Growing and Fostering Software Craftsmanship

Growing And Fostering Craftsmanship
Cory Foy | Cory Foy, LLC
@cory_foy | foyc@coryfoy.com

Wednesday, June 2, 2010 1
L: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/2712729687/sizes/l/
R: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffbelmonte/6406082/sizes/o/
C: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pepe50/3057465486/sizes/l/

Problem


“IT is a pain in the ass” - Guy next to me on the ﬂight to XP2010


How many of us are as happy as this guy?

Source: http://www.infoq.com/articles/Interview-Johnson-Standish-CHAOS


How can we be happy? 26% average succeeded rate in software projects. Success is measured
solely by releasing on a speciﬁc date

Source: http://www.infoq.com/articles/Interview-Johnson-Standish-CHAOS


One year, 1 million dollar project is now a 1.8 million dollar project. And you’ll get it 6
months late. How ‘bout them apples?


Release July 10th. Next release planned for June. Pulled everything to one backlog planned
for next release. Ran one 4-week iteration. Initial velocity showed release date August - 3
years later.

Typing Is Not The Bottleneck


“In programming the hard part isn’t
solving problems, but deciding what
problems to solve.”

Paul Graham


Credit: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/cdevers/4456481460/sizes/l/


There was a time when that was easy. Because the problem was engineering. And hardware.

“...the intellectual bookkeeping challenge...has been replaced
with the challenge of clearly expressing the design intention to
the rest of the team so the system can evolve.”
- Pete McBreen, Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative



This means there is a shift happening in our industry. If typing isn’t the bottleneck, and
hardware isn’t the problem, and the challenge is in expression - what are our weaknesses?

Code Quality


Communicating Intent


Readability

Collaboration


We can’t be the stereotypical IT people


We can’t be the stereotypical IT people

Sharing Knowledge


Breaking Out Features


Minimal Marketable Feature. Small Stories.

Responsibility


Regression Test Assurance

How can Craftsmanship Help?


Fix the problem at its source.


And what’s the source?


We’ve let

Us


We’ve let

Fear


stagnate us.

“People can be trained not to innovate, not to explore, and not
to reach. Many organizations value conformance above all.
They cut off the top and the bottom of the bell curve -- they like
interchangeable cogs. You can achieve predictability through
mediocrity in those places, and the best answer is to decide to
either go along or get out.”

Fear


stagnate us.

Fear
“Since my endeavors are not supported
by my organization, I'm limited to TDD,
and have no way of implementing
acceptance tests without getting sacked.
I'm pushing my luck to do TDD at all.”


stagnate us.

Fear
“When the manager saw our
estimate for the project, he
gave us a deadline without
considering our suggestions.
He is not a programmer and
his reason was a political
deadline.”


stagnate us.

“In my company, no code changes
can happen without the approval of
the Board of Governors for the
product involved”

Fear


stagnate us.

Source: http://www.twistedsister.com/gallery.php


We have to say that we aren’t going to take it

Unacceptable


We have to declare that it is unacceptable for us to be put in situations which destroy the one
thing which drives each of us here

Passion


And it was this passion which led to a

Manifesto


Agile Manifesto outlining four key values for anyone adopting agile methodologies.

Individuals and Interactions


over processes and tools

Working Software


over comprehensive documentation

Customer Collaboration


over contract negotiation

Responding to Change


over following a plan. And everything was...


ﬂowers, right?! Right?! No! It was all....


weird and distorted. Project Management seemed to be doing better, but developers were
still pumping out garbage.

Source:http://gallery.me.com/pew#100134/IMG_0155&bgcolor=black


But then this guy lulled us all in during dinner with 1500 of our closest friends at Agile 2008
and said the words that have stuck with me ever since.

Craftsmanship
over
Crap


No wait. That’s not it. Let’s try again.


Ah, much better! This statement led to a manifesto focused at the software developers

CRAFTSMANSHIP
OVER
CRAP!


Ah, much better! This statement led to a manifesto focused at the software developers


But the manifesto and the ideals behind it have an unspoken deﬁnition. Craftsmanship is
about....

