Le 9 décembre 2013, Google a fêté de jolie façon la 107ème année de naissance de Mme Grace Hopper. Cette papesse de l'informatique a participé à l'élaboration du langage COBOL. Si aujourd'hui, certains (j'avoue, j'en fait partie !) auraient tendance à critiquer cet ancêtre des langages informatiques ( COBOL a plus de 50 ans), à l'époque ce fut une véritable révolution ! En effet, COBOL est la première tentative pour s'éloigner d'un langage proche de la machine comme l'assembleur pour se rapprocher de l'anglais (bon, ce n'était que le début). Première personne à programmer le Harvard Mark I, ses états de service (elle était officier à la Marine) lui ont valu de nombreuses décoration et l'inscription au National Women's Hall of Fame.
Mais si Mme Grace Hopper est encore présent dans la mémoire collective des informaticiens, c'est qu'elle a popularisé le terme de bug pour parler d'une anomalie informatique. En effet, elle consigna la panne du Harvard Mark II à cause d'un bug (insecte) :"« first actual case of bug being found". Ces bugs n'ont cessé par la suite de hanter les jours et les nuits des développeurs !
mardi 10 décembre 2013
lundi 9 décembre 2013
What agility is not ?
Septembre 2008 !!! Still 5 years, since I wrote my last article on my blog about agility !
5 years ago, I decided to wrote a blog about agility. Agility in IT projects but also agility in every departments of a company and even in life. Since then, agility has gained awareness in some industries. Agility is seen as a key skill to be able to achieve some kind of demanding tasks. Nonetheless, there are still some confusion about agility and speed, about being agile and being dynamic or being reactive. There are of course some commonalities between these terms but there are far from being synonyms!
Some firms will ask you whether you feel yourself “agile” as a summary to “Are you polyvalent?” “Are you multitask?” “Are you working quickly?” and even “Are you able to work without precise guidance and to adapt yourself to new inputs every day?”. At the same time people who say “yes I am agile !” summarize “yes, I can learn something new”, “yes, I can slighty adapt myself and my way of doing thing if you train me”, and even “yes, I can use a hammer without crushing my fingers”. That’s a common misunderstanding: bosses use the word agility as a trendy word for modern slave where as employee use agility to please their boss and to say that they will be able in exceptional circumstances to evolve.
Now, we have a vague idea of what agility is not.
And if you ask whether it is agile to not write a single article about agility in 5 years. Even, if I am a little ashamed of it, yes it may be a proof of agility to forget an objective for more important ones !
5 years ago, I decided to wrote a blog about agility. Agility in IT projects but also agility in every departments of a company and even in life. Since then, agility has gained awareness in some industries. Agility is seen as a key skill to be able to achieve some kind of demanding tasks. Nonetheless, there are still some confusion about agility and speed, about being agile and being dynamic or being reactive. There are of course some commonalities between these terms but there are far from being synonyms!
Some firms will ask you whether you feel yourself “agile” as a summary to “Are you polyvalent?” “Are you multitask?” “Are you working quickly?” and even “Are you able to work without precise guidance and to adapt yourself to new inputs every day?”. At the same time people who say “yes I am agile !” summarize “yes, I can learn something new”, “yes, I can slighty adapt myself and my way of doing thing if you train me”, and even “yes, I can use a hammer without crushing my fingers”. That’s a common misunderstanding: bosses use the word agility as a trendy word for modern slave where as employee use agility to please their boss and to say that they will be able in exceptional circumstances to evolve.
Now, we have a vague idea of what agility is not.
And if you ask whether it is agile to not write a single article about agility in 5 years. Even, if I am a little ashamed of it, yes it may be a proof of agility to forget an objective for more important ones !
lundi 8 septembre 2008
First principle of the Agile Manifesto
If you are reading this blog, you probably already know about the "Agile Manifesto". Just in case, let me remind you that, this "Agile Manifesto"is a very short text that gather the main thinkers of IT agile methodologies like Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, Ward Cunningham (eXtreme Programming), Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland (SCRUM), Alistair Cockburn (Crystal methologies) etc. This text emphasize that some common really important IT milestones are finally less important than others when we follow agile principles.
