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Great metaphor! Scaling Agile – a perfect method.
Please share!
Great metaphor! Scaling Agile – a perfect method.
I have heard many reasons why a new team should wait to start "doing" Agile. Recently, I was asked to help a group who was struggling to get a Scrum team started. They had real obstacles to overcome, but waiting wasn't helping them.
This group was part of an IT initiative to develop a business intelligence program for a large energy company. The existing processes were highly inefficient and wasteful. The losses were in the ballpark of $1M/day. There was a long history of failed solutions. Needless to say, this was a critical project.
Those of us who understand Scrum well know that the more critical a project is, the more urgent it is to get a team up and running as early as possible. Unfortunately for this group, there was a great deal of cultural inertia from the IT management holding them back, including chronic distrust between IT & business leadership. IT management perceived Agile to be a risk and a threat. They were tolerating it as a "pilot project". They wanted to be sure that when Agile failed, they would not be left holding the bag. Their solution for self-preservation was to insist on getting the architecture of the system in place before the team started to work on features.
The only developer that management trusted with the initial architecture work was also extremely busy working on other projects. This individual and several other people slated to be on the new Scrum team were tied up working on change requests for a Waterfall project with no clear end in sight. It seemed impossible to predict when the system architecture work might begin, let alone end.
Meanwhile, the Product Owner was waiting for some new functionality that he could use and show to his superiors—the stakeholders that he reported to in the business. The program manager, who was the champion of the Scrum implementation, understood Scrum to be the way to succeed. The first Scrum team was wrapping up on the first project in the new program and the business was happy with the process and the results. This confirmed his understanding and gave him some traction to move forward. But he didn't have authority over all of the slated team members (specifically the sole developer trusted by IT management) to start.
I tried to explore possibilities of moving forward with the program manager. The conversation went something like this:
TB: Are there some people who are available to start as the team for the new project?
PM: Yes.
TB: Great! Do you need the star developer on this project or are there other people who have the skills to do the work who could be on the team?
PM: There are other people with skills who are available and who could be on the team.
TB: Great! Do you have the authority to make that happen?
PM: Yes.
TB: Great! Can we have the first Planning Meeting tomorrow?
PM: Yes.
TB: Great! What time do we start?…
One might get the impression from reading that conversation that we were on our way to Sprint 1. However, as we know, things are usually not that simple. There were several more obstacles to work through.
(As an aside, I know that some people reading this might be thinking "what about Sprint Zero". These guys were talking about Sprint Zero, -1, -2…basically all the way back to Waterfall. I needed to help them overcome that tendency.)
Below are a few of the other obstacles they were struggling with:
1. The program manager had assigned a project manager, one of his direct reports, as the ScrumMaster to the new Scrum team. This person was already responsible for (and overwhelmed by) the Waterfall death march project now in perpetual change request mode.
Advice for anyone in this situation:
Find someone else to be the ScrumMaster. It would be a better use of the external consultant (myself in this case) to serve as an interim ScrumMaster (coach) so that the team could just start, rather than trying to use a traditional project manager who was already overwhelmed by other responsibilities. In other words, don't wait for your ideal ScrumMaster candidate to be ready. In most cases, management's first choice for ScrumMaster is often not the best one. If you do not have an experienced coach to serve as interim ScrumMaster, then the best thing to do is hire someone specifically for this role. Again, it is better to just start than to wait for this new hire. If you have to wait for the new hire, someone from the team should just volunteer and learn on the job until help arrives. Even that will give you far better results than waiting. Just start!
2. The project manager who was assigned as the ScrumMaster was assigning Product Owner responsibilities to a business analyst that reported to him. The "BA" was worried that the Product Backlog was not ready for the team. The real Product Owner had created a high-level Backlog with items that were most likely too large for the team to complete within the two-week Sprint duration that they had decided on. The BA was trying to work with the PO, but there wasn't much reciprocity there, mainly because of lack of knowledge of the business on the part of the BA and the PO's lack of trust in the BA's ability to serve as his proxy on the team. During one of my previous visits over a month before, the PO, BA and a few of the other team members had workshopped the Product Backlog, refining the top "epic" and creating a User Story small enough for the team to start working on and complete in the first Sprint. Now, that story was lost and forgotten.
Advice for anyone in this situation:
Don't wait for the Product Backlog to be perfect. If the Backlog is not ready, use the first part of the planning meeting to identify what the team and the Product Owner can agree on as the deliverable for the first Sprint. In fact, that is all you should be discussing in this meeting in any case. With the right people in the room (the whole team) this can be done well enough. If the team is not able to agree within the time box of this meeting, it most likely means that you don't have the right people in the room. For example, there may be a project manager and a BA who want to delay the start of the project because they feel uncomfortable with the perceived ambiguity of the process. It would be better if these people were not on the team and not in the room. If the team says something like "we can give you 'X' in two weeks" and the Product Owner says something like "good with me", then make that your Goal for the Sprint and get on with the second part of planning—creating a set of tasks to execute the deliverable.
During the first Sprint, the Product Owner can be working with the team to refine the next items in the Backlog based on what has been learned from the Planning Meeting, which is probably a great deal. The purpose of the Product Backlog is to realize a great Product. Don't wait for a perfect Backlog—just start!
3. The culture of fear and distrust perpetuated by IT management was pervasive and the team was afraid to make a commitment to a deliverable.
Advice for anyone in this situation
Help people understand commitment as a team capability that develops over time. Teams are able to make and keep commitments based on historical velocity. For at least the first Sprint and perhaps for a while after that, new teams will not be able to make firm commitments. Most teams fail to deliver after their first Sprint. There is a learning curve to Scrum. There is a lot of change and a lot of new things going on. The environment of a new Scrum team is drastically more dynamic and complex than what most people have previously experienced. It takes getting used to. People need space to learn. Help them overcome their fear of failure. Agile is about failing fast. Get it wrong early, learn, adapt and change course. What a young team needs to be committed to is learning what it needs to do in order to deliver potentially shippable product every Sprint. In order to do that, you need to be doing Scrum.
I started this post by identifying that there are many reasons to delay "doing" Agile. I believe this stems from a cultural dichotomy in our society between "being" and "doing". We don't start doing something until we believe that we are prepared to succeed at it. We have to "be" ready before we can "do". This is a false dichotomy that Agile is designed to help us overcome. Another dichotomy is success vs. failure. The only real failure in Agile is the failure to learn and improve. Even the notion of "failure to deliver" is misguided. The real failure is not learning to deliver. In order to "be" Agile, you need to be able to fail. In order to "fail" at Agile, you need to do it. By doing Agile and failing, we learn to be Agile. There is no other way.
So, please… just start!
This is my first crack at a series of posts intended to document reflections, insights and experiences that have been generated over the past several years at Berteig Consulting in our work helping organizations to transform with Agile methods and approaches.
The most recent iteration of our collective practice is the Real Agility Program. The Program was created as a flexible yet systematic process for developing high-performance teams. The Program involves assessments, training, leadership and delivery teams coaching and internal coach development for teams and organizations that want to transform in order to become hyper-productive, lean and robust.
A central tenet of the Program is that teams are organic in nature. They are living systems that grow and develop in the right conditions. They also develop in stages. The Real Agility Program addresses the natural stages of team development with a sequence of steps or "sections".
Much like a seed, a new team has the latent potential for developing into a complex organic system of high-performance capabilities. Capabilities of high-performance start out as a simple set of attributes and grow in complexity and strength over time. Capabilities to carry out more complex activities are built onto capabilities for more simple activities. Little by little, high-performance can be realized in this way.
Something that most teams need help with early on, particularly if they do not already possess a growth mindset, is overcoming the false dichotomy between theory and practice. An indication of this is when we hear people say things like "well, that makes perfect sense in theory, but it's just not practical for us." Or "we need help to put that theoretical idea into practice in our own reality". This reveals a mindset that conversations around concepts and ideas are only valuable if they can be implemented immediately in a measurably beneficial way. The desire for technical recipes is understandable. They can help with immediate pain relief. They are not the most effective way to build capabilities.
The Tree of Organic Growth is an exercise that we often share early in the Program and is designed to help teams develop a more integrated mindset and approach to capacity building (very similar to The Tree of High-Performance in Lyssa Adkin's wonderful book Coaching Agile Teams). The facilitator usually starts by drawing a simple diagram of a whole tree, including the roots. Sometimes, simply exploring the concept in a conversation serves the purpose just as well. The team is asked to identify values, concepts, principles, qualities, skills, attitudes, habits and knowledge that are already present on the team that will serve as roots for building capabilities of high performance. The conversation is not merely a nice, ("fluffy") theoretical stroll in the proverbial park, but a critical aspect of the hard work of re-shaping thought, which in turn re-shapes reality.