Responsibility


Whose Responsibility?


YOUR RESPONSIBILITY! (And look! I found a hip bear!). Given that - whose responsibility is it
for learning new technologies and techniques?

Yours!


Whose Responsibility is it for growing in your profession? (All together now)

Yours!


Whose Responsibility is it for teaching others?

Yours!


Whose Responsibility is it for making what you build the best it can be?

Yours!


Indeed. (Next slide: Craftsmanship==Responsibility)

Craftsmanship ==
Responsibility


So, if craftsmanship is responsibility, whose job is it to foster craftsmanship in your
organization?

Yours.



Come on, Cory. How the heck are we supposed to be responsible for all that? Well, I’ll tell
you. By showing you the guide to...

Fostering Craftsmanship in
your Organization


a.k.a.


Cory’s 5-step Plan to World
Domination


Cory’s 5-step Plan to
Fostering Craftsmanship


Step 1:
Start with you


Katas. Learn them. Do them. Love them.


Katas. Learn them. Do them. Love them.

Step 2:
Involve your team


Brown Bags. Show people what you’ve been working on.

Step 3:
Get people talking


Book Clubs. Doesn’t matter the topic - just get people meeting and talking. Do Food.


Picture from Hashrocket

Step 4:
Get people learning
(and teaching)


Apprenticeships. Ask people to mentor you, and offer the same to those with you.


Dave and Adewale’s Book

Step 5:
Make it Clear


Proﬁt! Or formalize the program. Create a training path for people to follow.

This is Jason Gorman’s. Don’t blame me.
http://qconlondon.com/london-2010/ﬁle?path=%2Fqcon-london-2010%2Fslides
%2FJasonGorman_BeyondMastersApprenticesAScalablePeerLedModelForBuildingGoodHabitsInLargeDiverseDevelopmentTeams.pdf


Reference Application


In fact, because I’ve only gotten 4 hours of sleep in the past 70 hours, I found a way to do all
ﬁve steps using only Katas. I call this my “reference application”. To understand it we have to
know about

Learning Models


Thankfully, not every one. Just a speciﬁc one. It’s called the Dreyfus Model of Skills
Acquisition

Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition
Level Description

Needs to be told exactly what to do.
Novice No context to work from

Has more context, but needs
Advanced Beginner
rigid guidelines
Questions reasoning behind the tasks
Competent and can see consequences

Still relies on rules, but can
Proﬁcient
separate what’s important
Works mainly on intuition,
Expert
except when problems occur


Using this model, we can create a path for team members to go from Novice to Expert using
Katas. How?

Level 1: Novice


Novices don’t have the context to make judgement calls. So for novices, we can provide the
outline of a Kata with acceptance tests pre-ﬁlled out. This gives them context and structure.
Show Corey’s String Calculator

Level 2: Advanced Beginner


Advanced Beginners still need structure, so at level 2, they would still use pre-populated
templates. However, they would only be partially ﬁlled out. For example, in the String
Calculator, Roy deﬁned additional requirements which aren’t in the tests

Level 3: Competent


As developers reach competency, they need less context. At this stage, there still may be
some structure predeﬁned in the katas, but certainly no tests are ﬁlled in.

Level 4: Proﬁcient


At proﬁciency, developers should be able to tackle a Kata from scratch, including set-up of
any necessary tools (RSpec, Cucumber, FitNesse, NUnit).

Level 5: Expert


Finally, as they reach an expert stage, they should be able to develop their own katas for
contribution back to the team.

But Remember


Individuals and Interactions


over


Processes and Tools


In other words, don’t let the kata structure become a replacement for individuals and
interactions. Part of why programs and methodologies work is the learning that goes into
implementing and customizing it. As it grows, it may stagnate. Don’t do that.

Summary


So, to summarize


Don’t let fear


Stagnate you


and keep you from being happy


Because only you


can raise the bar


stop valuing crap, and instead deliver real value. And at the end of the day, that’s what our
customers want, our organizations want, and I bet most of us want too.

Growing and Fostering Software Craftsmanship

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