Alistair Cockburn

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Public Agile / Scrum CSM class (discussion: Re: Agile Development Class with Crystal and Certified ScrumMaster) : Aug 23-25, in SLC. You can register now (discussion: Re: Agile Development Class with Crystal and Certified ScrumMaster).
Public Certified Scrum Product Owner Class : Sep 27-29, in SLC. You can register now.
Public Writing Effective Use Cases course : not currently scheduled.
Writing Effective Use Cases course (discussion: Re: Writing Effective Use Cases course) is taught on-site in your organization!
My Consulting bio brief
All categories ! Blog (discussion: Re: Blog) ! Articles ! Talks ! Books (discussion: Re: Books) ! Poems ! Humor ! Use cases
How to use this site ! Comment on the site (discussion: Re: Site comments) ! Tricks for this site ! ContentWithDiscussions



Humans and Technology, Inc.
44 W. Broadway, #1601
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
801.824-1211
TotherAlistair@aol.com by email
@TotherAlistair on Twitter,Facebook

Dr. Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn, the Scottish way) is an internationally renowned project witchdoctor and IT strategist, best known for describing Software development as a Cooperative Game (discussion: Re: Cooperative game manifesto for software development), for helping craft the Agile Development Manifesto, for finally defining Use Cases (discussion: Re: Use cases) and for developing the initial response technique relaxation/massage form.


Most recent changes to this site:

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audio test 208/23/1008/23/10 00:20AlistairCreatededit
Re: Alistair CockburnBeing07/08/0908/23/10 23:26rado mens watchChangededit
Re: Alistair CockburnBeing07/08/0908/24/10 10:05AlistairTidiededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1008/24/10 18:40Ilker CetinkayaChangededit
Re: Earned-value and burn charts04/26/1008/24/10 19:52Dave KellowChangededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1008/25/10 10:57Scooter SchneiderChangededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1008/25/10 12:16William F. NazzaroChangededit
Oath of Non-Allegiance (discussion: Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance)Blog (discussion: Re: Blog)05/20/1008/25/10 19:46AlistairTidiededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1008/25/10 21:33WigahlukChangededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1008/26/10 06:00Pattern-chaserChangededit
Oath of Non-Allegiance (discussion: Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance)Blog (discussion: Re: Blog)05/20/1008/28/10 11:59AlistairChangededit
Re: Agile software development book08/22/1008/28/10 14:01aslamChangededit
Re: Agile software development book08/22/1008/28/10 22:45AlistairTidiededit
A short testamonial to test infectionBlog (discussion: Re: Blog)08/28/1008/28/10 23:36AlistairCreatededit
7 properties of highly successful projects (short list) (discussion: Re: 7 properties of highly successful projects)Articles06/19/0808/29/10 00:06AlistairTidiededit
7 Properties of Highly Successful Projects from Crystal ClearArticles08/29/1008/29/10 00:16AlistairCreatededit
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Re: Hexagonal architectureArticles10/05/0808/30/10 06:27AnusChangededit
Re: Hexagonal architectureArticles10/05/0808/30/10 13:55AlistairTidiededit
Courses (discussion: Re: Courses)Categories07/30/0608/31/10 19:55AlistairTidiededit
RECIPEPoems02/01/8608/31/10 21:17AlistairTidiededit
Re: Ports and adapters architecture09/01/1009/01/10 06:18benghunCreatededit
Cooperative game manifesto for software development (discussion: Re: Cooperative game manifesto for software development)Articles01/04/9809/01/10 07:25AlexandreChangededit
Cooperative game manifesto for software development (discussion: Re: Cooperative game manifesto for software development)Articles01/04/9809/01/10 13:11AlistairTidiededit
Ports and adapters architecture deprecated link (discussion: Re: Ports and adapters architecture)06/19/0809/01/10 13:15AlistairTidiededit
Hexagonal architecture (discussion: Re: Hexagonal architecture)Articles01/04/0509/01/10 13:16AlistairTidiededit
Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1009/01/10 17:54Olaf LewitzChangededit
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Re: Oath of Non-Allegiance05/20/1009/02/10 06:01Hans HöökChangededit

