Humane assessment primer (January 2013) - summary
On January 25, I gave a Humane assessment primer course. There were eight participants with different backgrounds: agile coaching, architecture, software engineering, and research.
It was a pleasure to work with such a diverse audience and observe how they react to the course and the humane assessment concepts.
The course has a dynamic structure with loose predetermined constraints: the morning offers an introduction of the concepts, and the afternoon focuses on case studies. The actual sequence is determined on the spot based on discussions. This helps dealing with the variety of attendees' concerns, but previous experiences showed that it also makes the audience prone to lose track of the overall picture.
To meet the challenge, I introduced a simple teaching device: the overview map. I physically printed the map and placed it prominently so that everyone could see it at all time. I then used physical pointers (magnets in this case) every time I was referring to any of the concepts. This was particularly useful when discussing case studies.
There is still to improve, but judging by the lively discussions, the course met its target. Here are some testimonials:
Humane Assessment is a full featured approach which enables you to grow your software organically based on hard data. It ensures that your underlying design and architecture is right - continuously throughout the whole product life cycle. It integrates well with Scrum, making it an obvious choice in my agile toolbox.
Ralph Jocham, Agile Coach at effective agile. and Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org
Skillfully crafted and brilliantly executed, Tudor's presentation whizzes you through the conceptual endoskeleton of the Humane Assessment method in what feels much less than a morning. But it doesn't stop there. Tudor puts meat on the bone with accounts from the past years of applying the method, where it has not only saved the day, but sometimes the existence of the company. I highly recommend this introduction to everyone in the software engineering business.
Florian Winkelman, Software Engineer, CompuGroup Medical Schweiz AG
The Humane Assessment course was given in such a wonderful storytelling way, that that alone is a reason to take the primer. Yet more importantly, Humane Assessment can have such a huge impact on development, that taking the course is a must.
Robert von Burg, Software Engineer