Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays from 2010
28 essays from 2010
-
My Agile adoption story, and why it matters to you
Every person has their own different story of how they found out about Agile and how they came to experiment and ultimately adopt it in their projects.Mine is also different than most, I started as a skeptic. I was one of those that said “it will never work”. But I did come around. Here’s the …
-
Patterns of Agility. How to recognize an Agile project when you see one…
Instead of fighting about “who’s agile” or “who’s more agile than whom”, it would be useful to create a set of patterns, that once recognized would help us define if we are or have been able to successfully implement an Agile life-cycle for our project and portfolio. These patterns or symptoms are useful for us …
-
this is a test post with a twist…
As it is a test post I decided to include a nice picture for you enjoyment. Hope you like it! 😉
-
What can we learn from illusions that helps us manage projects better?
Just had the opportunity to watch a BBC documentary about illusions. The show went on to detail how we as humans get deceived by our own senses. There were 3 things that opened my eyes in that documentary: The things that caused me to think were: when we mix senses one of them tends to …
-
Short multimedia review of LESS 2010 conference
The LESS 2010 conference just ended on a positive note of shared knowledge, bridge building between different communities and celebration of great work in the area of Software Development. LESS was started with a great ambition of combining, from the starting point three different communities globally. Those communities were the Agile community, which is focused …
-
Short video introduction to my sessions at Agile Eastern Europe 2010
In about 3 weeks I’ll be flying to Kiev and meeting some of the best Agilists in the planet. But it won’t be just fun and games for me. I’m already stressing about my sessions. Check out the video introduction of my sessions at Agile Eastern Europe and, while you are at it why not …
-
Waterfall leads to 90% ready 90% of the time! (the very definition of unpredictability)
One of the most common anti-patterns I’ve seen in waterfall projects is the “90% done syndrome”. It goes like this: the project will get quite quickly to 90% readiness and will look to be on time until that point. However, after the 90% readiness point is achieved we start to see more and more delays …
-
The three main trends in long agile adoption processes
I was having a discussion with fellow agile adopters yesterday and a bunch of interesting patterns emerged from the discussion: We are getting to agile/process improvement fatigue The management of software development is changing, but agile adoption processes do not have a mandate to change the management approach We don’t have a process to learn …
-
Stop fighting reality, take the red pill! A tale about managers
Today I’m on a mood for a rant. Be warned! 🙂 I constantly get gob-smacked (to borrow a term from a friend) about the lack of simple understanding of reality. Let me explain. One particularly common symptom in management is that they tend to “believe” (that’s the word) that they can affect what happens in …
-
Agile Eastern Europe announced, I’ll be visiting
It is now official, I’ll be speaking at Agile Eastern Europe. Hope to see you there!I’ll be hosting a workshop and a talk. Both are about the business view of software development. One will be specifically about Agile: Business Agility. How to take advantage of an Agile R&D?Many companies have jumped on the Agile bandwagon. …
-
Don’t just plan, plan to be surprised!
Walking a tightrope without a net maybe good entertainment, but it’s hardly what project teams enjoy the most. When the deadline comes and your team is late, you know why that is. No matter how well you plan (and you must) there will always be a volcano or a flood or simpler things like changing …
-
Tired of useless boring planning meetings? Read on, I’ve got a solution for you
In a meeting today I was graphically reminded of how some of the basic concepts in software development still escape many of us. Case in point, the meaning of capacity. In many people’s minds capacity still means “how many man-hours we have have available for real work”. This is plain wrong. Let’s decompose this assumption …
Nothing matches that yet.
Keep the conversation going
The essays work best in company. Join the community to keep the questions coming.