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This blog posting has been replaced by the more detailed article: Full Agile Delivery Lifecycles.
Thank you for your patience.
Scott is a Senior Consulting Partner of Scott W. Ambler and Associates, working with organizations around the world to help them to improve their software processes. He provides training, coaching, and mentoring in disciplined agile and lean strategies at both the project and organizational level. He is the founder of the Agile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), and Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) methodologies. Scott is the (co-)author of 19 books, including Disciplined Agile Delivery, Refactoring Databases, Agile Modeling, Agile Database Techniques, The Object Primer 3rd Edition, and The Enterprise Unified Process. Scott is a senior contributing editor with Dr. Dobb's Journal and his company home page is ScottWAmbler.com
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Lifecycles
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This blog posting has been replaced by the more detailed article: Full Agile Delivery Lifecycles. Thank you for your patience. |
Reworking the Agile Manifesto for Enterprise-Class Development
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This article has been replaced by an official "Disciplined Agile Manifesto". The text of the original article remains below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've recently been working with Mark Lines of UPMentors and we've had some interesting discussions around evolving the Agile Manifesto which I thought I would share here to obtain feedback. Note that this is not any sort of official position of IBM, nothing in my blog is by the way (unless explicitly stated so), nor is it some sort of devious plot to take over the agile world (although if we did have some sort of devious plot, we'd make the exact same claim). What we hope to accomplish is to put some ideas out there in the hopes of getting an interesting conversation going.
Updates Since this Was First Published:
Requirements Envisioning on Agile Projects at Scale
Contrary to popular belief, agile development teams do in fact model and yes, they even do some up front requirements and architecture modeling. Two of the best practices of Agile Modeling are Requirements Envisioning and Architecture Envisioning where you spend a bit of time at the beginning of the project doing enough initial modeling to get you going in the right direction. The strategy is to take advantage of modeling, which is to communicate and think things through without taking on the risks associated with detailed specifications written early in the lifecycle. In this blog posting I will focus on requirements envisioning, in a future posting I'll cover architecture envisioning.
The goal of initial requirements envisioning is to identify the scope of your effort. You need to do just enough modeling early in the project to come to stakeholder concurrence and answer questions such as what you're going to build, roughly how long it's going to take (give a range), and roughly how much it's likely to cost (once again, give a range). If you can get the right people together in the room, which can sometimes be a logistics challenge but not one that you couldn't choose to overcome, there are very few systems (I suspect less than 5%) that you couldn't initially scope out in a few days or a week. I also suspect that most of the remaining systems could be scoped out with less than 2 weeks of modeling, and if not then I'd take that as an indication that you're taking on too large of a project. I'm not saying that you'll be able to create big detailed specifications during this period, and quite frankly given the problems associated with "Big Requirements Up Front (BRUF)" you really don't want to, but I am saying that you could gain a pretty good understanding of what you need to do. The details, which you'll eventually need, can be elicited throughout the lifecycle when you actually need the information. A common saying in the agile community is that requirements analysis is so important for us that we do it every single day, not just during an initial phase. I'll discuss just in time (JIT) approaches to requirements modeling in a future posting. To envision the requirements for a business application, you might want to consider creating the following models:
For small teams simple tools such as whiteboards and paper are usually sufficient for requirements envisioning. But what happens at scale? What if you're working on a large agile team, say of 50 people, 200 people (IBM has delivered software into the marketplace with agile teams of this size), or even 500 people (IBM currently has teams of this size applying agile techniques)? What if your team is distributed? Even if you have people working on different floors of the same building, let alone working from home or working in different cities or countries, then you're distributed (see my postings about distributed agile development). Suddenly whiteboards and paper-based tools (index cards, sticky notes, ...) aren't sufficient. You're still likely to use these sorts of tools in modeling sessions with stakeholders, but because of one or more scaling factors you need to capture your requirements models electronically. In January Theresa Kratschmer and I gave a webcast entitled Agile Requirements: Collaborative, Contextual, and Correct which overviewed agile approaches to requirements elicitation and management, including requirements envisioning. We also showed how Rational Requirements Composer (RRC) can be used to electronically capture critical requirements information, enabling you to address the needs of large and/or distributed agile teams, while still remaining lightweight and flexible. I suspect that you'll find the webcast to be very illuminating and RRC something that you want to take a look at (the link leads to a trial version). Of course RRC can be used in other situations as well, but that's not what I'm focused on right now. Teams which find themselves in regulatory environments will likely need to do more than just use RRC, as might very large teams. Regulatory compliance often requires more complex requirements documentation, which in turn requires more sophisticated tools such as DOORS or Requisite Pro, and I would consider using those tools in the types of situations that warrant it. One of the things that people often struggle to understand about agile approaches is that you need to tailor your strategy to reflect the situation at handle. One process size does not fit all, so you will end up using different tools and creating different artifacts to different extents in different situations. Repeatable results, not repeatable processes, is the rule of the day. Further reading:
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Bureaucracy Isn't Discipline
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Again and again I've seen IT organizations suffering from what I call the "Bureaucracy is Discipline" antipattern. For example, filling out forms and reviewing documents are both bureaucratic activities, neither of which require significant skill nor discipline to accomplish. However, agile practices such as developing potentially shippable software every iteration is easy to say but requires great discipline to accomplish. Respecting the decisions of your stakeholders, particularly those pertaining to requirements prioritization, is easy to talk about but proves to require great discipline in practice (particularly when you don't agree with a decision). It's easy to talk about taking a test-driven approach to development, but in practice it requires significant skill and discipline to actually do.
A "process smell" which indicates that your organization is suffering from this antipattern is a focus on following repeatable processes instead of focusing on repeatable results. An example of repeatable processes is following the same route to work every day regardless of driving conditions. An example of repeatable results is getting to work on time every day, but being willing to change your route as required, bicycling into work instead of driving, taking public transit, and so on. Nobody really cares how you get to work each day (the process), what they really care about is that you got to work on time (the result). Sadly, we've been told for decades now that repeatable processes are critical to our success in IT, yet when you step back and think about that's really a reflection of a bureaucratic approach. On the other hand, a focus on repeatable results is a reflection of a more disciplined approach. Interestingly, the DDJ 2008 Process Framework survey found that given the choice that people would much rather have repeatable results over repeatable processes when it comes to IT. Mistaking bureaucracy for discipline, or rigour if you prefer that term, is a reflection of the cultural damage that has occurred over the years in IT organizations as the result of traditional philosophies and techniques. Unfortunately, this mistaken belief is a significant inhibitor to software process improvement (SPI) efforts, in particular agile adoption efforts, which must be addressed if you're to be successful. Overcoming this challenge will require a significant cultural shift in some organizations, and many people (particularly the bureaucrats) will find this uncomfortable. Further reading:
I'd like to leave you with this parting thought: Bureaucracy is bureaucracy and discipline is discipline, please don't confuse the two.[Read More] |
Scaling Agile with Risk-Based Milestones
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The explicit phases of the Unified Process -- Inception, Elaboration, Construction, and Transition -- and their milestones are important strategies for scaling agile software development to meet the real-world needs of modern organizations. Yes, I realize that this is heresy for hard-core agilists who can expound upon the evils of serial development, yet these very same people also take a phased approach to development although are loathe to admit it. The issue is that the UP phases are like seasons of a project: although you'll do the same types of activities all throughout a project, the extent to which you do them and the way in which you do them change depending on your goals. For example, at the beginning of a development project if you want to be effective you need to do basic things like identify the scope of the project, identify a viable architecture strategy, start putting together your team, and obtain support for the project. Towards the end of a project your focus is on the activities surrounding the deployment of your system into production, including end-of-lifecycle testing efforts, training, cleaning up of documentation, piloting the system with a subset of users, and so on. In between you focus on building the system, including analysis, design, testing, and coding of it. Your project clearly progresses through different phases, or call them seasons if the term phase doesn't suit you, whether your team is agile or not.
The UP defines four phases, each of which address a different kind of risk:1. Inception. This phase focuses on addressing business risk by having you drive to scope concurrence amongst your stakeholders. Most projects have a wide range of stakeholdres, and if they don't agree to the scope of the project and recognize that others have conflicting or higher priority needs you project risks getting mired in political infighting. In the Eclipse Way this is called the "Warm Up" iteration and in other agile processes "Iteration 0".2. Elaboration. The goal of this phase is to address technical risk by proving the architecture through code. You do this by building and end-to-end skeleton of your system which implements the highest-risk requirements. Some people will say that this approach isn't agile, that your stakeholders should by the only ones to prioritize requirements. Yes, I agree with that, but I also recognize that there are a wide range of stakeholders, including operations people and enterprise architects who are interested in the technical viability of your approach. I've also noticed that the high-risk requirements are often the high-business-value ones anyway, so you usually need to do very little reorganization of your requirements stack.3. Construction. This phase focuses on implementation risk, addressing it through the creation of working software each iteration. This phase is where you put the flesh onto the skeleton.4. Transition. The goal of this phase is to address deployment risk. There is usually a lot more to deploying software than simply copying a few files onto a server, as I indicated above. Deployment is often a complex and difficult task, one which you often need good guidance to succeed at. Each phase ends with a milestone review, which could be as simple as a short meeting, where you meet with prime stakeholders who will make a "go/no-go" decision regarding your project. They should consider whether the project still makes sense, perhaps the situation has changed, and that you're addressing the project risks appropriately. This is important for "agile in the small" but also for "agile in the large" because at scale your risks are often much greater. Your prime stakeholders should also verify that you have in fact met the criteria for exiting the phase. For example, if you don't have an end-to-end working skeleton of your system then you're not ready to enter the Construction phase. Holding these sorts of milestone reviews improves your IT governance efforts by giving senior management valuable visibility at the level that they actually need: when you have dozens or hundreds of projects underway, you can't attend all of the daily stand up meetings of each team, nor do you even want to read summary status reports. These milestone reviews enable you to lower project risk. Last Autumn I ran a survey via Dr. Dobb's Journal (www.ddj.com) which explore how people actually define success for IT projects and how successful we really were. We found that when people define success in their own terms that Agile has a 71% success rate compared with 63% for traditional approaches. Although it's nice to that Agile appears to be lower risk than traditional approaches, a 71% success rate still implies a 29% failure rate. The point is that it behooves us to actively monitor development projects to determine if they're on track, and if not either help them to get back on track or cancel them as soon as we possibly can. Hence the importance of occasional milestone reviews where you make go/no-go decisions. If you're interested in the details behind the project, they can be found at http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2007.html . Done right, phases are critical to your project success, particularly at scale. Yes, the traditional community seems to have gone overboard with phase-based approaches, but that doesn't mean that we need to make the same mistakes. Let's keep the benefit without the cost of needless bureaucracy.[Read More] |