Let's look at an example of the aspects of building a specific capability. A well-known Agile capability of high-performance is the self-organization of the team. On one level, it starts to happen as soon as a group of people come together to accomplish something and no one person is identified as the "boss". Without certain capabilities in the members, however, this can get very Animal Farm in almost no time. High-performance requires the development of qualities, attitudes, conceptual knowledge & understanding, habits and skills in all members of the team. For example, team members need to develop the qualities of openness, integrity and helpfulness. Attitudes such as a humble posture of learning and serving the team need to be developed. Knowledge of concepts such as consultative decision-making and Wideband Delphi and how self-organization differs from traditional command and control project management needs to be developed. Good habits and practices such as regularly coming together as a team to reflect and plan are essential for the team to become able to deliver complete increments of high value often. And, of course, team members will need to learn skills in terms of communication and collaboration, as well as other technical skills that may have previously been outside of their formal roles.
Furthermore, everyone can develop in any of these areas of any capability at any given time. Just like in any organic system, capabilities of high-performance benefit from constant nourishment, feedback and reinforcement.
Growing a high-performance team is a complex process that requires a great deal of effort, patience, time and a supportive organizational environment that will allow for all of these aspects to develop on a team. It is an investment in people as much as it is a business decision. There are no shortcuts or formulas, but with the right conditions, every team has the potential to develop capabilities of high-performance.
From push system to pull system thinking
One of the disconnects holding teams back the most in an organization embarking on an Agile transformation is the lack of will and perhaps understanding of vision on the part of the business. The required shift in thinking is from a "push system" to a "pull system". Historically and still culturally, most organizations, even those claiming to be 'Agile' are very much push systems. The business folks in client services – VPs, Directors, sales people, etc. seem to make time (deadline) commitments to clients on behalf of teams and then the teams are given the deadlines to finish the work. Sometimes, the deadlines are decided on in consultation with particular individuals on the teams and very rarely, if ever, with the actual teams themselves. In any case, the fact that the business is almost entirely deadline-driven is the centre of the push system. Deadlines push or drive everything else. Deadlines are fixed and often considered non-negotiable. Deadlines are a taboo subject – it is considered a waste of time to even discuss them because they just don't and won't ever move. The general attitude is that if we try to move deadlines, we put the entire business at risk because our clients will drop us and turn to one of our competitors who claim to be able to promise and keep deadlines. If we lose our clients, we lose business, we lose money and it potentially puts us all out of jobs. What this exposes is not only a push system driven by deadlines, but a culture that is actually driven by fear. The not-so-implicit message is that if you miss a deadline, you might lose your job, so you had better do whatever it takes to not miss the deadline. Or else. Push and pull systems and mentalities are like oil and water – they don't mix. In Agile, there is no place for fear of failure. Rather, teams must be allowed to fail (miss deadlines) and learn from their failures (plan better).
Why quality, not time/cost or scope is non-negotiable
The "make the deadline or else message" is couched and clouded by other talk. The main excuse is to blame the client, as noted above. "That's just the way our clients work, the way the market works". Of course, such an excuse contains a kernel of truth. Without a true understanding and embrace of Agile, the idea of not meeting deadlines and the perceived consequences can be truly scary. Generally, there is an understanding from the business that the productivity of teams may drop somewhat as they progress through the storming stage. What this translates into is a difficult discussion with clients around delayed delivery. It is tolerable in that it is temporary. "Once the teams get up and running, we can go back to meeting our deadlines, and even be able to deliver early because Agile is supposed to be faster." But the benefits of truly adopting Agile are much more powerful than this.
Understanding the true business value of Agile
What needs to be understood is the true business value for investing in Agile processes and practices – how it may add cost and time to the initial development Cycle, but how it saves both the business and the client tremendously on technical debt and support long-term. This needs to be understood and championed by the business in order for the organization to become liberated from its enslavement to the push system mentality. At the heart of such a mental liberation is the wholehearted adoption and commitment to the Agile/Lean principle that quality is non-negotiable. The investment in Agile processes and practices is essentially an investment not only in quality, but in continuous quality improvements towards the goal of being able to frequently deliver products of increasing relevance and quality (value). The ability to ship frequently allows for sustainable growth. All of this is made impossible by the deadline-driven push system mentality/culture of fear.
The urgent need for slack
One of the first things that a team needs in order to focus on continuous quality improvements is slack so that it can learn to learn. The first goal of the business leadership should be to facilitate scope and deadline slack for the team. This goal should also be fully and visibly championed by the business leadership. In order to develop the capability to facilitate slack, the business needs to gain knowledge around the purpose and importance of Agile processes and practices and be able to articulate a strong business case for them. The business leadership needs to develop the skill of educating the team, management and business leadership on the long-term benefits of an Agile transformation – the transformation from a push system to a pull system. The key stakeholders and business leaderships need to possess the courage to engage in difficult conversations with management and clients who may be upset by the short-term pain of delays and missed deadlines and protect the team from continued attempts to push work into the team. Perhaps above all, the business leadership needs to develop an attitude of learning – a humble learning posture that allows for the setting aside of preconceived notions, fears and prejudices around what it means to be a good business leader. A leader possessed of this posture demonstrates a learning attitude by stressing first and foremost the importance of creating slack for the team to learn to learn. It is a common pitfall for inexperienced business leaderships and stakeholders to expect Agile to provide solutions for their push system woes, woes that include the broken trust of clients from consistently broken (unrealistic, dreamt-up) deadline promises and the crippling effects of technical debt (the fallout of the former – when scope, time and cost are fixed, quality is compromised).
If the business leadership, with the support of the Process Facilitators and the Transformation Team, is able to foster the organizational will to create slack for the teams, then the teams will have the space they need to truly focus on continuous quality improvements. This is a critical milestone on the path to realizing the true, measurable benefits of Agile. Although the support of others is needed, the business leadership is in a unique position benefitting from an intimate relationship with both the needs of the business as well as the daily life of the team.
Why the business leadership needs to own the process
The first way that the business leadership creates slack for the teams is by championing the process. In OpenAgile, like all other Agile methodologies, there are key features of the process the purpose of which are to give space for new teams to begin to make the often seemingly inconsequential, yet ultimately critical first steps towards continuous quality improvements. One of the most obvious of these features is the Agile team meetings. In the early stages of team development, organizational understanding and will, the OpenAgile meetings (particularly the Reflection and Learning aspects of the Engagement Meetings in OpenAgile) can easily be discounted as an obstacle preventing the team from getting the "real work" done. What is often forgotten under the pressure of deadlines is the fact that in order for a team to be able to learn to make continuous quality improvements, it needs to develop the capability of systematic (frequent & regular) inspection and adaptation of the way that it works. It is easy to save on the short term pain of perceived non-negotiable deadlines (meeting deadlines at all cost = success) by compromising on investing in the process, especially when the team is still learning to learn and the effectiveness of the meetings is not yet apparent. When the team and the organization have an expectation of Agile as something that fits into the push system and allows for a team to function better within such a system, it can be hard to understand how spending time in a kind of meeting that the team doesn't seem good at yet can be of any value. This is where the business leadership needs to stand firmly behind the process. The team needs the meetings – the space to reflect, learn and plan – in order to learn to become more effective at making continuous quality improvements – a critical feature of an effective pull system. Without the meetings, the team will never develop this critical capability and as a result, will never become an Agile team. Instead, the team will revert back to getting the "real work" done with all of the quality problems crippling the organization and which led to the decision to adopt an Agile framework in the first place.
