Open Journalism & the Open Web

Sep 27, 01:51 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Geoff In my experience, the coder has to do his code's unit tests. And there're a specialized person who does the other tests (integration, etc.)

Chris Nicholson said:

Sep 27, 01:51 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Geoff Part of Agile programming is pairwise programming, where people work together in pairs. Often, the "partner" does peer reviews and writes the tests. And then there's a swap.

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:51 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Steve: WIll ask for some examples, and links. :)

Steve Myers said:

Sep 27, 01:50 PM (GMT -04:00)
If we have time, I'd love to be able to see something on economist.com that was developed in this way and have Rob describe how it changed over iterations.

Geoff D'Auria said:

Sep 27, 01:50 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Chris Who tests? The person who codes? Seems risky, no?

Chris Nicholson said:

Sep 27, 01:49 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Geoff In our Agile methodologies, the development is test-driven. It's code-a-little, test-a-little. In fact, some of the time, the unit tests are written before any code is created!

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:48 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Geoff @Vitor: Great. In the queue. (Though, we may run out of time!!!)

Geoff D'Auria said:

Sep 27, 01:48 PM (GMT -04:00)
One more question: where does testing happen in a sprint? Do you have a designated tester? Mutual testing? No testing? ;-)

Vitor Baptista said:

Sep 27, 01:47 PM (GMT -04:00)
Rob, you're the Scrum Master of all three teams? Or each team has one master?

Chris Nicholson said:

Sep 27, 01:46 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Terri My second-last organisation did exactly that! (AEGON UK)

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:45 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Geoff, Terri: Great. Thanks. In the queue! :)

Jason Dean said:

Sep 27, 01:45 PM (GMT -04:00)
There is some great info here, and sounds good for large teams. Is there an example of this from a smaller (1-2 person team)?

Terri Langford said:

Sep 27, 01:45 PM (GMT -04:00)
Can you point to an organization where scrum bubbled up from the worker class, versus some "enlightened" manager who comes to an organization?

Geoff D'Auria said:

Sep 27, 01:44 PM (GMT -04:00)
Q: can you give a specific example of when you may have emphasized "individuals and interactions over processes and tools"?

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:41 PM (GMT -04:00)
Solomon: great. :)

Solomon Lieberman said:

Sep 27, 01:41 PM (GMT -04:00)
(thanks!)

Solomon Lieberman said:

Sep 27, 01:41 PM (GMT -04:00)
(comment is probably best over phone...)

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:40 PM (GMT -04:00)
Jeff: no worries. :)

Jeff Severns Guntzel said:

Sep 27, 01:39 PM (GMT -04:00)
Best for me if I'm not un-muted. Sorry!

Solomon Lieberman said:

Sep 27, 01:39 PM (GMT -04:00)
Q: Can you explain the "waterfall approach" and why it doesn't work?

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Solomon: shoot.

Solomon Lieberman said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
Q + Comment...

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
(Same for you @Jeff) :)

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
:)

AmyJo Brown said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
Sure.

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:38 PM (GMT -04:00)
@AmyJo: Thanks for that. Mind if I un-mute you to ask it when Rob finishes?

AmyJo Brown said:

Sep 27, 01:37 PM (GMT -04:00)
How many people do you have on your development team at the Economist and what roles do they fill (separate design / developers, IA, content strategy, someone to do usability testing, etc.) ... and, related, what's the ideal mix, the dream team set up, for a small shop - I'm thinking for a small to mid-sized news orgs?

Kay Steiger said:

Sep 27, 01:36 PM (GMT -04:00)
One great example from my experience is that midway through our site redesign Facebook rolled out the "Like" button on third-party sites. We asked for this to be integrated into our plan and we got incredible pushback because it wasn't included in our original plan. We couldn't have! It didn't exist when we made the plan!

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:36 PM (GMT -04:00)
@Jeff: Good question. In the queue! :)

Jeff Severns Guntzel said:

Sep 27, 01:36 PM (GMT -04:00)
Question for question time: Could you give a few examples of what the Scrum teams at the Economist might be working on at any given time?

Phillip Smith said:

Sep 27, 01:33 PM (GMT -04:00)
Question time: feel free to A) post a question for Rob here, and I'll read it out, or B) post it here and mention that you'd like to be un-muted to ask it, or C) use the "Raise Hand" feature (*2) to let me know the same. :) Thanks!

Michael Roberts said:

Sep 27, 01:33 PM (GMT -04:00)
Agile has always seemed to me to be more a response to large-company software development than anything else. In the open-source world, I think we've always pretty much done what you call "agile development". I might be wrong.

Open Journalism & the Open Web

Course Material

Week 2: Audio and chat log