Agility at Scale: Become as Agile as You Can Be
I recently wrote an "e-book" for Internet Evolution overviewing agile software development at scale. The goal of the Agility at Scale: Become as Agile as You Can Be ebook is to get people thinking outside of the box a bit when it comes to agile development strategies and see that they really are ready for primetime.
[Read More] |
Criteria for a Disciplined Agile Team
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Although it might not be obvious, and important success factor in adopting agile techniques is to be able to determine whether a team is agile or not. The challenge that many organizations face is that many teams will claim to be agile, yet management, who often has little or no experience with agile approaches, cannot tell which claims are true and which are over zealous (I'm being polite). The following are the criteria that I suggest you look for in a disciplined agile team:1. Produce working software on a regular basis. This is one of the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto, and in my experience is a critical differentiator between the teams that are agile and those that are merely claiming it. Ideally the team should produce potentially shippable software each iteration. That doesn't mean that they'll deploy the system into production, or the marketplace, each iteration but they could if required to do so. Typically the team will deploy into a pre-production testing environment or a demo enviroment at the end of each iteration (or more often for that matter).2. Do continuous regression testing, and better yet take a Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach. Agile developers test their work to the best of their ability, minimally doing developer regression testing via a continuous integration (CI) strategy and better yet do developer-level TDD. This approach enables development teams to find defects early, thereby reducing the average cost of addressing the defects, it also helps them to deliver higher quality code and to move forward safely when adding or changing functionality.3. Work closely with their stakeholders, ideally on a daily basis. A common practice of agile teams is to have an on-site customer or product owner who prioritizes requirements and provides information on a timely manner to the team. Disciplined agile teams take it one step further and follow the practice active stakeholder participation where the stakeholders get actively involved with modeling and sometimes even development.4. Are self-organizing within a governance framework. Agile teams are self-organizing, which means that the people doing the work determines how the work will be done, they're not told by a manager who may not even be directly involved with the work how it will be done. In other words the team does its own planning, including scheduling and estimation. Disciplined agile teams are self governing within an effective governance framework.5. Regularly reflect on how they work together and then act to improve on their findings. Most agile teams hold a short meeting at the end of each iteration to reflect upon how well things are working and how they could potentially improve the way that they are working together. Sometimes this is done in a more formalized manner in the form of a retrospective, but often it's done informally. The team then acts on one or more of their suggested improvements the next iteration. Disciplined agile teams take this one step further and measure their software process improvement (SPI) progress over time: the act of taking these measures, perhaps via a product such as Rational Self Check, helps to keep the team on track in their SPI efforts.
I have yet to discover an ad-hoc development team which met all five criteria, and most of them rarely meet two or three. Further reading:
[Read More] |
Acceleration: An Agile Productivity Measure
A common goal of IT governance is to determine the productivity of various techniques, tools, and people as part of the overall effort to improve said productivity. If you can easily measure productivity you can easily identify what is working for you in given situations, or what is not working for you, and adjust accordingly. A common question that customers ask me is how do you measure productivity on agile teams. Although you could use traditional strategies such as function point (FP) counting, or another similar strategy, this can require a lot of effort in practice. Remember that we don't only want to measure productivity, we want to do so easily. Ideally it would be nice to do so using information already being generated by the team and therefore we won't add any additional bureaucratic overhead.
A common metric captured by agile teams is their velocity. Velocity is an agile measure of how much work a team can do during a given iteration. At the beginning of an iteration a team will estimate the work that they're about to do in terms of points. At the beginning of a project the team will formulate a point system, which typically takes a few iterations to stabilize, so that they can consistently estimate the work each iteration. Although the point system is arbitrary, my team might estimate that a given work item is two points worth of effort whereas your team might think that it's seven points of effort, the important thing is that it's consistent. So if there is another work item requiring similar effort, my team should estimate that it's two points and your team seven points. With a consistent point system in place, each team can accurately estimate the amount of work that they can do in the current iteration by assuming that they can achieve the same amount of work as last iteration (an XP concept called "yesterday's weather"). So, if my team delivered 27 points of functionality last iteration we would reasonably assume that we can do the same this iteration. So, is it possible to use velocity as a measure of productivity? The answer is not directly. For example, we have two teams, A and B, each of 5 people and each working on a web site and each having two-week long iterations. Team A reports a velocity of 17 points for their current iteration and team B a velocity of 51 points. They're both comprised of 5 people, therefore team B must be three times (51/17) as productive as team A. No! You can't compare the velocity of the two teams because they're measuring in different units. Team A is reporting in their points and B in their points, so you can't compare them directly, The traditional strategy would be to ask the teams to use the same unit of points, which might be a viable strategy with two teams although likely not if you have twenty agile teams and particularly not if you have two hundred teams. Regardless of the number of teams that you have it would minimally require some coordination to normalize the units and perhaps even some training and development and support of velocity calculation guidelines. Sounds like unnecessary bureaucracy that I would prefer to avoid. Worse yet, so-called "consistent" measurements such as FPs are anything but because there's always some sort of fudge factor involved in the process which will vary by individual estimator. An easier solution exists. Instead of comparing velocities you instead calculate the acceleration of each team. For example, consider the reported velocities of each team below. Team A's velocity is increasing over time whereas team B's velocity is trending downwards. All things being equal, you can assume that team A's productivity is increasing whereas B's is decreasing. Of course it's not wise to manage simply by the numbers, so instead of assuming what is going on I would rather go and talk with the people on the two teams. Doing so I might find out that team A has adopted quality-oriented practices such as continuous integration and static code analysis which team B has not, indicating that I might want to help team B adopt these practices and hopefully increase their productivity. Team A: 17 18 17 18 19 20 21 22 22 ...Team B: 51 49 50 47 48 45 44 44 41 ... There are several advantages to using acceleration as an indicator of productivity over traditional techniques such as FP counting:1. It's easy to calculate. For example, the acceleration of team A from iteration 1 to iteration 6 is (20-17)/17 = 0.176 whereas for team B it is (45-51)/51 = -.118. Of course, you don't need to calculate the acceleration over such a long period of time, you could do it iteration by iteration, although I find that doing it over several iterations gives a more accurate value. You'll need to experiment to determine what works for you.2. It is inexpensive. Acceleration is based on information already being collected by the team, their velocity, so there is no extra work to be done by the team. 3. It is unlikely to be gamed. Teams aren't motivated to fake their velocity because it provides them with important information required to manage themselves effectively. 4. It is easy to automate. For example, Rational Team Concert (RTC) calculates velocity automatically from its work item list (an extension of Scrum's product backlog) and does trend reporting via it's web-based project reporting functionality, providing a visual representation of the team's acceleration (or deceleration as the case may be).5. It offers the opportunity for more effective governance. This approach reflects three of the practices of Lean Development Governance: Simple and Relevant Metrics, Continuous Project Monitoring, and Integrated Lifecycle Environment.6. You can easily adjust for changing team size. If the size of a team varies over time, and it will, this metric falls apart the way that I've described it. To address this issue you need to normalize it by dividing by the number of people on the team to get the average acceleration per team member.7. You can easily monetize this metric. By knowing the acceleration of the project team and knowing how much they're spending each iteration, you can estimate the amount of money you're saving through process improvement. For example, if you're spending $100,000 per iteration and your acceleration is 2%, your cost savings is $2,000 per iteration. Of course, nothing is perfect, and there are a few potential disadvantages:1. It is an indirect measure of productivity. Truth be told velocity really is a productivity measure, it's just that because it's measured in different units it's difficult to compare between teams. Acceleration is merely an indicator of the change in productivity.2. You actually need to measure what you're interested in. When you step back and think about it, you're not really interested in measuring your productivity, regardless of what the metrics wonks have been telling you the past few decades. In this case what you really want to know is your change in productivity because your real goal is to improve your productivity over time, which is what acceleration actually measures.3. Management must be flexible. For this to be acceptable senior management must be willing to think outside the "traditional metrics box". Using a non-standard, simple metric to calculate productivity? Preposterous! Directly measuring what you're truly interested in instead of calculating trends over long periods of time? Doubly preposterous!4. Your existing measurement program may be questioned. Once management learns how easy it can be to obtain metrics which enables them to truly govern software development projects they may begin to question the investment that they've made in the past in overly complex and expensive metrics schemes. This can be dangerous for the metrics professionals in your organization, particularly if your metrics group doesn't have valid measurements around the value of their own work. Ummmmm....5. The terminology sounds scientific. Terms such as velocity and acceleration can motivate some of us to start believing that we understand the "laws of IT physics", something which I doubt very highly that as an industry we understand. All it would take is for someone to start throwing around terms like "standard theory" and "unified model" and we'd really be in trouble. Wait a minute..... ;-) In summary, measuring the acceleration of development teams is an easy to collect, straightforward measure of team productivity. I hope that I've given you some food for thought, and would be eager to hear about your experiences applying this metric in practice. [Read More] |