Why the business leadership should care about burn-down
Another key feature of the process for the business leadership to understand and champion is the concept of burn-down as represented by the burn-down chart of an Agile team. Agile doesn't care about how much work the team gets done. It assumes that the team is doing valuable work and getting things done – in other words, that the team is managing itself and working towards its goals and commitments. There are no tools in Agile for an individual, least of all the business leadership, to measure and manage how much work the team is getting done. Agile acknowledges the reality that real (sustainable) productivity cannot be forced on any team. Instead, a team grows its productivity at a sustainable pace when it is given enough slack to do so. The team makes a plan at the beginning of the Cycle based on what it understands about its capacity, works towards that goal throughout the Cycle and hopefully delivers valuable results at the end of the Cycle. By learning to apply the process of continuous improvement, quality and productivity go up hand in hand. That is the essence of the pull model. Through all of this, the team manages "how" it gets work done. The productivity of a team can be measured, but the burn-down chart is neither an appropriate nor effective tool for measuring the productivity of a team. Instead, burn-down provides one specific measurement and ONLY this one measurement: WORK REMAINING (in order to achieve the goal/commitment of the current Cycle). It does not and cannot tell you how much the team got done and even less so the whys and hows of the output and productivity of the team during the Cycle.
So what is the purpose of burn-down and why should the business leadership even care? If it can't be used as a tool to measure the productivity of the team (in other words, if it can't be used to manage the team) then what importance can it possibly have? These are typical questions of teams and individuals that are coming from a traditional project management, i.e. command & control, i.e. "push" system mentality. Understanding the purpose of burn-down depends on the ability to make the shift from the push system paradigm to the pull system paradigm. In a push system, burn-down is nice but somewhat irrelevant. For an organization committed to an Agile transformation (towards a pull system of self-managed teams) it is an invaluable launch pad for powerful conversations that live at the heart of continuous quality improvements.
Commitment to the business requirements come from the Agile teams
When a team decides on a plan for a Cycle of work, the plan is a commitment. This is a critical step in the Agile process. It is only after a unanimous commitment from the whole team that the team begins to work on the plan. If any individual team member feels hesitant about the work in the plan, tasks and potentially even Value Drivers should be removed until everyone is comfortable making a commitment. When the business leadership is telling a team what the plan is, then it is not the team's plan and therefore it cannot be a team commitment. This is not only an inappropriate use of authority, it is also breaking the Agile process. Moreover, when a plan and therefore a commitment is forced onto a team, the team cannot be held accountable for failure. Worse yet, the team will never learn to plan. If a team is not able to plan, then it is not able to make commitments. If the team is overwhelmed by an overly-ambitious, management-forced plan, it will not learn to evaluate its capacity and apply that knowledge to long-term planning and project estimates. It will not learn to make meaningful quality improvements and reflect on its progress. It will not learn to self-manage or self-organize. The purpose of burn-down is to establish commitment velocity. In other words, the amount of work that the team can truthfully expect to complete during the Cycle when it is making the Plan. The difference between the number of tasks in the Cycle Plan and the number of tasks remaining at the end of the Cycle gives the team its commitment velocity. Commitment velocity is always based on minimum historical velocity. The team uses commitment velocity to make a Cycle Plan containing no more than the number of tasks represented by its commitment velocity. This allows the team to spend just the right amount of effort and time on planning and allows the team slack to focus on the truly Agile work of learning and continuous quality and process improvements. Over-planning, especially when it is wedded to over-committing or even worse, non-committing (a common push system mentality pitfall forced onto teams by the business leadership) leaves the team in a state of dependent on daily micro-management and can completely halt the progress of a team. Not to mention that this is a flagrant violation of Agile values (truthfulness, responding to change over following a plan) and principles (sustainable development). Such compromises to foundational Agile values, principles and processes may produce desired results in the very short-term, but the long-term costs can be crippling to teams and organizations. The wasteful activity associated with team dependency on micro-management is what often leads organizations to the accumulation of technical debt that places them in dire competitive disadvantage and desperate need for Agile transformation in the first place. If an organization misses out on this golden opportunity, teams can become demoralized and innocuous to the Agile practices and the promise of an Agile transformation can quickly erode.
Coaching Agile Teams course descriptionCoaching Agile Teams is a training experience that covers both the being and the doing of agile coaching. There's a lot to learn, experience and practice! At the end of the course, you will be capable of applying many new tools and techniques, as well as your own mindset changes, to coach agile teams to high performance. As practical as it is provocative, the Coaching Agile Teams course challenges agile coaches to rise to the fullest expression of their role and offer simple, practical ways to get there.
You'll walk away from the course with your personal coaching improvement backlog – a tangible plan you can use to thoughtfully improve your coaching when you're back in your daily circumstances. We use your real world situations and scenarios throughout the class allowing you to craft powerful ways to address the challenges you face. You'll also have many new things to try with your teams and you will probably depart with a few provocative ideas to chew on (in fact, maybe wrangle with for a while). All of these outcomes add up to your ability to become the excellent agile coach your teams need.
Register for Coaching Teams Class here!
OpenAgile London 2013 is the first annual conference focused on OpenAgile and how it is used in organizations by real teams. London was chosen due to the great learning environment with both the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College being located here. This conference is meant to help both students and professionals by providing learning and networking opportunities.
The purpose of OpenAgile is to create an environment in which people are free to express their true nature and capacities to contribute to the betterment of their organization.
We welcome you to participate in this informative and inspirational event that will give you the tools for the future of management!
For Registration and more info visit visit http://www.openagilelondon.com/index.html
Hi Everyone,
I'm pleased to announce that a mini-conference for OpenAgile, with some great speakers, has been planned and is ready to accept early-bird registrations! The conference takes place in London, Ontario (yes, there is an airport) at the University of Western Ontario on March 18th.
Check out the conference information at http://www.openagilelondon.com/
I will be one of the speakers, along with some great industry leaders! I look forward to seeing some of you there!
Mike Caspar, an excellent Agile coach, has published a short article about information radiators and the Vogons (from THGTTG).
Sign up here: https://eval.webex.com/eval/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=924723906
The manifesto for agile software development (http://agilemanifesto.org) consists of 4 basic values:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools?
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation?
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation?
4. Responding to change over following a plan
I've been thinking about how this manifesto applies outside of the world of software, for which it was originally created. These concepts are so engrained into various agile methodologies, which these days don't explicitly refer to software any longer, that it begs the question: how does a team apply these four values to their work outside of software development; specifically, what would replace delivering 'working software'? The other three values translate more fluidly to differing spheres of work. For example, whether in the field of business, sales, medicine, etc. placing greater value on all the items on the left over those on the right will produce a transformed culture and working environment. But what does 'working software' translate into in these various realms? Particularly relevant for non-profit organizations, the next possible question would be: what if we are not creating a 'product' or something that is 'shippable'? What I've found to be the methodology which most aptly addresses this question is OpenAgile.
On its website: www.openagile.com it is noted that: OpenAgile is a learning system designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations build capacity for rapidly delivering value to their stakeholders. Rather than the focus being on a product, the aim shifts to learning and value. Yes, the 'product', if there is one (software or other), is important, but now there are even greater possibilities for the use of agile outside of software.
Though almost deceivingly simple, the principles animating OpenAgile are extremely profound. Through practicing the core foundational principles of truthfulness, consultative decision making, and systematic learning (through reflection, learning, planning, and action – all in light of guidance) the potential ability to 'deliver' something valuable is extraordinarily enhanced. Indeed, the greatest value could even be the learning that has taken place from the team or individuals themselves, the changed culture now animated by consultation engendering collaboration rather than competition, the regular and ongoing practice of truthfulness in a team resulting in accelerated transformation (potentially also allowing for that team to be more committed and driven to delivering a 'product') and the creation of a space where continual learning is the hallmark.
Recently, I was helping a friend of mine introduce OpenAgile into their environment. They are a software development house with some local and some overseas developers. I am occasionally following up with my friend to see how they are doing.
Their development has been going well since adopting Agile practices with the exception of a recurring problem with "returning bugs".
A bug will be discovered, fixed, and then several weeks later will show up again after some other modifications. This is a sure sign that Test Driven Development is not happening.
Consider the following:
Introduce the Test Driven Development Mindset.
|Shipment Entry Screen Tests
|Field is Empty, CTRL-N pressed
|List Appears, paged 20 at a time, sorted Alphabetically by Company Name within 3 seconds
|Field has "ABC", CTRL-N pressed
|List Appears (filtered to show all companies containing "ABC" in the company name), paged 20 at a time, sorted Alphabetically by Company Name within 3 seconds
|Field has an invalid entry "INVALID", CTRL-N pressed
|Within 3 seconds, a pop-up appears indicating "NO COMPANY FOUND", the shipper field is blanked and the cursor is returned to that location. The popup disappears.
