fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
A gentle Introduction to Bayesian Inference
By: Dr. Robert Kübler
Tags: Maximum Likelihood, Bayesian Statistics, Editors Pick, Artificial Intelligence, Bayesian Machine Learning

Stu’s Explanation

Stubborn Stu starts with a radical view:

I don’t care about the experiment. From my experience, it’s highly unlikely that she has psychic powers. If I had to quantify my belief, I would say that there is a 0.1% chance that she has these kind of powers.

Stu has a prior belief in his head he thinks is the absolute truth. In mathematical terms, this is

Stu’s prior belief. Note that there is no ‘data’ term involved.

where θ is either ‘fortune teller’ with probability 0.1% and ‘not a fortune teller’ with probability 99.9%, i.e.

Frank’s Explanation

Stu has got a legitimate, yet very simple answer. But Frequentist Frank sees things differently:

Data is everything. She got 3 out of 3 right, so I say she clearly has psychic powers.

He has come to this conclusion via a Maximum Likelihood approach, where he maximized the following likelihood formula with respect to θ:

Frank tries to find the θ that maximizes this term: The probability of the observed data, given that Claire is or is not a fortune teller.

Here, the data is that Claire scored right three times, thus Frank can try out the two possible values for θ:

The probability of getting 3 out of 3 right, given that she really is a fortune teller, is 100%.

The probability of getting 3 right, given that she is only an ordinary human, is 12.5%.

Frank votes for psychic powers because the probability of observing this kind of outcome (getting 3 colors right) is higher for a fortune teller than for an ordinary person. Note that he can’t give a probability that she is not a fortune teller. The maximum likelihood approach does not allow for that.

Betty thinks:

Both explanations are extreme in their own ways. Stubborn Stu disregards the collected data, which is clearly stupid. However, Frank pays too much attention to the data, as if nothing else exists in this world. Maybe Claire was just lucky, especially with only 3 trials.

You can argue that Frank behaves unreasonably, too, but he is merely doing what we Data Scientists often do.
How music can be turned into dataset
By: Mahmud Hossain Farsim
Tags: Dataset, Editors Pick, Music, Data Sonification, Data Science

How music can be turned into data set

Image source : Author

How does 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' look like as a dataset ?

We have seen musical datasets in the past. Like Spotify’s. In that particular dataset, each row has very important information about songs like energy, acousticness, danceability, etc. While those variables present the attributes of a song, a song can also be expressed entirely, as a composition in the form of data.

The basic structure of a musical piece

To understand how we can make datasets from musical pieces, it is important to understand some basic stuff about music theory. I will try to explain that very briefly for those who are not much familiar with the terms.

A note is a musical sound. There are 12 notes in music: C, C # (sharp) or D flat, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, and B. After B, a new octave starts from C again. Notes are played in a particular tempo. Tempo determines how fast or slows that particular music piece is. There is another thing called ‘Time Signature’ which determines the number of beats in each ‘Bar’ of a particular piece of music. A bar is a segment of time. For example, if the time signature is 4/4 (4 by 4), that tells us that there are 4 beats in a bar and it takes 4 bars to complete a ‘cycle’ of music. When more than one note is played together, for example, when C, E, and G are played together, it forms a chord.

Expressions are an important part of the music. There are different dynamics involved when someone plays the piano, a guitar, or any instrument. It is about how the sound of a particular instrument or human voice is “altered”. There are many ways to do this. For example, pianissimo is a subtle expression where the sound is very lightly expressed which is the opposite of fortissimo, which is a very loud sound. There are also expressions like a slur, staccato, crescendo, etc. All of these expressions make music a ‘language’ to interact and helps to convey certain emotions.

Let’s take a look at what is already happening with data and audio.

Sonification of data is a popular topic in recent days. There are many examples out there.

Just like data can be seen visually, data can also be heard! The pitch of the sound follows a particular curve as the curve goes up and down. Some follow a chromatic pattern and some represent the data through a scale. If compared to visualization, I think of these scales as ‘colors’ used in a graph. There are even programs like TwoTone and MIDITime to convert data to sound.

On the other hand, converting audio to data is also widespread research that has been happening and made tremendous development through deep learning.

However, there are differences in various contexts of sound and music. Turning sound into music requires thought and an artistic approach which makes the difference.
Do You Think Women Are Funny?
By: Sharon Alger
Tags: Editors Pick, Humor, Culture, Equality, Feminism

If women are as funny as men, why do they struggle to succeed in comedy?

