Agile Philly

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Defining Done

 DEFINING   DONE   .ORG

celebrating

National Definition of Done Day

May 10 2019

A Conference in Philadelphia

( a project of AgilePhilly and Philly Tech Week 2019 presented by Comcast )

The link for LIVE-STREAMING as at

https://livestream.com/HU/AgilePhilly ( videos coming this summer )

start time is 12:30

click here for TICKETS for ON-SITE or LIVE =-STREAMING

Student Promo Discount Codes and other discounts and freebies are available.

Just ask at DefiningDone@gmail.com

Slides of the Presentations and the Day's Schedule can be found at

http://www.agilephilly.com/page/schedule-for-natl-definition-of-done-day

It was on May 10 1869, that the Transcontinental Railroad was completed.

The Federal Government Contracts were approved by President Lincoln in 1861.

And then the great work began - Surveying, Engineering, Tunneling, Blasting, Digging.

A majority of workers on the West Side of the build were Chinese while Irish were predominant on the Eastern Side. No Chinese were invited to the celebration exercise, and the issues of the treatment of Chinese, Irish and Native American Lands should not go unremembered even while we celebrate this achievement.

It was the Moon Landing of the 1860's.  The news of the last spike was sent by telegraph to a waiting nation at 12:47 pm using just four letters . . . D O N E

 

What is happening in Philadelphia on May 10

The webpage http://www.agilephilly.com/events/definition-of-done-day shows who is part of our celebration of Definition of Done in Philly and those who will participate remotely, too. 

Yes, we are Live-Streaming our conference so everyone everywhere can share in the Joy of Done. Contact mailto:DefiningDone@gmail.com or leave a comment with email contact, and check back here as more details are ironed out.

 

For some background, the AgilePhilly group celebrated World Retrospective Day on February 27 - where teams reflected on the good (and not-so-good) of their teams' progress on www.WorldRetroDay.com

The next step for suggested improvements from a Retrospective is often for teams to make a better Definition of Done to keep the team and the team members focused. The goal of all technical projects is to move small tasks from a column of TODO to IN-PROGRESS to DONE. 

Software Engineers are expensive talent.  We want them to produce quality, but not over-produce features that will not be used.  The topics that we will talk about to prevent Scope Creep include:

  • Definition of Done
    • Break down your expectations for Proof of Concept, Prototype, or Minimal Vaiable Feature for Production
  • Definition of Ready ( Ready to begin development work )
    • A separate swim column for Defn of Ready became a 19% improvement in flow
  • When do we build "Good Enuff" and when do we build "Excellent" ?
    • The eternal question
  • Acceptance Criteria described in a Gerkin Style of BDD Behavior Driven Design that goes beyond TDD
    • The goal of BDD is for Business people to write the tests
  • Is your company going the way of the Pony Express ?
    • It was not the Transcontinental Railroad that killed the Pony Express.  It was the Transcontinental Telegraph that killed it in two days time.  Know your marketplace and your competitors' advantage.
  • The Schedule being developed

A Definition of Done is

what stops Scope Creep! Besides Requirements for a system, a Definition of Done for each sub-task tells us what to build and what to test.  It tells us what the Acceptance Tests will be.  It stops us from building more than is required or doing more tests than are needed.  As the great Edward Demming said,

Doing your best is not enough.
First, you must know what to do and then do your best.

Refer to https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/september/what-is-definition-of-done-(dod) for a longer description. Note that a Description of Done can be more than just programming.  Performance tests, documentation for support staff and other pieces that make up a complete system should be part of the Definition of Done.

How to help

Tell your friends, put www.DefiningDone.org into a Linked In post or Twitter, or leave a comment on what you want to hear discussed. And send us some Train Trivia from the Age of Steam. Techs love trivia.

Conference Timeline

A timeline for May 10 is 12:30 to 4:30.  Not to worry, our timeline at the conference will have a pause about 2:00 pm Eastern to see historian Jon Meacham speak at the reenactment on KSL-TV - and to see the Spike driven in - and see America united by steel. 

https://www.nowplayingutah.com/event/may-10th-celebration-ceremony-broadcast

 

"What was it the engines said? Pilots touching, head to head.

Facing on a single track. Half a world behind each back" - Writer Bret Harte

 

Resources about the Transcontinental Railroad, Promontory Summit and the Misconceptions that abound to catch the Tourists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spike  

http://www.gregmester.com/done-in-1869/#.WET5tZy00O4.linkedin 

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/28985

 

Other resources for the 150th Anniversary

https://www.nps.gov/gosp/planyourvisit/2019-150th-anniversary-of-the-completion-of-the-transcontinental-railroad.htm

Spike 150 Commission ( spike150.org ) and https://umfa.utah.edu/race-to-promontory

Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association (https://www.goldenspike150.org/)

 

Trivia

Most of the rail was for single passage ( not for two way traffic ) Resource management was even then part of their Definition of Done.

The two railway companies built past each other.  They were paid by the mile, so more miles were built than were necessary.  Still, they finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

 

In anticipation the day before May 10, Chicago held an impromptu celebratory parade that was 7 miles long.  Upon hearing the news on May 10, Philadelphia had fire engines lined up in front of Independence Hall with bells and whistles clamoring - while Boston was the sole American city to ignore the event. A hundred guns were fired in a salute at City Hall Park in New York City, and the lead story in the New York Times the next day was "The long looked-for moment has arrived. The construction of the Pacific Railroad is un fait accompli " 

This great technical accomplishment was at Promontory Summit.  The misnomer "Promontory Point" is still used by many due to the handy alliteration of two P's.

 https://www.nps.gov/gosp/faqs.htm

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promontory,_Utah

At the National Historic Site in Utah, on every Saturday and holiday between May 1 and Labor Day, the two replica locomotives are lined up to re-enact the "Golden Spike" ceremony.

The words on the Golden Spike also appear in US passports.

May God continue the unity of our Country, as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spike

During the ceremony, Central Pacific's Leland Stanford and Union Pacific's Thomas Durant both missed hitting the last spike. The spike had been wired to a telegraph and they only needed to tap it. The ceremony's telegrapher W. N. Shilling frustrated with their delay completed the circuit to send out the message D O N E.

Is there a Philadelphia Connection?

Although the two trains were NOT from Philadelphia, the Jupiter ( No. 60 ) and Train No.119 are similar to the steam locomotives built at the Baldwin Locomotive Works located at Broad Street in Phila and later the town of Eddystone.

BUT . . .

The Inyo, a 4-4-0 steam locomotive built for the Virginia & Truckee Railroad (V&T #22) in 1875 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, appeared in the Golden Spike ceremony scene in the movie  Union Pacific (April 1939) among others.  The movie premiered in Omaha in a 4 day event in which 250,000 people attended.  The Inyo also appears in the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West.  More details about the Inyo are at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_and_Truckee_22_Inyo and at http://www.virginiaandtruckee.com/Locomotive/No22.htm

In May 1969, the Inyo participated in the Golden Spike Centennial at Promontory, Utah, and then served as the replica of the Central Pacific's Jupiter (CPRR #60) at the Golden Spike National Historical Site until the current replica was built in 1979. Purchased by the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada, in 1974, it was eventually brought back to Nevada and was fully restored there in 1983 and where it still runs today.

( Inyo was a great Shoshone Chief.  Inyo County in California includes Mount Whitney and Death Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inyo_County,_California )

The word Inyo is also the Japanese name for the Ying-Yang symbol on the Okinawa flag and is the symbol of the JKA Karate Association.

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