If any developer works on that screen, before checking in, they need to do all the tests on the SHIPMENT ENTRY TESTS document to ensure they have not broken anything.Don't get me wrong. The idea is not to document the entire screen up front! Try to avoid designing the ENTIRE UI up front in this way. That has it's own non-agile problems. This is just an easy way to introduce future changes using a different mindset.In my example above, there is a field called "Mode of Transport". It currently shows a list of numbers which internal employees "KNOW" from years of experience with the application. When that number is selected, it gets converted into something like "MAIL", "COURIER", when it is printed on the final document. Your team has agreed to do work to have it show the appropriate labels in a drop down on the screen.Traditionally (non-test mindset), you would send out an email or open up an issue with a request for this change. Then, the cycle will continue again. As time goes by, you will always need to re-check this is working properly.
Try something like this instead:
When you have finished your planning and have decided this "story" or "feature" will be introduced to this cycle or Sprint, simply modify this document as follows;
|Shipment Entry Screen Tests
|Field is Empty, CTRL-N pressed
|List Appears, paged 20 at a time, sorted Alphabetically by Company Name within 3 seconds
|Field has "ABC", CTRL-N pressed
|List Appears (filtered to show all companies containing "ABC" in the company name), paged 20 at a time, sorted Alphabetically by Company Name within 3 seconds
|Field has an invalid entry "INVALID", CTRL-N pressed
|Within 3 seconds, a pop-up appears indicating "NO COMPANY FOUND", the shipper field is blanked and the cursor is returned to that location. The popup disappears.
|Mode of Transport
|Entry into Field
|Within 1 second, when entering this field, a drop-down list appears show full descriptions, sorted alphabetically by Mode of Transport.
Granted, the tests will eventually become cumbersome. However, please remember that someone will eventually be testing these screens and find these bugs in a never ending circle. My friend found that every morning they were having to go through all the screens to see what "new things" were broken.
Why not just try to get it right during your Cycle or Sprint ?
In the above example, as soon as someone takes on this task, they will have a failing test (Red), they will do what they need to do to get the test to pass (Green), and then will adjust the code to be efficient (Re-factor).
Although Test Driven Development is better done at other places in the code, this is a great way to introduce the "Mindset" into your team.
Someone will eventually say "This is getting to be a hassle. Can we automate it somehow?", which as an Agile person is exactly the words you eventually want to hear.
Maybe now, you can start to introduce it at the Unit Test, or Functional Test or whatever level is appropriate to your organization. There are some more formal ways of doing TDD such as Extreme Programming (XP).
The important thing is that your company will have shifted to a Test Driven Mindset.
The quality of your product will increase and stay that way and the need to go back and fix old bugs in a never ending cycle can soon be a thing of the past.
I recently introduced a small software development company to the ideas of Agile development, the culture of Agile, and of course some of the fundamentals of working in incremental steps. We focused specifically on OpenAgile.
They started their first cycle with great enthusiasm and with as much attention to detail as possible, but still ended up completing zero story points in their first cycle. Is this is a disaster ? The short answer… NO.
The company has gone through two major releases based on non-agile methods with limited success. One of the owners of the company has been a long time friend and we discussed doing some Agile training with his employees to "see how they felt" about learning about OpenAgile.
There were no commitments made to it. The idea of "Hey, let's learn about this and see if it's right for our organization" was the goal. All the team members were told that the company was considering (with emphasis on considering) switching to OpenAgile and would not do it if everyone didn't feel like it was worth the effort and made sense for them. It was stressed that OpenAgile is not a silver bullet and may not be right for them. The effort was purely exploratory in nature.
As this company is in software development, Agile development easily made sense for them. They were so excited by the OpenAgile training, the developers and the owners decided to immediately abandon their existing plans for development and refactor. The fact they felt they could do this shows true management leadership and support for the process.
I have to congratulate my friend for his courage in supporting his team.
The team determined that they were working on functionality which would not provide the greatest Return on Investment and decided to adjust their priorities accordingly.
A great deal of our time was spent during the training on the ideas of Consultative Decision Making and encouraging openness between those involved in the process. All team members are encouraged to be open about their opinions during planning and if they find something wrong during the cycle, to speak out.
I find that having management and stakeholder support and encouragement in the process is almost mandatory for Agile to work. Without the understanding from the owners of the company, the culture required to make it work will inevitably cause friction "around the edges" of the Agile team.
We spent time on the concepts of ROI (return on investment) and how to apply it to estimating, planning, re-estimating, and selected work. In using OpenAgile, we want to work on the tasks that give us the biggest value over effort factor or ROI.
We followed the OpenAgile syllabus. As an OpenAgile trainer and mentor, I had easy access to material to teach in an organized fashion. Their environment is complicated by owners in multiple cities and developers in 3 different cities including an overseas component.
Openness about the potential pitfalls of remote teams made a big difference to the attitudes of those taking the training and the final outcome. Learning OpenAgile, Scrum, XP Programming, or any Agile process is difficult enough without adding the component of two remote teams and overseas development.
Many people leave their OpenAgile training realizing that it is a very effective framework and are anxious to get rolling. Because this company and the team decided to continue with OpenAgile, they started the preparations for the first cycle to begin the following week (after a long weekend break).
The cycle started, cards were created as Story Points, and the work began in earnest. They had many surprises. I had been unavailable through their first cycle and had very little ability to keep up with how they were doing because of a new Scrum Team I was working with. In retrospect, I am glad I was not there to give advice. They did fine on their own :->
In true Agile form, they figured out on their own what was going wrong and when I talked to the owner several weeks later I found out that they had already determined their mistakes.
The team was actively taking steps to improve the next cycle.
If senior managers encourage the right environment and let the team self-organize… you know what.. they likely will :->
Things that went poorly
Things that went well
I had a discussion with the owner recently and he told me they all sat down and realized their mistakes of their first cycle. They consider OpenAgile to be a success.
The team was so worried about not completing story points, they considered it to be a failure to not finish at the appropriate time. You need to let newcomers realize that not completing all the story points of the first cycle may happen. This can be compounded by added complexities of your working environment or project.
Since they were pushing to get the points completed, they were sacrificing quality. They were rushing because they knew they had gone past the end of the cycle and it was causing more problems each day it continued. Thankfully, they stopped the cycle and decided to do the right thing and demo where they were and talk about their progress.
They simply took on too much work, didn't account for all the other overheads of a new team setup and issues that would take place with their remote environments. This did not mean failure. They learned how to re-organize themselves for future cycles.
With the support of the owner and a little bit of moral support from myself, the team realized they had accomplished a great deal already in their first cycle.
They realized they need to put some better controls on the holiday schedules of the remote teams overseas or at a minimum find out what is expected in this regard.
The team realizes it has a deficiency with Test Driven Development and is working on plans to allocate some time for training on this very important task. Perhaps their one bug from the first demo may not have been there with Test Driven Development in place. They will continue to work toward improving this.
One of the great things to come out of their first cycle…. A potentially deliverable product within the first two cycles!
When I reviewed this with the owner he told me the completed work is already faster and better than their previous system which took 5 years to write. Considering the remote component they are dealing with, this is truly great news for them. Their first cycle has produced software which can now simply grow organically.
Some advice here which I shared with my friend.. Make sure that you have at least one story that can be finished in the next cycle, no matter how small. Consider it of huge Value to the Agile process.
You need to provide some positive feedback for the team members now. This does not mean the team should agree to less work than they think they can accomplish. Simply encourage some work that can be completed to be included in the next cycle.
For my friend, although they completed zero story points in the first cycle, they are happy to know that if they just adjust the size of their stories for more attainable results and use what they learned from the first cycle, OpenAgile will work out well for them.
The concepts of Consultative Decision Making, Continuous Learning and the Learning Circle allowed them to truly excel and will allow them to continue to do so into the future.
They are looking forward to shipping their new product in record time :->
One comment that was made to me was something along the lines of "Hey Mike, this reminds me of when we used to work together in the garage when we started the company. We all worked together on whatever needed to be done. That's what made us successful in the first place."…. Hmmmm.
Mike Caspar, CSM, OA2/5
References: OpenAgile – www.openagile.com
This is just a quick post to share that Agile Tour Toronto is coming soon. It is on November 3 in Toronto. It will be a great day with plenty to do, much to learn, and so many people to meet.
We will be there too. Berteig Consulting has a booth and many of us will be there to meet all of you. Hope to see you there!
Here is the link: http://www.torontoagilecommunity.org/att2011
A great post by Mark Levison on Agile Pain Relief
Great opportunity for Eastern Canadians to get introduced to WAYK!!!.


