Why is Agile Software Development So Great?

At some point around 8 years ago, all the software projects I was involved in suddenly changed to use Agile development approaches. At the time, I worked for a large multinational that had decided this was the future across the company, and change came rapidly to us, though the company had been experimenting with it for years before that.

As a software development manager, the associated changes were moderately impactful to my teams and the way we worked. And there was certainly some trepidation as we adapted to this new way of working. But looking back, I see few downsides and a lot of benefits. I'm fully onboard the Agile train, and wouldn't go back.

Before this change, a product release involved a great deal of planning, resource allocation and tradeoffs many months in advance of the planned release date. And despite all the best planning, a high percentage of the intended content was typically late. Being late also tended to squeeze testing cycles, and the result was never as great as we hoped when we set out.

Agile didn't arrive unexpectedly, and in fact one of my staff had tried hard to get me to consider implementing it more than 10 years before that point. The Agile Manifesto made sense to me, but the details of Extreme Programming were challenging enough to keep me from jumping in too quickly. But the core ideas simmered and became more and more sensible to me over time.

One of the interesting things about Agile is that there's less real work for a line manager, whos responsibility becomes more limited to staff development and less about project control. As a result, besides coaching the team members to become better agile practitioners, I have had the fortune to be able to take on two different agile roles:

• As a Product Owner, I've had the opportunity to translate the high-level requirements from the product management organization into Epics, User Stories, etc. and work with Scrum teams to prioritize the implementation. I found this to be a tremendously fulfilling role, constantly striving to deliver the most real value possible.
• As a Scrum Master, the fun has been in coaching the team to better and more consistent performance one sprint at a time. Looking back, the team is able to take ongoing pride in the evolution of their processes to deliver better and more consistently over time.

As an experienced development manager, I can now look back at the agile projects with great admiration. With careful adherence to the values of Lean and Agile, the result is a far more predictable engine for product delivery than any of my prior experiences. Not everything you hope will get delivered, but you have early warning that things are off track, and you have the ability to prioritize the really important things to ensure they do get delivered, regardless of other things going off plan.

Oh, and you have the opportunity to quickly pivot the team to a different plan if business demands it.

Bitumen - a song

When I set out to write a song, it's rarely to portray unhappy situations.  But sometimes a song evolves to highlight something that's important to me, and that's what happened with this one.

The song Bitumen is about the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion, and reflects some of my concerns about the project. Here's a link to the song on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/covivant/bitumen   

covivant · Bitumen

The lyrics are:

I can see how people can be threatened by change 
And I understand that money talks
But the world is changing faster than it ever did before
So maybe we should stop and think about tomorrow

The cost of carbon on this world is one we can’t repay
Climate impact on our lives more obvious each day
Some may argue it’s just “not in my backyard”
Maybe we should stop and think about the children

When demand has gone away
When the Chinese just won’t pay
It’ll be too late to say “we were wrong”
So join me loud and sing along… It’ll be too late…

I fear the fate of all the whales when toxic oil leaks on the sea
And birds will die a horrid fate when who’s to blame but you and me
To scar the land for an ugly pipe full of black bitumen 
A leak into the river will even kill the humans

When demand has gone away
When the Chinese just won’t pay
It’ll be too late to say “we were wrong”
So join me loud and sing along… It’ll be too late…

It’s a funny word 'dilbit', like the cartoon engineer
But the meaning isn’t funny, it should really strike fear
The risk of a spill is one we all should know,
a toxic condensate makes the oil flow
Technology to clean up a toxic leak of diluted bitumen doesn’t exist
Our water, our coastline… we have to resist… before it’s too late...