An alternate photo of me:
2003wildface.jpg

Alistair photo 2003 PhD small 050.png

“Computers must support the way in which people naturally and comfortably work. This is needed both for personal job satisfaction and for corporate survival. I care about whether the team is thriving, and whether the software is being delivered. Keeping the people trained and the process light are key to both.” (written in 1991, still applicable 20 years later!)

This site is here to act as a watering hole for people with interests in these topics, with hopes that you get pleasantly lost browsing the content :-)

Other videos:
PoemVid Right before your eyes
PoemVid The Hike
PoemVid Two potatoes groping in the dark
Use case FAQvid - One or many primary actors
Use case FAQvid - Putting a table into a use case
Vidclip - What is the difference between teaching and learning
Vid of Alistair describing Shu Ha Ri
Vid of Alistair discussing agile in his kitchen


Discussion

Hi, Atalichome — I moved your question to Use case questions (discussion: Re: Use case questions) where I answered it.

All the best – Alistair



I am battling with one central problem in agile: how do you remain “agile” and open to change when you’re working against a fixed budget and defined scope, and a customer who is not a “software person”.

We use an adapted version of SCRUM for web development, which is part-software and part-design. Our customers have only a limited interest in being involved in the project. They want x by x date. But they also want to make changes along the way.

So do you baseline the project against the original scope document? And then measure each change impact on the budget?

It’s driving me kind of nuts — how can you merge an agile process with a non-agile budget?

-by Jarred Cinman on 11/25/2009 at 1:38 PM



I think Earned-value and burn charts (discussion: Re: Earned-value and burn charts) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle might help you.

Also: don’t be afraid to say “no” to the customer. Every time you say “yes” to the customer you lose a bit of control over the project. If you say “yes” too much the project will spin out of control.

-by Floyd on 11/26/2009 at 7:18 AM



I recently read about this new agile methodology (well, again calling Agile a methodology itself may be problematic … anyways) ... its called PLAY BALL!

I read it twice and kind of think it is nothing but a modified version of Scrum and a little hypothetical in terms of 9 innings and all. Wanted to know your view point on the same.

-by Dinesh Madne on 12/24/2009 at 8:26 AM



Have you considered how Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Contraints might be applied to Lean Manufacturing to try and increase the overall throughput of a software development organization? Just curious.

David

-by David Douglas on 1/29/2010 at 2:55 PM



Yes, indeed —- see "Spending" Efficiency to Go Faster, which does just that.

cheers – Alistair

-by Alistair on 1/30/2010 at 11:46 AM



Wondefull way how you describe the use cases, in your book, it is the only place where I have found a natural, clear, objetive and well description.

Success in your bussiness

Jorge

-by j.m on 2/17/2010 at 3:27 PM



Hi:

What are your undergraduate degrees?

From which institution did you receive your doctorate and what was the subject of your dissertation?

Regards,

Zarfman

-by Zarfman on 3/9/2010 at 10:12 PM



dear sir,
can you give me a case study where requirement is elicited by uscases and the actual effort incuured. i will be grateful to you sir,

-by Rajesh on 3/14/2010 at 6:18 AM



Hello Dr. Cockburn

My name is Ivonne Flores and I’m a software engineering’s master degree student from Mexico.
I am working on a research in the field of agile methods focusing in the importance of the human factor within the software development process.

The main hypothesis of this research is to determine if software developers in Mexico are indeed prepared to succesfully adopt and take advantage of the benefits of agile methodologies in the process of software development, in spite of our generalized lack of a healthy organizational culture and organizational values.

After reading your article entitled “Agile Software Development: The people factor”, I could understand some of the desired characteristics that an agil’s development team members should bear. Unfortunately, i’m not totally clear at that.

