [@schmonz](https://twitter.com/schmonz) ] --- template: centered # Shoestring Agility<br>in a Velcro Organization ## Amitai Schlair ### Path to Agility 2016/05/26 ??? - Press 'C' to clone - In the original, press 'P' to show these presenter notes --- ## 1. Keeping my job #### 2. #### 3. #### 4. #### 5. #### 6. #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - Graduated, music, 2009, needed a job, got hired - what it was like, what _I_ was like - NOT TOO MUCH TECHNICAL DETAIL - `proid disable`, broke production - EMOTION: fear for my job - QUESTION: have you ever felt like this at work? - what I said to Bill - THEME: start growing my sphere of effectiveness, influence --- #### 1. Keeping my job ## 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. #### 4. #### 5. #### 6. #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - challenges: problem domain, legacy code, out of practice, complex environment, no tests - advantages: brilliant architecture (knc, SSP), Roland and Bill were still around - motivations: fear (don't screw up), value (create a client for GUI users) - "the SSP 2 port", tiny mechanical changes, code review, new functional tests, migration plan - so what!?! - delivered `additional_environments` on the same day - what Bill said --- # “I may not have the discipline to write tests first, but I sure am glad you do.” — My boss ??? - QUESTION: have you ever felt like _this_ at work? --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature ## 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. #### 5. #### 6. #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - EMOTION: a little less fear now... - first non-Unix platform: mainframe (for GUI users) - explicit (hardcoded) and implicit (invisible) assumptions about Unix platform - deadline: 1.5 weeks - work from home, strategic napping, status update every night at midnight - came in on Thursday to pair-test the new rules with Robert - one small runtime problem in prod, obvious when it happened, fixed on the fly - better than we deserved - one could-have-been-huge problem in prod, months later, that was not huge - they loved it and made me product manager - THEME: unsustainable, lucky, but put me in position to do it better --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure ## 4. Continual delivery #### 5. #### 6. #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - monthly releases, we were confident, ops wasn't really - the Loic story - paired to deliver his code --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery ## 5. Fail-safe #### 6. #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - 3+ years of monthly releases - only one time we had to roll back - we knew it was extra likely, so we prepared extra well - THEME: we had our finger on the pulse of our impending success or failure - THEME: even when we failed, we failed right - EMOTION: zero fear. we got this. - (how did that even happen? why couldn't we test well beforehand?) --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery #### 5. Fail-safe ## 6. A big project #### 7. #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - the Sybase story - maybe impossible; not impossible - Scrum, points, velocity; no sprints - upstream team got in our way; fixed - delivered with minutes to spare --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery #### 5. Fail-safe #### 6. A big project ## 7. Win-win #### 8. #### 9. #### 10. ??? - the Dan and Murray story - they hit their deadline too --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery #### 5. Fail-safe #### 6. A big project #### 7. Win-win ## 8. No secret #### 9. #### 10. ??? - monthly whatever's ready looks like not discipline - deadlines being hit looks like discipline - how were we doing it with so little budget, no QA? - discipline and skill - disappointing answer?!?! - Babbage quote - THEME: maybe my influence is about to stop expanding? --- # “I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” — Charles Babbage --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery #### 5. Fail-safe #### 6. A big project #### 7. Win-win #### 8. No secret ## 9. Thwarted #### 10. ??? - wanted to try BDD - got it all going - was gonna borrow a tester - new management, blocked - THEME: yes, definitely not expanding my influence anymore --- #### 1. Keeping my job #### 2. A last-minute feature #### 3. Deadline pressure #### 4. Continual delivery #### 5. Fail-safe #### 6. A big project #### 7. Win-win #### 8. No secret #### 9. Thwarted ## 10. Testing acceptance ??? - people who don't know software development don't know how to see cost and risk - don't know how to see that that matters, a lot - we made half a humane workplace - I got burned out. my solution: career change - BUT ALSO! burnout is not permanent - Joining a dev team sounds pretty great right about now --- # Agile in 3 Minutes ## Podcast: [agilein3minut.es](https://agilein3minut.es) ## Book ($5 today!): [leanpub.com/agilein3minutes/c/path16](http://leanpub.com/agilein3minutes/c/path16) ??? - couldn't get heard - couldn't get hired - transmuted my frustration into these essays --- # Feedback [surveymonkey.com/r/PathSessions2016](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PathSessions2016) <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PathSessions2016"><img src="../qrcode.png" width="370" height="370" alt="Session feedback, please" class="img" /></a> --- template: centered # Shoestring Agility<br>in a Velcro Organization ## Amitai Schlair ### [schmonz.com](https://schmonz.com)