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Tim Ottinger | 1 Apr 2008 03:09
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Re: The $2.10 Game

1) I'd play for a penny (assuming it a minimum). Paying more does not increase my chance of winning or the
amount of the winnings.

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Tim Ottinger | 1 Apr 2008 03:09
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Re: Re: The $2.10 Game

Oops. I already gave that.  Paying more does not increase my winnings or my chances of winning.

Tim Ottinger
http://tottinge.blogsome.com/
http://blog.objectmentor.com/

----- Original Message ----
> From: Dale Emery <dale <at> dhemery.com>
> To: Extreme Programming <extremeprogramming <at> yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 12:01:20 AM
> Subject: [XP] Re: The $2.10 Game
> 
> The second question:
> 
> 2. How did you choose the amount you'd be willing to pay?  Some points to
> ponder, and maybe to include in your answer if you choose:  Why not 1 cent
> more?  1 cent less?  10 cents more?  10 cents less?  50% more?  50% less?
> 100% more?  100% less?
> 
> Dale
> 
> -- 
> Dale Emery, Consultant
> Inspiring Leadership for Software People
> Web: http://www.dhemery.com
> Weblog: http://www.dhemery.com/cwd
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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Tim Ottinger | 1 Apr 2008 03:10
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Re: Re: The $2.10 Game

3) I didn't *read* anyone else's, but I *saw* one "Re:" before the original when catching up, and then jumped
to the start of thread.

Tim Ottinger
http://tottinge.blogsome.com/
http://blog.objectmentor.com/

----- Original Message ----
> From: Dale Emery <dale <at> dhemery.com>
> To: Extreme Programming <extremeprogramming <at> yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 12:01:52 AM
> Subject: [XP] Re: The $2.10 Game
> 
> The third and final question:
> 
> 3. Did you post your answer before reading anybody else's answers?
> 
> Dale
> 
> -- 
> Dale Emery, Consultant
> Inspiring Leadership for Software People
> Web: http://www.dhemery.com
> Weblog: http://www.dhemery.com/cwd
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
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John Carter | 1 Apr 2008 07:11
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Prediction, change and the $2.10 game.

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Dale Emery wrote:

> I invite you and encourage you to keep referring the conversation back to
> "the real world."  If something interesting or contentious or personal or
> surprising pops up in the data or in the conversation, ask yourself, "How
> might this relate to leading change in organizations?"  Then add your answer
> to the conversation.

An excellent book on the many failings of out predictive ability is
"The Black Swan" by Nicolas Taleb.

Possibly the most applicable failing when trying to relate the $2.10
game to XP is what Taleb calls the Ludic Fallacy.

We mistake life, contracts, customers, markets as being a "Game" with
"Fixed Rules" and "Fair Play" having tractable probability distributions.

In reality life isn't nearly so kind.

Beyond the laws of Physics, there are no Rules.

There are "Laws" as promulgated by governments etc....

But they can be and often are broken. They may be enforced
later....but still your prediction your models have failed unless you
included that eventuality.

Your game has a neat tractable probability distribution.... having a
complete supply of finite moments.
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Ron Jeffries | 1 Apr 2008 14:06
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Re: Prediction, change and the $2.10 game.

Hello, John.  On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 1:11:49 AM, you wrote:

> "Aha!", I say, "So I can publish the minutes of your Monday morning
> meeting on the web then...."

> Splutter - splutter - splutter.

> I love it.

> Yet it is the answer to leading change in organizations....

> Transparency and honesty.

> How do you make people trustworthy?

> By trusting them.

Or, perhaps, by making them transparent against their wishes? Hmmm?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
If you don't have the courage to say what you think,
there isn't much use in thinking it, is there?
  --Thomas Jay Peckish II 

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Brad Stiles | 1 Apr 2008 14:23
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Re: Prediction, change and the $2.10 game.

Ron Jeffries <ronjeffries <at> XProgramming.com> wrote:

> Hello, John.  On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 1:11:49 AM, you wrote:
>
>> "Aha!", I say, "So I can publish the minutes of your Monday morning
>> meeting on the web then...."

    ...

>> How do you make people trustworthy?

>> By trusting them.
>
> Or, perhaps, by making them transparent against their wishes? Hmmm?

Do you find that this approach actually works, or were you making a 
comment about John's implementation of that approach?  I ask because 
whenever I've seen this tried, I've generally seen two outcomes.  One is 
that it works, sort of, with some major back-pedaling on the whole 
"transparency" front.  The other is that people become more adept at 
*appearing* transparent, while actually becoming more opaque.

Brad

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Ron Jeffries | 1 Apr 2008 14:37
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Re: Prediction, change and the $2.10 game.

Hello, Brad.  On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 8:23:28 AM, you wrote:

>> Or, perhaps, by making them transparent against their wishes? Hmmm?