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Main Forums > I Just Tested Poz
Less than 2 weeks since positive diagnoses
<< < (8/14) > >>
Sorry to hear you guys tested positive. I am sure being in the medical profession can add a whole other emotional aspect to the diagnoses. At the web site www.thebody.com, there are several doctors that managed the "ask the expert" columns and post in the forums. Some of them are also HIV positive. You may want to check it out and perhaps reach out there as well. While I am not familiar with the various laws or restrictions,that may be in place for HIV+ medical professionals, its only seems logical to me that the universal precautions used should be effective both ways, protecting both the medical practitioner as well as the patient. I would explore options before making any assumptions. Perhaps this won't force you to change careers or plans to the degree you think. Even if it does, the worst case may be that you adjust your career path to some other specialty as countless people do all the time for a wide number of reasons. Right now is probably one of the most stressful and emotional parts of dealing with being HIV+, but like so many say, it really will get MUCH easier to deal with and you may come through the experience with new perspectives that change what you actually want to do anyway.
I, too, am a physician living with HIV. You all are NOT alone. It appears, from reading other posts, that the discrimination directed towards medical professionals is decreasing in Europe. Unfortunately, we have a way to go in the U.S., as there is no federal regulation and each state can make up their own rules. Some states only require you report your status if you have a potential exposure, while other states require that you advertise your status in written form, so that all potential patients will have the choice of whether they still want to see you, after learning of your status. For most of us, medicine and helping others, is a calling in life. This calling often causes us to sacrifice 1/3 of our life in school and then leaves us about $200,000 in debt. One study noted that, if a patient knew their doctor was poz, only 30% of people would want to see him/hr. With threats of losing our jobs, or losing patients, which would essentially cause us to lose our job, how would we ever even be able to repay our loans? Not to mention, helping people is what drives me to live everyday...take that away, and I'm a broken man...even more than I was when first diagnosed. Only with education can we change this. It's time to stand up and say that we are here, and the laws must change! Lumpy, please send me a private message and we can talk more. Take care!
Oh, and in regard to testing and turnaround times for tests, a Western Blot is a 1-day turnaround, Viral Load/CD4 is 3 days where I live. So, yes it is possible to get labs back that quick...all depends on the area, and to which lab the bloodwork is sent.
Could you work with people with HIV? I'm sure they wouldn't mind one little but, in fact it could be a plus. Or am I being a bit simplistic as I have no idea what retraining would involve.
I am a Cardiac surgeon. I have sacrificed all my life to be that. Not to practice what I learned my whole life would be worse than the diagnosis
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Racing 101: Function Of Horse Blankets [01:05]
Katie Mikolay, a racing analyst and key member of the Racing 101 team, explains how and why trainers use horse blankets.
1998 Breeders' Cup Classic - Awesome Again + Pre & Post Race [32:16]
On a day when Skip Away ran out of the money and lost his chance to become the world's richest race horse, Awesome Again won the world's richest race when he rushed through the pack in a blanket finish and snatched the $5.2 million Breeders' Cup Classic by three-quarters of a length over Silver Charm. Awesome Again not only won the laurels and the loot, but also his sixth straight start in a perfect year at the races. To do it, he needed to make a furious dash through the homestretch and knife his way through the 10-horse field to hit the finish line in front. But he did it, prevailing over one of the most impressive casts in racing history before a record Breeders' Cup crowd of 80452 at Churchill Downs. And he redeemed an agonizing choice made a year ago by his trainer, Patrick Byrne, who dominated the 1997 Breeders' Cup with two juvenile winners, Favorite Trick and Countess Diana, and then gave them up to take a new job with Frank Stronach of Canada. ''Favorite Trick was a part of history,'' Byrne said with feeling, explaining again why he would surrender the Horse of the Year. ''I loved him. But I was faced with a decision that I had to make. That's what horse racing is all about.'' Racing is also about Skip Away, the 5-year-old superstar who will now retire with career earnings of $9.6 million, about $400000 short of Cigar's record. But in his final performance at the races, just when he might have scored his greatest triumph, he stalked the leaders through most of ...
Saratoga All Access: Fleece Blanket Giveaway Day [02:01]
Fans gathered at Saratoga Race Course today to receive the final giveaway item of the season, a free Saratoga fleece blanket, with paid admission, while supplies last. The red fleece blanket features the 2012 Saratoga logo. On Monday, September 3, all fans receive free grandstand and clubhouse admission to mark the final day of the Saratoga meet. Labor Day also marks the second day of the Family Fun Fest from 11 am to 5 pm with games, pony rides and other family-friendly attractions to benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Capital Region, Inc.
Tags: Saratoga, All, Access:, Fleece, Blanket, Giveaway, Day, nyra, horse, racing
Saratoga All Access: Fabulous Fillies Day at Saratoga Race Course to benefit BCRF [03:50]
NYRA celebrated women and their contributions to the thoroughbred industry while raising funds to support BCRF at Fabulous Fillies Day at Saratoga Race Course. All fans who wore pink received free admission. The centerpiece of the day-long affair was the Sizzling Hot Pink Saratoga Hat Luncheon to benefit BCRF in the At the Rail Pavilion. This year's luncheon was in memory of BCRF Founder and Chairman Evelyn H. Lauder and honored thoroughbred owner and breeder Virginia Kraft Payson. The event was emceed by Jeannine Edwards from ESPN. The day featured a number of special events and activities designed to honor women of the thoroughbred industry while raising funds to support BCRF. The day's card featured an all-filly racing program in concert with the day's theme. Pink bunting, ribbons and flowers adorned the track, including a pink flower blanket on the horse statue in the Paddock. The first 1000 women (ages 16 and older) through the admission gates received a cubic zirconia and were directed to bring their stones to one of two representatives from Northeastern Fine Jewelry on track to determine if they were the recipient of a genuine diamond. Kathy Hulbert of Oak Hill, NY received a genuine diamond that qualified her to select from one of three Hearts on Fire diamond pendants valued at up to $7000, courtesy of Northeastern Fine Jewelry, during a special winner's circle presentation. Additionally, women were treated to pink hair extensions and pink polish from Complexions ...
Tags: Saratoga, All, Access:, Fabulous, Fillies, Day, at, Race, Course, to, benefit, BCRF, nyra, horse, racing
Simon Stokes talks about Monty Roberts and horse racing [05:12]
Simon Stokes talks about Monty Roberts, Lomitas, the hallway system and the starting blanket. He says the blanket is all Monty.
Tags: horse, racing, starting, blanket, Derby, at, Epsom, hallway, system, Race, Track


text:
U.S. Bishops
An Exercise in Raw Judicial Power
As we observe the sad forty-second anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that overturned all state laws banning abortions and effectively served as a judicial death warrant for tens of millions of innocents, I think it is appropriate to pay tribute to the two dissenting Justices, Byron White, a Democrat, and William Rehnquist, a Republican. Here are the texts of their dissents:
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST joins, dissenting.
At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons — convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that, for any one of such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her request if she is able to find a medical adviser willing to undertake the procedure.
The Court, for the most part, sustains this position: during the period prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus; the Constitution, therefore, guarantees the right to an abortion as against any state law or policy seeking to protect the fetus from an abortion not prompted by more compelling reasons of the mother.
With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers [410 U.S. 222] and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally dissentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
Why We're Not Going Anywhere
Let me explain, in as clear and precise terms as I can, why social conservatives are not going anywhere, nor should they go anywhere, but should remain right at the heart of the conservative movement and gain acceptance among libertarians as well, and should reject as the foolish garbage that it is all suggestions to the contrary.
First, our principles are not electoral losers. Leftists believe they are on "the right side of history", comparing the campaign for "marriage equality" with every civil rights struggle of past eras. They believe that this fact is reflected in the way the youth vote splits and the purported reasons why. At the same time, they gloat and brag about the size of the Democratic share of the minority vote.
The merits of the "marriage equality" campaign don't need to be discussed here. I've discussed them to death on this blog in previous posts. The fact remains that minorities are opposed to "marriage equality." If Hispanics can be won over to the GOP on the immigration issue, it will put a stop to this "wrong side of history" nonsense for a generation. The uncomfortable alliance between racial minorities who hold socially conservative views and white liberals will finally be blown apart. Unlike them, when racial minorities finally do side with the GOP en masse, we won't attribute white liberal hatred for them to "racism" (even though it sure looks like it sometimes). This is a battle of values, not skin colors, and a failure to see that is one of the reasons why the white liberal left will never win the future they mistakenly believe to be theirs.
