Nano-Incremental Development, or Elephant Carpaccio
Mon, 2009-02-23 16:45 — Alistair Cockburn
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Add to calendarLevel: Introductory
In a quick survey, 17 of 20 programmers said they didn’t know how to slice feature requests to the sub-day level. In contrast, top programmers easily take them to 15-30 minute programming episodes. What does it take for people to make the transition?
In this workshop, analysts and programmers will pair up, decompose an problem into initial requests, then the programmers will deliver those features in five 10-minute iterations, the analyst adjusting requests on the fly.
This workshop works well with experienced programmers. Programming language and environment don’t matter.
Process/Mechanics
- Break into teams of 2-3 people, at least one programmer per team. (We need at least 1/3 of the room programming)
- Discuss elephants, flank steaks, sashimi, carpaccio.
- Present assignment.
- 15 minutes: create user stories or feature requests, estimated to be programmable at the sub-10-minute level.
- Discuss, correct, argue, harrangue.
- Five 10-minute programming iterations, teams showing their results to other teams at the end of each iteration.
- Debrief
Learning outcomes
- How to slice large applications into 1-day to 1-week requests, from the business perspective
- How to slice application requests into 15-30 minute work slices, from both the business and programming perspective
- What carpaccio is (have you already learned that while browsing this page?)
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