The double-hulled oil tanker Sanchi holds a lesson for BC
Collided with a freighter and went down in the South China Sea
32 crew onboard were killed; nature's impact barely made the news
Couldn’t stop the flames: that’s not the future we should choose

When demand has gone away
When the Chinese just won’t pay
It’ll be too late to say “we were wrong”
So join me loud and sing along… It’ll be too late…

Reawakening

The blog has remained dormant for years.  Oddly, it seems that the reason was that after I stopped traveling for work purposes, I stopped blogging.  In retrospect, I see that I used the blog as a way to occupy my "personal life" while on business trips.  Most of my posts happened while I was in airplanes or hotel rooms, and I haven't been doing any traveling now for a number of years.  That's good from a carbon footprint perspective, at least.

I will try to get it going again now.  I had actually started that process most of a year ago, while attempting to uplift my blog to a newer version of the platform it's running on.  I was pretty disappointed with that process, and abandoned it before finishing.  I will have to give another thought to how to modernize kell.ca in the near future.

My interests continue to mostly be the same... music, travel (perhaps mostly by boat or bicycle now), environmental concerns, and technology. I hope to post some thoughts in all of these areas.

Let's start with a few books I've recently been reading. Two that have provided an awakening for me have been:

The Heartbeat of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

This book provided a broad view of the relationship between humans (and all animals) and the plant life around us, focusing particularly on trees.  I found it full of surprising information, and it goes along at such a great pace as to remain interesting throughout. I don't tend to revisit books too often these days, but I suspect I will re-read this one in the near future.

Regenesis by George Monbiot

I'm actually only partway through this book right now, and am finding it similarly full of information that I wasn't truly aware of. Lots of it clarifies the impact of livestock on the world's ecosystems, and counters some disinformation about the pros and cons of certain types of farming. I'm finding it quite interesting, and well paced.

Let's hope that's enough to get me back in the groove.  These days I play bass guitar in a band, so the groove is where I belong.

20 Years Ago Today -- May 6, 1996 -- Day 28

Sun. 96-05-05 - Day 28 - Hiva Oa, Marquesas, French Polynesia 9° 50' S  139° 02' W  Log: 2,688nm

I got up at ~1900Z, with Hiva Oa about 10 miles off. Mostly sunny tradewind weather, blowing 15 - 18 from ESE. Very cloudy over Hiva Oa, so not worth a landfall photo.

We had hooked another 30" wahoo in the night and dragged it for a long time on John's watch, so when I had landed it, the eyes were gone. I cleaned it after breakfast as we sailed up to Hiva Oa and we put the skinny little fillets in the fridge. We talked to Upshot (British) and Cat's Paw IV (Bluewater Cruising Association) on the way in, as both were ahead of us. It took a long time for us to sail along the south coast of the island, as it is high and steep-shored. The very west end was pretty dry, and had little vegetation on it, and reminded me of California's Channel Islands. We were still sailing with reefed main and staysail, which was perhaps a bit undercanvassed.

Isle Motane was clearly visible to our south, and Tahu Ata ahead, until we turned north into Baie Taaoa, and finally NE into Baie Taahuku, a mile or so east of the town of Atuona. The village appears to be quite high up, as there is little shore-level land. There did appear to be about a 3-story building on the beach below the town, though -- I didn't expect any multi-story structures.

The anchorage at Baie Taahuku is protected by a breakwater, but pretty rolly, and surgy from reflected and refracted waves from around the point. There were about 15 boats in harbour when we arrived, anchored bow and stern [pictured at left]. As room must be left for large vessels to dock at the "wharf", all anchoring must be behind a line marked with a transit on the south shore of the bay.

We arrived in the anchorage ~0100Z, anchoring near Celebration, with Marc Edge taking our stern hook in his dinghy. Both Marc from Markenurh and Ken from Celebration had come out in their dinghies despite a rain squall at the time. It seemed to rain about once every 15 minutes all afternoon. We were anchored at 15:20 local time (Z - 9.5h). Marc invited us for supper for ~17:30 and congratulated us on our passage. Ooh, baby, we made it!

