A young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle asked by a journalist how could he retain command answered: “Around here, I am only the guy who is responsible. If these men don’t know what to do when they run into an enemy in the jungle, I’m too far away to tell them. My job is to make sure they know. What they do depends on the situation which only they can judge. The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot.” Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive, p. 6, Harper Collins Publishers, 2002

Although there’s a number of other mocking libraries, this one is definitely worth trying. It’s simpler and faster. Instead of tediously configuring each mock you just ask questions about interactions after execution. If it’s unclear here’s a comparison between EasyMock and Mockito. Enjoy & good luck!

1. Almost 70% of respondents would like us to organize the next Iteration in less than 2 months,
2. Over 80% is satisfied or very satisfied with the last event,
3. 60% says that Thursday is the best day, 20% votes for Friday,
4. Over 60% thinks that two tracks of presentations work well,
5. 80% would like us to invite English speaking guests to the next event,
6. Over 80% says that the number of attendees and presentations was well balanced.

Moreover I’m really grateful for all the ideas on other things that we should improve. I promise that we’ll discuss each o them carefully.

Good night and see you at the next Iteration!

The players are divided into small teams. Each team has a coach/customer assigned. Before every iteration the coach/customer adds some new stories annotated with business value to team’s backlog. It’s up to the team to choose which stories to develop, but they need to remember that their goal is to maximize business value delivered each iteration. So it’s just like in real XP.

And now the fun part. Stories are about building animals! “Give the animal 2 heads”, “Give the animal 4 legs”, “Give the animal 2 wings”… and so on. The team “develops” them using Lego bricks. Each iteration takes about 15 minutes (estimation, development, demo). After that there is a global retrospective where everyone says what went well and what should be done differently the next time. It’s a great opportunity to see Agile in the nutshell. Therefore if you want to learn Agile quickly and to have much fun during that - XP Lego Game is the way you need to take.

Another summary and many more photos you may find at Bartek Bankowski’s blog.

Will it surprise anyone if I say that the project methodology is Agile? Anyway, the project methodology is Agile. This is one of those teams that really follows the Agile Manifesto, not just repeats sequences of activities. Their processes represent their values and priorities.

Should you be interested in learning more please visit Studencki Festiwal Informatyczny. This Thursday Lucjan Sosna and I will be presenting there some more details on the project.

Phew… the event took place. Over 40 people attended (see the pics made by Krzysiek Dorosz), there were a couple of good presentations (see the agenda) and, last but not least, I had much fun! And a hangover the next day .

We already received a number of questions about the Iteration 2. Well… definitely we’re thinking about that. We’re considering hosting a couple of guests from outside Poland and changing the formula. But first of all we need to send surveys and do the lessons learned so that the next iteration is even closer to the expectations of the attendees.

More information about the event you may find at:

• http://underground.agile.org.pl/ (pl)
  
• Bartek Bankowski’s blog (en)
  
• IT w Krakowie (pl)

The manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantity and quality of a definable and discrete output, such as a pair of shoes. We have learned how to measure efficiency and how to define quality in manual work during the last hundred years - to the point where we have been able to multiply the output of the individual worker tremendously. […] The imposing system of measurements and tests which we have developed for manual work - from industrial engineering to quality control - is not applicable to knowledge work. […] Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. This is not capable of being measured by any of the yardsticks for manual work.” Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive, p. 2-3, Harper Collins Publishers, 2002

Fortunately during my presentation Eclipse didn’t crash, I managed to show what I planned and received positive comments. I also owe many thanks to all those people that after the presentation gave my hints on how to do it better the next time.

In the next few days I’ll prepare an article describing what I showed during the presentation, so stay tuned! (ekhm… didn’t I write something similar recentely?)