Author Archives: Liz

Upgrading wordpress and the missing posts

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Liz

I’ve finally got around to installing wordpress on my professional services site and upgrading to 2.8.3 on this blog. Then, this morning, I noticed that a link from Wikipedia’s BDD page to one of my old posts was broken. Further … Continue reading →

Posted in life | Leave a comment

It’s OK not to call them unit tests

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Liz

There’s been a bit of a twitter storm recently, prompted by Cashto’s blog, Uncle Bob’s response, and Justin’s excellent riposte. So, here’s my response to Cashto’s post. I value unit-level BDD hugely, and it’s fairly intuitive for me. So I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 3 Comments

Translating TDD to BDD

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Liz

Prompted by the recent twitter storm, prompted by Uncle Bob, Justin Etheridge and Cashto, here’s some sample language that I use when I’m coaching or thinking about BDD, instead of TDD. I’ve found this language really helps people adopt TDD … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 14 Comments

Lean and Agile haiku

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Liz

Many people have difficulty when they first encounter haiku in crafting a poem that’s aesthetically pleasing, with as few syllables as a haiku permits. (In Japanese, the “5-7-5” pattern is used, but in English some of us find that the … Continue reading →

Posted in writing | Leave a comment

BDD: A Lean Toolkit

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Liz

I’ve been invited to submit a talk to the Lean and Kanban conference in Atlanta, on how Lean principles have changed the way in which I approach TDD (which of course is BDD for me). For those of you on … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, conference | Leave a comment

Mocks, outside-in, swarming features and guesswork

Posted on October 17, 2009 by Liz

The paradox of mocking When we code from the outside-in in BDD, we start with the layer we know – the UI, often graphical – establish collaborators for the UI, establish collaborators for those classes, and work our way inwards … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, kanban, stories | 4 Comments

Lean and Kanban Conference Roundup

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Liz

The Lean and Kanban conference was hugely fun, with phenomenal speakers, passionate attendees and as many disparate topics as could possibly be imagined falling under the Lean umbrella. I particularly liked John Seddon’s approach, which I’ll boil down to “Apply … Continue reading →

Posted in conference | 1 Comment

Change, and keep changing

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Liz

Sometimes people ask me, “When we’ve gone Agile… when we are fully Lean… what will it look like?” The only answer I can come up with is this: Things will be changing. You’ll be in a better place to respond … Continue reading →

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Scrum vs. Kanban: FIGHT!

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Liz

Scrum: Hm, you’re rather small. Are you sure you want to do this? Kanban: Bring it. Scrum: Right. I represent a fundamental mindshift in the way that people do projects. Kanban: So do I. My mindshift is different to yours; … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban, scrum | 23 Comments

A Coaching Kanban board

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Liz

Chris McMahon mentioned my example of a coaching kanban board in the second of his series of posts against Kanban. That it comes across as simple and infantile in Chris’s example is my fault; I only really touched on the … Continue reading →

Posted in coaching, kanban, lean | 2 Comments