Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

191.8

⇒

167.2

⇒

186.2

183.6

184.0

183.2

184.6

Mon, 09 Jun 2003

Involving the user in agile projects

Canonical XP has a customer role that speaks with a single voice. That role has the hard job of integrating the voices of perhaps a bazillion users, clumped into overlapping interest groups. But how are those voices integrated?

Charles Miller has an interesting post on dealing with bug reports in open source projects. There's something about it that makes me think it's relevant. There's an air of balancing forces: of treating the users with respect, of learning from them, but also of protecting the development team from being thrashed by them. Not directly applicable, I think, but worth pondering.

## Posted at 08:48 in category /agile [permalink] [top]

Normal accidents and pair programming

Keith Ray contrasts code reviews and pair programming. I'm reminded of an editorial I wrote several years ago. I'd just read Charles Perrow's book Normal Accidents. It's about accidents in complex systems. It describes characteristics of those systems that bias them toward failure. In the essay, I applied his ideas to pair programming and inspections, suggesting that pair programming is less less likely to suffer normal accidents.

Note: the second figure got messed up in production. It should be just like the first, but with clouds that wholely or partially obscure the boxes and lines behind them. I should produce a fixed copy, but I lack time.

## Posted at 08:37 in category /agile [permalink] [top]