software development – Derk-Jan de Grood

Development and operations. Not the same…

Although they work side by side in service of the same business goals, development and operations often experience tension or misunderstanding.

In this article, I deep-dive the differences, that usually isn’t caused by bad intentions, but by fundamentally different responsibilities. Development is about change and new capabilities, while operations is about stability, reliability and risk.

Based on my experience coaching operations teams, I introduce a simple bucket approach that helps teams consciously balance urgent work with long-term improvement. Finally, I reflect on the role of the operations product owner, who must make decisions under pressure, protect team sustainability and clearly communicate invisible but essential value.

Thanks Nieke Roos, for the editing and Bits&Chips for publishing it. You can check it out yourself; Development and operation: different goals and ways to plan their work.

Agile Technical Practices – If only you knew them!

In Agile Technical Practices, authors Pedro Moreira Santos, Marco Consolaro, and Alessandro Di Gioia advocate for practices like Pair Programming and Test-Driven Development (TDD). Their comprehensive guide navigates through intricate design and refactoring methodologies, fostering code readability and resilience. The book describes a limited yet crucial set of practices. However, the deep dive and the insights provided in the book make them applicable for developers.

Besides the three key practices that Pedro, Marco, and Alessandro distill and describe, there are other practices worth knowing as well.

In Agile Technical Practices – If only you knew them !, my latest article that I wrote for Agile Connection, I tell more about the book and explain why I think it matters: books like this make organizations aware that effective value delivery is most likely obtained by proficient developers who know, talk about, and apply these practices. I am truly glad that I am not alone in this important vision. I wonder if you know of more books like this.

InflectraCon 2020 – Get inspired about what’s on the horizon for technology in 2022 and beyond!

The program of the InflectraCON™ 2022 is announced. And I am proud to be part of it! Set in the heart of the US’ s capital, InflectraCON 2022, is a two-day multi-track conference celebrates all aspects of Software Development, Testing, Agile, DevOps, Cyber, Leadership, and Innovation.

I will contribute with a great story, and hope that together with the other speakers, we will inspire you about what’s on the horizon for technology in 2022 and beyond! Check the line up on the event-page and see who’s there beside Mindy Bohannon, Jennifer Bonine, Ard Kramer and Jeffery Payne.

Join us for an all-out party marking the 16th anniversary of Inflectra and our collective emergence from the pandemic! Be part of the conversation about digital transformation! Network and rekindle friendships with your teammates, fellow technologists, and friends during the end-of-the-conference reception and party!Come to InflectraCON 2022 and join the people like you who are influencing their organization’s growth and the future landscape of Agile and DevOps!

Applying Agile beyond Software development

My latest issue of G(r)ood Testing is inspired by a blog of Mike Cohn from Mountain Goat Software. In his blog Mike investigates the application of agile outside the world of the software development. I like to contribute with two examples of my own. I sometimes use agile methods in my private live, e.g. when doing home improvements and when planning the activities during the holiday. Both cases exemplify that Agile helps create transparency, enables us to be adaptive and helps us to organise ourselves.

You can watch the video introduction below or go directly to the column on the EuroSTAR community pages: Applying Agile beyond Software development

Do not become a bottleneck for the agile project

Last November, during the EuroSTAR conference, I was asked to give a soapbox speech in the grand hall. During this “lightning strikes the keynotes” session I stated that if we testers don’t make haste with our test improvements we’ll become the agile project’s bottleneck.

I made a short summary of my arguments in the video below. In my latest edition of G(r)ood Testing 19: Let’s make haste with our test improvements I repeat this message, and also indicate some items that require attention in many organisations. You can read the column and my other columns in the series on the EuroSTAR community pages.

Agile in Europe, an overview for the Seoul Testing Conference

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Last week I visited South Korea and gave a presentation on the SSTC. I was asked to give an overview of the way that we do Agile in Europe. Since Agile is not an out of the box approach, it is hard to explain how we do Agile in Europe. There is not such as one way. But In this presentation I combine my experience, the information I gather whilst visiting various European Conference with Benchmark research. I believe the presentation gives a nice overview of the things we are struggling with and the agile test challenge. Valuable for the target audience, since I learned that Korea is somewhat lacking behind with the Agile adoption. But there is a great interest, so I hope this presentation helped them to gain a better understanding and lowers the threshold for implementing it.