Steve Freeman and I are thinking of using this video clip to introduce the ProductBox innovation game at SPA2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod
We’re running our Getting to know your customer session on wednesday morning (29th March).
This is a nice story of a team using agile development techniques. They even have pictures of the work environment…
http://www.gamesfromwithin.com/articles/0602/000104.html
Very nice.
Luke Hohmann has sent me an interesting link on how someone used a Product Box to help their stepdaughter buy a car. I really like using the Product Box technique myself.
Anyway, check out the link on Luke’s furums
While I’m on the subject of Product Boxes, Steve Freeman and I will be explaining Product Boxes and other techniques in our Getting To Know Your Customer session at SPA.
I saw a wonderful typo in a recent talk about Agile people being Barley Sufficient! That made me laugh.
Anyway, just in case you have not read Alistair’s paper describing Balancing Lightness with Sufficiency and being barely sufficient.
Alistair Cockburn has written an interesting article about the problems some people get into when they use agile techniques without focusing on delivering business value to the customer. I have also seen the exact same scenarios. I think this is a huge problem.
I’ve uploaded the slides from Steve Freeman’s and My talk at XPDay
http://www.pols.co.uk/papers/CustomerGamesV2.pdf
I really enjoyed the session. Here are some of the product boxes people created:
I particularly love the “official” Kent Beck endorsement!
Without any prompting everyone asked for free beer!
Bill Gaver gave an fabulous keynote at the recent XPDay conference. He talked about designing things for Ludic (playful) Engagement.
This included the Drift Table, a coffee table that enables people to slowly float over the British countryside from their own sitting room. The weight of objects left on the table control the slow drift of aerial photographs displayed in the table surface. This table suggests a ‘hole’ in the home connecting physical and virtual space. A display on the side of the table shows the location of the aerial image. See photos of the Drift table in use.
Check out this paper to find out more.
I bet you want one of those tables as much as I do!
I’ll be at xpday in London next week. It’s a great place to trade ideas and drink beer. Perfect really.
Alan Francis has posted a wonderful posting about Test First Development.
It’s very much in vogue at the moment to talk about TDD, and to mention, knowingly, and in passing that “of course, TDD is not about testing, it’s about X”. X is behaviour, design, specification and any number of other things.
I hate this trend too. He also manages to get the word bollocks in a blog posting!
I couldn’t agree more.
Luke Hohmann has started blogging. Fantastic!
I like this observation:
One of the points that Don made in his presentation was that being a true visionary can, at times, be a curse. When a visionary holds too tightly to his or her vision, they are often overtaken by the world that is happening around them. Furthermore, a visionary can be a bit depressing, as no matter what someone else does, they claim that it isn’t good enough. And that’s simply not true.
