Sarah Taraporewalla’s Technical Ramblings

There is something about the phrase Non Functional Requirements that I don’t really like. It’s the Non bit which gets me – I think that word makes them feel unimportant and therefore there is no pressing need to explore how they will affect the system. I have seen on many projects teams procrastinating in defining [...]

A few weeks ago, my good buddy Christian Blunden and myself presented at a London Geek Night. For us, it was quite fun and I hope people not only picked something up from it but also had a good time. The presentation was recorded and should be on skills matter so check it out if [...]

The classic log-in story is often the story that new-to-agile-ist assume you need to develop first. In fact, it is often the last story that should be developed.
The problem is that they see the order that stories should be developed in should mirror the process flow of the tasks that the customer needs to take; [...]

If there is one thing that I hate about how a lot of Agile projects are run is the notion that you need to sign up to deliver certain stories/ a certain number of story points for an iteration. I find this to be detrimental on so many counts.
Firstly, if you don’t achieve the target then [...]

Pair programming may feel quite strange and frustrating to those new to it. (I guess it can feel strange and frustrating to those who have been doing for a while). I gave a brown bag session to a group who were just starting to embrace pairing to try and help them overcome some of their [...]

I have been reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, and in it he discusses the events which lead to plane crashes. Gladwell explores the plane crashes of Korean Airlines to demonstrate that cultural legacy is important to understand success factors. One interesting point he explores is the communication required in the cockpit between the captain and the [...]

Stand-up meetings are a healthy part of the daily routine. They are a useful forum to keep everyone up to date with the happenings of the team, escalate any blockers that may have arisen and set direction and focus for the days activities.
However, in practice they can easily degrade to daily habits, where each person [...]

that an agile team in possession of good practices, must be in want of a better way of doing things.

I am not a huge fan of the iteration-based retrospectives that people usually run. These are the retrospectives in the format where you write about

What We Did Well
What We Did Less Well and
What’s Puzzling Us

I find with these retrospectives, the same issues seem to crop up, with actions that don’t get resolved and nothing really [...]

I have just finished watching the special features of Surf’s Up on the DVD and I was struck with a thought that software development is somewhat similar to making a movie, and if you allow me to draw the parallels, you can see that Surf’s Up was created in a very Agile way.

Surf’s Up was [...]