> Do you find that this approach actually works, or were you making a 
> comment about John's implementation of that approach?  I ask because
> whenever I've seen this tried, I've generally seen two outcomes.  One is
> that it works, sort of, with some major back-pedaling on the whole 
> "transparency" front.  The other is that people become more adept at
> *appearing* transparent, while actually becoming more opaque.

I have no reason to believe that this works. On the other hand, the
kind of secrecy we are seeing today in the US government isn't
working all that well either.

In his book /The Transparent Society/, David Brin makes the point
that all kinds of information about us all will be collected, and
that the best treatment for it may not be to leave it in the hands
of a "few" who will "protect" it.

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Perhaps this Silver Bullet will tell you who I am ...

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Joseph Little | 1 Apr 2008 15:05
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Re: Success rates of Agile Transitions

Hi George,

"How are you judging improvement?"

You are a smart guy, and doubtless have your own answer for the
question.  Or feel the question cannot be answered.  So, at the risk
of setting myself up, I will still try to give you (and really others)
my answer.

Before that, I must also say that this is an important topic that has
been discussed here and elsewhere at length.  And yet, I find in teams
there is often not enough discussion of it.  Nor enough coming back to
it in the course of an effort (I am more and more moving away from the
project idea).

OK, so, with those caveats...

There is the small world and the large.  But, as we have learned over
the centuries, there are linkages and similarities.

In the small world (the iteration), I have come to favor velocity
(stories points completed).  It gives one measure of "productivity"
and anyway the team needs it to (a) try to make itself better, by
removing impediments (NOT by working harder, usually), and (b) to use
to talk to managers who want magic ("I know you guys can get those
extra features done by the next release...just try harder.")

In the larger world (a release, a larger effort), I favor some metric
around Business Value.  There are lots of them, and I think each can
be good and appropriate in some situations.  Examples include: NPV,
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George Dinwiddie | 1 Apr 2008 17:57
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Re: Re: Success rates of Agile Transitions

Joseph Little wrote:
> Hi George,
> 
> "How are you judging improvement?"
> 
> You are a smart guy, and doubtless have your own answer for the
> question.  Or feel the question cannot be answered.  So, at the risk
> of setting myself up, I will still try to give you (and really others)
> my answer.

Joe, you wound me with your distrust!  Honestly, I'm not trying to set 
you up.  You said, "We also know that many large firms have tried to do 
'agile' and failed.  Or had mediocre results (+10%, +20%)."  Expressing 
improvement as a percentage implies some sort of measurement, but you 
didn't state what was being measured (or who was measuring it, for that 
matter).

	[snip, concentrating on the "larger world"]

> In the larger world (a release, a larger effort), I favor some metric
> around Business Value.  There are lots of them, and I think each can
> be good and appropriate in some situations.  Examples include: NPV,
> ROI, Reduced Cycle Time (eg, for a process the SW will improve), etc,
> etc.
	[snip]
> In the end, it is more blessed to give than to receive.  In the end,
> the only measure is: did we satisfy (or surpass) the customers' needs
> and wants.  All else is minor commentary.  (As a tease to my vanity, I
> will remind myself that almost all customers don't want software; they
> want a solution to a real problem they have identified.  Maybe
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Kristoffer Roupe | 1 Apr 2008 17:08

What to do when breaking down 5 stories takes a whole day?

Hi all!

I've just come out of a sprint planning meeting here (yesterday) where we spent almost 1h/story in break
downs. Now, we are a 12 man team, thinking of splitting in 2, just to get some better output. One of our main
issues is that we have about 7-8 products that is in development. Which makes about 1 product per 2 man team!
Surely enough this becomes an issue, we context switch a lot, and that takes time. 

Now, our product owners /customers are quite new to storytelling, so they do produce epics. We try to narrow
them down, but that (I guess) is one of the reasons why break down takes such a long time... we just can't
understand how the heck to do the stories. Yesterday, the PO's was out of office, so that being a sprint
planning day just made thing even worse; we had no one to ask. 

Now, back to the main object (not me crying over how bad we did), how do I get my product owner to start
splitting her stories? We've tried to educate our product owners about how to write a proper story, and
that it shouldn't be to "big". We've also introduced a quick "estimation calculation" that gives them a
hint about the overall complexity of the story. So that we don't have to break it down first. But they just
keep ignoring our demands on "breaking them down into smaller parts". One of the arguments heard from PO's
is that they lose the eagle eye view when things get to small. This is understandable, so I'm in the writing
of a small wiki-topic about "release planning", just to get them started. But I feel that this might just
not be enough!

This is why I now ask you guys. Because I know that there's a lot of people on this list that have more
experience than me on XP/Scrum/Agile/Lean etc. and I'm eager to know if there's some "hidden tricks" out
there that I could use. 

If I'm just blathering here, please let me know.

Kristoffer Roupé 

Lead Programmer
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