John Ver Voorn

I am interested in agile and agile techniques, so I do a bit of reading on subject. I ran across this blog post on "Trust". Really cool, I wish I had seen the session. It is interesting to look at the slides and get a quick overview of the session.

Agile 2007- The First Thing to Build - Trust on Agile Teams

One thing that struck me was a graphic on one of the slides that showed a cutout view of some land. It showed several layers, the bottom layer was trust and everything else was on top of that. Immediately I thought of a foundation, and how a strong foundation makes the building stronger and more resistant to weather and storms.  The next layer was commitment, and I can see how high performance teams need to be committed to one another and to the overall goals of the project.  The next layer was a surprising one, Conflict. I guess I just viewed conflict as the enemy, the storm if you will, but here it is viewed as one of the building blocks of teams.

When conflict happens, and it will happen, if it already has trust and commitment as a solid foundation then we can weather that storm. The next layer is creativity, I can totally see how we can be creative when we trust that our ideas won't be attacked.

It just made me think of the whole agile process in a new light. When someone makes a comment about a feature that they dislike it shouldn't be taken as a personal attack against the programmer. What is really happening is a compliment, "I am so glad we are using this agile process, and we can make necessary changes like this."

I haven't totally thought this through, but I had these thoughts so I had download "Windows Live Writer" to blog about this.

I just downloaded the newest Nunit 2.4.0.2 and the new version of nunitforms. One of the first things I wanted to try was to run the tests. I was suprised that they all didn't run. Now I can see some test being incomplete and therefore might be ignored, but why are there red tests in there. Is that something that runs on their machines but not mine or what? I'd like to document which tests didn't run and look at the code, but for now I just wanted to dash off a quick blog post to remind me.

I've watched this program on and off for quite a while, the only other program I enjoyed was Enterprise. The 200th Episode of StarGate SG1 was a riot, my wife was in the other room on the computer and wanted to know what I was laughing at so much. There were inside jokes all over the place for people who like SG1 and/or other SciFi classics. For a normal trying to be serious show with a few jokes thrown in, this was a welcome change to have a lot of jokes and a few serious moments in there also.

public bool isGameOver() {
bool result = false;
result = CheckRowMatch()
|| CheckColumnMatch()
|| CheckDiagonalMatch();
_gameOver = result;
return result;
}

1     public bool isGameOver() {
2       bool result = false;
3       result = CheckRowMatch() 
4         || CheckColumnMatch() 
5         || CheckDiagonalMatch();
6       _gameOver = result;
7       return result;
8     }
9 

    public bool isGameOver() {
      bool result = false;
      result = CheckRowMatch() 
        || CheckColumnMatch() 
        || CheckDiagonalMatch();
      _gameOver = result;
      return result;
    }

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Source: Quote Details: Salman Rushdie: A book is a... - The Quotations Page

Here is a great quote to get me motivated to blog more. Just replace book with blog and read it a few times. I like to read quotes a few times and put the emphsis on different words to see how it makes me feel. It's kinda hard to demonstrate the inflection in my voice in written media, but...

A BLOG is a version....
A blog is a VERSION...
...If you DO NOT LIKE IT, ....
... If you do not like it, IGNORE IT; or ...
... offer YOUR OWN version ...
... in RETURN.

Read the whole quote several times, and try to think of why the emphsis is on that word, or sequence of words. The point of the exercise is to repeat and get that thought deeper in your head where it belongs. I also like to do this with scripture. The thinking about where and why the emphsis is where it is can come after or ever later. I put the different versions here in order to demonstrate, but most of the time I work backwards or even randomly. This is a great thing to do when you are walking or on the bus or in the car. I would NOT recomend doing this when driving. This for me anyways is a kind of meditation, and sometimes I get lost in the thoughts and before I know it farther down the path then I realized. I like this method of concentration. It is lightweight and I can do it easily. I don't have to get out and put on a yoga outfit and sit in a funny position. I don't have to turn off the lights and lay down and control my breathing. I just have to concentrate my thoughts on the same line or short paragraph over and over.

I've relized that just talking ( whoops I mean bloging ) about this is also kinda motivating me to maybe walk more. My weight has gotten over what I want it to be again and "i DO need exersize."
"I do need exersize."
"i do NEED exersize."
"i do need EXERSIZE."

Maybe this is also a great way to also motivate me to apply gtd (Getting Things DONE)  more.

I also could apply this to teaching or presentations. They say it is important to repeat you main point several times durring the presentation. I think it would be good to sutuly or even not so sutuly EPHISIZE a different word each time it is said. So If I were talking about TDD (test driven development) I would make sure to say near the end of the talk something like...

I think you can see why it's called test DRIVEN development, because the development is DRIVEN by the tests.

I can't believe I blogged about meditation, gtd, religion and tdd all in a single post.