Technical Excellence Doesn't Just Happen - AgileIndy 2016

Technical Excellence Doesn't Just
Happen – Igniting a
Craftsmanship Culture
By Allison Pollard and Mike Rieser

Allison Pollard
• Agile Process Coach and
Consultant
• Firm Believer in
Continuous
Improvement
• DFW Scrum User Group
leader and Dallas Agile
Leadership Network
board member
• Glasses wearer

Mike Rieser (ree-sir)
• Agile Coach and
Consultant
• Technical Practices
Coach
• “Programmer shirt”
wearer

TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE
“In an agile project, technical excellence is measured by
both capacity to deliver customer value today and create an
adaptable product for tomorrow.”
– Jim Highsmith

Who’s problem is it?
How many programmers
does it take to change a
light bulb?
6
https://www.flickr.com/photos/belobaba/6058142799/

Who’s problem is it?
Who should be
concerned with the
long-term viability of
the codebase?
7
https://www.flickr.com/photos/f-oxymoron/5005673112/

Agile: build the right thing and build it right.
• Building it right means it
has a simple design, and
is maintainable and
flexible.
• Successful software
needs to be able to
evolve to meet
expanding needs.Photo by Yann, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taj_Mahal_(Edited).jpeg

Excellence Is a Habit!
Continuous attention
to technical excellence
and good design
enhances agility.
(9th Principle of the Agile Manifesto)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikoka/16843413711/

Discuss
Anyone have an anecdote of an extreme in technical
excellence? Either
• “too much”
• or “not enough”
That you can share in 30-60 seconds.

KINDLING CRAFTSMANSHIP
What will spark your culture change?

Process & Technical Practices
“People have told me that they see Scrum as the
management approach to agile development and
XP as the engineering practices that make it
effective, both bonded together by complimentary
practices and goals.”
– Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum

Flaccid Scrum – Martin Fowler, 2009
• They want to use an agile process, and pick Scrum
• They adopt Scrum practices, and maybe even the principles
• After a while progress is slow because the code base is a mess
Five Years Later… 2014
My advice still stands - ensure you take technical practices
seriously when introducing Scrum (or indeed any agile
approach). – Martin Fowler

From Flaccid to Awesome!
Internal Quality
(Developer Facing)
External Quality
(Customer Facing)
Advice
High High You’re awesome!
High Low Get Customer-focused!
Low High It won’t Last. Refactor now!
Low Low Refactor versus Rewrite?!

Agile Requires Quality
Waterfall Agile
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 18 36 54
Quality over Time
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56 60
Quality over Time

Process Dependencies
18
Waterfall
Upfront Requirements
Upfront Design
Agile
Evolutionary Design
Refactoring
Automated Developer
Tests
Test First
Test After

How Does Technical Debt Occur?
IT’s
“Done”
Business
“Accepts”
Result
True True ✔
True False
Communication
Problem
False True Technical Debt
False False ✔

How Does Technical Debt Occur?
• Complex Requirements – producing overly complicated
implementations, unreduced complexity
• Over Engineering – developers building more sophisticated code
than is necessary (Speculative Development). [Gold Plating]
• Business Solutioning – dictating technical solutions rather than
bringing problems to be solved.
• Ignorance – an incomplete understanding of how the system works
• Undone Work – deciding “writing automated tests slows us down”
• Good code / wrong place
• Cutting Corners – “quick and dirty”

Faster is Slower
We’ll “fix it later.”
When is later?
(There is no later!)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/9266144@N02/1074851879

The Business Made Me Do It!
What a Tech Lead says to his Product Owner:
“To do it right will take 2 Iterations. If we do it this other way, we can do
it in 2 days, but the developers will be forever burdened with fragile
code and it will impact our delivery on every project in the future.”
What the Product Owner hears:
“You can have it in 2 days!”
Moral:
Be sure you can live with the options you present.

Enhances. Really?
Compare
“Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.”
– 9th Principle, Agile Manifesto
with
“Speed is a long-term side-effect of
producing code with the highest possible
internal quality.”
– Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory
perhaps
Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design sustains agility.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/2322412546/

WHAT WE TRIED
And now for something completely different.

