Improving the world with software
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Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 3
314 essays in the archive
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Why projects are often late, and how to avoid it – A #NoEstimates Post
I was watching a video of @nntaleb on youtube and it became obvious to me why scheduling / estimating is a bad idea for a Software Project. Here’s my take on it. Have you ever been HOURS early arriving from a flight? No. Have you been HOURS late? Sure. Happens all the time. I’m writing …
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Don’t plan to fail! Or how to never be late, never ever! #NoEstimates
Project management methodologies involve some kind of estimates on the content of the project (i.e. scope) and effort/duration (i.e. schedule). Simple techniques like WBS (work breakdown structure) with Gantt Charts or more complex techniques like PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) involve estimating the content and ultimately the duration or effort of each of the …
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A #NoEstimates tool: The slicing meeting, replacing estimation meetings while creating shared understanding
Before we start, I’d like to thank to Neil Killick and Woody Zuill for inspiring this technique with their work. Sit down. Let’s estimate This is not a good start of a meeting for many of us. Asking for estimates may be an easy thing to do, but going through the process of estimating Stories …
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How to manage risk in Agile?
Unvalidated opinions are “bets”, with the caveat that they beget even more “bets” (decisions based on that opinion). So we can say that unvalidated opinions generate other unvalidated opinions based on the original one, therefore creating exponential growth in risk. The process of validating an opinion (like Popcorn Flow by Claudio Perrone) helps us jump …
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How to define purpose for an Agile team? A practical guide to defining purpose and aligning with your organization’s goals
As a Scrum Master, we are often worried about what goes on with the teams we work with. We care about the people. We help the team communicate, collaborate so that they can achieve the team’s goals. However, we often don’t work on a larger goal: the goal of the organization that needs that team. …
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5 tools all Scrum Masters should be familiar with. From managing conflict to Lean Startup
Today is Tuesday. I get up and go to work. This Tuesday is the same as every Tuesday. After a few Tuesday’s we get the hang of the work we do. We get familiar. And after the familiar comes the routine and ultimately the boring. Is this how you want your job to be, routine and ultimately boring? …
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Scan Agile 2016 call for sessions – announcement
It’s that time of the year. The Scan-Agile 2016 organizing team got together and put together the Call for Sessions for the 2016 edition of the conference. You can find the Call for Sessions at this link Help us out spread the word and tweet about it 🙂 See you all in Helsinki in March! …
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Agile incremental delivery visualized – how to explain Agile and Incremental delivery to anyone
If you are interested in Agile and if you want to read up on it (reading books, blogs or following discussions on twitter) you soon stumble upon the following picture to visualize incremental value. I believe it’s from Henrik Kniberg: I do understand where this picture is coming from. It is about focusing on value …
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ScanAgile 2016 – Help Shape The Conference
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a possible Vision for the 2016 edition of ScanAgile. But that was only my Vision and I was looking for feedback. ScanAgile was, and has always been team work, so when we got together with some of the team members we decided that we needed your …
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A possible Vision for Scan Agile 2016: Work 3.0
As I’m writing this blog post, in the balcony of my apartment, enjoying the mild Finnish end of Summer (it is not snowing… yet), I am forced to acknowledge how the world of work has changed. It is not that far ago that we lived under a Feudal system, where the notion of fairness was …
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FREE Agile Retrospectives Program
Agile Retrospectives is all the rage right now for good reason: never before companies and teams had so much understanding how Agile Retrospectives can help companies. However, it’s easy to get sucked into the trend of Agile Retrospectives, run a few sessions, and literally wind up with nothing to show for it. Most Scrum Masters …
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Accidental complication: another reason why estimates don’t work
Accidental complication Another reason why estimations can’t work goes by the name of accidental complication. J.B. Rainsberger introduced this concept at Oredev 2013 . The gist of the argument is this: every feature or functionality added to an existing project has two cost elements (what you want to estimate): Essential complication or g(e): How hard …
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