The Manifesto values more Individuals and interactions than processes and tools. This may seem obvious that people are the main key success factor of any project. Nonetheless are you not astonished to realize that when something get wrong it is more than often seen as an 'organizational' problem ? There are always some guys who will argue that we need more processes, more roles, a heavier workflow to make things work. Too often, these guys are just not able to discuss with their peers and feel more comfortable when there is a clear hierarchical link.
Finally what is a team ? Is it a group of people who share a common set of tools and are linked through a collection of processes or is it a group of people who share a same vision, the same objectives ? As always, both is better !
The Manifesto values more Individuals and interactions than processes and tools. This may seem obvious that people are the main key success factor of any project. Nonetheless are you not astonished to realize that when something get wrong it is more than often seen as an 'organizational' problem ? There are always some guys who will argue that we need more processes, more roles, a heavier workflow to make things work. Too often, these guys are just not able to discuss with their peers and feel more comfortable when there is a clear hierarchical link.
Finally what is a team ? Is it a group of people who share a common set of tools and are linked through a collection of processes or is it a group of people who share a same vision, the same objectives ? As always, both is better !
mercredi 16 janvier 2008
Agility and inventory
This morning I take a plane from Paris to Monaco and the flight has been delayed for an uncommon reason an issue with the truck that has to push the plane to the lane of departure. We had to wait in the plane for more than an hour for our plane to be handled by a new truck.
Thinking about this lead me to tackle the subject of inventory and agility. Indeed, if there was an available truck, our plane could have taken of on time. It seems obvious that keeping some products in an inventory help bear an unforecast demand for that product. Some people would say that it is an obvious sign of agility (1) while some others would say that lean production and zero stock is far more agile (2) !
Probably agility is in the middle of this two first points of view depending of your business and the time it takes to be restocked.
In my truck case, the agile driver should have been careful concerning the level of gas. It had just run out of gas !
Thinking about this lead me to tackle the subject of inventory and agility. Indeed, if there was an available truck, our plane could have taken of on time. It seems obvious that keeping some products in an inventory help bear an unforecast demand for that product. Some people would say that it is an obvious sign of agility (1) while some others would say that lean production and zero stock is far more agile (2) !
Probably agility is in the middle of this two first points of view depending of your business and the time it takes to be restocked.
In my truck case, the agile driver should have been careful concerning the level of gas. It had just run out of gas !
vendredi 11 janvier 2008
Welcome on this new blog about agility !
Let's go for a new blog on agility issue !
I should acknowledge it right now : I am a former (not so former after all) IT software engineer. I currently lead IT projects for my company. In fact, as you may know or not agility has been a real issue in IT projects for years and I have been interested in it for something like eight years. One of my favorite game is to try to apply on other area than IT agility ideas.
This blog will mainly focus on what agility means, what are the pros and cons of agility (yes there are some cons !!!), how can we effectively implement agility etc. I will indeed use my knowledge about different software methodologies like scrum, or eXtreme Programming. However the main aim of this blog is to share ideas about how to apply agility in different areas.
Perhaps we should begin by finding our own definition of agility !
What do agility means for you ?
I will try to summarize your point of view in my next message.
I should acknowledge it right now : I am a former (not so former after all) IT software engineer. I currently lead IT projects for my company. In fact, as you may know or not agility has been a real issue in IT projects for years and I have been interested in it for something like eight years. One of my favorite game is to try to apply on other area than IT agility ideas.
This blog will mainly focus on what agility means, what are the pros and cons of agility (yes there are some cons !!!), how can we effectively implement agility etc. I will indeed use my knowledge about different software methodologies like scrum, or eXtreme Programming. However the main aim of this blog is to share ideas about how to apply agility in different areas.
Perhaps we should begin by finding our own definition of agility !
What do agility means for you ?
I will try to summarize your point of view in my next message.
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