Optimistic Programming Skunkworks

This page is intended to be a record of my experiences in a real project (web development for a major insurer) as I try to develop the concepts of OptimisticProgramming.

[Refactored: moved the current diary entry here, discussion below it.]

The Diary

I'm posting the current entry in this section; I'll archive and replace them each time, so as not to waste wikispace. These will be, I believe, on-topic thoughts; please let me know if and why you think they aren't before you take any more drastic action.

20030506

Success that feels like failure

I haven't posted anything here in a long time. I think it's because I feel bad about how far we've fallen: no pair-programming, forced to do walkthroughs, everybody working independently, having to fight the complexity of STRUTS.

But our customer is still happy, we've pretty much made every iteration, and in spite of being way off on some UserStory estimates, and losing one of our team to maintenance (there is no handoff to support groups here), we've figured our overall velocity pretty well.

The ongoing major problem has been communication with the IS bureaucracy. We can't test all our security code because WSAD/WTE needs admin rights to talk to the security server, and they absolutely won't give them to us. Now they're replacing CVS with Harvest, and it still isn't working right.

I've been moved to a new web project - again, fairly simple: reports only, and from an existing data warehouse table. Half of what I'm doing is refactoring a lot of the code from the first project into a utility project, which the other guys can then pull in when they're refactoring for the second phase of said first project.

It's going well, but I hate the fact that we've fallen so far from the True Whatchamacallit.

Background

The project is a performance "scorecard" for employees. There's no rocket science here, but there's a tight schedule, RUP is just coming in, nobody really knows about XP. On the other hand, the IS department is really helpful and flexible.

I will have to walk a fine line here to avoid any trade secret information.

I'm going to keep it in a log form with dated entries. Feel free to insert comments and questions, but please don't try to refactor it to DocumentMode. That should be done in OptimisticProgramming itself. -- TomRossen

Ontogeny: The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult. Also called ontogenesis. (Source: dictionary.com)

[The above comment refers to the pretentious former name of this page: ModerateProgrammingOntogeny. Please allow it to stay - it's a milestone in my long march from dopiness. -- tr]

The Environment

It's a lot like this:

On the good side, this organization is willing to change. There's quiet interest in agile development, but not a lot of knowledge of what that means. There's acknowledgement of problems and desire to improve. The people in positions of authority are generally easy to talk to and are open-minded. -- ChangeYourOrganizationDiary

Physically, I'm two floors down and half a building away from the rest of the team. A bad sign for XP. No hope of changing it. And of course the cubes aren't designed for PairProgramming.

ThreadModish history:

Tom, though I think this diary will be an interesting experiment, WikiIsNotYourBlog. Could you post the diary elsewhere, then link to it? Perhaps set up your own Wiki (it's easy; I've done it several times). More in PhilosophyJournalDiscussion?. -- BrentNewhall

Brent - you're absolutely right. I'll move the diary to my yahoo site. I can't set up my own wiki because I don't have access to a public server, so I guess it will just become a blog - I was hoping the rest of the team could join me, but that will be impossible now. (Unless somebody wants to donate a wiki server for this purpose!)

The diary will be temporarily unavailable till I move it over. -- tr

Okay - moved - see URL above. I'm going to keep updating it in Wiki format in the hopes that it can find a home, but meanwhile it's going to be a little hard to read. -- tr

WikiIsNotYourBlog refers to journals that have no on-topic content. I would like the "ontogeny" to stay here, provided that it stays on the topic of introducing a new process. Perhaps it could focus more on high-level goals and activities than low level things like "reformatted X document." --JimLittle

Jim - I haven't moved OptimisticProgrammingOntogeny?, which is meant ultimately to be DocumentMode, but the diary itself, which is more low-level stream-of-consciousness ThreadModeForOne?/blog. -- tr

Thanks to a WikiGnome for refactoring and reminding this RecentChangesJunkie that I haven't been updating this. XP is going well for us, with minor exceptions, so I'll post an entry shortly.

CategoryCaseStudy