… de personas y sistemas.
Agile Projects
The day I sat for the PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) exam
34 months ago
In mid-September 2011 the PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) exam was lunched. Personally, I get the chance to sit for the first time the exam was taken in Latin America some weeks ago.
Being in a pilot phase, the test results will be announced in December this year, but meanwhile, I take to leave my impressions recorded here.
What I think was positive
- Values. The biggest surprise that I got was to see that all content and exam questions are strongly oriented towards agile values and philosophy. One of the questions that accompanied me all the way to where I took the test was exactly “What would the vision of PMI about agility be?” (I was particularly concerned about an article that got published by the PMI in 2010 with, in my opinion, a not-so-lucky-vision about agile methodologies, on which I wrote at that time (see original article). But let’s get back to the exam. It seems the steering Comitee for tagile certification has done a good job.
- Agile Manifesto and Lean Values. There were several questions about the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto (essential to know) and Lean values. I particularly liked some questions that asked for parallels or mappings between Lean and Agile Values.
- Methodologies. All XP, Lean, Scrum and Kanban are covered by the exam. There were questions related to these four agile approaches. Although I must admit that most are associated with XP and Scrum and fewer to Lean and Kanban.
- Not as many tools and processes. Excellent from my point of view. Most of the exam was oriented toward the interactions between people, working with the customer, learning and constant adaptation.
- Situational questions. Like the PMP exam, many questions were situational. Ex: It poses a particular scenario for which you have to choose an action. There was a “most correct” choice of a series of “right choices”.
- Oppositions. I liked the way in which some questions were asked. I refer specifically to several that included two types of correct answer: The one that a PMP would choose and the one that an Agile Practitioner would, in fact, those questions could be part of the PMP exam and thus have another correct answer than the one in this context. I think this point is critical and requires the candidate a paradigm shift in the way of working.
- Technical Knowledge. While it is not necessary to have a high level of technical knowledge, XP practices are presented in the exam, like TDD / ATDD / IC. I was happy to see them there.
- Reference Materials. The exam questions cover virtually the entire bibliography recommended by PMI.
What I saw as Improvement Opportunities
- Questions. There were some questions with semantic errors. I recommend to pay special attention to such situations.
- Agile Manifesto and Lean Values. In my opinion, I would put greater emphasis on agile principles and values. I think (and it’s a personal opinion) that is essential to understand them before trying to understand any methodology or framework or particular implementation.
- Methodologies. Incorporation of DSDM, Crystal Clear, OpenUP, etc.. would be great.
- Many “Hows” and few “Whys”. For the most part, the test was focused on “how to” resolve certain situations or “how” certain methodology solves the odd situation but does not spend too much time on the “Why” of the resolution.
In short, and in my personal view, the test has more positive points than improvement opportunities. I must admit that my expectations were far surpassed.
Where would be located, in my opinion, this certification in relation to the Scrum Alliance ones? I’ll leave this topic for a next post.
How to access this certification? More information on the official website for the PMI-ACP.
WebTest Fixtures, FitNesse, Selenium and Integrated Windows Authentication
01 year ago
As part of one of the latests coaching on implementing Scrum in a software development team, it was decided to implement ATDD and we decided to use FitNesse for preparing and writing of the tests and Selenium to execute them.
In order to link both Selenium and FitNesse, we use WebTests Fixtures (Thanks Gojko et al.)
The surprise that awaited us was a web application developed in. NET with Windows Integrated Authentication. Anyone who has been through this, would know that there is not much information online that would solve the problem. Except for a couple of modifications to the core of WebTest and a few isolated posts, we were unable to find a unified source to solve this problem.
From the beginning, we knew we didn’t want to modify the code of the testing tools we decided to use, to enable them to be updated as new versions come out without major problems, therefore, that solution was discarded.
After researching a while, we decided the best option was to have Selenium running an instance of Firefox onfigured enough to set Integrated Windows Authentication with no problems.
Context
FitNesse and Selenium are both installed and running as services on a windows server. FitNesse version is the one that comes with the download of WebTests Fixtures, while the version of Selenium is the latest, since that comes with WT supports up to Firefox 2, not 3.
Solution
In principle, we must create a new Firefox profile with a given configuration for user credentials under which the service is running Selenium are sent to the Web application in a transparent manner, without popups or alerts that prevent Selenium do its job. Then we configure selenium to lift the specific profile of Firefox, and not another.
Creating the Profile in Firefox
To create a new profile for firefox it’s important to be logged with the user under which the service is running Selenium. Once inside the system you must follow these steps (Note: This assumes Windows):
1. Run:
firefox.exe -ProfileManager
2. Click “Create Profile”
3. Naming Your profile. In our case we use “WebTest-FFPROFILE-IWA”
4. Select a folder. In our case we use “C:\webtest\WebTest-FFPROFILE-IWA”
5. Click “Finish”
6. Select “Do not ask at startup”
Configuring Profile in Firefox
1. Continuing from the previous step, select the newly created profile and click on “Start Firefox”
2. Go to “View-> Toolbars” and uncheck “Bookmarks”
3. Right click on the toolbar and select “Customize”
4. Select “Use Small Icons” and accept
5. Go to “Tools-> Options
6. In the tab “Main” setear “about: blank” homepage and off as “Show Downloads”
7. In the Tab “Perstañas” select new window to new pages and disable all alerts
8. In the Tab “Content” Disabling Pop-Ups
9. Tab In the “Privacy” all options off History
10. In the Tab “Security” Security Options unselect and “Settings …” disable alerts
11. In the Tab “Advanced” deactivate “automatic transfer” of the subtab “General” and turn off alerts and search engines the tab “Updates”
12. Go to “Tools-> Extensions” and install Firebug, and ScreenGrab Selenium IDE
13. In the address bar type “about: config”
14. Create logic input (boolean) “extensions.update.notifyUser” -> false
15. Create logic input (boolean) “extensions.newAddons” -> false
16. Modify the entry “network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris” and enter the domain of the server where we want to test the Web application
17. Modify the entry “network.ntlm.send-lm-response” and give it a value of “true”
At this point we have properly configured Firefox profile.