A quick search on the internet reveals lots of men repeating the same complaints:

‘They only talk about their vaginas.’ ‘They only talk about sex.’ ‘They only talk about sexism.’ ‘Most female comedians are lesbians, which don’t represent women as a whole.’

I see. Because no male has ever discussed his genitalia, talked about sex, nor feminism. Got it. And who says lesbians can’t represent women? They are women. I’m a straight woman, and I feel represented when a lesbian comic gets up and does her bit. But why the pressure for female comics to represent all women, anyway? This is something that is never expected of men. When was the last time a straight, white dude had to represent anyone but himself? This, folks, is privilege 101.

Let’s not forget the arrogance it takes to dismiss an entire gender. If this is all a man thinks female comics talk about, it’s obvious they haven’t taken the time to consume much of their work. How would they even know?

Do you know what I enjoy about female comics the most? The lack of the obligatory rape joke. You know the one. The one that proves you’re brave enough to ‘go there.’ Because you’re an edgy comic. There are few men these days who don’t feel a perverse need to include at least one rape joke that punches down.

That’s not to say I’m 100% against rape jokes. But if a comic is going to do one, first off, it needs to be actually funny. Secondly, it needs to punch up, not down. Here’s one of my favourite rape jokes:

This bit makes fun of the man’s aggressive behavior, rather than making light of the victim.
Latest picks: In case you missed them: Our daily picks will be back on Monday! If you want to receive our weekly digest on Fridays, it’s easy! Follow our publication and then go to your settings and…
By: Tds Editors
Tags: The Daily Pick, Editors Pick, Machine Learning, Towards Data Science, Data Science

Our daily picks will be back on Monday! If you want to receive our weekly digest on Fridays, it’s easy! Follow our publication and then go to your settings and turn on “receive letters.”
Bringing to your attention some excellent stories about writing from Illumination, here is my…
Tags: Editors Pick, Short, Creative Writing, Writing

Bringing to your attention some excellent stories about writing from Illumination, here is my first choice.

Amy Culberg shows us five ways to use Medium as a writing retreat. I really loved the way she encourages us all to cooperate in our community of writers.

‘They are your colleagues, your friends, and maybe even people that you end up helping and end up helping you.’

She advises us not to skim, but to

‘Dive into it. Read it like it was made by a friend.’

Then respond, show your appreciation, be an active part of the community .

‘The icing on the cake is the community you build here, will continue after the pandemic.’

So let’s embrace the positivity of this huge space and live it more.

5 Ways to Use Medium as a Writing Retreat | by Amy Culberg | ILLUMINATION | Dec, 2020 | Medium
Does Your Husband Know You’re Doing This?
By: Sharon Alger
Tags: Editors Pick, Culture, Equality, Feminism, Diversity

Does Your Husband Know You’re Doing This?

A year ago, I was discussing the manosphere online. The manosphere includes groups such as incels, MGTOW, red pill, pick up artistry and the like. I mentioned I was in my 40s and concerned for my children facing this new dating landscape. Of course, there were some men who disagreed with my views. This resulted in a debate between us. Which I didn’t have a problem with, but one man had different feelings:

‘Does your husband know you’re online, raising hell? Don’t you have something better to do?’

I asked the guy what he thought I should’ve been doing instead. In his wisdom, he suggested cooking, cleaning, or looking after my kids. This confused me: my younger two children were asleep, and my adult child didn’t appear to need anything from me. It was ten o’clock at night and not the most practical time to be cleaning. As for cooking? Sure, I can cook. But usually, my partner prefers to do the cooking, and I prefer it that way, too. And no one needed feeding.

Should I have sat still in a corner, my hands folded in my lap, until I received further orders from my master? I should be doing anything besides doddering onto the internet, where I didn’t belong. Please, dear reader, whatever you do, don’t tell my partner I was on the internet!
If You’re Not Angry, Then What Are You?
By: Nada Chehade
Tags: Gender Equality, Rape Culture, Editors Pick, Sexual Violence, Feminism

I took a creative writing class this summer and everything I wrote about was pretty light-hearted. The in-class prompts were questions like: Describe the image in front of you or what kind of fruit would you like to be? Etc…nothing that required me to dive deep into my soul.

Until the last prompt which was: Why are you writing?

Obviously, the question means a lot to me, so I put some heart and funk into the answer; I finally showed up to class with my emotions. I was nervous.

In brief, I wrote about how I had to leave a “dangerous” situation, a “bad” marriage; that I had “no support” doing it either. Which brought me to, I write to inspire other women in similar situations. I even managed to make it humorous despite the sensitive topic.

