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ExtremeHour

See also: ExtremeProgramming

Jeff Mc Kenna has suggested doing an "ExtremeHour?" if people are interested. I'm thinking this might be appropriate for the SHAPE day...

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeHour

--KeithRay 2002.08.05

And I am interested in how architectures and designs emerge from the extreme approach. I looked back at Cockburn's Agile Methods book and found nothing there that really talks about design - except in the small (if you will excuse the phrase...) How does it emerge?

BobKing 2002.08.04

That should leave lots of time for debriefing and discussion of the interesting issues such as BobKing's above.

BobLee 2002.08.04

Keith, I am trying to work out the 500 people situation you offered as a real possibility:

... to coordinate up to 500 people on one large project. Each lowest level team is around 10 people, who have their daily 15 minute scrum meeting reporting progress and roadblocks. One representative from each lowest level attends a "scrum of scrums" meeting with other reps, and so on up a hierarchy of scrum meetings.

So, how does this work? ... I mean in detail -how many levels are there? Is A coordinating person added at a level (and adding to the total number)? I ask this because I once consulted on a project of 200 engineers (not to mention other project participants) where depite the best of intentions, communcations failed at some level. In fact, getting every level of communication to work in such a large project seems to defy the odds.

- BeckyWinant 2002.08.04

I think I'd be intereted in leading a session on test-driven design (we'd have to "test-first-program" simple problems, since we won't have a computer lab.... it would probably take about an hour.

"How does design emerge"? Two ways: (1) refactoring to remove duplication creates abstractions. (2) The team draws up the design as it exists now, draws up the design they need for a new feature, and plans on how to move from old to new design within one iteration -- iteration planning is an opportunity for team design (pairs and the team also get together whenever they need for design sessions.)

Becky: I've forwarded your question to Mike Beedle, coauthor of the Scrum book. I think what makes the situation work is the "scrum masters" for each level report up to the next level -- the whole job of a scrum master is to find and remove roadblocks to progress.

KeithRay 2002.08.05

The ExtremeHour is a simulation of Extreme Planning and Tracking. It substitutes "incremental" drawing in place of incremental programming/design/testing.

The best way to learn TestDrivenDevelopment is to actually do some test-first-programming. I have an example here <> but I'm making up the requirements while I'm writing the article.

For a learning environment without computers, I would ask the students to pair with each other, and simulate the computer. Simple problems like "conversion to roman numerals", or "prime factors"... the key is

• to write a one-line test,
• write code to pass the test,
• (simulate the computer running the test and code)
• and then write another one-line-test,
• change the code to pass both tests,

and so on.

KeithRay 2002.08.05