Context Counts - Choose the right tools for the job
For some reason, it seems as if everyone's grandfather at one point in time recommended to use the right tools for the job. That's practical wisdom from my point of view, one that is certainly an issue for agile development.
One of the primary messages, I hope, of the Agile Scaling Model (ASM) is that context counts. Although the focus of the ASM is on describing a contextual framework for tailoring your process to meet the needs of the situation that you find yourself in, it's also applicable to your tooling selection. For example, the tool choices of a co-located team will be much different than that of a geographically distributed team. A co-located team will likely use a whiteboard or paper for their agile modeling efforts, whereas distributed team members may need to capture their diagrams using a more sophisticated tool such as Rational Requirements Composer (RRC) so that their work can be shared electronically. Having said that, RRC would be overkill for a co-located team (unless they had regulatory compliance issues). Different teams, different situations, therefore different tooling choices. One of the concerns that I run into from customers is that some of our legacy products don't support agile very well. Once again, it's a matter of context because many of our legacy products reflect the realities faced by more traditional teams. The challenge occurs when you try to take a legacy product which is well suited for traditional development, such as Rational ClearCase, and try to apply it on agile projects. Although ClearCase makes sense in certain scaling situations, particularly very large teams that are geographically distributed, you'd be better advised to use something like Rational Team Concert (RTC) for configuration management on most agile teams (note that RTC does far more than just SCM). So, if you're taking an agile approach you should consider Rational tools such as RTC, RRC, Rational BuildForge, Rational AppScan, and others which support agile development. Granted, some you would only use at scale -- for example Buildforge is a good option in really complex environments, but if you don't face that complexity then you'll likely find that RTC's build engine is sufficient. Similarly, if you're taking a traditional approach to development then you'll likely consider products such as ClearCase, Appscan, RTC, and Rational Software Architect (RSA) instead. Different situations, different tooling choices. What's even more confusing is that some products support a range of process paradigms. For example, RTC supports agile, lean, iterative, and traditional approaches to development. The same can be said of Appscan and several other products. Notice how I listed RTC and Appscan for both agile and traditional development above. So, if anyone tells you that Rational tools don't support agile development don't believe them. Ask them which tools that they're talking about, and ask them if they're aware of the Rational products that do support agile development. Context counts. |
You Can't "Cherry Pick" Agile Projects at Scale
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When you are first adopting agile techniques in your organization a common strategy is to run one or more pilot projects. When organizing these projects you typically do as much as you can to make them successful, such as finding:
In North America we refer to this as "cherry picking" because you're picking the cherry/best situation that you can find. Some thoughts:
Our integrity debt continues to grow
Recently I spent some time in the UK with Julian Holmes of Unified Process Mentors. In one of our conversations we deplored what we were seeing in the agile community around certification, in particular what the Scrum community was doing, and he coined the term "integrity debt" to describe the impact it was having on us as IT professionals. Integrity debt is similar to technical debt which refers to the concept that poor quality (either in your code, your user interface, or your data) is a debt that must eventually be paid off through rework. Integrity debt refers to the concept that questionable or unprofessional behavior builds up a debt which must eventually be paid off through the rebuilding of trust with the people that we interact with.
The agile community has been actively increasing their integrity debt through the continuing popularity of Scrum Certification, in particular the program around becoming a Certified Scrum Master (CSM). To become a CSM you currently need to attend, and hopefully pay attention during, a two-day Scrum Master Certification workshop taught by a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). That's it. Granted, some CSTs will hold one or more quizzes which you need to pass, an optional practice which isn't done consistently, to ensure that you pay attention in the workshop. Scrum Masters, as you know, take the leadership position on a Scrum team. The idea that someone can master team leadership skills after two entire days of training is absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm supporter of people increasing their skillset and have no doubt that many of the CSTs deliver really valuable training. However, there is no possible way that you can master a topic, unless it is truly trivial, in only two days of training. From what I can tell the only thing that is being certified here is that your check didn't bounce. The CSM scheme increases the integrity debt of the IT industry by undermining the value of certification. When someone claims that they're certified there's an assumption that they had to do something meaningful to earn that certification. Attending a two-day course, and perhaps taking a few quizzes where you parrot back what you've heard, clearly isn't very meaningful. The problem with the term Certified Scrum Master is two-fold: not only does the term Certified imply that the holder of the certification did something to earn it, the term Master implies that they have significant knowledge and expertise gained over years of work. It is very clear that people are falling for the Scrum certification scheme. A quick search of the web will find job ads requiring that candidates be CSMs, undoubtedly because they don't realize that there's no substance behind the certification. Whenever I run into an organization that requires people to be CSMs I walk them through the onerous process of earning the designation and suggest that they investigate the situation themselves. Invariably, once they recognize the level of deception, the customer drops the requirement that people be CSMs. Another quick search of the web will find people bragging about being a CSM, presumably being motivated by the employment opportunities within the organizations gullible enough to accept Scrum certification at face value. My experience is that the people claiming to be CSMs are for the most part decent, intelligent people who 99.99% of the time have far more impressive credentials to brag about than taking a two-day course. Yet, for some reason they choose to park their integrity at the door when it comes to Scrum certification. I suspect that this happens in part because they see so many other people doing it, in part because they're a bit desperate to obtain or retain employment in these tough economic times, and in part because the IT industry doesn't have a widely accepted code of ethical conduct. These people not only embarrass themselves when they indicate on their business cards or in their email signatures that they're Certified Scrum Masters they also increase the integrity debt of the agile community as a whole. Yet another search of the web will find people bragging about being Certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs), the people whom have been blessed by the Scrum Alliance to deliver Scrum master certification courses. Once again, my experience is that these are intelligent, skilled people, albeit ones who have also parked their integrity at the door in the pursuit of a quick buck. Surely these people could make a decent living via more ethical means? I know that many of them have done so in the past, so I would presume that they could do so in the future. The actions of the CSTs increase our integrity debt even further. The group of people who have most embarrassed themselves, in my opinion, are those whom we consider thought leaders within the agile community. Leaving aside the handful who are directly involved with the Scrum certification industry, the real problem lies with those who have turned a blind eye to all of this. The Scrum certification scheme was allowed to fester within our community because few of our thought leaders had the courage to stand up and publicly state what they were talking about in private. This of course is all the more galling when you consider how much rhetoric there is around the importance of courage on software development projects. As Edmund Burke once observed, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. There are several things that we can do today to start paying off some of our integrity debt:
Suggested Reading
Is software development an art or a science?
I was recently in Bangalore speaking at the Rational Software Conference, which was really well done this year, and visiting customers. In addition to discussing how to scale agile software development approaches, particularly when the team is distributed geographically and organizationally, I was also asked about what I thought about a software factory approach to development. My instinctual reaction was negative, software factories can result in lower overall productivity as the result of over specialization of staff (I prefer generalizing specialists), too many hand-offs between these specialists (I find close collaboration to be far more effective), and too much bureaucratic overhead to coordinate these activities. I initially chalked it up to these people still believing that software development was mostly a science, or perhaps an engineering domain, whereas my experiences had made me come to believe that software development is really more art than it is a science. Yet, the consistent belief in this strategy by very smart and experienced people started me thinking about my position.
Just let me begin by saying that this blog posting isn't meant to be yet another round in the age old, and relatively inane, "art vs. science" debate within the software development community. That debate is a symptom of versusitis, a dread disease which particularly plagues the IT industry and which can any of us at any time. There is no known cure, although the combination of experience, open-mindedness, and critical thought are the best inoculation against versusitis that we have so far. In that vein, let me explore the issues as I see them and I will let you think for yourself. On the one hand software development has aspects of being an art for several reasons. First, the problem definition is never precise, nor accurate, and even when we have detailed specifications the requirements invariably evolve anyway. The lack of defined, firm requirements requires us to be flexible and to adjust to the situation that we find ourselves in. Second, teams typically find themselves in unique situations, necessitating a unique process and tool environment to reflect this (assuming that you want to be effective, otherwise there's nothing stopping you from having a "repeatable process" and consistent tool environment). Third, software is built by people for people, requiring that the development team have the ability to build a system with a user interface which meets the unique needs of their end users. One has only to look at the myriad UI designs out there to see that surely there is a bit of art going on. Fourth, if software development wasn't at least partially art then why hasn't anyone succeeded at building tools which take requirements as inputs and produce a viable solution that we can easily deploy? It's been over four decades now, so there's been sufficient time and resources available to build such tooling. Fifth, regardless of how much of a scientific/business facade we put over it, our success rate at producing up front detailed cost estimates and schedules speak for itself (see Funding Agile Projects for links to articles). On the other hand software development has aspects of being a science for several reasons. First, some aspects of software development have in fact been automated to a significant extent. Second, there is some mathematical basis to certain aspects of software development (although in the case of data-oriented activities the importance of relational theory often gets blown way out of proportion and I have yet to see a situation where formal methods proved to be of practical value). What does this have to do with Agility@Scale. As you know, one of the agile scaling factors is Organizational Complexity, and cultural issues are the hardest to overcome. Whether your organization believes that software development is mostly an art or mostly a science is a cultural issue which will be a major driver in you choice of methods and practices. Organizations which believe that software development is more of a science will prefer strategies such as software factories, model-driven architecture (MDA), and master data management (MDM). And there is ample evidence to support the claims that some organizations are succeeding at these strategies. Although you may not agree with these strategies, you need to respect the fact that many organizations are making them work in their environments. Similarly, organizations which believe that software development is more of an art will find that agile and lean strategies are a better fit, and once again there is ample evidence that organizations are succeeding with these approaches (there's also evidence that agile projects are more successful than traditional projects, on average). Once again, you may not agree with these strategies but you need to respect the fact that other people are making them work in practice. Trying to apply agile approaches within an organization that believes software development is mostly a science will find it difficult at best, and will likely need to embark on a multi-year program to shift their culture (likely an expensive endeavor which won't be worth the investment). Similarly, trying to apply a software factory strategy in an organization that believes that software development is mostly an art will also run aground. The bottom line is that one size does not fit all, that one strategy is not right for all situations and that you need to understand the trade-offs of various strategies, methodologies, techniques, and practices and apply them appropriately given the situation that you face. In other words, it depends! If you are embarking on a software process initiative, and you don't have the broad experience required to effective choose between strategies (very few organizations do, although many believe otherwise), then you should consider Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF) to help increase your chance of success. |