Obama's Ideological Brinkmanship
We knew it would come to this, but we weren't sure until when until the Obama administration announced the contraception mandate; even then, we weren't sure when exactly it would be explicitly spelled out by the leadership of the Church. I am referring to the U.S. bishop's recent statement declaring, among other things, the following:
It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law. An unjust law cannot be obeyed. In the face of an unjust law, an accommodation is not to be sought, especially by resorting to equivocal words and deceptive practices. If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them. No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.
It is essential to understand the distinction between conscientious objection and an unjust law. Conscientious objection permits some relief to those who object to a just law for reasons of conscience—conscription being the most well-known example. An unjust law is "no law at all." It cannot be obeyed, and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal. (Emphasis added)
In making this statement, the bishops have echoed Pope Leo XIII's statement in his encyclical Libertas: "But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man, we become disobedient to God."
War Crimes
As the New York Times remembers Hiroshima, Richard Fernandez asks us to name the two greatest losses of civilian life in the Pacific war. ("Hint. In both cases the civilian casualties were greater than Hiroshima's. In one case the event took place on American soil.")
Meanwhile, Donald Sensing (Sense of Events) thinks it's past time for Western churches to stop treating Japan as victim every Aug. 6 and 9:
I refuse on principle to pollute God's ears with prayers dedicated only to Hiroshima Day and the dead of those cities while ignoring the tens of millions of Japanese-murdered souls who cry for remembrance, but do not get it, certainly not from the World Council of Churches and its allies who have no loathing but for their own civilization. If the prayers of the WCC's service are to be offered, let them be uttered on Aug. 14, the day Japan announced its surrender, or on Sept. 2, the day the surrender instruments were signed aboard USS Missouri. Let our churches no longer be accessories to Japan's blood-soaked silence but instead be voices for the millions of murdered victims of its bloodlust, imperialist militarism.
(HT: Bill Cork).
The U.S. Bishops Dereliction of Duty
Catholic Advocacy of Torture: A Teaching Moment for the Catholic Bishops?
Writing at Vox Nova, the author known as "Morning's Minion" has published a post calling for consistency in the application of canon 915 — the denial of Holy Communion to those who "obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin" — in this particular case, the public advocacy of abortion and torture. The post was occasioned by the recent appearance of Mark Thiessien on Raymond Arroyo's "The World Over", in which the duo lobbied vigorously in defense of waterboarding:
I think the analogy is clear. Arroyo and Thiessen are both Catholic public figures, and Arroyo in particular is a TV personality on a Catholic TV channel, making the scandal all the more grave. They are clearly "obstinately persevering" in support for an intrinsically evil act. Worse, they actually try to justify it on Catholic grounds. Thiessen has made it his life's work to claim that some forms of torture are virtuous. Arroyo, again and again, invites defenders of torture onto his show, and instead of confronting them with clear Church teaching, voices his agreement. As [Archbishop Raymond] Burke says, this is "public conduct" that is gravely sinful. I would go further and argue that it is even more scandalous than support for legalized abortion. Most public supporters of abortion do not go on television extolling the great virtues of abortion for women and society. Their argument is more with how it should be treated under the law. But the Arroyo-Thiessen-Sirico cabal are (i) claiming to the faithful Catholics while (ii) making public pronouncements on the positive value of torture.
Catholic debate over torture (and/or what the Bush administration has termed "extreme interrogation") has been going strong for several years now. It's online manifestation initiated — to my recollection — with the publication of Mark Shea's article in Crisis, "Toying with Evil: May a Catholic Advocate Torture?" and subsequent discussion at Amy Welborn's, in March 2005. From time to time I've personally blogged on the various vollies and controversies between various camps as the debate has asserted itself, time and again, over half a decade (has it really been that long?)
That EWTN ("Eternal Word Television Network") has hosted two explicit defenses of waterboarding — most recently by Thiessien, as well as Fr. Joseph Sirico of the Acton Institute, not to mention Q&A from Judy Brown of the American Life League questioning whether torture should be considered "intrinsically evil" — does not surprise me in the least. As I noted recently, there has been open dispute as to whether waterboarding constitutes torture from many prominent Catholics, including editor Deal Hudson, Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Brian Harrison (in the pages of This Rock — the flagship publication of Catholic Answers, the largest largest lay-run apostolates of Catholic apologetics and evangelization in the United States). [Note: Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a newcomer to the debate, has likewise made it known in the comments of this post where he stands on the matter].
Little wonder that a Pew Forum survey examining "the religious dimensions of the torture debate" found many white Roman Catholics, along with most frequent churchgoers, affirming that the use of torture against terrorists is "sometimes" or "often" justifiable.
With respect to abortion, readers may recall a number of opportune moments during the 2008 presidential elections when Catholic bishops were obliged to speak out, publicly, forcefully and collectively, in correction of blatantly false presentations of Catholic teaching on abortion by Nancy Pelosi and (then) Senator Joseph Biden.
There have been numerous missed "teaching moments" for our bishops and the Catholic Church on the matter of torture.
Are You Listening Madame Speaker?
Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco addressed on January 13, 2010 a free will defense of abortion by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House:
In a recent interview with Eleanor Clift in Newsweek magazine (Dec. 21, 2009), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about her disagreements with the United States Catholic bishops concerning Church teaching. Speaker Pelosi replied, in part: "I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have the opportunity to exercise their free will."
Embodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom. These misconceptions are widespread both within the Catholic community and beyond. For this reason I believe it is important for me as Archbishop of San Francisco to make clear what the Catholic Church teaches about free will, conscience, and moral choice.
Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared that the human person, endowed with freedom, is "an outstanding manifestation of the divine image." (Gaudium et Spes, No. 17) As the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov, makes so beautifully clear, God did not want humanity to be mere automatons, but to have the dignity of freedom, even recognizing that with that freedom comes the cost of many evil choices.
Why is Cardinal George Silent about Abortion in the Current Health Care Bill?
When Cardinal George requested that pro-life Republicans vote for the Stupak amendment to the health care bill, he was shaming conservative American legislators that they need to stand up for what they claim in public. Cardinal George discounted reasonable Republican objections that this was just a ploy by Nancy Pelosi to get pro-life Democrats on board knowing full well that all pro-life language would be stripped in the joint chambers conference committee.
Was Cardinal George this naive to fall for this parliamentary trick? Can we assume he isn't this naive?
No, Cardinal George is not this naive because why would the Vatican choose him to lead a diocese? The Vatican certainly takes its time to make wise and knowledgeable decisions don't they? The Holy Spirit guides them in their work, granted that this is done primarily through the teachings of the Church. Though we can be reasonable enough knowing that the Vatican wouldn't choose someone who is incompetent to be a shepherd to his flock.
Nancy Pelosi to Bishops on Abortion: I practically mourn this difference of opinion
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was interviewed in a recent edition of Newsweek, in which she had the opportunity to set the bishops straight on the participation of Catholics in public life.
I think you have had some brushes with [church] hierarchy.
I have some concerns about the church's position respecting a woman's right to choose. I have some concerns about the church's position on gay rights. I am a practicing Catholic, although they're probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith. I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.
Is it difficult for you to reconcile your faith with the role you have in public life?
You know, I had five children in six years. The day I brought my fifth baby home, that week my daughter turned 6. So I appreciate and value all that they want to talk about in terms of family and the rest. When I speak to my archbishop in San Francisco and his role is to try to change my mind on the subject, well then he is exercising his pastoral duty to me as one of his flock. When they call me on the phone here to talk about, or come to see me about an issue, that's a different story. Then they are advocates, and I am a public official, and I have a different responsibility.
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf applies the necessary fisking and muses: "I cannot fathom why she hasn't been told she must not receive Holy Communion. How much more public scandal does she have to give before the bishops of the places where she resides take concrete action?"
My thoughts exactly. Note that she has already received an admonishment from the Holy See and an invitation to "converse" from San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer.
Bishop Olmsted Accuses President Jenkins of Disobedience
Here is the text of Bishop Olmsted's letter to President Jenkins (h/t American Papist):
While I am disappointed by President Jenkin's decision to invite President Obama to speak at commencement, particularly the decision to confer an honorary law degree, I have several questions about this letter:
Catholic Campaign for Human Development – Tainted by ACORN or Still Rotten Itself?