The six women in the class loved it. They clapped and whistled at the end, I even heard the professor wept!

However, the two men in class thought I sounded angry. Just straight-up angry

“WOW, why so angry?”

I almost spat my coffee out on the screen. It was such a drastic difference in opinions.

I had spared them from the painful bits and splashed some humor all over it too; I even fucking giggled in the end. But I was labeled angry anyway.

It was very dehumanizing.

They did not pick up on “ danger”, “bad”, “no support”, they did not pick up on how I turned a miserable story funny. They only picked up on their sensitive egos.

“You seem to hate men,”

“Not all men!!”

They were shocked I used their own bullshit as a comeback. Not all, just you!

Disclaimer: I don't hate men. I hate men AND women who lack emotional intelligence; the ones who sympathize with the violator and justify their behavior.

The ones who dismiss your pain and label you angry instead.

The ones who ask why are you angry instead of how the fuck are you smiling most of the time?
7 Reasons that Customers Love Onyx Boox Note Air
By: Onyx Boox
Tags: Editors Pick, Buying Advice, Featured Stories

Note Air differentiates itself from most of the same-sized devices and even real paper with its capability and E Ink Carta HD screen.

With the E Ink screen of 227 dpi and front light, users can read sharp texts while protecting their eyes from being hurt by LCD’s backlight. The eye-friendly display makes Note Air a preference over some robust tablets, such as iPad and Samsung Tab S6.

The screen is high quality, the backlight is a nice extra for working late into the night and unlike the iPad the screen stays cool to touch (and rest your palm on) when working on it for extended periods of time. — Jakob Gronkjaer/Note Air User

Also, unlike LCD devices requiring frequent charging, Note Air can last for weeks on one charge. User Devin Odom has proved the excellent 3000mAh battery capacity: “Battery life has been very good though I have only had the device for a few days, it has not needed a charge.”

If you’re looking for outstanding 10.3inch writing tablets like the ReMarkable2, you can take a look at Note Air. Note Air focuses on offering an optimal multitasking experience for its users in addition to a great writing experience.

Overall, excellent e-reader, note taker, simple tablet. — Devin Odom/Note Air User

Leveraging Note Air’s design and versatile capabilities, people can read books in any light, sync notes to the cloud and load Android apps and split the screen to do two tasks at once.

Like user Andrés Lugo put it: “All in all Note Air is a superb device: like a tablet, unlike any tablet!”

Reason 7: Magnetic BOOX Pen Made for Note Air
Thanks so much for this! I can’t tell you how much I hate pitching!
By: Lindsay Redifer
Tags: Publishing, Pitching, Editors Pick, Writing Tips, Writing

Lindsay is the author of the graphic novel The Dyslexia Book, due out in 2021. Find her project on Patreon for more information.
November Edition — Editors’ Top Picks
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: November, Editors Pick, Scrittura

November Edition — Editors’ Top Picks

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

November was another fantastic month at Scrittura! We welcome more and more talented writers each day, it seems. I am ecstatic at the quality of poetry and prose you have all been submitting. Truly, this is a stellar place to come read on Medium!

It’s hard to believe it’s already time for another one of these showcases to brag a little longer about the talent here. But, such is the plague…I mean, c’est la vie! Each month it takes me a little longer to make my picks, so much good material to choose from. You all ought to be very proud.

At any rate, please enjoy our editors’ favourite selections for November of 2020.

Zay’s Picks:

Viraji’s Picks:

J.D.’s Picks:

The Scrittura Team

Lori Lamothe Georgia Lewitt Louis Dennis Lowell Woluchem Aspen Blue Mahnoor Chaudhry MDSHall Amy Jasek Mary Jones Barry Dawson IV Ian Cunnold Patrick M. Ohana Zay Pareltheon Eli Snow Viraji Ogodapola Ema Dumitru Kristen v.H. Middleton Hannah Dziura Janaka Stagnaro Joseph Lieungh Joseph Coco Samantha Lazar Paroma Sen Mimi Bordeaux Jasmine Abbi. Camille Fairbanks Kevin E. Pittack Jr. Sydney Duke Richey Sydney J. Shipp Josh Lonsdale Isaac Dennett Jay Sizemore Vera Hadzic Victoria Ponte Charlotte Allan Debbie Miller Carolyn Riker Samuel Clarke Dermott Hayes Dr. Jackie Greenwood Gurpreet Dhariwal Ray Lobo Rosy Rane Qalam Dana Sanford Suntonu Bhadra Wendell McQuary Suzanne V. Tanner Johanna Geary Jenny Justice Tre L. Loadholt Jenine Bsharah Baines Josie Elbiry AK (Aaska Aejaz) Johannes Mudi Ana-Maria Schweitzer Ann Marie Steele Kim Cullen Sarah E Sturgis Simran Kankas C.J. Obikile The Conscious Wordsmith Jessica Lee McMillan Ronald Mathew Gerardo Rene Paz Rhonda Marrone Aaron Quist Mohan Boone Angelina Der Arakelian Amanda Dalmas Daniel A. Teo
Extreme Event Time Series Preprocessing
By: Marco Cerliani
Tags: Time Series Analysis, Editors Pick, Data Preprocessing, Machine Learning, Data Science