Agile Scaling Factors
In the early days of agile, the applications where agile development was applied were smaller in scope and relatively straightforward. Today, the picture has changed significantly and organizations want to apply agile development to a broader set of projects. Agile hence needs to adapt to deal with the many business, organization, and technical complexities today's software development organizations are facing. This is what Agility@Scale is all about – explicitly addressing the complexities which disciplined agile delivery teams face in the real world.These agile scaling factors which we've found to be important are:
Further reading:
[Read More] |
Should We Train Contractors in Agile Techniques?I recently ran into an interesting issue at a customer organization. This customer is in the process of transitioning to Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and part of that effort is to train, mentor, and coach their people in these new ideas and techniques. The challenge is that some of "their people" are full time employees (FTEs) and some are contractors/consultants. When we were planning an upcoming DAD workshop with them, part of the planning effort was to identify who should get that training, which we're delivering in a just-in-time (JIT) basis on a team-by-team basis. The only people invited to take the training were FTEs because the customer has a policy of not training contractors. I pushed back a bit on this, but they were adamant about not training contractors because their view was that contractors should either have the skills required to do their jobs or be willing to get those skills on their own time. Fair enough, but from an agile team building point of view this isn't ideal. This situation got me thinking a bit. One issue is that not all contractors are the same. Some are short term contractors that are brought in for a specific purpose, they're paid well, and then they move on. Other contractors stay much longer, sometimes months or even years, and as a result gain deeper knowledge and understanding of your business. For these longer term contractors it seems to me that there is little difference between them and FTEs, perhaps only in the way that they're remunerated. Some countries such as the United States now have laws in place limiting how long someone is allowed to remain a contractor because these similarities lead to interesting legal questions around extending benefits to them. Another issue is that if you intend to build teams from both FTEs and contractors, it behooves you to ensure that these people get similar training, coaching and mentoring to streamline the transition effort. Here's the logic I would suggest to address the issue of whether or not to train a contractor:
As always, let the context of the situation drive your strategy. |
10 Reasons to Consider Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)A fair question to ask is why should your organization consider adopting the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework. I believe that there are several clear benefits to doing so:
In short, DAD provides a lot of proven advice culled from years of experience applying agile software techniques in enterprise-class environments. Instead of figuring all of this stuff out on your own, why not jump ahead and leverage the hard-won lessons learned from other organizations that have already dealt with the challenges that you're struggling with today? The primary shortcoming of the DAD framework is it makes it very clear that software development, oops I mean solution delivery, is quite complex in practice. As IT practitioners we inherently know this, but it seems that we need to be reminded of this fact every so often. DAD doesn't provide a simplistic, feel-good strategy that you can learn in a few hours of training. Instead it defines a coherent, tailorable strategy that reflects the realities of enterprise IT. There is a wealth of information at DAD posted at the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) web site and great discussions occuring on the DAD LinkedIn discussion forum. For those of you interested in agile certification, the Disciplined Agile Consortium site will prove valuable too, in particular the list of upcoming DAD workshops provided by several IBM partners. And of course the book Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner's Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise (IBM Press, 2012) written by Mark Lines and myself is a very good read. |
My Agile Scaling Model (ASM) White Paper has Been SupercededIn 2009 I wrote a white paper entitled The Agile Scaling Model (ASM): Adapting Agile Methods for Complex Environments for IBM Rational. Apparently it's been taken down, which I think is unfortunate as it contains some interesting ideas that your organization may be able to benefit from. The original white paper addresses several key issues:
Defining Disciplined Agile Software Development
When adopting agile software development techniques across a large number of teams within your organization it is important to provide a definition for what agile software development is, in addition to criteria for what it means to be agile. Many people will point to the four values of the Agile Manifesto and claim that's a good definition. Well... it might be a good definition for the visionaries and early adopters among us, but for people on the right-hand side of the technology adoption chasm (the early majority, late majority and the laggards) this isn't enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in the agile values but I like to cast them as philosophies instead of as a definition.
At IBM Software Group, the definition of disciplined agile software delivery which we have been sharing with our customers is:Disciplined agile software delivery is an evolutionary (iterative and incremental) approach to delivery which regularly produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner. It is performed in a highly collaborative and self-organizing manner, with active stakeholder participation to ensure that the team understand and addresses the changing needs of its stakeholders. Disciplined agile delivery teams provide repeatable results by adopting just the right amount of ceremony for the situation which they face. I think that this is a pretty good definition, although I have no doubt that we'll evolve it over time. I also suspect that the agile community will never settle on a common definition for what agile is and more than likely are smart enough not to even try. ;-) Further reading:
[Read More] |
Questioning Case Studies
I'm often asked by customers for case studies of successful agile adoptions or agile projects in general. This is definitely a valid request, and yes, such case studies exist. But I'm often concerned that the people making these requests don't appreciate the implications of what they're asking for. My concerns with case studies are:
Further reading:[Read More] |
Large Agile Teams
A common misunderstanding about agile software development approaches are that they're only applicable to small, co-located teams. Yes, it's much easier to be successful with small teams, and with co-located teams, and as a result agilists being smart people prefer to work this way. After all, why take on extra risk when you don't need to do so? But, sometimes reality gets in the way and you find yourself in a situation where you need a large team, or you need to distribute your team (see previous blog postings for strategies for distributed agile development), and you would still like to be as agile as possible. The good news is that it's still possible to be agile with a large team, although you will need to go beyond some of the popular "agile in the small" strategies to succeed.
Here are some disciplined agile strategies to succeed at large-team agile:
Further reading:
Scaling Test Driven Development (TDD)
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Test-driven development (TDD) is a common agile programming technique which has both specification and validation aspects. With TDD, you specify your software in detail on a just-in-time (JIT) basis via executable tests that are run in a regression manner to confirm that the system works to your current understanding of what your stakeholders require.
TDD is the combination of test-first development (TFD) and refactoring. With TFD, you write a single test (at either the requirements level with customer/acceptance tests or the design level with developer tests) and then you write just enough software to fulfill that test. Refactoring is a technique where you make a small change to your existing code to improve its design without changing its semantics. TDD offers several benefits:1. It enables you to take small, safe steps during development, increasing programmer productivity.2. It increases quality. Agile developers are doing more testing, and doing it more often, than ever before. We're also fixing the problems that we find right on the spot.3. It helps to push validation activities early in the lifecycle, decreasing the average cost to fix defects (which rises exponentially the longer it takes you to detect them).4. Through single sourcing information, by treating tests as both specifications and as tests, we reduce the work required, increasing productivity.5. We leave behind valuable, up-to-date, detailed specifications for the people who come after us. Have you ever met a maintenance programmer who wouldn't want a full regression test suite for the code that they're working with? But TDD isn't perfect. Although TDD is great at specifying code at a fine-grain level, tests simply don't scale to address higher level business process and architectural issues. Agile Model Driven Development (AMDD) enables you to scale TDD through initial envisioning of the requirements and architecture as well as just-in-time (JIT) modeling at the beginning and during construction iterations. To scale requirements-level TDD, you must recognize that customer tests are very good at specifying the details, but not so good at providing overall context. High-level business process models, conceptual domain models, and use cases are good at doing so, and these work products are often created as part of your initial requirements envisioning and iteration modeling activities. Similarly, to scale design-level TDD you must recognize that developer tests are very finely grained but once again do not provide overall context. High-level architecture sketches created during envisioning activities help set your initial technical direction. During each construction iteration, you'll do more detailed design modeling to think through critical issues before you implement them via TDD. You also need to scale the validation aspects of TDD. TDD is in effect an approach to confirmatory testing where you validate the system to the level of your understanding of the requirements. The fundamental challenge with confirmatory testing, and hence TDD, is that it assumes that stakeholders actually know and can describe their requirements. Therefore you need to add investigative testing practices which explore issues that your stakeholders may not have thought of, such as usability issues, system integration issues, production performance issues, security issues, and a multitude of others. For further reading, I suggest:1. My article "Introduction to TFD/TDD" at http://www.agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html which overviews TDD.2. My February 2008 column in Dr. Dobb's Journal entitled "Scaling TDD" at http://www.ddj.com/architect/205207998 which explores this issue in detail. 3. Andrew Glover's article "In pursuit of code quality: Adventures in behavior-driven development" at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-cq09187/ which describes a new-and-improved take on TDD called BDD.[Read More] |


