Improving the world with software
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Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 2
314 essays in the archive
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#NoBacklogs: How to never lose a good idea by keeping the Backlog short!
“I’m afraid we might lose all these good ideas!” This is a phrase I hear very often when facilitating a Vision and Backlog session with the teams I work with. This is true for software teams as well as for business teams and mixed business + development teams. The fear of losing a good idea …
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The Project Slippery Slope: why the concept of Projects lead to Waterfall, sooner or later, but inevitably…
All that is below applies in the context that is defined here. This is not supposed to cover your personal “projects”, musical “projects”, art “projects”, home improvement “projects”, etc. You get the picture. In a company that uses the concept of “projects” to decide what to work on, fund, plan, control work (contextual boundary), projects …
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#NoEstimates for the perplexed – a simple principle that makes estimations obsolete
When we think of estimation, we immediately associate some concepts that are attached to the estimation activity: listing all the work, sequencing all the work, assigning all the work, etc. All of those activities are accessories to estimation. The fact is that a task does not have an intrinsic duration, it has a duration that …
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The Errors of Estimation
What we often hear from estimators is that estimates are supposed to be “intervals”, not single-point values. This blog post is now a podcast also, narrated by Billy Elchin As usual, they don’t define what “interval” should be. They just say that you have to be “accurate”, but not so “precise”. Ok, let’s explore what …
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The most dangerous phrase I’ve heard in my life as an Agile Consultant
Have you heard this phrase lately: “we’re working on it”? If you have, you may have found a symptom you should tackle quickly. Learn how in this blog post.
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The Biggest Problem I see Agile teams face and the solution that works for me
This is a #SkiTertulia blog post. If you want to know more about #SkiTertulia, visit the announcement page. When I work with teams from all over the world (multiple different national cultures, multi-national, distributed or co-located), the biggest problem I see those teams struggle with is very simple. They aren’t teams. Let me use an …
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The Ski Tertulia, a space for generating breakthrough experiments
The Ski Tertulia is a space for learning, in the Alps, with Vasco Duarte and Jacopo Romei.
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A detailed comment on the practice of estimation in Software Development – a #NoEstimates post
OK, so a friend (who shall remain anonymous) sent me a message with some very good points bout estimation. This blog post explores those statements. It will be long, and detailed. Grab a cup of coffee, sit down and let’s do this! The first thing I’d like to comment on is the statement My start …
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#MyCoreOfAgile: Global retrospective, what’s the one thing Agile is about for you?
I had an amazing conversation about the Core of Agile with some members of Torino’s local Agile community. We met at Trattoria Valenza. Which was an excellent location to enjoy tradition and look at what we can learn for the future.The conversation touched many points, but the one that I want to talk about is …
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PO Role: Most have it ⛔️WRONG when it comes to the PO role
There’s a widespread belief that the Product Owner handles writing user stories (partly true), and helps the team clarify requirements. That’s not right! At least, not the whole truth, not even the most important tasks for PO’s. There’s a much more important aspect of the PO role, that has nothing to do with User Stories, …
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Two simple heuristics that will solve (most of) the problems you face as a Scrum Master
I regularly hear about the problems Scrum Masters face. After more than 200 interviews with Scrum Masters in the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, here are the 3 most common problems that we face in our work, in order of frequenc): As a Scrum Master, I lack support from management, and when they don’t actively fight …
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Estimates anchor (limit!) benefits while not limiting costs! – a #NoEstimates blog post about value delivery
Estimation and estimates are a dreadful way to run a business. The basic idea is this: Estimates anchor benefits while not limiting your costs at all. Let’s look at this statement in parts. The second part (“estimates don’t limit costs”), is self-evident. Anyone looking at the track record of software projects will see the evidence. …
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