What I really identified with, though, is not the fancy chart that shows how red states tend to have lower IQs, but some of the comments posted by other readers. The fact that the majority of the statistical range shows an average spread of only 20 points is disappointing too. But, back to those comments… this one strikes way too close to home:

I have an 11 year old daughter who we have had in a little private school for the past 3 years. this year, we decided to put her in a public school to save money. She has been there a week, and we are pulling her out and putting her back in the private school. Why?

Because she has been bringing home the math papers they have been working on, and I for one was motherfucking shocked. She’s in the 5th grade.

Anyways, friday’s math hour was spent with the whole class working on a 10 question worksheet. My girl tells me that most of the class was having trouble with it. Here are some of the ‘problems’ my FIFTH GRADER had to work out (if no one believes me, i will scan it and post it):

1. The first problem was some ‘review’ equations : 3+8=? 4/1=? there were a couple of other equally 1st grade equations

2. What is the number that comes after 99? (I shit you not this was a question)

3. There was a fraction question with a rectangle that had 1/2 shaded, then below it, the rectangle was divided into fourths, with the same 1/2 of the rectangle shaded, to show how 2/4 simplifies to 1/2

There were several others, but you get the gist. I cannot beleive some of the kids were having problems with it, or even that 5th graders would be asked shit like this.

Needless to say, Jordan has today off while we enroll her back in her regular school…

I’ve posted many times before about the horrible state of our educational system, and I’m sure to do so again. It gets worse every year. Get out there and do something to put an end to the so-called “no child left behind” (should have been named “least common denominator”).

And, in the meantime, my own kids will stay in their charter school, attend after school programs such as Soccer, Lacrosse, and Kumon (an advanced math program that more-or-less seems to be on a par with what I remember doing when I was in 4th and 5th grade), and get as much home schooling as possible. It’s such a shame though — once upon a time, the U.S. turned out 1 in 2 of the world’s best engineers. Today, we turn out 1 in 98, if I remember the statistics correctly.

And secondly, they had to make their methods trendy and fashionable, so that clueless management at big corporations would hire them in.  Enter the “Agile manifesto” and “Extreme Programming” … Could they pimp their stuff any more blatantly?  

Luke’s major criticisms of typical Agile methods (such as Scrum) hit the nail on the head too:

A specific danger of the Agile processes is doing the easy parts and not the hard parts.  I’ve seen a number of teams saying they’re adopting Scrum, but when you look closely they’re doing the trivial parts (such as daily stand-up meetings and calling someone a Scrum Master) and missing out on tricky but important ingredients that could actually help them (for example, making their team cross-functional and reflecting on their practices regularly).

One of his most pointed ripostes is simple this: “Agile gives you an excuse for not introducing a little rigour and discipline into your project.” Dead on, mate — a danger that’s so commonplace it’s painful.

Agile is not a solution in and of itself. Those who sell a particular methodology — whether Scrum, XP or even Rational Unified Process — as the end-all-be-all solution to any organization are just plain wrong. There is no single solution that will work across an entire organization or even within a single project.

Every project, every team, every organization needs to develop a process that is suited to their needs.

I strongly believe that Agile principles such as Scrum provide an excellent basis for new teams to start with — a building block with which to create a foundation. On this foundation, a solution can be built. After 20 years of project management and consulting to solve the hard process problems faced by many organizations, I know that process is part of the answer. But throughout all of my projects, I’ve never seen a single, canned solution that works.

However, a solution can be created by drawing on a tool set that includes Scrum as a starting point, formal Software Quality Assurance and testing principles, good team organization, and possibly elements of more complex methodologies such as Rational. The very aspects of the challenges faced by any given project team will change the requirements, the conditions and the ultimate solution.

One thing that people often forget is that Agile itself recommends frequent self-inspection. This applies to the very process itself — in other words, the process that is put in place today may be woefully incorrect just a little ways down the road. The company grows, the team changes, the clients become bigger and more demanding — and the process had better change to reflect that evolution of the business. One size most definitely does not fit all.