TDD Training
• Introduces the practice of Test-Driven Development
• Refreshers welcome
• ‘Ignites the spark’ around Test-Driven Development and why
we need it
Outcomes
• Shoot for “Test-Infected,” coach the rest
• 18,000 Unit Tests with 100% pass rate every build
• Tasks for “Unit Tests” have disappeared
Red
GreenRefactor

Maturity Model for TDD
36
SHU
(Follow)
HA
(Break Free)
RI
(Transcend)
 Still learning, follows but may
not know why.
 New code comes with new
tests.
 Changed code comes with
tests around the changes.
 Internalized practice, but still
needs a coach.
 Understands pros and cons.
 All code is written test-first.
 Able to go beyond what has
been taught
 Creates a unit testing
framework because they
needed one and it didn’t
exist.

Code Clinics
• A non-judgmental place where developers can bring their
coding issues to look for feedback or work collaboratively on
solutions, watch and help others, get mentoring if needed,
identify how to apply concepts from the book or get some
code under test.
Outcome
• Sometimes repurposed into “Code Review”
• A few dedicated “Lurkers”
• As delivery pressure increases, attendance decreases
• Found “classroom exercises” this way https://www.flickr.com/photos/lloyds-
screenies/2696378369/

Transferring Code Ownership
Devs:
This is horrible! They ought to do something about this!
Coach:
Management wants you to have a nice code base to work in, but
they aren’t in the code every day.
This is where you work every day.
If you want a nice place to work, you’re going to have to clean it up.
“You” are “they.”
Outcome
“Don’t touch that!” replaced with
“Why didn’t you clean that up?”

Tech Lead Interview Process
• Recruiting Tech Leads that are evangelists and mentors for the
concepts we care about (TDD, Quality, Refactoring, OO Design)
• Interview includes: a coding problem, a code review problem,
a non-technical-solution problem
• Allowed no exceptions for folks hired into a Tech Lead role
Outcome
• “New DNA” rejecting “Old DNA”
• “Supervisor” Tech Leads did not do well
• Hit most on: Senior Devs looking for their next level
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/File:Star_wars_movi
es_darth_maul_obi-wan_wars_hd-wallpaper-
481469.jpg

Code Reviews
• Originally no definition of “Production Worthy”
• Code is continually ‘assessed’ (every iteration) and
feedback given to ensure we continue to steer
away from the addition of debt to the codebase
• The more frequent the code reviews, the more
likely we are to avoid pitfalls at the end of a project
Outcome
• Reviews with different teams were at different
levels
• Smell: sign-off became “required”
• Now community owned
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ericvaughn/972882
9199
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcdevit/1143743
631
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26116471@N03/6
788264645

Additional Coaching Items
• Directive – leave things better than you found it
• Free Book – Working with Legacy Code by Feathers
• Book Club – meet over lunch to discuss a book on software
craftsmanship
• Community of Practice – a recurring meeting for developers
to communicate across teams on successful solutions and
useful tips and techniques applied to the codebase
• Continuous Integration – reduces deploy costs and fast-tracks
code improvements to teams

Practices & Process
Where would
focusing only on
delivery get you?
Process
TechnicalExcellence

Perfect (v.)
• Continuous Improvement requires continuous learning –
encourage a learning environment.
• Problems are one of the first signs that something needs
changed.
• Get to the root cause, and fix it. The symptoms will go
away.
https://pixabay.com/en/learn-note-sign-directory-
64058/

Invest in your people
CFO: What if we train them, and they leave?
COO: What if we don’t, and they stay?
Copyright: David Franklin/Shutterstock

Fan the Flame!
• There really is no
substitute for a
developer that has a
spark to make it
right.
• When you see the
spark, encourage the
flame!Photo by Billy Hathorn,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kindling_for_starting_a_campfire_IMG_2454.JPG

Create a Safe Environment
“Initiative is punishable.”
– Russian Proverb
• If you want teams to take
initiative, you must allow
for failure.
• Mistakes are an indicator
of trying something new.
• Teams require autonomy to
achieve excellence.

LongTermViabilityRequiresDiscipline
“Just put it anywhere” only works for a short time!
Image from Raiders of the Lost Ark

THE END
Allison Pollard allison.pollard@improving.com
@allison_pollard (Twitter)
Mike Rieser mike@mrieser.com
@MichaelRieser (Twitter)

Best Measure of Code Quality
Hard to game.

Technical Excellence Doesn't Just Happen - AgileIndy 2016

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