Story points for Estimation

Mike Cohn, author of Agile Estimating and Planning wrote in his comments to his "To Re-estimate or not; that is the question" article ...

"... When I do iteration (sprint) planning I don’t even consider the story point estimates. We grab one item from the product backlog, break it into tasks and hours, discuss whether we can commit and then repeat until full. The story points–as I use them–are for long-term planning. When we plan an iteration and take a lot more time to do so we do it by discussing tasks, hours and commitment."

check out "Why I Don’t Use Story Points for Sprint Planning" for more of his thoughts on this.

What makes a group into a team?

The key difference is that in a team everyone is values equally, so no decision can be made that is not unanimous.

The question then is how do you get unanimous decisions?
My ex-Coworker, Rob Smyth, taught me "the decider protocol". This is very formal and does the job well, but it's the values behind it that are key.

• Never allow 'no resistors' decision making.


• Never allow group decision if any one person is not aligned.


• Give the power to any individual to block any decision but ask them first 'what will it take to bring you in'?

It's all about valuing every individual in the team.

Thank Rob.

How to get TDD to stick

I found this an excellent summary of points on how to help TDD adoption.

Quick Summary :

• Training


• Patience


• Measure Coverage


• Instill Pride in clean code


• Management's Understanding & Support


• Pair Programming


• Sharing Community


• Coding Dojo


• Reading Workshops


• Periodic visits from a Coach

Telling a good Story with RSpec

RSpec recently dropped their StoryRunner in favor of Cucumber.

Dispite that, Joseph Wilk's post on "what makes a good story" is still a great place to get started, if you're looking for some pointers.

Works for me :)

Great Hackers

I heard a good talk by Paul Graham on what makes a Great Hacker.

The bit that stuck with me was the idea of getting your great hackers to write the tools or building blocks that let the others write the apps.

I love that idea.. I think I keep gravitating that way.