So, all this aside, there are a few critiques I have of Luke’s post:

• “The ’sprint’, or in plain English, one iteration of software development, is nothing new.  You’d have to be pretty feeble to benefit from moving to these.”  Well, terminology aside (I don’t care if it’s a sprint or an iteration or a cycle), I actually do find value in fixed duration sprints. Most of the value extends beyond the development team — it is external. A fixed duration sprint aids in setting customer expectations around release cycles. It helps to have an artificial “time box” in which to set some work goals as well — otherwise, the customer keeps pouring more features in and is surprised when they find out it will take six months. Finally, I strongly object to those long, six-month development iterations: Short cycles with real, usable software delivered to the customer is useful. It keeps the team focused in one area, it helps prioritize and set goals, and it gets something into customer hands frequently (whether for hands-on feedback or just for perception, both are valuable).
• “The product backlog is just an estimated, prioritised list of everything you have left to do.  I find it hard to imagine a working software team that doesn’t have this already…” Alright, agreed — and yet, it happens all the time. Most often it’s not so much not having a list, it’s having an unwieldy, huge list that has no prioritization and no cost estimation. The product backlog simply formalizes a process wherein the customer is expected to help prioritize work based on its value.
• “Having an assigned person (the ‘product owner’) to control the backlog exists purely to combat a crazy situation where multiple people tell developers what to do.” Absolutely. Having multiple “bosses” (maybe it’s the CEO who thinks he can “chat” with the development team — and totally change the perspective on priorities) needs to be cut off and this is one tool that helps. But it’s not the only problem the product owner role address: What about a customer that has multiple stakeholders, multiple owners that all feel they can set project priorities? I’ve run into a few projects with this problem. Having the customer appoint their “voice” ultimately resulted in saving days of lost developer time.

Luke’s final comment on Agile as a whole:

There is literally nothing here of any interest to me.  It’s a bunch of common sense (sometimes bordering on banal) stuff, with some very arbitrary decisions made for you on things like meeting frequencies, and some really stupid terminology.  I don’t see how it benefits anyone but the worst of teams, and they have bigger problems.

I won’t argue the point that there is nothing here for Luke. But lets not forget about those companies that are just starting out, forming their first development team without any idea how to do it. Having some documented process — and possibly hiring a consultant to help guide them to a solution — is not a waste of effort. Quite the contrary, many companies have gone under after hiring a bunch of developers and “some guy” who says he’s a project manager… without having any idea what they were in for. Having an experienced hand at the wheel will benefit any organization — and if that comes with a bit of Scrum, or as Luke calls it “common sense,” it’s good for the whole team.

It’s a good, in-depth comparison. For those that want to jump to the quick, here’s the final word from Jade Ohlhauser:

In my first comparison I could see the advantages that Cornerstone had to offer, but it had flaws in the workflow I needed every day. Now that those flaws have been addressed, the comparison isn’t even close. I’m going with Cornerstone. Something we can all agree on is that the competition benefits everyone. Subjectively speaking, however, it seems to me that the Cornerstone developers have made more progress in the last 4 months than the Versions team has.

Check out AdvertFan and you’ll likely find what you’re looking for. If you want to critique or dissect an advertisement for its pros and cons, it’s a great tool.

Hear hear, Mr. Olbermann.

So, at any rate, the old Boss Logic look has been around for three years or so and I thought it would be time to try something new. Let me know what you think; there are still a few loose ends but I’m feeling pretty good about it. It loads a lot faster, too, and that’s one of the things I was after.

“This is hell,” [said an attendee at Web 2.0 Expo], to applause from the audience. And he followed up with a question to the panel: “What are you going to do about it?”

With Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Explorer and now Chrome possibly mixing in, does it mean multiplatform browser wars all over again? Developers aren’t liking the idea that every site is going to need fine-tuning (or outright redevelopment) to support a bunch of warring, incompatible browsers.

…You can learn something about a person by the company [Palin] keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” “miraculous healings” and “the gift of tongues.” Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin’s spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of “the final generation,” engaged in “spiritual warfare” to purge the earth of “demonic strongholds.” Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: “All options remain on the table”?

…The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.