Selenium configuration to take your Firefox profile created
Modify the batch file that runs Selenium (in the root of WebTest) and include the following parameter after the call to the JAR file: “-firefoxProfileTemplate C:\webtest\WebTest-FFPROFILE-IWA” (change C:\webtest\WebTest-FFPROFILE-IWA with the foldername into which you saved the newly created Firefox profile.
Done, your tests now should run under Windows Integrated Authentication.
I hope to serve you at some point if you run into this problem.
Is this PMI Agile perspective?
31 year ago
Update: The article mentioned in this post does not exist any more at the PMI website. Thanks to the agile community within the Project Management Institute and its efforts to promote the essence of agile methodologies, we can say that PMI’s perspective on agility is much more objective.
Here my original post:
In the August edition of “PM Network” a short presentation about what is and whether to adopt Agile was published. It touches on several of the principles and suggested (in a somewhat biased way in my opinion) the situations where they apply or situations where they don’t. Anyone interested in seeing it, can do it here::
http://www.pmi.org/resources/pages/agile.aspx
But the interesting part is the response posted by some Agile Folks Enjoy:
Scrum in Rosario City!
01 year ago
During a new visit to the beautiful riverside city, this time supported by Fundación Libertad, I have the chance to chat a few hours about the meaning of Scrum in order to get a little bit closer to Agile.
We were fortunate to enjoy a cool winter morning, in a high floor of a building in downtown that offers a breathtaking view of the river Paraná. Gorgeous!
At the beginning, we held a dynamic called “tribes” through which we identified different groups of professionals and their knowledge and use of Agile methodologies in their projects (it’s amazing how this kind of exercise always works, whatever the context or group of persons).
Later on, we started talking about the Principles, the Agile Manifesto, User Stories, Sprints, Product Backlog, Release Plan, Task Board, Daily Standup Meetings, Retrospectives…, trying to understand what makes Agile Methodologies so effective when talking about improving the quality delivered to the customer and the practices of our daily work.
Even though many people are reluctact about these methodolgies and find them strongly contrasting with what they´ve learnt so far, there are many others who are positively interested and look forward both to learning more about Agile and applying it at work. The mere act of participating in this experience is a great way to do it!
Here I post the presentation we used (in spanish):
Hope to see you again soon, Rosario!
Procrastination
01 year ago
By prioritizing the stories in the backlog we’re supposed to do it by business value or ROI (value / cost). I like to also add the risk inherent in the user story and use it as a factor to decide on prioritization.
Said in a different way, the group of stories with greater ROI can be divided into more risky stories and less risky stories. In particular I prefer to first address those at high risk because I see agile methodologies a great tool for risk mitigation. If the risky stories are left or postponed for a later time, we wouldn’t be mitigated any risks.
Just thinking out loud because of a procrastination video I saw on YouTube.
Procrastination
Procrastination refers to the counterproductive deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.[1] There are three criteria for a behavior to be classified as procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.[2]
Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity, as well as societal disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments. These feelings combined may promote further procrastination. While it is regarded as normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological disorder.
Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination
Bigger procrastination examples are those deep analysis and design phases of traditional project management, also known as Analysis-Paralysis, but this is a topic for another post. (procrastinating)… 
Agile in Action! – March 2010 – Review
01 year ago
From March-16th trough March-26th the workshop named Agile en Acción! took place in Buenos Aires City.
This edition was delivered to 15 participants, who through a serie of workshops based on real requierements created EPICs and User Stories, estimated and prioritized them, created the Product Backlog, defined Velocity, put together the Release Plan, and ended with a series of retrospective execices.
There was a great dynamic between the participants and between the teams that were built. We all have fun during those 4 days. I took some photos that you can access here: http://bit.ly/alQC2j
Greetings!
There will be a new Agile in Action! in April-2010: http://bit.ly/agile-en-accion–abril-2010
Agile Open Buenos Aires 2010 – Quality
01 year ago
Excellent experience in the AO Buenos Aires during March 13th. I can say that I’ve met many people and good experiences. Here you go the link to the photos of the event: http://bit.ly/coCnnA
Greetings!
Agile Methodologies & PMI
11 year ago
On Thursday March 4th, 2010 at 6:30 PM I’ll be talking for about an hour at the PMI Buenos Aires Chapter monthly members meeting.
The talk is entitled “Agile Methodologies & PMI” which will present the assumptions that shape traditional project management but seen from an agile perspective of time, cost and scope management. Traveling through the processes and PMBOK knowledge areas I’ll show how to adapt them to agile projects. There will also be several PMP tips discussed that any PMP can apply tomorrow to immediately start building an agile culture in their projects. All this will be discussed based on past experiences.
All attending PMP will be able to get 1.5 PDUd accredited (category 3).
Enyone interested in participating in this members’ meeting, please express your intention clicking here. For any questions, ask rm@pmi.org.ar
Agile Roles
01 year ago
This article is a Spanish direct translation of the “Programmers” section from the InfoQ Article named “Book Excerpt: Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum“, which is about Mike Cohn’s book “Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum“.
You can access the Spanish version of this article following this link.
Since the original article is written in English, I see no need to translate it. Please visit the original article here: http://www.infoq.com/articles/cohn-chapter8
