Given at the DaVinci Institute 3/20

1. agile development
THE PIVOTAL WAY
Mike Gehard
Software Engineer, Boulder
mgehard@pivotallabs.com
@pivotallabs
@mikegehard

2. PIVOTAL LABS
• 200+ people in San Francisco, New York, Boulder,
Los Angeles, Boston, London (for now)
• Ruby on Rails, iOS and Android
• Big name clients
• Makers of Pivotal Tracker (used by 500K people)
• Agile/XP since beginning of time
GRUELING, HARD CORE, DISCIPLINED
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
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3. FIRST, WE FEED
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4. THEN WE STAND
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5. AND THEN PAIR
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6. AND THEN PAIR
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7. WE TAKE OUR BREAKS
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8. AND REPLENISH
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9. A GRUELING DAY
• 08:45 Breakfast
• 09:05 All Hands Standup
• 09:15 Team Standups
• Lunch noon-ish
• Ping pong at will
• Done around 18:00* (*your mileage may vary)
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10. IT’S ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY
• Consistent, predictable delivery is at a premium
• Tired developers leave bugs
• Tired developers leave
• Short-term bursts of productivity cost more in the
long term
Happy developers = productive developers
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11. BUILDING SUSTAINABLE
SOFTWARE IN A
SUSTAINABLE WAY
amazing secrets revealed!

12. GOALS OF OUR SOFTWARE
PROJECTS
• Get V1 of new product to market quickly
• Malleable, change based on feedback
• Predictable schedule with no surprises
• Low bug count
• Performant, scalable
• Help client teams go faster and maintain it
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13. TRADITIONAL SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT IS EXPENSIVE
• Growing maintenance debt
• Rising defect rate
• Increasing cost of change
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15. EFFECTIVE (AND SUSTAINABLE)
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT...
• Is mostly about communication
• Needs to allow for change
• Takes discipline and rigor
• Needs to be constantly adjusted
The XP philosophy embraces and
enables these ideas.
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16. OUR HISTORY WITH XP
• Started with “by the book” XP in 1999
• Helped Beck et al with the early books
• Great early experiences with XP
• Thinking is always evolving
• Various changes/additions to the process
Bottom line: it’s a truly different way to
build software, with awesome results.
And it’s fun, day after day.
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17. CORE PRACTICES
October 12, 2012

18. ALL PAIRING, ALL THE TIME
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19. PAIR PROGRAMMING
• Developers sit in pairs
• All machines are communal
• No laptops/iPhones
• Ping pong pairing
• Frequent pair rotation
• UX designers pair with developers as needed
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20. PAIRING BENEFITS
• Higher quality code
• Shares codebase knowledge quickly
• Very high bus count
• More focus
• Greater discipline around other technical
practices
Pairing is our competitive advantage.
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21. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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22. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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23. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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24. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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25. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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26. PAIRING COMBINATIONS
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27. 100% TEST DRIVEN
• No production code written without a failing test
• No code checked in without running tests
• Focus on organization and readability of tests
• Focus on keeping tests fast
• Tests are for design and regression
Keeps cost of change constant.
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28. RUTHLESS REFACTORING
• Code evolution
• Incremental design towards patterns
• It takes discipline, but pairing helps
Tells you when something is resistant to
change.
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29. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
• Critical to maintain constant cost of change
• When to release is a business decision
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30. THE TEAM
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31. THE TEAM
• Small, typically 2-4 pairs
• Co-located, or intermingled-then-remote
• Daily standups, weekly planning meetings
• Same hours
• Stable anchor, but frequent cross-team rotation
Software development is a team sport!
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32. INVOLVED CUSTOMER
• Within earshot and always available
• Empowered to make decisions
• Maintains prioritized backlog
• Accepts/rejects stories continuously
• Close collaboration with design/UX
Constantly aware of situation.
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34. RETROSPECTIVES

35. TECHNICAL EXPERTS
• Lead in specific tech area
• Guest pairs on teams as needed
• Blog & tech talk regularly
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36. HIRING FOR APTITUDE AND
CULTURAL FIT

37. THANK YOU
Mike Gehard
Software Engineer
mgehard@pivotallabs.com
@pivotallabs
@mikegehard
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