Dr. Dobb's Journal - April 2008 - (Page 51)

d04ambler_p3ds 2/13/08 9:43 AM Page 51 Although this was a bit harsh (but how else could you possibly govern IT professionals), the process engineers did manage to improve things. After analyzing the values of the agile alliance, the process engineers determined that they were insufficient to meet Gorwell’s needs and thereby introduced the Victory Doublethink slogans. The agile value of “working software over comprehensive documentation” was replaced with the simpler “Documentation is Software” slogan, an obvious fact that any bureaucrat can explain to you. Similarly, the slogan “Metadata is Quality” communicated the importance of Operation Blackhole and also made it obvious that regression testing and continuous integration were clearly a waste of time. The slogan “Plans are Progress” enabled project teams to report earned value when compared to the agile strategy of delivering high-quality working software on a regular basis—business stakeholders could trust the word of IT project managers and didn’t need the concrete visibility provided by real agile teams. The human resources department supported the Agile Victory process by establishing the “Victory Alliance,” a group of trainers that ran what they called the Certified Victory Master (CVM) program. Anyone could become a CVM, regardless of experience or ability, simply by taking a two-day CVM training course. Granted, you couldn’t become a certified master of anything, even something as simple as tying your own shoes let alone leading a software development project, by taking a two-day course. The Victory Alliance claimed that what they were really doing was certifying that you had taken the class, but this didn’t stop anyone from claiming that they were Certified Victory Masters on their business cards and in their e-mail signatures. Of course it didn’t help that the trainers provided the CVM logos to anyone who wanted a graphical instead of textual representation of their awesome certification accomplishment. In the end, Winston’s agile adoption effort was squashed. By putting an agile façade on top of traditional strategies, Gorwell managed to derail the productivity improvement potential of actual agile tech- niques. Inadequate training, mentoring, and coaching prevented staff experienced in traditional approaches to learn the techniques and nuances of agile development. In short, Gorwell’s existing culture and bureaucracy had successfully repelled the agile onslaught. 1984. Although fiction, I suspect that many of the challenges that I described within Gorwell Financial Group will strike close to home for a lot of readers. It would be doubleplusgood if you were to consider many of the concepts promoted by the Victory process to be thoughtcrimes—oops, I mean process crimes. DDJ Scott is a DDJ Senior Contributing Editor and author of numerous IT books. He can be contacted at www.ambysoft.com/ scottAmbler.html. Parting Thoughts If you haven’t figured it out by now, April Fools! 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Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - April 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal - April 2008 Contents Hmmmm Alia Vox Developer Diaries Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award Conversations Fast String Search on Multicore Processors The Byzantine Generals Problem Optimizing Math-Intensive Applications with Fixed-Point Arithmetic Random Numbers in a Range Using Generic Programming The Agile Edge Effective Concurrency Swaine's Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - April 2008

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