Niko Heikkilä 💻 @nikoheikkila@mastodon.technology

Final sprint 11 completed and the MVP is ready for production use.

Success:
- vehicle moves forward and backward slowly
- consumes bananas instead of gas
- client is happy with their new toy

Failure:
- does not generate the required 1.21 gigawatts even with the fusion reactor although we haven't performed proper load testing during a thunderstorm
- does not accelerate to 88 mph without radically being pushed forward by a train

Consultants have sent the invoice for the project and left the building.

Sprint 10 completed.

Retro: plutonium battery installation was a great success even though we didn't use protective equipment. Out of the blue the client insisted we must also build a skateboard without any wheels (call it hoverboard), which should somehow fly but rather resembles a curious male reproduction organ with stickers attached. Developers were happy to oblige.

Sprint 9 completed.

Retro: Passenger doors installed yet there is no mechanism to open them automatically. Mechanics also had greasy fingers from eating beef jerky so doors don't stay open for long either. The team discussed of patching the situation later with bubblegum (hopefully not).

Sprint 8 completed.

Retro: Flux capacitor is online and working or at the least displaying lights. Because of the schedule we might have to drop some features from the scope. It will likely be the time-travelling capability because architects can't get into agreement on how to integrate the Flux capacitor to the Java backend.

Sprint 7 completed.

Retro: we can now drive the vehicle! Kind of. If we believe very strongly we can. It turns out the client is too small to use the product as their tiny feet can't reach the pedals nor the stick. Management was delighted to hear our proposition that we start searching for bigger clients but I fear they might have misunderstood us.

Sprint 6 completed.

Retro: this time had to undo and rework a couple of tasks from the previous iterations. Nevertheless, got the rear lights done and the client is happy or infuriated about the progress. Can't say because the client is unable to speak.

Sprint 5 completed.

Retro: team focused mainly on frontend development this time. The vehicle still doesn't move but it shines modestly and has lights so feature priorities are in beautiful order.

It ain't much but it's honest day of work. More to come tomorrow!

Sprint 4 completed.

Retro: no one in the team thinks this vehicle-to-be should be driven like this. MVP is a wagon without horses and the product owner is fine with that.

Sprint 3 completed.

Retro: This had some interesting pieces and two rubber bands, which made it possible to build my first integration test. I don't know what it exactly tests and if it breaks but such is the world of inside-out development.

Sprint 2 completed.

Retro: some pieces feel off, so I might have collected some technical debt. No value for the users still, but I shrug because I'm only following a detailed requirements specification.

Sprint 1 completed.

Retro: this was not too hard yet!

Not-that-rainy day hobby begins. How long will this take? How many jiggawatts will it eventually require?

Big batches hurt you while they develop and when they come out.

Source: https://jhall.io/archive/2022/07/27/slow-stable-releases-or-fast-unstable-releases/

When you refine user stories, do you…

– add an imaginary number of story points to each story
– split the story into several subtasks
– estimate each subtask in hours
– sum up the hours
– calculate a deadline/commitment based on hours

It appears you're following a plan instead of responding to change, which contradicts the Agile Manifesto.

#NoEstimates

Choosing a new computer for work.

I realized what the Taskfile project is missing... an interactive task picker/runner!

As a lazy shellist, I made this Fish shell function for it. Enjoy.

#taskfile #fishshell

https://gist.github.com/nikoheikkila/f8f6d707102e186b790bc3efb5bd70c2

It's not rubberduck debugging, it's toxic brogrammer debugging.

PSA: anything done async will require a resync, so it's better to stay sync.

My reaction when someone in my team is enthusiastic about implementing a feature that no one asked for.

As a payment receiver, I want to send a knife emoji as the reaction if that bastard didn't pay back the full debt.