A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.
Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.
It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective here.

https://t.co/I8q6rRqxym
Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.
Researching the user’s problem is not any of these things.

It’s important we not lump all possible pre-Sprint 1 activity under the Big Design Up Front label.

We shouldn’t head into Sprint 1 believing we know the solution. Yet, we need to be clear on the problem.
Austin Govella (@austingovella) said it well.

https://t.co/8fJA3QpA0X

More from Tech

I could create an entire twitter feed of things Facebook has tried to cover up since 2015. Where do you want to start, Mark and Sheryl? https://t.co/1trgupQEH9


Ok, here. Just one of the 236 mentions of Facebook in the under read but incredibly important interim report from Parliament. ht @CommonsCMS
https://t.co/gfhHCrOLeU


Let’s do another, this one to Senate Intel. Question: “Were you or CEO Mark Zuckerberg aware of the hiring of Joseph Chancellor?"
Answer "Facebook has over 30,000 employees. Senior management does not participate in day-today hiring decisions."


Or to @CommonsCMS: Question: "When did Mark Zuckerberg know about Cambridge Analytica?"
Answer: "He did not become aware of allegations CA may not have deleted data about FB users obtained through Dr. Kogan's app until March of 2018, when
these issues were raised in the media."


If you prefer visuals, watch this short clip after @IanCLucas rightly expresses concern about a Facebook exec failing to disclose info.
On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/

1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/
https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/

4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/
After getting good feedback on yesterday's thread on #routemobile I think it is logical to do a bit in-depth technical study. Place #twilio at center, keep #routemobile & #tanla at the periphery & see who is each placed.


This thread is inspired by one of the articles I read on the-ken about #postman API & how they are transforming & expediting software product delivery & consumption, leading to enhanced developer productivity.

We all know that #Twilio offers host of APIs that can be readily used for faster integration by anyone who wants to have communication capabilities. Before we move ahead, let's get a few things cleared out.

Can anyone build the programming capability to process payments or communication capabilities? Yes, but will they, the answer is NO. Companies prefer to consume APIs offered by likes of #Stripe #twilio #Shopify #razorpay etc.

This offers two benefits - faster time to market, of course that means no need to re-invent the wheel + not worrying of compliance around payment process or communication regulations. This makes entire ecosystem extremely agile
(1) Some haters of #Cardano are not only bag holders but also imperative developers.

If you are an imperative programmers you know that Plutus is not the most intuitive -> (https://t.co/m3fzq7rJYb)

It is, however, intuitive for people with IT financial background, e.g. banks

(2)

IELE + k framework will be a real game changer because there will be DSLs (Domain Specific Languages) in any programming language supported by K framework. The only issue is that we need to wait for all this

(3) Good news is that the moment we get IELE integrated into Cardano, we get some popular langs. To my knowledge we should get from day one: Solidity and Rust, maybe others as well?

List of langs:
https://t.co/0uj1eBfrYj, some commits from many years ago..

@rv_inc ?

#Cardano

(a) Last but not least, marketing to people with Haskell, functional programming with experience and decision makers in banks is a tricky one, how do you market but not tell them you want to replace them. In the end one strategy is to pitch new markets, e.g. developing world

(b) As banks realize what is happening they maybe more inclined to join - not because they would like to but because they will have to - in such cases some development talent maybe re-routed to Plutus / Cardano / Algorand / Tezos

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?