Heather McLean

It seems that no matter what aspect of software development in which you’re involved, someone is always starting a holy war.

I found David Anderson’s post, Trashing Scrum or Reflecting Reality?, amusing. Not because it was humorous, but because it’s in response to the same sort of war we see time and time again. This time, it’s the Lean radicals versus the Scrum purists.

One thing I can’t stand is people who have a myopic view of things that they consider “correct.” Yes, I agree that Scrum is a wonderful tool for helping teams succeed. Relative to the waterfall way of doing things, Scrum can provide visibility and productivity increases that are almost undeniable for most teams. However, like everything, it is not the end of the journey.

In order to truly appreciate Scrum, one cannot assume that it is sacred. Scrum is about adaptability above all else, so the idea that Scrum cannot be improved, extended, or even superceded is absolutely ludicrous. One of the very reasons I created this blog was to examine agile and lean methodologies to get the most out of them, and if that means “trashing” a particular ideal, then so be it. Personally, I would rather trash Scrum than assume it is perfect.

Also be sure to read Alan Shalloway’s article, Is Scrum Failing Us?, linked from Mr. Anderson’s blog. I agree wholeheartedly with his observations and have witnessed several of them first-hand.

As a matter of course, I like to follow Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox posts (as I have been since 1998). Today I think he posted for the first time regarding Agile methodologies:

Agile Development Projects and Usability by Jakob Nielsen

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he has some disdain for Agile, but he makes some good points on how Agile can threaten a project’s user experience.

David J Anderson made a post the other day about his personal hedgehog concept that got me thinking about my own personal career targets. First, a quick explanation of the hedgehog (and my own lovely rendition of the hedgehog diagram):

Personal Hedgehog Diagram

The personal hedgehog takes into account three factors: what you’re passionate about, what you can be best at, and what can support you financially. The target is to find where these three things intersect and use that to define your goal or “happy place.”

So the question I must consider now: what is my personal hedgehog? Let me try to break down the three questions.

What am I passionate about? Obviously, from this blog alone, it can be said that I am passionate about software development using agile methodologies, career development for individual software engineers, and leading changes and improvements to the software development life cycle. In a nutshell, I want to lift up the engineers around me and show them how to improve themselves and the IT organization as a whole.

What drives my economic engine? Currently my economic engine consists of working for private firms leading software development projects on business critical systems.

What can I be best in the world at? This is probably the toughest question for me. There are definitely a lot of things I’m good at: software development, project management, team leadership, training and mentoring, documentation (just to name a few). But best in the world? That’s a pretty big set of shoes to fill. If there were something I wanted to be world-renowned for, I suppose I would want to be seen as the premier person for leading and growing other software engineers from the ground up. I want to be the gardener for your engineering seedlings.

So where do these intersect? What is my personal hedgehog?

My own boss asked me a very similar question a few months ago, about what I thought my ideal role would be. The best way I could describe it was to call myself a developer advocate.

In short, I want to be in a position where I can lead other software engineers to greater success. I want to help them implement agile methodologies and improve output. I want to help them identify career goals and elements for personal growth. I want to provide highly technical training for those who need it. I want to turn junior developers into senior developers. I want to instill passion in others so that they take pride in the work they do and have a greater desire to produce quality work instead of “just good enough.” I want to cut away the fat from IT organizations as a whole so that people can actually get quality work done ahead of schedule and under budget.

So have I achieved my personal hedgehog? Not yet, but many of the pieces are falling into place. I think I’ve finally managed to put myself in a position where I could achieve these goals within the next 1 or 2 years. It will certainly be interesting to revisit my personal hedgehog in that timeframe.

Well, it looks like I won’t get to do Agile Development Practices 2008 as I posted earlier, due to a horrible case of tonsillitis. I doubt, as I am still bed-ridden today, that I will be in any shape to travel by Sunday. This makes me really sad since I was looking forward to the conference.

Updated 6:09pm: Looks like they were able to transfer my registration to STAREAST, though, so all is not lost!

I just wanted to post this link in addition to my earlier post, because it’s informative:

Kanban, Flow and Cadence by Karl Scotland