Preprocessing is an essential step in every pipeline involving the development of a forecasting or analytic tool. In case we are dealing with time series, the most important things to take into account are resampling and filling possible missing values.

While resampling is a semi-automatic procedure which, in the best cases, can be directly derived from studying the frequency of the series, missing data imputation is more critical. The choice of a particular type of filling can distort our conclusions. This is particularly important with time series, where we have to take care of possible temporal dependency when replacing the ‘NaNs’ to leverage the best possible outcomes.

In this post, we present some clever and effective alternative to the standard interpolation methods for the preprocess of time series. These tricks are useful not only in the presence of missing values but also in the presence of extreme events in the data stream than we want to mitigate. The tsmoothie package can help us to carry out this task. Tsmoothie is a python library for time series smoothing and outlier detection that can handle multiple series in a vectorized way. It’s useful because it can provide all the tools we need to operate a time series preprocessing efficiently.

PROBLEM SETTING

To have an empirical demonstration of what we are trying to achieve we generate some simulated data. More specifically, we create some artificial time series with seasonal and trend behaviors.

Simulated time series with trend and seasonality (image by author)

They present a trend pattern with seasonality of 24 periods. Given these data, we introduce some lacks replacing intervals of observation with missing values. We are forcing the introduction of missing data intervals but this can be a common and unexpected behavior that may present in our analysis. On the opposite, another inconvenience appears when we observe a period characterized by extreme turbulence or unusual breaks. A safe bet would be to mask these values and properly fill them.

Here we cover the case of missing data periods because this permits us to have a ‘true reality’ that can be used to test the goodness of our approaches. The same considerations can be extended without problems in case we face the problem of high inconsistency in our data stream.

Our workflow is very simple. We take the time series and generate some random missing intervals on them. We aim to try to fill them in the best way possible. This is a tricky task because our time series have a trend and seasonality that we want to respect. We need to adopt some techniques that can reproduce the right pattern in the best way possible. In the end, we test the goodness of our work computing an error score to compare the goodness of our filling with the true reality that we have previously censored.
Three Out-Of-The-Box Transformer Models
By: James Briggs
Tags: Editors Pick, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Programming, Data Science

Text Classification with BERT

Text classification is simple but incredibly useful. One of the most common use-cases for natural language classification is sentiment analysis.

We will use sentiment analysis in our example — however, we can use this same approach for any text classification task.

Unlike the other two use-cases, we do need to train our model — so that it understands what we are asking it to classify. The steps are slightly different because of this:

Preprocessing (including tokenization) of the data

Training of the model

Classification of test/real data using the model

Model

The model itself is incredibly easy to define and follows the same structure as the other models.

Pre-Processing

It’s incredibly easy to build the model; there’s almost nothing to it. However, we need to make sure we are feeding the right data into our model.

We will use the movie review sentiment dataset from here — using train.tsv to train our dataset.

The model expects tokenized IDs and attention mask tensors as input, and one-hot encoded target labels.

Both input tensors are built using the encode_plus method. The IDs are returned by default, and we add return_attention_mask=True to return the attention mask tensor too:

One-hot encoding of our target labels is handled easily with nothing more than Numpy:

Because we’re using TensorFlow — we can easily format, shuffle, and batch our data using the built-in Dataset object:

Train and Predict

We need to train our model this time too. First, we compile our model, then begin training with model.fit :

Now we have our text classification model, built with Google’s BERT! We can make predictions with:

This model isn’t as clean-cut due to the need to train our classifier, but other than this, there is nothing more we need to do — and the level of accuracy possible on language classification tasks using BERT is simply phenomenal.

I have written about this use-case in more depth here.
Sprint, Scrum, Agile, Software, SDLC, New Year, Google, LinkedIn, Project Management, Sprint Retrospective, Java, Python, JavaScript. Facebook
By: Nikhil Raj
Tags: Agile Methodology, Sprint, Agile, Scrum, Productivity

“Our New Year holidays must be like a Sprint Retrospective”

Q- What is a Sprint Retrospective?

