Pols Consulting

Martin Fowler has blogged the idea of a Strangler Application based the work Chris Stevenson and I presented in our An Agile Approach to A Lagacy System paper.

Here are some interesting comments about our approach:

… Much of my career has involved rewrites of critical systems. You would think such a thing as easy - just make the new one do what the old one did. Yet they are always much more complex than they seem, and overflowing with risk. The big cut-over date looms, the pressure is on. While new features (there are always new features) are liked, old stuff has to remain. Even old bugs often need to be added to the rewritten system.

An alternative route is to gradually create a new system around the edges of the old, letting it grow slowly over several years until the old system is strangled.

The most important reason to consider a strangler application over a cut-over rewrite is reduced risk. A strangler can give value steadily and the frequent releases allow you to monitor its progress more carefully…

Kenji Hiranabe sent me the following embarrassing photo from the ADC closing party with my fellow partners in crime! It was a great night! Thanks Kenji.

This morning at ADC2004 had some amazing papers (with links to the papers):

XP “Anti-Practices” : anti-patterns for XP practices
Yoshihito Kuranuki and Kenji Hiranabe presented a superb paper on the problems (anti-patterns) they had using XP. They used cartoons, play acting to totally captivate the audience. I felt sorry for the poor guys who had to follow them!

These include:

* Brownie’s Works – “The boss refactored our code!”
* This Anybody Syndrome - “I’m not necessary here”
* Pairing Prison – “I’m always under observation!”

Refactoring the Development Process: Experiences with the Incremental Adoption of Agile Practices
Paul Hodgetts talked about his experience with big bang adoption of XP practices vs doing it more incrementally - one practice at a time. This supports my experience working with teams transitioning to agile.

Subclassing XP: Breaking its rules the right way
Greg Luck talked about his experience on a project. When I first read this I really did not like it! They did not subclass XP, and he talked about only allowing refactoring at the end of the iterations!! Ummm, not convinced about that!

Anyway, it turns out that he ment defer large design changes to the end of/future iteration. Phew, now I can see where he is coming from. He also talked about a pair being too small a unit to make large design decisions. I agree with that. I always use team white board sessions to discuss designs with the team. Shame the paper does not explain the story properly.

Check them out. You can find a copy on the conference website -
http://www.agiledevelopmentconference.com/schedule/expreports.html

Andy Hunt had an interesting blog entry referencing an New York Times article on outsourcing.

The article describes how you can only outsource projects which are easily managed at a distance. While obvious, lots of people need to read it! They predict development will move back to the USA, when companies realise that’s its faster and cheaper to develop software locally.

Bladelogic’s chief technology officer, Vijay Manwani, born and educated in India, predicts that once the “hype cycle” about Indian outsourcing runs its course, projects will come back to the United States “when people find that their productivity goals have not been met.”

Innovative business processes result from “an understanding of the business that happens when people get into a room and talk to each other,” Mr. Pradhan said. “That is very difficult to outsource.”

I hope more people start publishing stories like this…

Sadly you have to register (it’s free) to be able read it.

Chris (Stevenson) and I wondered how we could pair-present our experience report at XP2004. It seems appropriate that you pair on a XP presentation. We are both very spontaneous and did not relish the idea of scripting the whole talk. If you don’t do some planning there is a danger that one person does all the talking, or forgets some key points. It can get real messy!

Chris hit on the idea of using a chess-clock (swing app on a laptop) to control how long we get to talk! We each had a minute of talking before we tapped the clock and passed control over to the other speaker. If we went over a minute the clock went red.

It worked. We finished dead on time. Lots of people came up to us and said they enjoyed it. Extreme Presentations anyone – I feel a book coming on.