Pivotal Labs uses an agile development process focused on sustainability. They emphasize practices like pairing programming, test-driven development, and continuous integration to deliver working software quickly while maintaining quality. Teams are small and co-located to facilitate collaboration, with daily standups and planning meetings. Customers work closely with teams and provide ongoing feedback to prioritize new features.

1. agile development
THE PIVOTAL WAY
Mike Gehard
Software Engineer, Boulder
mgehard@pivotallabs.com
@pivotallabs
@mikegehard

2. PIVOTAL LABS
• 200+ people in San Francisco, New York, Boulder,
Los Angeles, Boston, London (for now)
• Ruby on Rails, iOS and Android
• Big name clients
• Makers of Pivotal Tracker (used by 500K people)
• Agile/XP since beginning of time
GRUELING, HARD CORE, DISCIPLINED
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
2

3. FIRST, WE FEED
3

4. THEN WE STAND
4

5. AND THEN PAIR
5

6. AND THEN PAIR
6

7. WE TAKE OUR BREAKS
7

8. AND REPLENISH
8

9. A GRUELING DAY
• 08:45 Breakfast
• 09:05 All Hands Standup
• 09:15 Team Standups
• Lunch noon-ish
• Ping pong at will
• Done around 18:00* (*your mileage may vary)
9

10. IT’S ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY
• Consistent, predictable delivery is at a premium
• Tired developers leave bugs
• Tired developers leave
• Short-term bursts of productivity cost more in the
long term
Happy developers = productive developers
10

11. BUILDING SUSTAINABLE
SOFTWARE IN A
SUSTAINABLE WAY
amazing secrets revealed!

12. GOALS OF OUR SOFTWARE
PROJECTS
• Get V1 of new product to market quickly
• Malleable, change based on feedback
• Predictable schedule with no surprises
• Low bug count
• Performant, scalable
• Help client teams go faster and maintain it
12

13. TRADITIONAL SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT IS EXPENSIVE
• Growing maintenance debt
• Rising defect rate
• Increasing cost of change
13

14. 14

15. EFFECTIVE (AND SUSTAINABLE)
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT...
• Is mostly about communication
• Needs to allow for change
• Takes discipline and rigor
• Needs to be constantly adjusted
The XP philosophy embraces and
enables these ideas.
15

16. OUR HISTORY WITH XP
• Started with “by the book” XP in 1999
• Helped Beck et al with the early books
• Great early experiences with XP
• Thinking is always evolving
• Various changes/additions to the process
Bottom line: it’s a truly different way to
build software, with awesome results.
And it’s fun, day after day.
16

17. CORE PRACTICES
October 12, 2012

18. ALL PAIRING, ALL THE TIME
18

19. PAIR PROGRAMMING
• Developers sit in pairs
• All machines are communal
• No laptops/iPhones
• Ping pong pairing
• Frequent pair rotation
• UX designers pair with developers as needed
19

20. PAIRING BENEFITS
• Higher quality code
• Shares codebase knowledge quickly
• Very high bus count
• More focus
• Greater discipline around other technical
practices
Pairing is our competitive advantage.
20

21. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
21

22. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
22

23. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
23

24. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
?
? ?
? ?
? ?
?
24

25. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
?
? ?
? ?
? ?
?
25

26. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
26

27. 100% TEST DRIVEN
• No production code written without a failing test
• No code checked in without running tests
• Focus on organization and readability of tests
• Focus on keeping tests fast
• Tests are for design and regression
Keeps cost of change constant.
27

28. RUTHLESS REFACTORING
• Code evolution
• Incremental design towards patterns
• It takes discipline, but pairing helps
Tells you when something is resistant to
change.
28

29. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
• Critical to maintain constant cost of change
• When to release is a business decision
29

30. THE TEAM
30

31. THE TEAM
• Small, typically 2-4 pairs
• Co-located, or intermingled-then-remote
• Daily standups, weekly planning meetings
• Same hours
• Stable anchor, but frequent cross-team rotation
Software development is a team sport!
31

32. INVOLVED CUSTOMER
• Within earshot and always available
• Empowered to make decisions
• Maintains prioritized backlog
• Accepts/rejects stories continuously
• Close collaboration with design/UX
Constantly aware of situation.
32

33. 33

34. RETROSPECTIVES

35. TECHNICAL EXPERTS
• Lead in specific tech area
• Guest pairs on teams as needed
• Blog & tech talk regularly
35

36. HIRING FOR APTITUDE AND
CULTURAL FIT

37. THANK YOU
Mike Gehard
Software Engineer
mgehard@pivotallabs.com
@pivotallabs
@mikegehard
37