We got settled and took the dinghy ashore. The bay has fresh water (galore), including a shower stall available free and a big place to wash clothes near the dingy landing. There's a concrete landing which is quite surgy and a stern anchor is required to keep the dingy from getting under the wharf. Another choice (which we used the first time) is a gravel launch ramp around the corner, with less surge, but you have to carry the dinghy out of the way.

We filled the water tanks and had showers (very welcome!) and chatted with a few cruisers. A bit wobbly walking, but not bad.

After a beer and fresh clothes aboard Vahevala, we headed over to Markenurh, bringing one of John's trusty bottles of Padre Kino red wine (Mexican). Besides Marc and Adrien and Sylvia, Ken and Hillary from Celebration, and Jim and Penny from Cat's Paw IV were there. [I had previously sailed for a few weeks between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo aboard Vancouver-based Markenurh with Marc, Adrien and Sylvia.]

We had a really nice time, with Marc serving his famous pizzas, salad and good company. Our 27-day [sic] passage compared well with most of the others, although Celebration did it in 17 days [Celebration is a Carpenter 37 from Aukland, NZ that did the Melbourne to Osaka race last year, and then crossed to Canada. I saw their boat in Victoria in July and in Nanaimo in August, then in San Diego in November, La Paz in Jan/Feb, and Puerto Vallarta in March, where I had finally spoken with them. Nice folks.] Cat's Paw IV is a Fast Passage 37.

It turns out that there were various rumours about Vahevala on the HAM/SSB nets, including that we were overdue and that we were headed for the Cook Islands (!?). Ah, rumours.

We turned in about 21:30 for the first full night's sleep in nearly a month. No CDs.

[Ed.: Well, that's the end of the big offshore passage. There were lots of great and memorable experiences (including this one, mentioned previously) in the Marquesas and further West, but I'll stop here with the log. This passage inspired me to write a song a couple of years ago, which I'll post here in the near future.

I would like to express thanks to my brother John and his wife Laura, who gave me this lovely leather-bound log book for recording my trip, and which is still in excellent shape 20 years later.

And of course finally a great thank-you to my skipper, John, who welcomed me aboard Vahevala and gave me this great opportunity.]

20 Years Ago Today -- May 5, 1996 -- Day 27

Sun. 96-05-05 - Day 27 - 8° 08' S  137° 34' W  Log: 2,569nm

Only 121 more miles to Hiva Oa. We're bombing along in mostly rambunctious conditions, with wind slightly ahead of the beam and making ~190° magnetic in 15 - 20 knots of wind. We dropped the yankee at the end of my first watch last night and put up the staysail, with one reef still in the main. We had a few gusts to 25 knots before the sail change, but things quieted down some afterwards, naturally.

The weather was more sunny today [crash, as we are pushed over by a steep wave] with some tradewind clouds, although there were still squalls around. I felt better -- better mood and more rested, although still easily pissed off. I need a shower, but am reluctant to wash without a fresh water rinse.

Woke this morning to find John running the small manual watermaker in the cockpit, having taken it out of the abandon-ship bag. The things some people will do for a cup of coffee! Earlier, he had tried making coffee with 7-Up (ugh) and sea water ("-10 on a scale of 1 - 10").

We should have landfall by sunrise tomorrow morning. We're both quite ready for a quiet(er) anchorage and a walk ashore. I guess we'll try to find a restaurant for dinner in Atuona.

John's French is coming along -- he's really done pretty well considering the short time he's been at it -- but he's not yet up to being able to converse. I'm looking forward to speaking French in the islands -- hope my vocabulary is up to it.

CDs:

• Miles Davis -- 7 Steps to Heaven
• Getz / Gilberto

This afternoon I spotted a sailboat crossing our bow about a mile ahead. Looked like they were headed for Nuku Hiva, perhaps from Panama. John tried to raise them on the radio -- "Sailboat, sailboat, sailboat, this is the sailing vessel Vahevala." No response.

Had a tuna or something on the fish hook this afternoon in a squall but it got off shortly after I started hauling in on the line. Too bad.