My purpose is to make a comparison between characteristics from Mexican developers against those of the ideal agil development team and get a conclusion.

At this point of my research i have got a profile of the generic mexican developer, who appear to be obedient, cordial, moderate, neat, adaptable, indulgent, respectful and sometimes purposeless.

After all this introduction i am willing to ask you What is the ideal profile for the members of an agile development team?.

I sincerely appreciate the attention and time that you spend at reading and replying this message.
Thank you.

Regards…

-by Ivonne Flores on 4/26/2010 at 3:27 PM



my name’s tong,i come from VietNam, i’m learning about methodology Crystal. I have some problem about it, i don’t know the purpose of Crystal and the steps taken to create Crystal or process of it. can you speak specific than???

-by maivantong on 4/28/2010 at 12:56 PM



Hello Alistair,

I am not sure if we have the situation we have use case A both include and is extended by use case B

The scenario is here. Let say I browse some products and place an order with amazon and choose to pay by a paypal account.

But halfway through, I decided not to pay right a way but save the order in PayPal suppose Amazon allow Paypal to do so.

When I write the use case “place order ”,
the situation arises that “place order” and use-case “authenticate Paypal user” would have at the same time a extend and include relationship.

One scenario is the usual way that users browse products and place order and “authenticate Paypal user” is inserted to at the extension point once user chooses to pay.

Another scenario, user login to paypal successfully and choose to pay the saved order. In this scenario, the “authenticate paypal user” use case always happen during user can place order the order.

What is your opinion?
Thank you

Ken Hope

-by Ken Hope on 5/16/2010 at 12:54 PM



Hi,

I just tried signing up with this website with my email id (mentioned in the form above). An error page was displayed to me telling me that there was some problem and I should retry the operation.

But when i tried signing up again with the same email id, i was told that the email was already in use.

Also my attempt to log in with the password i supplied the first time i tried to sign up was also unsuccessful.

Could you please help me with this. I stumbled upon your site today only and I realy do want to be a registered user of this site. :)

Warm Regards
Sachin Sharma

-by Sachin Sharma on 6/17/2010 at 11:04 AM



My apologies – I’ll see what we can do.

Alistair

-by Alistair on 6/17/2010 at 8:29 PM



Hi,
I think there should not be multiple Primary or Initiating actors associated with a use csae. If so,probably it means modeling business roles as actors rather than identifying actors from system’s perspective. From system’s perspective, it doesnt matter whether it is actor A or actor B. All it matters is some external entity!!.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Praveen

-by Praveen on 7/15/2010 at 7:30 AM



Hi,
I think there should not be multiple Primary or Initiating actors associated with a use csae. If so,probably it means modeling business roles as actors rather than identifying actors from system’s perspective. From system’s perspective, it doesnt matter whether it is actor A or actor B. All it matters is some external entity!!.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Praveen

-by Praveen on 7/15/2010 at 8:31 AM



Hi, Praveen,

I just answered this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52uOYQBiPsU (in the style of the Old Spice man :).

best wishes, Alistair

-by Alistair on 7/15/2010 at 11:25 AM



Hi Alistair,
Thanks for the clarification :) !!
Regards,
Praveen

-by Praveen on 7/16/2010 at 9:37 AM

Heh heh :), glad you like it. That was fun and easy – I’ll do more use case FAQvids in the style of Old Spice Ad man.



Hi Alistair,

Can you agree or am I missing something?

thx,

Evert

-by Evert on 7/28/2010 at 9:31 AM

Hi, Evert, I moved your question to use case questions (discussion: Re: Use case questions). Alistair




hi
can u help me to find good information about relation between Service Oriented Architecture and Agile Development,I read your usefull article about Agile development and i think u could kindly help me more.
thank u very much
Best Regards

-by Narges Shafieian on 8/29/2010 at 10:48 AM

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