Answer — Sprint Retrospective is the last step or we can say phase of any project in an agile environment, which is managed or run by the Scrum master. In Sprint Retrospective team members are discussing their pros and cons among their team members.

Q- Which Kind of pros and cons they are discussing?

Answer- Five diamond questions of every Sprint Retrospective is mentioned below:-

What went well?

2. What didn’t go so well?

3. What have I learned?

4. What still puzzles, mystifying, and confusing me?

5. How can I use this knowledge to improve for the future?

👉Now, How our New Year holidays must be like a Sprint Retrospective? Answer- I hope after reading about Sprint Retrospective, which I mentioned above 👉 you have a clear idea about Sprint Retrospective. 👉Just like a Sprint Retrospective in which any Agile team members are discussing their pros and cons with their team members managed by the Scrum master 👉 We have to discuss it with our family, friends, and fellow-workers under the guidance of any senior citizen or head member of the family and discuss below five-diamond points.

1. What went well?

2. What didn’t go so well?

3. What have I learned?

4. What still puzzles, mystifying, and confusing me?

5. How can I use this year experience to improve for the future?

👉I hope if you are reading this line then you are definitely saying to your heart ❤ Wow, what an amazing explanation❤ 👉If not then sorry for wasting your precious time.
What is Agile and its Benefits?
By: Jennifer Yoo
Tags: Scrum, Software Development, Software Engineering, Agile, Agile Methodology

Agile methodology in software development implements collaboration between self organizing cross functional teams. Agile methods encourages teamwork, accountability, and flexibility which allows for fast delivery for end users.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is based on twelve principles.

Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Welcome changing requirements, even in late development. Deliver working software frequently (typically in weeks). Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers. Projects are built around motivated, trusted individuals. Face to face conversation is the best form of communication. Working software is the primary measure of progress. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design. Simplicity is essential. Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing items. Regularly, the team reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts accordingly.

There are also subsets of Agile. The most popular process framework is called Scrum. Scrum is used to manage intricate program development using iterative and incremental practices. It aims to increase productivity and save time. The overall advantages Scrum offers to the company are: increasing quality of deliverables, planning for changes, more accurate estimated deadlines, and more control of project schedule.

The table below demonstrates the benefits of Scrum.

from cprime.com

While there is no substantial empirical evidence that agile methods are advantageous but there are numerous accounts of anecdotal evidence from companies and software engineers.

One example of a successful agile transformation is Capital One Europe. Six years after moving away from legacy processes and implementing agile methodologies, their software engineering team grew 100%, from 30 to 300 engineers. The tech team can deliver quicker results to customers while keeping costs low.

Additionally, in uncertain times where companies had to make changes to their workflow and shift to work at home, the agile approach helped companies thrive under unexpected challenges.
Embracing the Agile manifesto
By: Doron Katz
Tags: Agile, Agile Methodology, Scrum

Something as a practicing program manager I tend to always use as tenets when guiding teams, is relying on the spiritual bible of contemporary project management, and that’s the Agile Manifesto. Products of the Agile Alliance, the premise of the Manifesto is to simplify the practice of project management through a lightweight framework to build software expeditiously with bias for customer validation over processes and documentation and red tape.

The two drivers behind the manifesto are iterative and incremental development, over pre-medicated and over planning, and creating higher quality software in shorter time, or more concisely, build more with less.

The Agile Manifesto

I see the Manifesto as guiding principles, tenets as I mentioned earlier on, rather than rigid and enforced rules, advocation for the spirit rather than the letter of the law. So does the Agile Manifesto entail?

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

To me this infers bias towards the human element over procedures. Engaging customers, stakeholders, other team-members. It is not to say that processes and tools aren’t important, but the scales should favor people over process.

Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation

Following the spirit of being lightweight, don’t focus on heavy documentation, over-planning but build early, build fast, and iterate fast. It is therefore emphasized that working software that meets user acceptance criteria, even incrementally, over detailed documentation.

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation.

The Agile mindset is one that is flexible, and embracing requirements that can change. Pivoting is something that has to be accepted. This is not to say that contracts aren’t also important, but getting the right requirements from customers is favorable to rigid contracts.