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Movie SummaryThe Darkest Hour 3D
Web Site: http://DarkestHourMovie.com Description: The Darkest Hour is the story of five young people who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive in the wake of a devastating alien attack. The 3D thriller highlights the classic beauty of Moscow alongside mind-blowing special effects. Movie summaries and listings powered by Cinema-Source
Related Content on Movies from Infoplease:

subset: commoncrawl


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Diva Jerry quicksteps off Strictly
SHE went from catwalk queen to dancefloor diva, but Jerry Hall's stint on Strictly Come Dancing has come to an end as she became the second celebrity to be voted off the show.
The supermodel, with her partner Anton Du Beke, was forced into a dance-off with retired cricketer Michael Vaughan and his partner Natalie Lowe, which she lost.
Both couples performed their routines again, with Hall reprising her role as Mrs Robinson from The Graduate, doing her best to seduce Du Beke through the medium of quickstep, and Vaughan taking on a cha cha.
With Craig Revel Horwood and Darcey Bussell opting to save the sportsman and Bruno Tonioli choosing Hall, the deciding vote was with head judge Len Goodman who said it was a "difficult decision".
He said: "To be honest, neither couple impressed me. The pressure got to both of them.
"Jerry's routine was full of mistakes. Michael's routine went in and out of time. This is a really difficult, difficult decision for me. This is so close, but I'm going to save Michael and Natalie."
Reflecting on her time on the BBC dance show, Hall said: "I've had a lot of fun, it's been great. I've loved hanging out with Anton, and dancing with Anton. It's been lovely."
On Saturday night's show, Hall said if the public kept her in she would be dancing to Paint It Black next week, the track made famous by her ex-love Mick Jagger's band the Rolling Stones.
The results show also featured performances from Dionne Warwick and the cast of West End musical Top Hat.
Next Saturday night's show will be a Halloween special.


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The Craig branch of the Moffat County Libraries is closed for computer upgrades and further computer installation.
8:30 a.m. Mothers of Preschoolers meets at Calvary Baptist, 1050 Yampa Ave., until 11 a.m. The cost of $6 includes breakfast, crafts and speakers. Children are welcome. Call 824-0101.
10 a.m. A joint meeting for the Moffat County Affiliated Board of Control and the Rangely College Junior College District will be held at Meeker Town Hall.
3 p.m. Quest Bible-based activities program for children in grades kindergarten through fourth will meet at the First Congregational Church, 630 Green St., until 4:45 p.m. Stories, activities and snacks will be provided. Call 824-3039.
6:30 p.m. Awana for children ages 3 through grade six will meet at the First Baptist Church, 1150 W. Ninth St. Call Pastor Brian Haynes at 824-5926.
6:30 p.m. Yampa Valley Antique Power Club will meet. Anyone interested in antique tractors is invited to attend. Call Dean at 824-3588 for location.
Thursday, Jan. 20
10 a.m. Children's story hour will be at the Moffat County Library, 570 Green St. Another story hour will be at 11 a.m. The project after the story is mitten art. Call 824-5116.
6 p.m. Parents of Moffat County High School seniors are invited to attend a financial aid meeting in the school's library. Information on the FAFSA, financial aid packages and scholarships will be available. Call Paula Duzik at 824-7036.
7 p.m. The Landlords Association will meet at the Moffat County Public Safety Center for the first time in 2005. New officer elections will take place. Judge Mary Lynne James is the guest speaker. The topic is Colorado eviction law. Call John Barr at 824-7120.
Friday, Jan. 21
11:30 a.m. A meeting is planned to review the proposed uranium tailings site near Maybell at the Golden Cavvy in Craig. Everyone is welcome. Call Terrie Barrie at 824-2260.
Saturday, Jan. 22
1 p.m. SHARE distribution is until 2 p.m. at Saint. Michael's Church, 678 School St. Call Karen at 824-7939 or Laura at 824-7916
Sunday, Jan. 23
9 a.m. The Craig Snowmobile Club will leave from the Craig Middle School north parking lot for a club ride. All snowmobilers welcome. Call David Bray at 824-4984.
1:30 p.m. Bingo will be held at the VFW, 419 E. Victory Way. Call 824-7145.
5 p.m. Awana for children ages 3 through grade 12 will meet at Calvary Baptist Church, 1050 Yampa Ave. Call Pastor Rod Compton at 824-5222.
6 p.m. Awana for seventh and eighth grades will meet at First Baptist Church, 1150 W. Ninth St. Call Pastor Brian Haynes at 824-5926.
6 p.m. Happy Hands Crochet Club will meet at 655 Ranney St. until 9 p.m. Call Mary Walters at 824-2923.
7 p.m. The Cancer Support Group meets until 8 p.m. in the Visiting Nurse Association conference room, 745 Russell St. Call 824-7641.
Monday, Jan. 24
2 p.m. AARP meets at Sunset Meadows II, 595 Ledford St. Call Trudy Sullivan at 824-4917.
5:30 p.m. LIFE, a weight-loss group, meets at Sunset Meadows I, 633 Ledford St. Call Joan at 824-6611 or Ken at 824-6806.
Tuesday, Jan. 25
8 a.m. The COMA task force's Ministerial Alliance and Outreach for METH Victims will hold a prayer session until 9 a.m. at St. Mark's Church, 657 Green St. Fellowship at Serendipity, 576 Yampa Ave. will be immediately afterward. All clergy of the community and those who have compassion for those in grief are invited to the prayer sessions. Call F. Neil Folks at 824-0312
10 a.m. There will be a public hearing on the 2005-06 Community Services Block Grant in the Board of County Commissioners chambers of the Moffat County Courthouse. Call 824-8282.
Noon The Rio Blanco County Community Networking Group meeting is in the Johnson Building Banquet Room on the Colorado Northwestern Community College campus, 600 Kennedy Drive, in Rangely.
1:30 p.m. The governor's Office of Economic Development and International Trade and the Northwest Loan Fund will host an informational workshop about business financing options. The meeting will be at the Rangely campus of Colorado Northwestern Community College in the Johnson Building Banquet Room, 500 Kennedy Drive, in Rangely and will last until 4:30 p.m.
5 p.m. The American Legion Post 62 and Auxiliary meets at the First Christian Church, 960 W. Victory Way. Bring your food bank donations. Call 824-3085 after 5 p.m.
7 p.m. New member and parent orientation will be held at the Boys and Girls Club, 1324 E. U.S. Highway 40. New members, parents and interested community members are encouraged to attend. Call 826-0411.
Wednesday, Jan. 26
11:45 p.m. Moffat County on the Move meets at the Cooperative Extension Office, 539 Barclay St., until 1 p.m. Call 824-9108.
3 p.m. Quest Bible-based activities program for children grades kindergarten through fourth will meet at the First Congregational Church, 630 Green St., until 4:45 p.m. Stories, activities and snacks will be provided. Call 824-3039.
6:30 p.m. Awana for children ages 3 through grade six will meet at the First Baptist Church, 1150 W. Ninth St. Call Pastor Brian Haynes at 824-5926.
7 p.m. HEARTBEAT, a support group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide, meets at Serendipity, 576 Yampa Ave. For more information, call Barb Seed or Tracey Lathrop at 824-6541.