A lone individual with a sign protesting the second collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development sets Vox Nova's Morning's Minion on a tirade against Fr. Neuhaus and evangelicals:
After a moment of confusion, it suddenly dawned on me what this was about. And then I became rather angry. Yes, it was just one "whack-job", but I was still angry. And then I thought of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus's partially-successful attempt to align Catholics with the emergent right-wing evangelical movement, and realized that it had come to this. Catholics, including Neuhaus, were lambasting an anti-poverty program because it simply did not fit with the the ideological talking points of the hour.
As Fr. Neuhaus points out, "Ten years ago, CCHD was exposed as using the Catholic Church as a milk cow to fund organizations that frequently were actively working against the Church's mission, especially in their support of pro-abortion activities and politicians."
Pointing to the CCHD's stated principles, including that it "will not consider organizations which promote or support abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, or any other affront to human life and dignity," Morning's Minion dismisses Neuhaus' concerns:
This is important as many of the critics (including Neuhaus) claim it is funding pro-abortion activities. (Yet again, the mis-use of the abortion agenda as a Trojan horse to further a distinctly less noble cause– will this ever end?)
Unfortunately, Neuhaus' claim is true — CCHD has a disappointing history of, contrary to its stated principles, providing extensive funding for questionable political groups with agendas morally at odds with Catholic teaching.


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Tomasella, Javier1; Hodnett, Martin G.2
The application and validation of complex atmosphere-soil water transport models demands knowledge of the parameters that describe hydraulic properties over extensive areas. Such information is rarely available, but Pedo Transfer Functions (PTFs) provide a means of predicting these parameters from soil survey data. However, most PTFs have been derived and validated using information from soils of temperate regions and have not been tested for the soils of tropical areas, for which chemical, physical, and pedogenetic processes are different. The equations of Rawls and colleagues, for example, overestimate water content when applied to the soils of Brazilian Amazonia. In this paper, we have developed a PTF to predict Brooks-Corey parameters from texture using data from soils of Amazonia. Multiple linear regressions were fitted to estimate, from soil texture (% sand, silt, and clay), the bulk density and porosity and the water content at a range of matric potentials. Brooks-Corey parameters were then derived and correlated independently with soil texture, providing a straightforward method for deriving soil retention parameters from the percentage of clay and silt. The method was validated using an independent data set for which textural and water release data were available. The agreement between the observed and measured values was very significant, but the results showed that the differences between predictions and measurements also depended on bulk density. However, the Amazonian soil survey data, which may be used to extrapolate these results spatially, do not generally include bulk density, and for this reason they were not included in the regressions.
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Baroness of Hobcaw
The Life of Belle W. Baruch
Publication Year: 2012
Published by: University of South Carolina Press
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pp. 1-5
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pp. v-vi
List of Illustrations
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pp. vii-viii
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pp. ix-x
Without Ella Severin, resident trustee and director of long-range planning for the Belle W. Baruch Foundation, this book could not have been written. Miss Severin shared her memories, letters, and memorabilia of her fifteen years as Belle's companion and opened the archives of the foundation as well as the doors of Bellefield Plantation and Hobcaw House. ...
1. Paternal Pride and Future Hope
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pp. 1-8
Belle Baruch could outride, outshoot, outhunt, and outsail most of the young men of her acquaintance—not the most desirable attributes for a young lady in the polite society of 1918. For most of her growing years, Belle had been admonished to "act like a lady" and reminded that men did not like to be bested in competition by women. ...
2. The Only Real Place on Earth
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pp. 9-17
Though only in his midthirties, Bernard Baruch was a multimillionaire who had always believed that a man needed periods of quiet contemplation. After a major endeavor, he liked to isolate himself and reflect on events to determine what led to their success or failure. He searched for a getaway. ...
3. Life Lessons at Hobcaw
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pp. 18-23
Belle's relationship with the plantation blacks was ambivalent. It was in - credible to her that most of the inhabitants of the old slave villages— Friendfield, Strawberry, Alderly, and Barnyard—had never left the plantation. They were born, married, reared families, and died without ever having left the boundaries of the property. ...
4. A Study in Determination
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pp. 24-26
As Belle entered her teens, she had two great passions—sailing and horses. By age seventeen, she had already won over fifty sailing trophies and in 1916 became the first woman to win the coveted Queen of the Bay Cup sponsored by the Yacht Racing Association of Great South Bay, Long Island. ...
5. From Debutante to the World Stage
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pp. 27-33
When Belle graduated from Rayson in 1917, the United States was at war against the kaiser, and there's no doubt that, had she been a man, Belle would have enlisted immediately. ...
6. Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism
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pp. 34-36
The United States in the 1920s was introspective, isolationist, and seeking to assign blame for its own entry into World War I as well as for the conduct of the war itself. As chairman of the powerful War Industries Board and, unquestionably, the most renowned Jew in the country, ...
7. Resolution and Independence
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pp. 37-40
Belle came of age in the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age. She was young, rich, and adventurous. The post–World War I era in America was one of turbulent and often painful social and economic change. The war had exposed millions of rural Americans to urban lifestyles and shifting mores. ...
8. Lois Massey
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pp. 41-44
The one special person who shared Belle's dreams and vision of Hobcaw Barony was Lois Massey, who served as social secretary to the Baruchs at Hobcaw and later to Belle at Bellefield. Lois loved Hobcaw almost as much as Belle and was often her companion when Belle visited Hobcaw. ...
9. Travels with Edith Bolling Wilson
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pp. 45-47
In the spring of 1925 Edith Bolling Wilson planned her first European trip since the death of her husband in February 1924. Belle, along with Lucy Moeling, was to be her traveling companion. They sailed for Europe on the Majestic on May 17. Mrs. Wilson sought rest, anonymity, and complete freedom from formal receptions, press interviews, and the like. ...
10. An Awakening
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pp. 48-50
In late 1925 Evangeline Brewster Johnson fell in love with the brilliant conductor Leopold Stokowski. Nothing would do for Evangeline but for Belle to share her ecstasy and participate in the plans for the wedding. She chortled as she told Belle about her staid family's reaction to her fiancé. ...
11. La Belle Équitation
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pp. 51-55
In the spring of 1926 Belle went to France, where she plunged into a whirl of social engagements. She sighed with plea sure at the beauty of Paris, the Paris immortalized by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, where the wide avenue of the Champs-Élysées bloomed with chestnut blossoms and brilliant flowers instead of the tourist kiosks of today. ...
12. Success and Romance at Home and Abroad
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pp. 56-65
The year 1929 began like any other year for Belle. She celebrated the New Year at Hobcaw with her family, then headed north to New York to see a few plays and look after her business affairs before setting sail for Europe. ...
13. Triumphs with Souriant and Rumors of War
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pp. 66-69
In 1932 Belle hired a Frenchman, Jean Darthez, as her head groom and trainer, beginning a relationship that would span three decades. The doughty Frenchman maintained what he considered to be the neatest, cleanest stables in all of France. ...
14. European Friends and a Fleeting Betrothal
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pp. 70-77
Belle had developed an international coterie of close friends, some Europeans and other Americans who, like Belle, lived in Europe several months of the year. Nearly all shared her passion for riding. ...
15. Bargaining for Bellefield
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pp. 78-83
In January 1935 Belle went to New York with thoughts of Hobcaw on her mind. Planning to return to Europe immediately, she took a short lease at a residential hotel, The Surrey, on East Seventy-sixth Street. She had confided to Lois Massey her wish to buy a piece of Hobcaw Barony and had asked her for support and assistance. ...
16. Lois Massey and Prewar Europe
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pp. 84-89
In May 1936 the Italian army took control of Addis Ababa, the capitol of Ethiopia, making it a part of Italian East Africa. To Belle's disgust, the League of Nations decided to accept Italian rule for Ethiopia. Noting the dithering by the league, Hitler repudiated the articles of the Versailles Treaty that declared the Rhineland to be a demilitarized zone. ...
17. Varvara Hasselbalch's American Sojourn
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pp. 90-101
During that final summer of competition in 1937, Belle noted with concern the growing disharmony between her friend Louise Hasselbalch and her teenaged daughter, Varvara. Varvara was increasingly rebellious against Louise's almost tyrannical insistence that Varvara pursue a professional riding career. ...