Responding to Change over Following a Plan

Change is inevitable, the only constant is change, and that’s why heavy documentation is doomed to failure, because of the nature of change. Instead build components in a decoupled and nimble manner that fosters change, and work in an environment that allows you to react to changes based on new understandings.
Notes about my PSM I Assessment
By: Serhat Topkaya
Tags: Scrum Agile, Scrum Master, Tips And Tricks, Agile, Scrum

NOTE: On November 18th, a new version of the Scrum Guide was made available. All Assessments and Classes will be based on the previous version (2017) through January 9th 2021.

Hope this information would be helpful to some of you.

Cheers!
The #1 Reason Why Your Estimates Might Go Wrong
By: Ravishankar R
Tags: Estimations, Forecasting, Agile Planning, Scrum, Scrum Team

This incident happened in November 2019 around Diwali time in Chennai. A close friend of mine travelled from Bangalore to Chennai on an official visit and wanted to meet me before his return to Bangalore the same day.

We worked on a plan and somehow met at a common place with just a few hours left to reach Chennai Central for boarding his train.

Given the tight schedule, we could hardly speak in a relaxed mode nevertheless we had a lot to exchange. We had everything to discuss over a cup of tea standing near a tea shop.

With no good ambience to continue our conversation, my friend suggested why not we both get into the cab and continue speaking while ensuring his travel plan is intact.

After some time, he requested the driver suddenly to stop the cab in the busy market roads of Thyagaraya Nagar (otherwise called Mambalam) en route to Chennai Central.

He wanted to surprise his mother in law with a Kanchipuram silk saree on her 70th birthday coming soon. The idea was definitely a noble one nevertheless there was not much time left.

He somehow persuaded me with a forecast to get a saree in less than 15 minutes and get out from a busy shopping mall nearby. With not even a week’s time for Diwali expecting a huge last-minute shopping by many, I wasn’t convinced for him to own such a risk.

But what is bound to happen, had to happen. He selected a wonderful silk saree in less than 10 minutes and stood in a long queue for about an hour to get it billed.

Finding that he was running short of time and can’t get his billing done, had no choice other than to give up the plan of buying a saree. He left with a heavy heart back to the cab to board the train on time to reach home safe.

While coming back to the local suburban train all alone, I had a realization with all the series of activities that happened in the last couple of hours. I found it neatly ties back to estimating work in a complex domain and the reason why it fails.
Branching Strategy pada Scrum Software Development
By: Timotius Andrew S.
Tags: Software Development, Branching Strategy, Scrum

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Change Agency. Bridging the gap between what is…
By: Tom Cooper
Tags: Scrum, Career Change Advice, Professional Development, Career Change, Agile Methodology

Bridging the gap between what is happening and what is possible is what change management is all about. Change management is not just an organizational topic delegated in highfalutin Corporate HR policy document publication. Twenty years after the Agile Manifesto, it is a personal career manifesto for every worker who hopes to remain relevant over their entire life. From newly graduated post college hopeful to the soon to retire, highly respected, career professional, your survival depends on change agency.

What is a better word for change? development, advance, adjustment, diversity, shift, transition, variation, switch, revolution, reversal, innovation, modification, difference, transformation, revision, turnaround, evolve, reduce, resolve, reform.

As a noun

the act or instance of making or becoming different

As an antonym

conservative, averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values

In short, a person who seeks to remain relevant in a highly competitive employment marketplace would do well to embrace characteristics and skills that promote adaptation, adjustment, and development to advance and survive.

An individual seeking to remain relevant in that same highly competitive marketplace would not survive if they were averse to change. For example, holding on to a traditional value of your father’s profession, pursuing the skills of a blacksmith shoeing horses while automobiles begin to outnumber horse drawn carriages as primary modes of travel.

Career change is inevitable so learn to change and anticipate it.
Agile Software Development. A ‘big picture’ look at software…
By: Scott H Lee
Tags: Software Development, Scrum, Agile

A lot of my background has been in the project/program management side of the house, and so I was naturally drawn towards an exploration of the big picture side of software development. A methodology that I had come across years ago, that still seems to still be prevalent in software development, is the Agile Process. There are many flavors of Agile, but they are all based on the same basic principles of short, regular iterations that produce a working deliverable(s) at each step. Think “skateboard” to Maserati! The process is dependent on clearly defined, but open communications paths and tightly knit, cross-functional groups, all focused on delivering a product, which the client and stake holders can clearly understand and provide feedback to. This is intended to make the process highly ‘agile’ and able to shift priorities to meet the immediate needs of the client. Most of the processes start with some form of ‘User Stories’ that will drive and guide the team.

