I presented a session at the Brisbane Agile Academy Meetup group on Agile for Startups.
I discussed some of the Agile principles and practices relevant to a startup and demonstrated some of the tools used by Ennova. Despite numerous technical issues (which rendered the video unusable) the content stimulated heaps of questions.
Craig Smith and Fiona Mullen have reviewed the presentation and the full slide pack is now available on SlideShare.
Thanks to all those who attended.
Gregory Wilson published an article in the American Scientist discussing the results from a web-based survey of how scientists use computers. Its worth a reading as it highlights the differences between the the scientific community and the IT industry. For me, the most important were collaboration, team work and reuse.
In many organisations (especially larger commercial or government) it is common for the project governance processes to require an estimate of project costs before funds can be released and the project launched. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an estimate that can be used as the basis of a go/no-go decision.
In the example discussed below, I was asked to create a process for developing an estimate that satisfied the above requirements. Rather than simply creating process flow and swim-lane diagrams, I tried to consider how the process could be adapted and matured over time as the organisation changed over time. In doing so I found the many agile/lean principles were being subtly introduced.
Continue reading…
Later this week I’m participating in a round table at the Building Community Centred Economies Conference in Brisbane. I’ll be one of the panelists discussing leadership.
The session title is “Leading the Future: Is a new management paradigm a precondition for sustainability transition”. The other panelists have interesting backgrounds so hopefully we’ll get some good discussion and audience interaction. I’ve included an overview of the conference below.
Conference Overview:
The conference is designed to attract a diverse local, national and international audience including community organisations and NGOs, large and small business, all spheres of government, academics, social enterprises and philanthropic trusts, writers, artists, community development practitioners, policy makers, and environmentalists. Participants from over 30 countries from the Oceania Region and around the world are expected to attend.
Before I started work on a recent project, I was asked if Agile methods could be applied to a systems integration project. Naturally I said yes, (responding more from instinct rather than first hand knowledge) – but as soon as I got a chance I typed ‘agile‘ and ‘systems integration‘ into the Google search bar.
Normally this is a pretty fail-safe approach (used by consultants globally) but I was a bit disturbed by how little information related to this activity. Apart from one excellent post and subsequent discussion – there was little to go on.
Dave Cooper of Genworks published an AIAA paper where he defines the minimum set of features for a Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) system. These features include:
Functional Coding Style: programs return values, rather than modifying things in memory or in the model.
Declarative Coding Style: there is no “begin” or “end” to a KBE model – only a description of the items to be modeled.
Runtime Value Caching and Dependency Tracking: the system computes and memorizes those things which are required – and only those things which are required (no more, no less).
Dynamic Data Types: Slot values and ob ject types do not have to be specified ahead of time. They are inferred automatically at runtime from the instantiated data. Their datatypes can also change at runtime. In fact, the entire structure and topology of a model tree can change, depending on the inputs.
Automatic Memory Management: When an object or piece of data is no longer accessible to the system, the runtime environment automatically reclaims its memory.
The paper is well worth a read as it provides some interesting historic insight into KBE systems and the deficiencies of pseudo-KBE systems such as CATIA Knowledgeware.
The launch of Google’s Chrome browser has triggered media hype around cloud computing issues.
The ABC’s Background Briefing has a very entertaining podcast and the show page has some great links for further information.
My favorite is the song about life down on the Server Farm.
This image is an interesting picture I found on Brian Solis’ Blog that groups social media web sites in terms of the forum they provide for sharing information, ideas and conversations.
The Scientific Computing World web site is a great resource that provides information in the areas of Data Analysis, Modelling, Simulation, Data Management and High Performance Computing. The site also provides a free subscription to the magazine and numerous articles.
Acceptance tests define exactly what stake-holders expect of a system and are therefore a critical part of the system specification. Automation of these tests has gained popularity within the agile software community, following the success of Test and Behaviour Driven Development, and are commonly referred to as Executable Specifications. The popularity has given rise to the development of a number of software tools that support the definition and execution of acceptance tests. As you would expect, there are also a range of engineering tools that support automated design verification. However, there seems to be some fundamental differences between the two approaches and a potential opportunity to improve engineering design by applying these software based techniques.