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Science/Technology/Environment news
New Year's News!!!
We are pleased to announce that we now have an "App" both for Apple and Android devices so that the McGill Office for Science and Society's nifty and sometimes quirky science can always be at your fingertips. The Apps are free and can be downloaded here: For Apple devices, download the app at: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/office-for-science-society/id779488353?mt=8
CSI: Dr. Oz's Questionable Wizardry
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER: Miracles are pretty rare events. Except on television's Dr. Oz Show, where they appear with astonishing frequency. Oz of course doesn't claim to raise the dead or part the Red Sea, but he does raise people's hopes of parting with their flab. And he's certainly not shy about flinging the word miracle about. But it seems miracles fade as quickly as they appear.
McGill's "Food for Thought"
The year was 1982. "Food for Thought", a new and innovative course conceived by Drs. David Harpp, Joe Schwarcz & Ariel Fenster. Designed to provoke some thought, separate fact from fiction and of course, digest everything there is to know about food. And now, 17,000 students later, you too can take this course. FOR FREE. That's right. McGill presents its very-first MOOC (massive open online course), & the McGill Office for Science and Society (OSS) is up at bat. Are you ready for some Food for Thought?
Michael Specter: Irrational rejection of science threatening our lives
Information is the key to life. We want to know what to eat, how to protect our environment, what risks to avoid and what to do if illness strikes. But when it comes to acquiring information, it is the best of times and the worst of times. It is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness. Newspapers, television, radio and of course the Internet bombard us with information at an unprecedented rate, but when it comes to scientific issues the quality of the information is variable.
Forbes: Dr. Schwarcz comments on whether natural products can protect us from mosquitos with West Nile Virus
Almost 40,000 people in the United States developed West Nile virus last year and 1,549 died because of it. Compare that to 1999, the first year the disease was seen in North America, when only 62 people were reported infected.
Webcasts, Mini-Science 2013
Selected lectures from Mini-Science 2013: Science, Sex, and Gender are now available as webcasts and podcasts. Listen or watch, when you want, where you want, at no charge!
Feeling hot, hot, hot
We're not used to thinking of ourselves as animals. But as Jason Samson sees it, climate is as important in shaping the distribution and movement of humans as it is in other animals. The McGill-trained ecologist and fellow researchers have been using modeling techniques similar to those used to define the ecological niche for plant and animal species to explore the correlation between climate patterns and population growth in the contiguous United States between 1900-2000. And what they discovered was a pronounced population shift away from areas within the U.S. with cool and seasonal climates, towards those areas that are warmer and drier year-round, and they found that this was the case even when it meant moving further away from agricultural lands.
Vision 2020: Creating a Sustainable McGill
Vision 2020: Creating a Sustainable McGill
»FWDfest research festival
The Bellairs Research Institute will host the »FWDfest research festival from May 23 to 29, 2011, in collaboration with the Folkestone Marine Reserve. Come join us and explore four thematic areas: 1. Robotics, mathematics, and computer science; 2. Land use planning and sustainable agriculture; 3. Climate change, alternative energy, and biodiversity 4. Marine and coastal resource management.
Call for nominations: Emerald Key & Catalyst Awards for Sustainability (staff and students)
The Emerald Key & Catalyst Awards will be presented by the Office of Sustainability for the first time in 2011 to those who have made a meaningful and enduring contribution to the sustainability movement at McGill University.
Producing clean water in an emergency
McGill researchers develop a new and inexpensive way of filtering water using silver nanoparticles
Graduate Students: Register now for Writing Science Articles 2
Register NOW for the 2011 winter session of WRITING SCIENCE ARTICLES 2 (REDM 710), a 3-credit writing course for graduate students. This course will help you think critically about your data and write logically about your findings. For more information or to register please contact: Prof. Linda Cooper at 514-398-8545.
SeRIOus about Innovation: Research Innovation Office newsletter
RIO, the Research Innovation Office of the Faculty of Science, is pleased to offer its most recent newsletter online.
Nature: Molecular Switch Helps Cell Instantly Recognise Sex Partner [in Yeast]
A molecular switch, triggered by a signal, helps an organism instantly recognise a healthy and potential sex mate. "This mating decision is controlled by a simple chemical switch that converts an incoming pheromone signal into a cellular response," says study author Stephen Michnick, University of Montreal biochemistry professor.
National Geographic puts hydrographer on the map
By Allison Flynn Bernhard Lehner is a hydrographer whose work is about to go global. Fusing the fields of hydrology and cartography, he has created a one-of-a-kind map of the world's rivers that is included as a pull-out in the April 2010 "Fresh Water" Issue of National Geographic, the iconic magazine that's read in 32 [...]


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Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Where: Expo Center, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach
When: Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Sept. 22.
Tickets: $20
Information: www.chrysalisstage.com
Chrysalis Stage has a reputation built on eight remarkable productions around Southern California since it was founded by Aaron Morgan and Andrea Gwynnel Morgan in Whittier in 2008. Now it has found a new home at Long Beach's Expo Center.
To inaugurate its first season in Long Beach, the company is presenting a stunningly simple and remarkably detailed production of Henrik Ibsen's 1881 play "Ghosts," a play of biting realism and rising tension that was written in an era when most plays were still unable to address the dark side of human life.
Ibsen is called the "father" of realist drama, but he is much more than that. "Ghosts" deals with sexual disease and infidelity. It is shocking, but it doesn't go for that shock roughshod. By the end of the play, you have to deal with all those problems, you have to decide if it is right to kill a young man who is diseased — and the play doesn't make it easy: the lights go out without a resolution. But at the play's beginning, that ending is anything but obvious.
Chrysalis uses a simple platform stage, with chairs gathered round it and a Victorian-era couch and table as the only furnishing. The setting is pleasant. When Regina Engstrand, a cute and proper housemaid played by Courtney Sutton, meets with her father Jacob (Frank Stasio,) we have no idea that there is anything wrong in their relationship. He has recovered from alcoholism, he says, and wants her to come home and help him open a pub.
Nor do we suspect anything when Mrs. Alving (Andrea Gwynnel Morgan, who is also one of the play's directors) meets with Pastor Manders (Aaron Morgan, the play's other director) to discuss her late husband's bequest of an orphanage. Everything seems rosy and happy. Even when Oswald Alving (ZackaRya Santoro) returns home from three years painting in France, it seems like everything is in place for a happy family celebration.
That's part of Ibsen's genius. He has a tale to tell of wickedness and evil, very different from the Victorian morals of the time, but he is content to let it build little by little.
Morgan's Mrs. Alving seems happy, but she is haunted by ghosts, when she sees her son Oswald and the maid together, for instance. She explains some of her fears to Manders, but it is only at the play's end that we begin to realize how so many things are not what they seem.
Ibsen hides these sins until the second act — and don't worry; they won't be revealed here. But the characters share their secrets, and as the play progresses, each becomes fraught with deeper emotion and disturbing truths.
"Ghosts" is no longer shocking as the world has come a very long and painful way since 1881. But even if we are ready to accept it and acknowledge it, Ibsen's artful way of presenting the decay — a little at a time, a surprise here, a surprise there, until the whole comes unraveled — is fascinating and passionate.
Chrysalis has brought a first-rate production to Long Beach. You'll want to see it and to look forward to future productions.


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So here's a reason you should go to every Sandy benefit ever: Michael K. Williams, best known for playing Omar on The Wire, happened to show up to one at Brooklyn Bowl so he could bust out his best Ol' Dirty Bastard impression. Williams, who's playing Dirt Dog in an upcoming biopic, passed on doing "Got Your Money" and instead went straight for the rawness that is "Brooklyn Zoo."
It all makes sense to us, considering Wu-Tang and The Wire are two of the most bad-ass ensembles of all time. Williams seems to have a habit of just popping up and blasting his way into the things we love, so we look forward to his next sighting at a kickball game or vegan bake-off. [via The AV Club]


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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Conservatives haemorrhage support to UKIP
9 comments:
I was a life-long Conservative. No longer!
Increase the purple wedge a bit, I'm now voting UKIP.You are using my proof reading service again ! Now when are you going to pay my bill ?
I quote 'Cameron is a globalist, as are Clegg and Cameron'
I think you mean '. . . as are Clegg and Miliband'
Ivan WintersAll this demonstates is that we need a viable non-globalist alternative to UKIP who can take many votes from the Tories but will gain little if anything for themselves and leave us with a Labour government with a landslide majority in parliament. God only knows what a PM Miliband would do with such a landslide but you don't have to be a genius to work-out that we British won't gain much from whatever he does. I am feeling very despondent about our future!
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely voting for UKIP at the next election because I hope and pray they have the balls to do something about the muslim extremists living in this country and the idiots that follow them.
Yesterday I posted a link to a video in the 'EDL Solihull' article showing 'muslim police' in London telling drinkers and women to get off the streets because their actions are anti-islamic. The video can be found here:
Today a new video has appeared from these same lunatics. The opening music, picture and fire make it more reminiscent of a terrorist video! Worrying indeed. Take a look for yourselves:
If Cameron and his cronies are too afraid to stop this behaviour I do hope that Farage has a plan. He can't be any worse than Cameron or Blair/Brown before him can he?
Comments that call for or threaten violence will not be published. Anyone is entitled to criticise the arguments presented here, or to highlight what they believe to be factual error(s); ad hominem attacks do not constitute comment or debate. Although at times others' points of view may be exasperating, please attempt to be civil in your responses. If you wish to communicate with me confidentially, please preface your comment with "Not for publication". This is why all comments are moderated.


text: 686 NOUS43 KARX 171328 PNSARX Public Information Statement National Weather Service La Crosse WI 815 AM CDT Fri Mar 17 2017 The National Weather Service has declared March 13 through March 17 as Flood Safety Awareness week. The National Weather Service in La Crosse has been providing information about a different flood topic each day during the awareness week. Today`s topic: Partner Resources The National Weather Service works with and relies on strategic partners involved in river observations, reservoir management, floodplain management, flood hazard mitigation, and flood preparedness and safety to reduce the loss of life and property due to floods. Today we are sharing some great tools from several of our partners. American Red Cross family disaster plan: www.redcross.org/prepare/location/home-family Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLSH) flood safety information: www.flash.org/peril_flood.php Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) safety information: www.flash.org/peril_flood.php safety kit assembly: www.ready.gov/build-a-kit property protection and flood insurance: www.floodsmart.gov assess your flood risk: https://msc.fema.gov United States Army Corps of Engineers flood information: http://www.usace.army.mil/missions/emergencyoperations/floods.aspx united states geological survey water watch: http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/index.php?id=ww water alert - national water information system: http://maps.waterdata.usgs.gov/mapper/wateralert/ The National Weather Service works with many key partners to complete the mission of protecting life and property. Some additional key partners are the national hydrologic warning council, association of state floodplain managers, the national safety council, media outlets, and many other government and private sector organizations. for more information about any of our partners, or to learn about partners local to your area, contact your local NWS office. As we wrap up the 2017 Flood Safety Awareness week, remember, flooding can occur in any of the fifty states or U.S. territories at any time of the year. Prepare yourself, your family, and your home. Be aware of potential flooding in your area, turn around don`t drown, and help make the U.S. a more weather ready nation! http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/ For more information, please contact your local NWS office. $$