The Core of Agile Development

One thing that separates Agile from other approaches to software development is the focus on the people doing the work and how they work together. Solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams utilizing the appropriate practices for their context. https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/

Agile is a framework for software development that provides core, driving principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

There are a number of variations of Agile methods:

A narrative on each one of these is beyond the scope of this blog(links are provided above). Some are more appropriate for small teams, where others are meant for large projects where scalability is a big factor. One source cites over 42 different methodologies! Obviously, a lot of thought has been given to how best to approach software development. The biggest take away is that once entering the world of software development , you are likely to run across some form of Agile development, where terms like “Burndown/Burnup charts”, “Sprint Backlogs”, “Scrum masters”, and daily “Standups” become a whole other language to learn!
Как измерить технический долг. Нулевая версия
By: Philipp Sanachev
Tags: Agile, Scrum, Tech Debt, Development

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Agilidade no JOTA: Uma visão geral (Parte 1)
By: Thaís Rigolon
Tags: Kanban, Business Agility, Jota, Scrum, Agilidade

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Certified ScrumMaster Course, Дистанционно, 16–18 апреля
By: Nataliya Trenina
Tags: Scrum Master, Scrum Certification, Agile Methodology, Agile, Scrum

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Agile Development Frameworks
By: Melody Soriano
Tags: Extreme Programming, Scrum, Agile Development

Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming, shortened to XP, is another agile framework, that is almost as complicated as it sounds by the name and I will attempt to give a brief explanation of some of the practices. Twelve core practices are described in more detail here.

In XP, everyone is apart of the whole team, which forms around a business representative known as the Customer. It is highly encouraged for all members to be co-located in one space or office. Every iteration the team delivers running, tested software to the customer, who then can use that software for any purpose, including release to end-users.

The planning game addresses two concerns in software development: predicting what will be accomplished by the next due date and determining what to do next. There are two steps in planning that help emphasize steering the product, rather than predicting exactly what is needed and how long it takes. Release Planning is a practice where the Customer presents the desired features to the programmers, and the programmers estimate their difficulty. Iteration Planning is the practice whereby the team is given direction every couple of weeks. The Customer defines what it means for a feature to be complete, and the programmers build automated tests to prove that a feature is working as expected.

One of the big things that set XP apart from death march or crunch development is the dedication to a sustainable pace: team members work overtime when it is effective, but normally work in such a way as to maximize productivity week in and week out. Crunch seldom produces quality software, though certain sectors of the tech industry have yet to really figure this out (CD Projekt, I’m looking at you).
Planning poker — async edition. The web version of Team O’clock…
By: Team O'Clock
Tags: Agile, Scrum, Planning Poker

The web version of Team O’clock planning poker just got a major revamp, focusing on asynchronous estimation.

The previous version was designed upon synchronous sessions, where all team members joined via video call in order to estimate a single task at a time, emulating cards on a physical office. However, with remote work and distributed teams becoming more of a norm than ever, we tried to put more strength on the asynchronous side of things, hence the new version.

Planning poker estimation

Here is a list of the major changes on the user experience:

The facilitator role was introduced, a member who is responsible for managing the session.

The facilitator can add multiple tasks for estimation.

Team members can enter the session at their own leisure and estimate the open tasks.

When all members have voted for a task, the estimation is revealed and the task voting is closed. Alternatively, the facilitator can close an estimate manually, in case a member is absent.

Quick filters control visibility of the task list.

Additionally, clicking on the 3-dot menu, the facilitator can now change the voting technique, without the need to go to the team settings.
Experiment: Increase Cross-Functionality with a Skill Matrix
By: Zombie Scrum Resistance
Tags: Scrum, Zombie Scrum, Zombie Scrum Experimen, Ship It Fast

In our book — the Zombie Scrum Survival Guide — we dive deep into what causes Zombie Scrum; something that looks like Scrum from a distance, but lacks a beating heart. We also offer 40+ experiments to recover from Zombie Scrum. In this series, we share experiments that either didn’t make it to the book or a selection of those that did and are just too good to miss. Download the paper “10 Powerful Experiments to Overcome Zombie Scrum” to get more inspiration on how to fight Zombie Scrum.

Is your team experiencing bottlenecks because only one person is capable of testing work? Is a developer on your team struggling to implement something that is blocking everyone else until she is done? Do team members start work on unrelated and low-value tasks simply because they have nothing else to do? These symptoms arise when teams are not cross-functional enough, causing work to pile-up for some people and creating delays for others.

The Scrum Framework is built on cross-functional teams because they are better able to overcome the unpredictable challenges that arise when working on complex problems. Your team is cross-functional enough when items flow smoothly through your workflow. Cross-functionality does not mean that everyone can perform any kind of task, or require having at least two experts for every kind of skill in your team. Often, just having another person who has a particular skill, even when they are slower and less experienced at it, already improves flow enough to prevent most problems.

