The Agile Toolwright

The Agile Toolwright
As a child I remember going camping in our multi-colored VW pop top van with our extended family. No, my family was not part of the whole 60’s thing. It was the late 70’s anyway. My father repaired VW’s in his spare time to flip and this one had not been painted yet. As you will see from this story technical improvisation runs in the family.

On the day we were leaving the van would not start. My dad diagnosed the problem to be the solenoid. (One of those key parts that makes an engine start.) Fortunately we had my Uncle Dwight with us. A man who collected things, all kinds of things, scrap metal, screws, bolts, thermostats, and various pieces of "junk".


His collection was housed in a large shed with an estimated 25,000 cubic feet of storage. It was very organized and collected with a purpose. One portion of it held all of the tools he used to craft art, tools and fix things.


Now Dwight did not just collect these parts he used them. He took them and combined them in ways never seen before. Most often they were used in an urgent manner to fix some major problem like broken well pumps. Dwight seemed to be everyone’s fix up man. If something was impossible to fix or you just did not have money for new parts he was the person to call. Other times he used them to weld fantastic looking sculptures or even tools to accomplish a task.


I went with him to his Red Ford F100 and he pulled up the back of the seat to reveal a carefully organized box of parts. Everything from springs, cables, rope, pulleys to a solenoid were there.


A person with traits like Dwight is most helpful for a software development team. They become even more valuable on an Agile team. The Agile Toolwright is what I like to call them. A Wright is a maker of things as in shipwright. The Toolwright is sometimes called a jack of all trades or toolsmith. This idea and word is based on the term Toolsmith from James Bach. http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/agileauto.pdf and http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/15


The Toolwright is able to aid the rest of the developers, testers and even the user representative on the agile team get things done faster and increase velocity. It is someone who has experience at all layers of the software stack and may have positions in most of the life cycle roles, from DBA, tester, developer, help desk, system administrator to help desk. They can quickly research all of the software tools at hand and combine them in strange ways to get a task done all focused around software quality.


The Toolwright ends up building small tools or even an entire continuous integration / testing framework to help remove roadblocks in the way of the developers and testers. Some of the tools they may end up building or integrating together are continuous integration platforms integrated with unit testing, automated testing, code coverage and other extras. They help guide developers in making the application testable. Most of the time is spent helping testers with small applications to help them test faster. Sometimes they even help the users in building interim software to allow the development team to speed the time needed to build the feature correctly for the long term.


The person in this role may not contribute directly in the production code but they have the ability to find the gaps in the process that can be made more efficient. The whole process of developing in an agile fashion goes much better if you have a dedicated Toolwright. Perhaps you do not have a full blown Toolwright on your team but there is no reason it cannot be a shared role between all team members. Try to develop the skills needed and the attitude to help others on your team get their job done quicker.



Well that solenoid was not a VW solenoid; it was a bit too large. Good thing VW engines are not that picky about organ transplants. A little duct tape and bailing wire solved that problem. Watch out, many Toolwrights are not opposed to duct tape solutions. In any case, the van started and got us home.



Now for Dwight, being a toolwright of sorts was not his livelihood but he ended up as the community maintenance man, the ultimate handyman on an extreme budget. Often without cost helped neighbors repair their homes, appliances and cars.


I only hope I can do the same with software and code instead of scraps.

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