I have decided James Shore knows Agile

I have been reading through James Shore's Top ten articles about Agile software development and I have decided the man knows what he is talking about. I started with The Decline and Fall of Agile which only served to back up what Mary Poppendieck said in her presentation "Is Agile a Fad?" at the October 27th Agile Denver meeting. I have since been reading other articles and have been impressed with knowledge. Here is his top ten list:

• The Decline and Fall of Agile - 14 Nov, 2008
  It's human nature to only do the stuff that's familiar and fun, and that's what has happened with Agile.
• Quality With a Name - 5 Apr, 2006
  What is good design?
• An Approximate Measure of Technical Debt - 19 Nov, 2008
  Introducing: The Spag.
• Kanban Systems - 15 Oct, 2008
  How, when, and why to use Kanban systems to eliminate iterations.
• Use Risk Management to Make Solid Commitments - 8 Oct, 2008
  How to use risk multipliers and risk-adjusted burn-up charts to make solid commitments to your executives.
• Continuous Integration is an Attitude, Not a Tool - 18 Aug, 2005
  CI tools make it easy to do the wrong thing.
• Beyond Story Cards: Agile Requirements Collaboration - 21 Mar, 2005
  Agile requirements, in-depth.
• Design Debt - 1 Feb, 2004
  Why we trash seven-figure software investments.
• Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day - 27 Feb, 2006
  An easier, cheaper (and better) way to do continuous integration.
• Change Your Organization: A Diary - 10 Mar, 2006
  Six months of changing an organization from within.

Book Update: Can Wizards4Word help?

I was just feeling overwhelmed with the management of my book project, Battle Gaming: The New American Sport. I recently decided that chapters 7,8,9, and 10 had to be scrapped and replaced with whole new reorganized set of chapters. The current content looks something like

Part I - Playing the Games
1 - A New Kind of Sport
2 - Safety First
3 - Quick Start Guide
4 - The Games
5 - Combat in Detail
6 - On the Battle Field

Part II - Equipment
7 - What You'll Need
8 - Technology of Foam Padded Weapons
9 - Swords and Long Blade Weapons
10 - Handheld Weapons
11 - Tips and Tricks of Weapon Construction
12 - Thrown Weapons
13 - Archery and Arrows
14 - Shields
15 - Armor
16 - Uniforms and Costuming
17 - Game Props

Part III - Running the Games
18 - The Organizations (Dagorhir, Belegarth, Amtgard, Darkon)
19 - Doing it Your Way - Starting a Club
20 - The Successful Game Day
21 - Building on Success

Each of the chapters are split into multiple section files in word. This has made writing much easier since a section is on a very specific topic and covers only a few pages. The problem is that I now have 37 folders containing 348 files. Even though some are just images and diagrams or research items, I am still having a some difficulty keeping it all organized.

I was checking out the Book Master system (http://www.wizards4word.com/bookmaster.html) that is provided by Wizards4Word to see if that might help. I found a few good reviews, but if anyone has some more information about this product, I welcome hearing from you. Feel free to post a comment. Thanks - Dave

Writing the Battle Gaming Book Update

Here are were things are at with the new book.

Currently the title is "Battle Gaming: The New American Sport." I am not sure if this is the title that will exist for the release. Margaret had suggested "Battle Gaming Made Fun." The problem I had with this title is that it implied that Battle Gaming was not fun to begin with (on the contrary it is quite fun).

Overall the book is coming together well. I still wish to have a draft out by the end of the year. I have now been printing each section I work on so as to have a binder that represents the entire book. Still do not know how many pages I have. I am trying to keep it under 300 pages in an effort to keep the price of the book down.

Last week activities included:

I was working on the Open Battle Gaming System Dagorhir Variance Document. This is a document that allows players who read the book to convert the books Open Battle Gaming System rules into a set that matches the Dagorhir rule set. As always this force me to loop through yet another revision of the Open Battle Gaming System.

I also spent a good bit of time working on developing a chart categorizing various real weapons to Open Battle Gaming System weapons. This was a nightmare because historical weapon taxonomy is an art more than a science. I ended up writing a few paragraphs about the whole tangled mess of categorizing historic weapons and then went on to just start a table that made sense for most people who are familiar with the common names of weapons used in role playing games. The table is not finished and likely will continue to get updates until the time of publishing.

This weekend was spent attacking the games in Chapter 3. I created my game information rendering template and ran my first mail merge against the Excel spreadsheet I have been loading with games. It was gratifying to see pages and pages of battle game descriptions come out in a good readable form. Of course the spread sheet is still incomplete. I have also taken a hard look at consolidating and reducing the number of games. I am working on how to describe the unique qualities of each game and then reference combining them with other games. I am working on removing redundancy (after all how many versions of zombie can one read about). I think the result will be more concise, with an objective of reduced volume (to keep the price down) along with maximum useful information content.

My objective is to by the end of the year have a draft that I can send out to reviewers. Things are coming together so well I think I may make this deadline.

Reading Update

I noticed that Amazon has rearranged there Pictures on there server so my Blog site looks like a partly built web site or one that is dieing. They always say, copy the pictures locally for your links, but who has time to do that! I will try to get back in the next few days to update things when I can.

Made me realize how far behind I am on updating what I am reading. Things I have read in the past few months include:

Will and I completed the second Warrior series. Felt the first, second, and fifth books were good, while the third and fourth were pretty much filler that stretched out the plot line too long.

Got going on finances listening and re listening to "Your Broke Because You Want to Be" and "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind"

Currently finishing up the Eragon trilogy with Will. Found the books to be derivative works. Really liked the details he puts in, that boy has an eye for detail. Have difficulty with the rate of advancement of the characters. I think this may be the difference between the video game generation where video games players are used to quick advancement and the old rpg generation where we play a campaign for 5 years before our characters have any reasonable amount of power.

With Audrey I have been through most of the Rainbow Fairy and related books. We are now reading works by Gail Carson Levine. I have also picked up a new book "How to Ditch Your Fairy" which we have not started. I hope that this book will give a different view of the whole fairy genre that Audrey is infatuated with.

As for myself, I am mostly rereading titles to find material for the book. This includes going back to Bruce Lee, Miyamoto Musashi, and John Clements among others.

Most People Don't Get It!

I finally put my speech Most People Don't Get It into a movie. Check it out.

Quiet Summer on the Blog

Things have been very quiet this summer on the blog. I have been mostly working long hours at PTC where we are a bit under the gun to get things out. I also took 2 1/2 week vacation where we drove from Colorado to Rhode Island, Mass, and Maine. It was fun to show the kids the North West.

Mostly the reason the blog will continue to be quiet is that I am focusing most of my additional energy on my new book "Battle Gaming: The New American Sport" which I was hoping to have out this year. The book really is not new. The first 97 pages were written in 1997 back when it was a book about Dagorhir. It has had two major rewrites since them and should fall out at somewhere between 250 and 300 pages. It features Amtgard, Belgarth, Dagorhir, and Darkon. With rules and instructions for new people just starting into Battle Gaming. I will share more as the time is right.

Audrey performs in 2008 Lab School Talent Show

Here is my daughter Audrey at the 2008 Lab School for Creative Learning talent show.