This experiment offers your team practical strategies to help them improve their cross-functionality.
Transformando planos de ação em ações: como engajar equipes
By: Flavia Araujo
Tags: Scrum Master, Plano De Ação, Gente, Scrum, Agilidade

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Gather Data
By: Dirk Fabricius
Tags: Serious Scrum, Scrum Master, Gather Data, Agile Retrospective, Scrum

When a Scrum Master facilitates a retrospective, “Gather data” has a promise to it:

“We’ll share relevant data with the whole group. Make it the best you can and want. We can and will help and/or support you within our accountabilities inside the organization. We’ll still ask before taking action and will only make proposals for the next steps for you to decide on.”

Should that sound strange, this article might be for you.

Some definitions first: We’re not really aiming at data but information and actions based on the information. Information will be generated in Phase 3 — Generate Insights. The difference between data and information would be, that data is unorganized and without context, but the information is structured, and context-relevant.

Information equals power in all known organizational forms

Wolf Pack: How strong/weak is the enemy, where can I find food…

Mafia: Who killed whom, who slept with whom, who took something which they had no right to, who has the godfather a soft sport for, which policemen are corrupt,…

Military: How strong is the enemy, where are their hidden bases,…

Enterprise (Classic): When is the position to be filled, what are my colleagues earning,…

Enterprise (Value Stream): How to improve, how to generate more ROI (Return on Invest), how to please the customer…

Enterprise (Knowledge Work): Even in a modern sharing culture the employee sharing the information has the final say on when, how, and in what format. This also equals power in my opinion.
Visual Collaboration, Rejecting Requests — Food for Agile Thought #273
By: Stefan Wolpers
Tags: Innovation, Product Management, Software Development, Agile, Scrum

TL; DR: Visual Collaboration, Rejecting Requests — Food for Agile Thought #273

Welcome to the 273rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 29,133 peers. This week, we appreciate the merits of visual collaboration; we detail the path of agility from the team level to the organizational level, and we reflect on cost-saving with ‘Agile’ and its inherent trickiness.

We then delve into the differences between user stories and use cases; we share a hands-on guide on how to move toward a balanced, outcome-driven way of product development, and we embrace an approach that allows understanding which stakeholder requests to accept or reject — without burning bridges. We also welcome a set of 50 team building activities, games, and exercises from communication to collaboration to alignment and vision.

🎉 Wishing you a joyous Holiday season and a happy and peaceful New Year. The next edition of ‘Food for Agile Thought’ will be available on January 10th, 2021.

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #272?

🗞 Do you want to get this article in your inbox? You can sign up here and join 29k other subscribers.
Indeed, it is easy to understand the role of a product owner but difficult to master.
By: Dong Hyung Cho
Tags: Scrum

Indeed, it is easy to understand the role of a product owner but difficult to master. Thank you for sharing your experience and insight.
Food for Agile Thought #273
By: Stefan Wolpers
Tags: Agile, Scrum, Product Management, Innovation

Hello from Berlin!

Welcome to the 273rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 29,133 peers.

This week, we appreciate the merits of visual collaboration; we detail the path of agility from the team level to the organizational level, and we reflect on cost-saving with ‘Agile’ and its inherent trickiness.

Food for Agile Thought #273: Visual Collaboration, Cost-Saving with Agile, User Stories vs. Use Cases, Rejecting Feature Requests

We then delve into the differences between user stories and use cases; we share a hands-on guide on how to move toward a balanced, outcome-driven way of product development, and we embrace an approach that allows understanding which stakeholder requests to accept or reject — without burning bridges. We also welcome a set of 50 team building activities, games, and exercises from communication to collaboration to alignment and vision.

🎉 Wishing you a joyous Holiday season and a happy and peaceful New Year. The next edition of ‘Food for Agile Thought’ will be available on January 10th, 2021.

Learn more: Food for Agile Thought #273: Visual Collaboration, Cost-Saving with Agile, User Stories vs. Use Cases, Rejecting Feature Requests.

Best,

Stefan
Learn Agile: 2 biggest mistake Product Owners make regarding Product Vision
Tags: Product Management, Digital, Agile, Scrum, Digital Product

Do you know what are the 2 biggest mistakes Product Owners make regarding Product Vision? Download Product Vision Template. Agile Software Development and Scrum Series…

You can also jump in right away: https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-build-an-effective-digital-product/?referralCode=111D4F91601055EE0609