Remote Island

An interesting and funny article/rant about the Agile methodology and the development process at Google. The first paragraph about the ‘Bad Kind’ made me laugh out loud (can’t think why), and the quote about pair programming made me nod a few times - I’ve known companies who feel they need to practice pair programming religiously to resolve spiraling defect counts and/or improve the quality of their code.

From my own experience, I’ve come to learn that Agile doesn’t always solve all your software development problems and a lot of XP techniques are a little unnecessary - probably because they aren’t executed correctly, or misunderstood. Take the good bits from Agile, the ones that promote productivity, and run with them.

Link to Article [steve-yegge.blogspot.com].

The guys over at 37signals prove that another advantage accepting the remote working ethos is the ability to hire from wherever you like. This was the attitude of a company I used to work for. They hired some of the best software developers and programmers from around the UK and we worked together in a remote environment. Dare I say it, worked rather well.

In traditional office environments, everyone needs to travel into work every day. This means that you either recruit from around your location, or offer relocation packages. It really cuts down on your choice when hiring new staff.

After a hard days drive back from meetings on the mainland, I visited my local Sainsburys in Newport to stock on the essential items such as milk and bread, plus a few treats for the wife. When I came to the checkout, I was offered by the assistant to pack my bags, which I always answer no (why can’t you remember that?). When it came to paying, the assistant told me that I needed to swipe my own Nectar card (awards cards for those who don’t know) and then my debit card. Now I usually use this time to catch up packing my own bags whilst my debit card goes through the system, printing of the receipt etc. but now I don’t have this time because I now have two things to worry about – scanning my Nectar card (should I really bother doing that next time I ask myself? Sainburys probably don’t want to know my spending habits anyway) and entering my card, removing it from the machine because it didn’t work first time, entering my pin whilst still worrying about the unpacked shopping and the queue of people behind? I only had three bags of shopping but felt the eyes of customers on the back of my skull whilst I carried on catching up packing my shopping with them waiting.

Sainburys has taken away (in my opinion) one of the important iterations between itself and the customer. Why try to fix something when it’s not broken in the first place? It doesn’t speed things up at the checkout, it only slows things down and gets the customer into a flustered mess. Fools.

(rant over)