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Humble Chic NY was conceived in 2012 to offer a superior online boutique shopping experience at an accessible price point. The company launched its first pop-up shops in New York City and received immediate attention from "recessionistas," fashionistas, and celebrity shoppers compelled by the aesthetic and price point. In 2013 the company debuted online, quickly catching the attention of media outlets including Vogue, the Today Show, People StyleWatch, InStyle, and more.
The Humble Chic team employs a boutique approach. They carry limited quantities to ensure that customers don't get caught wearing the same |


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Tag Archives: sarah mosher
Woah, Danny Espinosa Now Has a Huge Beard. Who Cares, Check Out His Girl!
You might not recognize him, but that's Danny Espinosa, second baseman on the Washington Nationals. Since I know you, like me, were staring at that gorgeous woman next to him and not at Espinosa's beard…I ask you this: That… who … Continue reading
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Posted in Baseball, MLB
Tagged danny espinosa, danny espinosa wife, danny espinosa's girlfriend, sarah beth mosher, sarah mosher


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Latest Headlines
Do you believe in the Orlando Magic? 2011 Playoff Preview
Posted on 14 Apr 2011 by Warren Shaw.
The time is finally here. We will soon know if this Orlando Magic team that was rebuilt after only a quarter of the season had passed is good enough. Or at least as good as General Manager Otis Smith thought they could be. Orlando finished the season 4th in the Eastern Conference with a record of 52-30 and are set to face the Atlanta Hawks in the playoffs for the 2nd consecutive year. Atlanta t...
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Bobcats on the Hibachi…Orlando defeats Charlotte 111-102 in OT
Posted on 7 Apr 2011 by Warren Shaw.
After an uninspiring stretch where the Magic lost 3 out of 4 games, Team Blue is getting back on track. Tuesday evening the Magic survived one of the ugliest games of the season defeating the notoriously poor shooting Milwaukee Bucks 78-72. Wednesday evening was far more entertaining. With their slim playoff hopes in the balance the Bobcats hosted the Magic in Charlotte. Orlando showed its trad...
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Foul Play…Hawks outlast Magic 85-82
Posted on 30 Mar 2011 by Warren Shaw.
In what is almost certain to be a first round playoff match up, the Orlando Magic faced the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night. The Hawks survived another manic Magic comeback to win 85-82. After tonight's affair Orlando might need to make adjustments to its offensive scheme against Atlanta. It was the third straight game in which Atlanta secured a victory against Orlando holding the Magic to 8...
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Playoff Preview
Posted on 30 Mar 2011 by John Morgo.
Just finished watching the Hawks play Orlando in their final regular season matchup. These two, as I've been predicting since February, will tangle in the first round of the playofs. Even though Atlanta seems locked in the fifth seed in the playoffs, the Hawks haven't been wowing the Atlanta area. Maybe it's the ugly home losses, the inability to show a pulse against the NBA's elite (but there ...
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Posted on 24 Mar 2011 by Warren Shaw.
The Magic seem to be finding what they have been lacking for the better part of the season, and that's consistency. Since the loss to the Lakers on March 14, Orlando has reeled off 4 straight victories capped by the 111-99 washout of the New York Knicks this evening. Dwight Howard bullied the "little" big men of New York, scoring 33 points and snatching 11 rebounds. He even hit 11-1...
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Sacramento's Whole Greater Than Howard and His Parts
Posted on 24 Feb 2011 by Steven Jones.
Dwight Howard won the battle. His teammates lost the war. Five players scored in double figures for the visiting Kings, who defeated Howard's Magic 111-105 on Wednesday night despite an efficient 31-point, 17-rebound performance from Orlando's lone All-Star. Howard even chipped in an 11-12 effort from the foul line, and generally had his way with Sacramento's inside players. The Magic opene...
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A Memo to the Elite
Posted on 14 Feb 2011 by Warren Shaw.
On the eve of Valentine's Day there was no love lost between the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic. It almost seems like a decade has past since these two teams met in the 2009 NBA Finals. The Magic are a completely different team while the Lakers by and large remain the same. While L.A. vs. Orlando doesn't scream rivalry, this game clearly meant a great deal to the Magic.Orlando saught ano...
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On the offensive
Posted on 23 Jan 2011 by Warren Shaw.
For all intense and purposes the last two games for the Orlando Magic have been snoozers, much to the chagrin of the Toronto Raptors and Houston Rockets who were the Magic opponents. The team has exhibited masterful offensive ball movement and chemistry finally showing team balance and consistency…at least for these two games. On Friday the Toronto Raptors came to Orlando in the midst of ...
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Power Plays
Posted on 20 Jan 2011 by Warren Shaw.
Sometimes its better to be lucky than good. In a somewhat unexpected battle with the Philadelphia 76′ers the Orlando Magic escaped with a 99-98 victory in OT keyed by two wild & rare 4 point plays. This was a game that once again showed the team's resilient nature because quite frankly many times throughout the game they looked dead in the water. In the closing minute of regulation...
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Lou Williams-Andre Iguodala Lead Sixers to Another Collapse
Posted on 19 Jan 2011 by Bennett Snyder.
For the fourth time this season, the 76ers lost a seeming improbable game, that most teams would win 95 out of 100 times. This time because of a four point play with less than 20 seconds left as the Magic went on to win in OT 99 to 98. The Sixers were up 3 when the Magic fouled Lou Williams to put him at the line. He, just like in the Pistons collapse loss, failed at the free throw line, making...
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Celtics Get Revenge, Dazzle Magic 109-106
Posted on 18 Jan 2011 by Michael Johnson.
On Monday night, Kevin Garnett made his long awaited return to the Celtics lineup. After missing 9 games due to a strained calf muscle, he returned for one of the most anticipated games of the year, a rematch vs. the Orlando Magic. And in the end, Garnett stole the show. He ended the night with 19 points, 8 rebounds, and the steal that iced it, giving the Celtics a two possession advantage at 1...
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What's Been Missing
Posted on 18 Jan 2011 by Warren Shaw.
With the Celtics seeking Christmas Day revenge against the Orlando Magic, Kevin Garnett returned from a nine game absence in a rematch with the Magic on MLK. Orlando probably wishes KG sat out one more as he was in vintage form finishing with 19pts, 8rebs, and 2stls. That last steal was potentially game saving and the Celtics defeated the Magic 109-106. The Celtics shot 60% in a seesaw affair t...


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'Airplane!' team reunites in L.A. to shoot Wisconsin tourism ads
The team behind the classic comedy â;€Âoe;Airplane!â;€Â; will reunite on a set for the first time in 33 years on Thursday, when they shoot three new TV commercials in Los Angeles for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism.
The three ads being shot Thursday at Air Hollywood Studios in Los Angeles will spoof â;€Âoe;Airplane!â;€Â;, according to an announcement from the department.
The spots will feature actors Robert Hays and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who starred in the movie. Abdul-Jabbar, of course, is best known asâ;€¦;