18. Life Stateside and War Abroad
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pp. 102-112
After seeing Varvara off to Europe on the Queen Mary, Belle, Lois Massey, and Barbara Donohoe stayed in New York for a month. Belle wanted to buy a small apartment in New York since, in the future, she would be living primarily in the United States. In the meantime, she leased a house in Bedford, New York, just outside the city, ...
19. Personal and National Turmoil in 1941
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pp. 113-119
Belle and Barbara Donohoe worked tirelessly to complete the grounds at Bellefield Plantation. Landscape architects Umberto Innocenti and Richard E. Webel of Long Island's Studio Roblyn designed the entrances to the stables, the house, the forecourt, gates, and terraces of Bellefield. ...
20. U-Boats and Spies along the Carolina Coast
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pp. 120-127
World War II wrought changes throughout the United States, but the coastal areas, in particular, were affected. Even before the war began, volunteer plane watchers manned lookout towers in Georgetown and Horry counties. Detailed instructions were given to coastal inhabitants as to what action to take in the event of an air raid. ...
21. Dickie Leyland at Hobcaw Barony
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pp. 128-133
The advent of Dickie Leyland at Hobcaw Barony signaled an era of discord. With a single exception, no one speaks kindly of Dickie. She was considered rude and overbearing, spiteful, jealous, and deceitful. Dickie had two faces, one individual noted, one for Belle and one for everyone else. ...
22. FDR's Visit to South Carolina
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pp. 134-141
Spring had always been Belle's favorite season at Hobcaw. As Easter approached in 1944, the woods of the barony were at their loveliest, with purple wisteria cascading from the trees and fragile dogwoods swaying in the soft breeze. Brilliant azaleas were in bud, and crocus and jonquils bloomed in glowing color. ...
23. War's End and the End of an Era
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pp. 142-145
The Allied armies continued their thrust in both theaters of war. The world knew the end was coming when Benito Mussolini was shot on April 28, 1945, and Adolph Hitler committed suicide just two days later. By May 7, Germany had surrendered unconditionally. ...
24. Winds of Change in Postwar America
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pp. 146-152
In 1946 Belle made her first trip to Europe since the end of the war. She held a tempestuous reunion in London with Varvara Hasselbalch, then married to Guy Ingram. For some reason, Belle was spoiling for an argument, probably resentment at Varvara's last-minute refusal to leave Paris during the German occupation. ...
25. Philanthropy and Ecology
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pp. 153-158
As the years passed and development increased in Horry and Georgetown counties, Belle was alarmed by the destruction of natural habitat and the diminishing wildlife. The wild turkeys were seldom seen anymore and the number of ducks dwindled each year. ...
26. From Constable to Baroness
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pp. 159-169
Belle and Ella were to share many happy years at Hobcaw. They did not always agree but deferred to each other. Ella, for instance, was an animal-rights activist and deplored hunting in any form. Belle, of course, was an avid hunter, though she never shot deer or turkey once she took over the plantation and rarely shot ducks in order to protect their diminishing numbers. ...
27. Paul Dollfus and Frances Milam
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pp. 170-175
Next to Hobcaw and her beloved horses, Belle's greatest plea sure was doing for others, giving not only money but her time and attention. Her philanthropies were extensive and included organized charities such as the Seeing Eye of Morristown, New Jersey; ...
28. The Passing of Jean Darthez and Souriant III
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pp. 176-180
In 1956 Belle's friends joined her in mourning the death of her beloved Toto, Souriant III. Toto had passed thirty years of his life with Belle and Jean Darthez, loved and pampered, but all the affection they lavished on him could not stave off the ravages of age. ...
29. Into the Twilight
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pp. 181-192
Bernard Baruch ushered in the new decade with the publication of volume 2 of his autobiography, Baruch: The Public Years, creating quite a stir among his political contemporaries. He still had enough clout that the young Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts came to pay his respects as he sought the presidency. ...
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pp. 193-194
As often happens when someone of great wealth dies, there was dissension and controversy following Belle Baruch's death. Belle had often expressed the wish to be buried at her beloved Hobcaw Barony but had not so designated in her will. Bernard Baruch insisted that she be interred in the family burial plot at Flushing Cemetery in Queens. ...
Appendix: Hobcaw Barony Today
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pp. 195-198
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pp. 199-204
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pp. 205-206
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pp. 207-212
Print-ISBN-13: 9781570039591
Page Count: 248
Publication Year: 2012
OCLC Number: 817813780
MUSE Marc Record: Download for Baroness of Hobcaw


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The 2012 NBA free-agent class is more than 100 players deep, yet when it comes to providing pure excitement, there are a few talents in the pool that are head-and-shoulders above the rest.
And while the solid, unassuming scorers, rebounders and defenders will get much of the love this summer, there's something to be said about someone who can get 20,000 people fired up with either a single tomahawk dunk or a long, buzzer-beating three-pointer.
So, with that in mind, let's take a look at the five most exciting free agents that are still on the market.
Please note: Although no free agent has officially signed a new deal, for the purposes of this slideshow, we've omitted those who already have tentative agreements with teams.


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Named for the sparkle this constellation brings to the night sky, Wink of Stella Brush Markers contain an archival, waterbased pigment ink infused with glitter dust.
Available in sets of three markers each, Wink of Stella Brush Markers have a nylon brush tip that's great for adding shimmer and shine to papercrafts, stamping projects, and much more. They can also be used over dry marker ink to add glittering effects.
Conforms to ASTM D-4236.
Christmas Sparkle, Set of 3
This set includes one each of Gold, Silver, and Clear.
Elegant, Set of 3
This set includes one each of Black, Silver, and Clear.
Flower Power, Set of 3
This set includes one each of Dark Pink, Orange, and Violet.
Landscape, Set of 3
This set includes one each of Blue, Green, and Brown.
Pretty Garden, Set of 3
This set includes one each of Pink, Green, and Yellow.
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Reviewed by 16 customers
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Glorious Glitter
By traypup
from fort collins, co
Comments about Zig Wink of Stella Brush Markers:
Lays down the most beautiful glittery mark you have ever seen...no brush lines or scribbling...it's like the ink floats onto your paper. It is the perfect glitter brush pen and I am in love with it.
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
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Most Awesome Art Supply Store
By Art Abilities
from Melbourne, Fl
I absolutely love this online art store for supplies. Service and delivery is fast and efficient. I recommend dickblick.com to anyone looking for art supplies.
Love them
By Adult coloring nut
from Merton, WI
Wish they came in even more colors, and could be purchased separately.
Great Glitter Pens
By Emmy
from Santa Ana, CA
These glitter brush pens are wonderful. You can use them overtop of colored pencils to make your coloring glitter and stand out. They are the best glitter pens I've tryed, and I have tryed them all.
Wink of Stella
By Pssequimages
from Mesquite, NV USA
I use Wink of Stella EVERY day and cannot get enough of them--they come in a variety of colors and add just the right glimmer to a project. EASY EASY to use, and beautiful results every time!
Fun and easy to use to add a little sparkle
By Danielle
from MI
Love these Wink of Stella brush pens to add a sparkle to my projects. They are easy to use and consistently give a nice shimmer and sparkle.
(0 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
Great color difficult feed
By Older artist
color is beautiful but does not fit the purpose I purchased them to use. Will come up with anyother Idea.
Bottom Line No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Merchant response: Thanks for sharing! If you need any help finding the right product for your project, give our Product Information team a call. Our Experts are available M-F from 8:00am to 5:30pmCST and can be reached at 1.800.933.2542. We look forward to hearing from you!
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
all that glitters
By Monica L
from plano, tx
Stella Wink is awesome! It's so easy to use and adds instant glitter shine to your project. My only complaint is that the tube contains very little product in it for the price. With that said, use sparingly, a little goes a long way!
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
Wink of Stella Outstanding
By Cathy
from NY
Really enhances colors in card making. Adds a lot to appearance
wink of Stella markers
By kittylady760
from Farmington CT
I use this when I want to add a little glisten to the cards that I make. Great value.Delivery very fast. I know people who had problems with Joanns.
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My twin daughters, who are juniors in high school, are already spending countless hours searching online trying to figure out what to wear to prom! And despite the fact that they are twins, they are not identical by any means and thus are looking for dresses for different body frames. Macy wants her prom dress to be accented with animal print, be it cheetah or leopard print, or even peacock feather adorned. She has bookmarked several prom dresses in teen fashion magazines as well as online at … [Read more...]
Cheetah Print Prom Shoes
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