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Reviews & Retrospectives |
O X F O R D S O F T W A R E E N G I N
E E R I N G |
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Get the best from two
fundamental software development best practices:
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Everyone knows about technical reviews and
post implementation reviews. And everyone knows they could be better. What is
not so well understood is how much better they can be, and the remarkable
effect this can have. Both technical reviews, which range from
traditional walkthroughs, through to the remarkable Fagan Inspections, and
post implementation reviews, now reinvigorated and elaborated by Norm Kerth
as ‘retrospectives’, deserve to be part of every professional software
development team’s toolkit. They act as catalysts for change - transforming
team performance and software quality. Done well technical reviews are the most
effective software quality control. With a well documented return on investment of up to 10:1
they are far more effective than testing, but more than that they: - tell the author about potential improvements - tell developers and others that the item is ready (or not) to
be made available for use - tell team leads and managers that the task to produce the
item is complete (or not), triggering earned value recalculation - reveal novel solutions or design excellence (‘undefects’ or
‘profects’) that can be used elsewhere - help developers within the team and from other teams to
synchronize their work as they share understanding of the progress of work - help reviewers develop shared appreciation of de facto standards and a good work - enable less experienced developers or developers new to the
organization to learn from the more experienced and experts - share technical understanding among developers and reduce
dependencies and bottlenecks - provide early and ongoing data about the quality of the
systems being developed - provide data about the process and practices used to
develop the system …which is very good for such an apparently
simple practice. In a similar way retrospectives do far
more than harvest lessons learned, but they are difficult and need care to
get the best from them: a project’s history is more difficult to review that
a technical document, the need is often less clear and apparently of little
immediate operational value, and much of the feedback can be difficult to
capture, diffuse and take longer to have effect. One commonly heard comment about retrospectives is ”we
used to do them once, but nothing much changed so they stopped.” But,
planned carefully, with the right people involved (not necessarily who you
think) and with good facilitation they will transform your organization.
That’s what they’re for. They can: -
identify development and management opportunities -
reveal what the team really achieved -
capture the learning of the team and project -
repair damage done to the team by the last project - show
that there are solutions to development and management problems, that there
are better ways of working… …and
make them happen. In effect making
genuine process improvement happen. Retrospectives are the basic and
fundamental process improvement tool. If you are interesting in developing
your software capability start with these. Few software organizations can claim to
get all the benefits from these practices. Often the processes are not fully
understood or have degraded to the point were they cannot deliver the results
they should, they can be seen as a waste of time (which they are if they’re
not working). And even when they are working their benefits can be difficult
to evaluate, making them a target for cost cutting and schedule reductions.
Measuring effort or time saved can be difficult - but it can be done. We believe these practices are fundamental
to good software development and should be used by all development teams what
ever development approaches or technologies you use. If you want to get more
from these practices we can help you with: -
evaluating the effectiveness of your reviews and retrospectives -
providing support to correct failing reviews or retrospectives -
introducing, or reintroducing, them to your organization -
provide independent and objective facilitation (which is critical for
retrospectives). To find out what reviews and
retrospectives are about and how they can improve your teams’ performance,
your organization’s development capability and your software quality contact
us CCS May 2009, March
2010
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© Copyright OSEL 2009 - 2010 |
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