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View Pseu Braun's profile |
Riff rock for riff raff, pop fizzle for the frazzled, chord changes of life for the menopausal teenagers, a safari in the jingle-jangle jungle. (Visit homepage.)
<-- Previous playlist | Back to Pseu's Thing With A Hook playlists | Next playlist -->
August 22, 2008
Listen to this show:
Add or read comments
Listener comments! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:19pm
hey theu! how goeth you? terrif show so far... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:20pm
miss buxley:
hi pseu,,whut up?? hope your havin a groooooooovy summer,,could you PLEASE play some SABRINA..TY | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:23pm
Why do I love that Tom Petty song so much? Is it the delightful production? | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:23pm
hi 'mo note the apostrophe at the beginning? it's my new attitude. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:28pm
jump back now! i'm feeling it. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:29pm
Pseu, in honor of my purchase of my first pair of moebius strip hippie sandals I request a workforce block of Ozric Tentacles (Pseu, I am kidding you don't have to play Ozric Tentacles in honor of my being a toenail fungus virgin, but a plaque or ribbon in honor of this department having been toenail fungus free in recognition would nice. ) BTW hi, looking forward to enjoying the show, which is a foregone conclusion. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:42pm
toni d.:
i know i'm takin a risk,, but i'm the of EVERYBODYS dreams!!! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:44pm
toni d.:
*girl | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:45pm
except for the fact that you are a dewd. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:48pm
don't get me started with my critique of Carl Jung. Also, Pseu it's spelled d-o-o-d | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:48pm
dew'd | |
Fri. 8/22/08 8:55pm
All We Are Saying, Is Give Homophony a Chance... If Sue can be Pseu, then Dude can be Dood can be Dewd can be Dew'd | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:03pm
Pseu, those are ctenophores | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:04pm
listener carl:
Playin Hooky gift is super. Wheres Ann Arbor? | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:08pm
listener carl:
yep WCBN + Viagra | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:09pm
they make hyperobsessive university of michgian graduates in ann arbor. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:09pm
Listener Michael W.:
Kellog's is in Battle Creek, Michigan. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:12pm
Nick the Bard:
The movie was The Road to Wellville, with Anthony Hopkins playing John Kellog. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wellville_(film) | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:12pm
The movie was Road to Wellville which was a book first which was inescapable while I worked at a bookstore. One of the Kellogs kids spent his later years wandering greenwich village in a harlequin outfit | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:14pm
"...spent his later years wandering greenwich village in a harlequin outfit." Like me?? | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:18pm
I love "Crank." Ah, college memories. Sounds a little thin and metallic now, though. Low-bitrate MP3, or my non-ideal speakers and revisionist nostalgic memories? Re: downtown Detroit, via Onion: http://tinyurl.com/haxf2 | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:20pm
more lo bit rate to come. That's how we roll, son... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:27pm
never met a colonic irrigation scene that i didn't love.... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:36pm
That Clearlake singer does a pretty fair Morrissey impression. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:38pm
That movie disturbed the crap out of me. And the singer in Clearlake (good stuff) is WAY less whiny than the Morr. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:40pm
Discogs.com has nothing for me concerning this Jeremy guy... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:42pm
i'll tell you who gives a crap about number one hits: michael shelley, that's who. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:44pm
Don't clean the grill - just burn it off with fire. Jeez. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:44pm
grrrl, you need you a grill daddy! http://www.grilldaddy.net/Default.asp?bhcp=1 | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:45pm
I Love Cake:
Boston has a bay too, bitch! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:54pm
You're in troooouuuuble, Pseu just said so! Neener neener LMAO | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:57pm
Listener Michael W.:
PAUL WESTERBERG!!! Yea! Thank you! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:57pm
wait...Ike just said he loves crank. DAMN. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 9:59pm
PAUL WESTERBERG!!! "invented modern rock" (Mary Prankster, "Art Fag Bastard"; irony alert) | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:00pm
tommy stinson invented chicken hawk core. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:02pm
al gore invented comments boards... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:20pm
Irony killed the comments board. Sandra Day O'Connor did Gore in... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:22pm
everybody's talkin, it's just that no one hears a word theyre sayin | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:23pm
Terre T:
Yes! This is Ms Aguilera's best ! Thanx for playin it in this set -ya radio genius! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:27pm
miz t! thanks for listening! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:38pm
Rich P:
I wish Cristina had used Amy Winehouses band the Dap-Kings | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:40pm
Rich P:
PS You are a Rock God:) | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:40pm
is that your SICK FANTASY? | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:42pm
rick armstrong:
That Westerberg album represented him going from post-punk wildman to introspective singer songwriter, a not unusual move. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:42pm
Listener Michael W.:
Wow. Ouch. Sorry. 14 Songs is PW's debut solo record. So, his first "breakout". (awkward pause) Anyway... Thanks. Good show, as ever. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:43pm
Rich P:
Like Lou Reed | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:44pm
"ouch"? what'd you stub your toe and are embarrassed? | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:47pm
rick armstrong:
Bob Mould kind of went acousticky as well with some bizarre pop albums in the nineties. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:50pm
I stubbed my toe once. It was terribly shaming... | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:52pm
clearly michael w is having self-esteem issues. let's make a sucking sound tall ogether now and have a collective "ooo - ee-yeah--WOW-Sorry-yikes-ouch" moment. | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:54pm
He lost hipster cred in public, ewwwwwwww@!!@!! sniff sniffffff :-) | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:55pm
Sounds good from up here - I'm in "B" say hi after yer done...! I remember when Pseu's toenail came off during one of her programs!! NOT from a stubbing incident, tho! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:57pm
dave de:
The Hook = Awesomeness!! | |
Fri. 8/22/08 10:58pm
hi di and dave de... the hook and the toenail!! I was just thinking about that old toenail today in fact as I admired my feet for the 10, 000th time today... | |
RSS feeds for Pseu's Thing With A Hook: Playlists feed | MP3 archives feed
| E-mail Pseu Braun | Other WFMU Playlists | All artists played by Pseu's Thing With A Hook |


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Lion Morosini Palace
Photos of Lion Morosini Palace
TravelPod Member ReviewsLion Morosini Palace Venice
Small basic b & b but such great value for location, hotel has pier looking at rialto bridge! little tapas bar under hotel for drinks and nibbles - not loud and breakfast over looking the main waterway through venice!
This review is the subjective opinion of a TravelPod member and not of TravelPod.com.
TripAdvisor Reviews Lion Morosini Palace Venice
Travel Blogs from Venice
Day 5: Venezia and journey to Wien!
... to the underground and took it to my hostel stop. Very Lucky for me, my hostel was right next to the Metro.
I booked one night at the Wombat Hostel in Vienna and I was immediately impressed by it! It was so clean inside and they had 1 keycard for both the room and the locker! It was great! Once I checked in, I headed up to the room and put my stuff down. I said hi to my roommates, who were really friendly, and then I went out ...
Cruise Week One
... 60's and the role of woman at the
time, very well put together with great voices. After the show around 10:30 it
was time to get the kids and head home for bed. As we are traveling in different
time zones we moved our clocks forward an hour before bed.
Monday 3rd – Day at Sea – this started with a
sleep-in for all. Off to breakfast at the Garden View caf� before it closed as
it was no longer early. The rest of the day was filled ...
Culture & history
... is opposite David, about to kill someone, this was carved in the 1800s, there is a so a bronze statue created in the 1800s of Persius who killed Medusa by cutting off her head.
Onto a gold & leather factory, this made us separate from our money slightly, before we did that they selected some people, Tim was one of those & he modeled a €1100 leather jacket made from goat skin, & 3 other ladies to ...
Pippy's Dippy
... while consuming strictly protein, green vegetables and salads. I am proudly at 180 as I begin this trip and I plan to return home two weeks from now still at that weight.
With a cruise in my future, I have my work cut out for me.
There will be more details about that as we progress. The overview is this: we will spend tonight in Venice at the Hotel Moresco, board the Norwegian Jade tomorrow and begin a seven night journey stopping at Corfu, ...
Enchanted by Venice
The hotel provided breakfast and it was a nice assortment tucked into a tiny little room with at least two, sometimes three employees seating you, washing dishes, and getting your coffee or espresso if you drink it. We finished our breakfast and I was a little concerned about our day. When we had packed, the weather had said sunny and 60 or 62 as a high. Now my phone was saying cloudy, winds 15 – 25 miles an hour and a high in the mid 50s. We had packed ...


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Thursday, March 19 2009
Emerging Star Criticism the One to Beat in Orchid Sunday
Darley Stable's 5-year-old English homebred mare Criticism has won the 12-furlong Long Island Handicap (G3) at Aqueduct on Nov. 1 and 11-furlong The Very One Stakes (G3) at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 22 in her last two starts for trainer Tom Albertrani, and will likely be favored to make it three in a row in Sunday's $150,000 Orchid Stakes (G3).
Jockey Edgar Prado gets a return call on Criticism in the 1½ mile turf feature facing seven rival fillies and mares as she bids to continue her ascent to the top ranks of the filly and mare turf stakes division in the U.S. after campaigning with moderate results as a 3-year-old in France through the 2007 campaign.
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Oakley Progression Sessions Day One At Mammoth Mountain
Written by Neev Zaiet
Oakley Progression Sessions kicked off their second stop on their four-stop tour at Mammoth Mountain today with 50 girls from all over the country, and even one from New Zealand, who were ready to push their boundaries on snow.
The morning started off with a Muscle Milk batter pancake breakfast, followed by an hour of the most innovative and hilarious yoga session I've ever been a part of. All 50 girls bonded first thing in the morning over sexual yoga innuendos, danced to upbeat music, and chatted about our goals for the weekend.
Chanelle Sladics led the first group in the morning, coaching all of the ladies on getting comfortable riding switch and running 180 drills on the snow. Learning something new wouldn't be complete without a few riotous bails in which every girl made sure the snow was still there to break their fall. But hey, falling is progressing right?
In keeping up with progression, there was a private park set up by Mammoth Unbound for the session, complete with a 12 jump mini line, boxes and rails, and a mini pipe. Progression wasn't just for campers, but for coaches as well, with Chanelle working on perfecting some tricks herself. "I rode all day with everyone, working on my methods and working on my back one to switch back one. No matter how big or small the features are, we can always learn and I always learn at these things so it's really fun for me too."
The second half of the day kicked off with a pipe clinic run by none other than Mary Walsh herself. Fifteen girls stood at the top of the 18- foot pipe in South Park at Mammoth Mountain, pushing each other to go big and work on their jump turn style in the pipe. Every lady vibed off of one another's successes, with at least half riding the pipe for the first time ever. Taylor Wright, a first time progression session camper, also popped her pipe cherry today too.
"The pipe was good. I think once you do it and you try it out for the first time you get more comfortable and are willing to go bigger and try something different," said Taylor.
Day one was successful, with each woman navigating their way throughout the day, learning new skills in both the private terrain park and the halfpipe in a safe and fun environment. Every single lady went out of their way to push themselves to new limits, while continuously uplifting everyone around them, making for a joyous and progressive day.
Day two will only bring more new skills, laughter and overall good times.
Special thanks to Oakley, Muscle Milk, Paradigm, Natural Vines, Tonic, Snowboarder and Powder Magazine's.