An
article on scrum argues that the Scrum Master (Project Managers) are not empowered to change schedules and scope and as a consequence can only change code quality to achieve the necessary mix of features and velocity. From the article:
If the Organizers (the ScrumMaster, and in most teams I've worked on, the Product Owner) of the team is unhappy with how new Stories will affect a deadline, they can - according to the Agile canon - change three things:
They can change the scope of what needs to be delivered by de-scoping Stories they think aren't so important; They can add extra Developers with the (often misguided) hope it'll increase capacity; Or they can change the deadline.
Which bring us to the central problem, and what this article is really about: The Organizers are rarely empowered to change any of those thing, so they change the one thing they can, but shouldn't: the build quality.
What stands out most in this is; you are an engineer, grow a spine and tell the Product Owner and Project Manager that this is not acceptable. Until it has a full battery of functional and unit tests it is not complete. It has been my experience that scope and timelines are up for negotiation if engineers don't just cave like Obama immediately or give up the farm as Obama does straight away.
It has also been my experience that most Product Owners and Project Managers don't care about code quality anyway. They just care about getting past QA, or getting the code signed off or certified in a QA or Stage environment as per their timeline. The ones that care about unit tests or functional tests are engineers, and if engineers don't show passion for them they will not be done as part of a project schedule.
Thirdly, it has also been my experience, that even in a strong culture of unit testing and functional testing, some developers will be lazy and choose not do them. Either their code is untestable, they don't care, or they can't be bothered. Saying there is not enough time is never true.
The original purpose of Scrum or Agile was to have the Engineering Leads talk directly to a Product Owner - or more accurately, the people using the end software. It was to remove the positions of Business Analyst and Project Manager from the software engineering process. Organizations cannot just jettison their PM Departments, so we have Project Managers become part of Scrum which is in itself an inefficiency. Scrums are much faster, and more efficient when engineers are the scrum masters. This too has been my experience.
Finally the main benefit of Scrum is that it has got rid of the death march. That is its greatest gift to software engineering. By getting rid of the horrifically monolithic use case and arbitrary deadlines the death march is never experienced by those that do sprints or practice scrum even halfway badly.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
